Chapter 14

I glanced around the big, round table and saw eight strangers whose expressions mirrored what I felt: we were confused, totally flummoxed. This conference room was fairly full but I recognized only a few of the attendees. Mr. Campbell’s attorney, the one he met with all the time, sat with a laptop and files neatly stacked in front of her. Two of the junior associates that had whispered complaints about him stood behind her. Today, those guys were impassive rather than sneering, and the lawyer-types looked as if they belonged.

The ones I didn’t know, the eight strangers, seemed as out of place as I felt. At least I was sitting between Mina (on my right) and Jude Bowers (on my left). My sister had called me earlier this morning, very early, and she’d had plenty of questions about her husband’s presence at this meeting. “What’s going on, Addie?” Nicola had asked. “Why would Jude have to go see some lawyer about your boss dying?”

“They were related,” I reminded her, and she had reminded me back that it was a distant connection and that the two of them had never even met.

“Well, Mr. Campbell knew who Jude was,” I’d said. “He told me that he kept track of all his relatives.”

That memory led me to believe that the rest of the people in this room, all of us except the lawyers, had some ties to Mr. Campbell. I looked at Mina and mouthed, “Who are they?”

After blowing her nose and wiping her eyes, she started texting me under the table to clue me in on the identities of a few of them. The woman directly across from us was the niece of Mr. Campbell’s cousin, the man with the portable oxygen tank was (she thought) related through Mr. Cambell’s wife, somehow. Maybe he was Celeste’s great-nephew—but the rest of them? Even Mina, who had been on scene in the mansion for so many years, had no idea.

It was more noticeable who wasn’t here: Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Berthe, Matilda, and Gwenyth. They were the crew who were the closest relations, the ones who had always shown up to apply a thick layer of butt kisses. I decided that this meeting must have been called in order to divvy up what was left of the estate once the five of them got their greedy paws onto it. They had already started trying to claim their prizes; as I’d talked with my sister this morning, Mina had texted me that somehow, they’d found out about Mr. Campbell’s death. They’d shown up at the house and demanded entry—but the security guards had said no. So there.

The attorney cleared her throat. “All right, everyone is present and we can get started. First, I’d like to express my condolences to you, the family and friends of Eben Campbell.”

Only Mina and I cried. The rest of them nodded and looked solemn, but I figured that they were in the same position as my sister’s husband. They may have been related, but they had never met him, so of course they weren’t sad. They still looked confused, though, and the attorney kept talking.

Basically, she told us this wasn’t a normal situation, although she took a lot more time and used a lot more vocabulary to explain that. Usually the postmortem legal procedures took more time, but Mr. Cambell had liked to do things in his own way (duh) so the settlement of his estate was going at full throttle. But he’d also done everything in a formal and correct manner. He’d collected written opinions on his mental state and cognitive abilities from several psychiatrists, neurologists, and geriatric specialists. He’d had all his documents reviewed by three separate legal teams, not just by the woman sitting in front of us (she seemed a little huffy about that), to ensure that everything was totally buttoned-up.

Basically, he’d done every single thing that anyone could think of so that his final wishes would be carried out to his specifications. The lawyer went on to talk more legalese about beneficiaries and the court system, wills and trusts, and probate. It was a long monologue that made Mina start to tap her fingernails and text me the raised eyebrow emoji.

I sat there quietly and without fidgeting, but I had little understanding of my purpose in the room. If the lawyer’s point was that Mr. Campbell was smart and thorough, well, I’d already known that. If her point was that he liked to get what he wanted—yes, I’d known that, too. I saw the other people around the table staring at her with what appeared to be a similar lack of comprehension.

“Why are you telling us about this man and all the estate planning he did?” Jude Bowers asked. “Are you hinting that he left us something? I didn’t even know him.”

“Me neither,” a woman across the table put in. “He was married to our great-aunt, but she hated everyone in our family. Whenever we drove by their house in Grosse Pointe, our grandmother would give it the finger.” The man with they oxygen tank nodded and smiled, as if he remembered that fondly.

“Well.” The attorney blinked. “You may not have known him, but he was aware of all of you. In fact, he left letters that I will now distribute.” One of the lower-level lawyers, or maybe a paralegal, passed out envelopes addressed in Mr. Campbell’s shaky handwriting. Mina held hers against her heart for a moment before she carefully slid her finger along the seal, and she waited a moment before removing the letter as she took shaky breaths. The other people ripped their envelopes and I opened mine, too, and read his last words to me.

“Addie Curran,” he’d typed. “While you’ve been in my employ, I’ve watched you make a series of disastrous decisions. One of those poor choices was being in my employ in the first place rather than seeking a position with proper benefits, a competitive salary, and potential for advancement. It was to my advantage, of course, but nearly every day I would look at you performing some menial chore and wonder why you’d chosen to squander money on a useless nursing degree in order to be my servant. Imagine how much better it would have been if you had studied the liberal arts and received a classical education. And then there was the ridiculous man on whom you had pinned your hopes…an uglier specimen of a human is rarely to be found. Watching you stumble and fumble away your best years constantly reminded me that youth is wasted on the young. You, however, were always determined to be old before your time. You’re also a doormat.”

What was this? He was reaching out from the grave to make me feel bad? I definitely felt a flush in my cheeks and I heard Mina say, “Fuck you, Eben!” I turned to her and she told me, “I was right all along. He’s just a mean bastard and I wasted my time. You won’t believe what he wrote to me about astrology!”

“This is a letter insulting me for my poor choices and insulting my wife for marrying me,” Jude spoke up. He also sounded very angry. “You asked us to come here so we could read a bunch of bullshit from a nasty old man?” He pushed back his chair and stood. “I have a job and better things to do. I’m leaving.”

“Wait,” the attorney said, and when two other people also got up she called, “Please! Please, give this another moment. If everyone has finished with their personal letters, he wanted me to read something aloud to all of you.”

No one looked like they wanted to hear it but maybe curiosity overcame their wrath, because they did sit down again.

She jumped right in. “I, Eben Vanderbilt Campbell, am aware of my shortcomings,” she read from another piece of paper. “I’m aware that I injured people close to me and did not render aid to those who needed it. I’m aware that I was, in the words of my staff, a prick and an asshole.”

I hadn’t known that he’d overheard that. Oops.

The lawyer shook her head slightly before she stated, “Mina Morgan Thomas.” She looked at my friend over the top of her glasses and Mina grabbed my arm. “My last statement to you is that I’m sorry.”

I felt her jolt. “He was?” she asked.

“I am,” the attorney read. “I’m sorry that I was not the person you wanted me to be.”

“I just read three paragraphs of insults from him,” she answered. “But now he’s sorry?”

“In my way, I do love you,” the attorney stated.

“Oh,” Mina said, and absolutely lost it for a while. She went to the bathroom to wash her face before we continued, and I was next.

“Adeline McKenzie Curran,” she stated next, and I swallowed. “You’re a nice girl but you could be a successful, confident woman. Make better choices. Stop cowering behind meekness and fear.”

They had been right to call him those names and I was glad that he’d overheard them. Jerk.

“I grew to care about you deeply,” she read. “Over the last six years, I began to understand the desire to have children of one’s own. I would have liked to have you as my daughter.”

“Oh, Eben,” Mina sniffled, and I started up, too.

The rest of the relatives got a short speech about how they’d all had their issues, but they were also the best and brightest of what remained of the proud Campbell family. He was glad that there were people who carried his blood and weren’t “unctuous narcissists like my grandnieces Berthe, Matilda, and Gwenyth. Tweedledee and Tweedledum didn’t deserve to be allowed in my house.” The lawyer actually winced when she read that. “He’s referencing Felix and Francis, his grandnephews,” she translated for us.

“What does all this mean?” Jude asked.

First, she explained the estate. He’d had investments all over the world and then there were the physical assets—the cars, houses, private planes, et cetera. Those would be sold. She told us about how much all that would add up to, and most of us sat in shock. Even the young lawyers lost the impassive expressions when they heard, and I lost my power of speech. I’d known that he was wealthy, but…

The lawyer was still talking. The biggest recipients, the ones who would apparently make out like bandits, were Mr. Campbell’s various alma maters, and I was sure that the members of the Lamb’s Academy development office would pat themselves on the back for faithfully sending him the flowers on his birthday for so many years. Other entities would also receive large bequests, and I was glad to hear that he’d decided to be charitable. And the unctuous narcissists he’d mentioned, Berthe, Matilda, Gwenyth, Tweedledee, and Tweedledum?

They were cut out. “They will receive one dollar each,” she told us. “He wanted everyone to be aware that they were specifically excluded from more of an inheritance because he despised them.” She winced again and I also imagined how the five of them were going to respond. Their years of sucking up and silently absorbing Mr. Campbell’s insults appeared to have been fruitless.

“What does that mean for us, the people sitting here at this table?” Jude persisted.

“You are also beneficiaries,” she answered. Then she told us the approximate amount each of us would receive. We all sat there silently until she repeated it, and when we still didn’t respond, she turned to one of the assistants standing behind her. “What don’t they understand?” I heard her murmur.

“You’re all rich now,” that guy said loudly. “You’re getting a windfall.”

“Well, merry Christmas!” the man with the oxygen tank said, and then he fainted. Holy heck broke loose.

Mina fainted too, sliding off her chair, and someone shouted for an ambulance. People were shouting in general. Jude kept asking, “What? Me? Are you sure?” I got onto the floor and tried to help Mina and the other man and Granger pushed his way into the room.

“Addie! What the hell is going on?” He lifted me back up.

“I’m really rich,” I told him and maybe it was the change of position, but I got dizzy as well. I leaned on him and tried to pull myself together.

People were still talking, yelling really, and law office staffers ran in and out. Both of the fainting victims were awake and talking before EMS arrived and took over. The attorney was still giving us directions but I was hardly paying attention and neither was anyone else in the chaos of the room. But eventually, Mina was coherent and sitting in her chair, and the man with the oxygen tank went off in an ambulance with another woman at the table (his sister). The meeting broke up but we were going to have to come back when everyone was calmer and more lucid. The attorney warned us that we’d be hearing from the relatives who only received a dollar, and that retaining counsel of our own was a good idea.

Mina stayed to talk more and to re-read the letters from Mr. Campbell, but Granger and I left. He held my hand and tugged me through the office’s lobby where he’d been waiting, past the elevators, around the corner in the hallway outside, and to a pair of old chairs that didn’t look like they’d seen a lot of use in the past twenty or so years. He suggested that I sit and waited until I put my butt into one before he sat next to me.

“What did they say to you in there?” he asked. “Try to remember as much as you can.”

I told him everything that I could think of, starting with the mental testing Mr. Campbell had done—which I’d already known about since I’d accompanied him to those appointments, except I hadn’t understood the reasons for them. I told him about the insulting personal letters and then the apologies that the attorney had read out loud. “That’s exactly like him,” I said. “Just when you thought he was the worst, then he did something nice like saying he wished I’d been his daughter.” I started to cry again. “This isn’t me being sad, it’s just me overwhelmed. I think I need a popsicle.”

Granger smiled. “When you can keep going, tell me what the lawyer said about the other relatives, the ones who were barred from the house.”

I did, explaining how they each got a buck out of that huge inheritance, and then I told him what was happening to the rest of it. “There are bequests to a bunch of people. Walter, the driver, will come into a big chunk and I’m so glad. Everyone who worked at the house is getting a good…I guess you’d call it a severance package? Mr. Campbell even left money to one of the gardeners whom he fired a few months ago for a very unfair reason. Her car alarm kept going off by mistake and he said that it reminded him of being a warzone. He was never in a warzone, of course, because I’m sure if there was a draft that he was eligible for, he bought his way out of it.”

“Probably. What else? Go slow but keep talking.”

I did. I told him how all the assets were going to be sold, and I listed as many of them as I could. I talked a lot about the classic cars kept in storage in the dry climate of Arizona, a hangar full of them, because I knew that Granger would be interested in those. Mr. Campbell had collected them but he’d never driven them—he’d never even had a license.

I told him about the houses in Mustique, Jackson Hole, and the other places Mr. Campbell never visited because he didn’t like to leave Grosse Pointe. There were priceless art collections (stored in vaults), rare coins (in a bank), vintage wines (in a special cellar—not for drinking). He’d amassed so much and some of it would be donated to museums to create Eben Campbell collections, but most of it would be sold.

“That’s going to bring in a lot of money. And there’s also other money,” I explained. “He has investments in a bunch of different countries. It’s all accounted for, like, his finances are totally shipshape and neat. They know where everything is and how much there is. My own grandfather kept money in a box under his bed and forgot about it, but Mr. Campbell was careful.”

“How much did he have squirreled away?”

I told Granger what the attorney had said, that the exact number fluctuated based on the worldwide stock, bond, and commodities markets, so the number would be a close approximation. Then I took a breath and told him the gargantuan, astronomical total, but he didn’t faint. He only nodded and mentioned, “I almost had it.”

“What?”

“I was curious after you told me how he was too cheap to turn up the heat in his house, so I one afternoon I calculated his assets. I was pretty close to that number, but I may have underestimated his exposure to the Nikkei.”

I shook my head. “I knew that he was rich, but I had no idea of the extent. I had no idea there was so much. He gave a lot to his schools, for scholarships and new buildings in his name. He donated to the place that treated his wife, Presbyterian Hospital of Detroit, and they’ll have enough for another hospital, practically. He gave a lot to Mina and that was why she fainted. And the other guy fainted because Mr. Campbell divvied up the rest between the few relatives that he didn’t disapprove of, and me. He also left a bunch to me.”

“How much?”

“It’s three million dollars. Three million dollars.” I heard my voice shake. “Mina is getting ten times that and Jude is…and the other relatives, too…and…”

“Addie.Bend over.”

Before I knew what was happening, my head was between my knees. It took a moment before I was ready to sit up again.

“Was I going to faint also?” I asked confusedly.

“You got very pale. I’ve only seen you turn r—flush a little, but this time you went the other way. Feeling better?”

“How are you so calm right now?” I asked.

“I expected that you were going to be a beneficiary when you got the summons for that meeting, but I didn’t know how much it would be. I’m glad.”

“Are you?”

“Aren’t you?” he asked me back.

“I don’t think I believe it. This is real, right?”

Granger offered his hand. “Come on. We’ll go home and you can get used to it there.” I held his fingers tightly and we walked back around the corner toward the elevator. “Do I have to address you as Miss Curran now?” he asked.

“No, Addie’s fine with me.”

“How about Dutchess?”

He kept that up all the way home, asking me about different titles in English and some in other languages, and I relaxed a lot. When we arrived, though, I had another realization. I didn’t have to live here anymore. I could buy a house of my own and live anywhere.

“Let’s go in,” he invited. “Now you look cold.”

Actually, I was worried. “It’s going to take a while for us to receive anything,” I blurted out. “The lawyer repeated that a few times. Disbursements take time and they have to sell all the assets first. And Matilda, Tweedledum, and the rest of that crowd are definitely going to fight and draw it out for as long as they can.”

“You mentioned that to me.”

“You can’t just spilt up a multi-billion dollar empire in one day,” I let him know. “It could even turn into a Bleak House kind of thing.” That book had taken forever to read aloud.

“I’m not sure what you mean about the house, but I agree that nothing’s going to change for a while.”

“Right.” I exhaled, forcing out the air that was stuck in my lungs. “It won’t change for a while.”

“You’ll have to stay here with me and Cacau, just like before,” he said. “Ok?”

“Ok,” I echoed, and breathing started to come easier again. “Yes, ok. We should head in.”

But Granger did have to go to work, leaving me to my own devices. I needed to let my family know what was happening, and I needed to talk to my sisters. I started with Nicola and that made me feel so much better. She told me to calm down and that things were going to be fine, talking in exactly the same way as when she’d told me that the snapping turtles wouldn’t get my toes in the lake. I’d believed her when I was a kid and I believed her now.

“I guess we’re rolling in it,” she commented. “That means that Jude can buy a new lathe. He really needs one for the woodshop but he never wants to spend a penny on himself.”

“I don’t know how much those cost, but I think you’ll be able to buy more than that.”

“Well, we could remodel the kitchen so that he can have more room to cook,” she continued. “We can make a nice nursery and save for the baby. We can pay for Tanya and Michael to go to college.” They were the kids who lived across the street from her, and she was very attached to them.

“Mr. Campbell left money to fund scholarships but you’ll never have to worry about your kids at all,” I said. “Can you imagine?”

“No,” she answered. “I can’t think of when I haven’t been worried about money. Jude and I were already talking about other things we could do, like buying a van with a wheelchair lift. He says that the money will belong to both of us, which I guess is right but it feels a little weird.”

“You’re married and if you inherited stuff, you would think the same thing.”

“He asked me what I wanted,” she said. “I’d like to hire a person to clean Sophie’s house. I could pay for Grace to go to a life coach to help her figure herself out, and get a therapist for Brenna to help her to be nicer. Mom and Dad could go on a vacation and Juliet could get a new apartment, without roommates.”

“Nic, you’ve talked about everyone except yourself. Don’t you want anything for you?”

She was quiet for a moment. “I already have it,” she said. “I have so much.”

I knew what she meant. She had so much happiness, she didn’t think that she needed anything more. But I was going to buy her a new purse, the kind that Juliet had, because I’d heard her admire it. I would make her take a trip with her husband, too, and lay on a beach somewhere. She’d also need a big hat and plenty of sunscreen.

“I was thinking that I could help the people in my old building,” I mentioned. “My neighbors from there are stuck without apartments now but I could buy that place and redo it so that it’s habitable again. I could donate to the animal shelter, too, the one where Aunt Patricia said I could drop off Cacau.”

“If you didn’t take that cat, she was going to kill it,” my sister answered. “Speaking of Skurwysyns, I’m glad that Briggs isn’t around to ruin this for you. He was such a cheap jerk, but I bet he wouldn’t have minded spending your money. Remember how he refused to buy you Christmas presents, but he got one for his mother?”

“I do remember.” He’d said that his commitment to me was the best gift I could have received.

“I’m hosting Christmas this year,” she also reminded me. “Is Granger coming?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “He was busy on Thanksgiving.” The restaurant had been open and packed, but he would definitely be closing for the next big holiday. “I’ll ask him but…do you think he’ll read a lot into it?”

“You said he doesn’t have much family. He’s friends with Liv’s husband, but they’re going to some island for Christmas so Granger won’t be with them. You told me that you’re only roommates, so what would he read into it? Hm? Addie?”

Now she sounded just like she had when she used to interrogate me about my grades in school and how I was organizing my study time. “I don’t know,” I mumbled, which was about the same thing that I’d told her back then, too.

“Addie,” she repeated, and now it was an order.

“I’m not going to be Mina,” I announced. “I’m not going to mope around after some guy for forty years even if I do kind of love him. I think. He doesn’t feel the same way and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Oh, sugar. I knew it,” she sighed. “You need to get settled with losing Briggs before you—”

“I didn’t care about losing Briggs!” I burst out. “I was glad! No, I wasn’t glad that he was dead, but I was so glad to be free of him. I was scared of him and I was biding my time until I could get away.”

There was a short silence. “What?” Nicola bit out. “You were scared of him? I’m coming over there.” She hung up before I could tell her not to, as if you could have told my sister anything.

But I was glad to see her when she arrived, because it was always good to see Nicola. She gave me a while before she cut to the chase, too. I showed her around and she liked Granger’s house, and she had some suggestions about what her husband could do to help improve it even more than the new landscaping, furniture, and green door had. She and I made dinner and I talked to her about Mr. Campbell and Mina and I cried more, thinking about him and what a jerk he’d been but how I’d liked him, too. We talked a lot about her pregnancy and we both cried about that (me more than her, but that was normal behavior for us).

Then, being Nicola, she had to get down to business. “Do you really think that it’s a good idea to live with a guy that you have a giant crush on, when you know that he doesn’t feel the same way and it’s going to break your heart?” she asked me.

“No,” I said, and blew my nose. It had been an emotional twenty-four hours. “No, I’m sure it’s not a good idea.”

“So, you’ll move out and stay with me and Jude until you can get your own place,” she said briskly. “We’ll come this weekend with our friend Sergio’s truck. Pretty soon, Jude can buy his own truck,” she mentioned, and her expression turned dreamy for a moment.

“No, I’m not doing that. Not right now,” I added. “So much has happened lately. I don’t want any more changes.”

“You’ve always been that way. I remember how you used to cry when school got out.”

“I did?” I didn’t remember that myself, but Nicola nodded.

“You were so sad when it ended. I had to promise you that in a few weeks, summer would be over and you’d get to go back. And then at the end of the vacation, you would cry more because everything would be changing again,” she said. “You used to get upset when plants would die and we kept talking about the cycle of life, but you couldn’t take it. Remember Mom starting all those gardens?”

“Yes. I would try and try to keep everything growing but I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Neither did she,” my sister sighed. “Ok, I’ll give you some time before we come to get you. But you’re right that you can’t stay here pining after some guy who’s not stepping up. After what happened with Briggs, I don’t want you to be sad anymore.” Then she paused. “What did happen with Briggs?”

“Well, the car accident, then the birds…”

“Addie, you know what I mean. Why did you say that you were scared of him?”

“He had a temper,” I answered.

“So does Brenna. You’ve never been scared of her.”

“Ok, well, he acted on it. He pushed me,” I admitted. “He shook me and yelled at me, and I thought he was going to do something worse.”

Nicola got a little flush and I knew that it was her own anger. “What? He did what to you?”

I told her everything, starting with how I’d always worked to keep him calm, to mitigate his moods, and moving to the night when I’d tried to break up with him. “He lost control of himself. I’d seen him do it before, like one time he had an absolute fit and destroyed a cooler, kicking it and hitting it with a hammer and then running it over with his car. And he’d always been mean to other people, and sometimes to me, but I never thought…I don’t know why I didn’t think it,” I confessed to my sister. “I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that he could get physical, but I really believed that I could keep him mostly calm and even-keeled.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“After he died, I felt so guilty. I was secretly happy—no, not happy, but glad that I was free and I was ashamed of that. He and his mother died and got ingested and I was relieved? What kind of person would feel that way?”

“I would have. Of course you did!” she said. “He was mistreating you and then it was over. And you can’t judge how people respond to trauma. I see it all the time in the emergency department, how everybody deals differently. It’s not right or wrong and it’s nothing to be ashamed about. You might be sorry that vultures tore apart his corpse, but also be thrilled that he’s not around to act like such an abusive jerk.”

“I hadn’t told you what a jerk he really was because I was also ashamed that I’d gotten into that situation in the first place. I was so embarrassed that I didn’t want to admit to it. How had I let myself sink to that point? How had I picked someone who was like that?” I inhaled shakily.

“It happens all the time and it’s hard to accept that someone who was supposed to love you can treat you so badly. I see that, too.”

“I wanted to get away from him. I didn’t want him to die, I wanted proof,” I explained. “I needed proof.”

“What does that mean?” Nicola demanded.

“If he put his hands on me once, he would do it again. He might have done something worse,” I answered. “I started recording him. I was waiting to catch him at it and then I was going to act. I would have called the police and his boss. I would have told all the people at their church. I would have told his mother. At the least, I could have held it over him so that he would have left me alone. I was just waiting.”

“You were waiting for what? For him to yell at you? To hurt you? That’s crazy! You should have come to me,” she said.

“No, don’t get upset. You’ll make the baby upset.”

“The baby is the size of a blueberry right now and I’m not making her upset. Did you pay any attention in nursing school?”

“Holy Mary, do you think it’s a girl? Oh, I’m so excited!”

So we were back to that topic when Jude started calling because he was worried about both his wife and the blueberry she was growing. He wanted to come get her, I gathered from her side of the conversation, and they discussed her driving alone so late at night. I could have told him that he wasn’t going to win an argument with my sister, but to my shock I did hear her apologize and say she hadn’t realized how much time had passed, and that she wouldn’t do it again. She also said that she loved him.

“I don’t want to leave you when you’re crying,” my sister said when she hung up, because I was.

“I’m going to be doing this off and on for a while, I think.” After some more convincing, she did go home to the guy who was waiting for her there. I was still intermittently sniffling as I curled up on the new couch with Cacao, who purred in happiness. I was glad that one of us was so relaxed and content. I was tired, but not in any mood to sleep—my mind raced and leaped from topic to topic. It hadn’t been as hard as I’d expected to tell my sister about Briggs, and maybe I should have done it sooner. Maybe the distance from the events had eased my guilt. And maybe my plan to get myself away from him had been a bad one, too, and I probably should have asked for help from Nicola or from someone else. Granger would have helped, I considered, but then I remembered how he’d been running in the other direction from me at the time because he’d thought that I was after him.

And I could now fully admit to myself that I had liked him a lot, even back then. I’d hoped that when Briggs and I ended things, I could have started up with him. He’d made it clear that he wasn’t interested. He’d been absolutely clear about that and about how he’d always be the Mr. Campbell in the situation, except not a mean jerk who only revealed some better characteristics after death.

But I liked Granger even more, now. A lot more. As we spent time together, those feelings only increased… which meant that Nicola was right. I needed to move out and put more distance between us—but then I remembered him asking me not to leave. My mind raced in circles again.

The front door opened quietly and Granger’s eyes widened when he saw me sitting there. “You’re still up?”

“I’m thinking too much to sleep,” I explained. “How was the restaurant tonight?”

“Normal.” He told me a few things that had gone awry as he loosened his tie, dropped off his keys and wallet, and lined up his shoes next to the door. “What are you thinking so much about? Anything besides the obvious?”

I wondered how much would be obvious to him. It hadn’t been any secret to Nicola that I was in love with him, but I hoped he didn’t see it in my face. “There’s just a lot,” I answered.

He sat down next to me on the couch and slung his arm over its back. “I used to do that,” he told me. “I used to lie awake for hours, wishing I could sleep. Then, for my job, I had to train myself to drop off faster. To sleep when I could,” he explained.

“I wish I could do that. I’m tired but my eyes won’t even stay closed.”

“Try it,” he suggested. “Put your head here.” He set one of his new pillows on his lap and patted it.

“Here?” I hesitated but then scooted myself down. I glanced up at him again before I carefully rested my cheek against the soft fabric.

“Here.” He moved his arm from the couch cushion to rest on me, kind of like a hug. His other hand brushed back my hair.

Sugar, this felt good. “You could sing a lullaby,” I suggested.

“No, I’m not going to sing. I wasn’t good before, and now there’s no way.”

“I like how your voice sounds,” I said, and my eyes did stay closed. “It’s soothing.”

“That’s a nice way to think of it. I’m glad it doesn’t bother you.”

“Why would it? I really like it.” I liked everything about him, and I especially liked being close like this. “It’s perfect for you.”

He continued to play with the Nicola waves I’d tamed before the meeting at with the attorney. “I really like your hair,” he said. “It’s also perfect for you.”

“Is it? Sometimes I think it tends toward orange,” I confessed.

“No, it reminds me of a sunset. Your cheeks get a nice color, too.”

“You mean red?”

“Just a little flushed,” he corrected, “and I like it a lot.”

I felt like I was already dreaming. “Really?”

“Really. I’m glad you’re here when I come home. I’m glad you’re here all the time.”

And maybe it was a bad idea…but I was glad, too, and I didn’t want to leave even if I knew that Nicola was right. I had to.