Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

Evie

“Do you want to talk about what happened inside?” I’d finished putting my purchases in the trunk and clicked my seatbelt into place in the passenger seat.

Merrick’s eyes closed a moment and he sighed. “Not really.”

I thought he probably just needed a little time and space, so I nodded. “The landlord is having my new apartment painted today. He said I could drop things off while it’s being done. Would you mind stopping there so I can deliver all this stuff I bought?”

“Sure.”

He was quiet during the ride. When we pulled up, Merrick double parked out front and helped me get everything inside.

“You’re not staying here until the bed gets delivered, right?” he asked.

“No. I still need to finish packing all my stuff at my sister’s anyway.”

He nodded and shook the keys in his hand. “You want me to drop you off at your sister’s?”

“Oh…yeah, sure. That would be great.” It wasn’t like I expected him to spend the entire weekend with me, yet the ending to our time together felt sort of abrupt. I hadn’t even taken my overnight bag when we’d gone out to the stores. “My bag is at your apartment, but I don’t need anything from it. I can just grab it before I leave the office Monday.”

He nodded.

The drive to my sister’s apartment was short, and I was glad since the silence was getting pretty loud in the car. I tried not to take it personally. Clearly seeing Amelia’s daughter had upset him. Unless I was doing the math wrong, which I didn’t think I had, she’d had a baby with another man while they were together. I could’ve sworn Merrick had said Amelia passed a little less than three years ago, and it seemed like they’d been together up until the end. But maybe I’d gotten that wrong. Now was not the time to ask.

When we arrived at my sister’s building, Merrick pulled to the curb. He left the car running and came around to open my door.

I forced a smile. “Thank you for coming shopping with me.”

“No problem.”

“I guess I’ll see you Monday?”

He nodded, then leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Take care.”

Merrick waited until I got into the building to get back in the car. I wanted to think whatever had happened would blow over, yet I couldn’t help the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I watched his car pull away. Call it women’s intuition or whatever, but something told me my heart was about to be broken…again.

• • •

“Hey. What are you up to?” My sister tossed her keys on the kitchen counter and walked into the living room, where I’d been sitting for a long time. It must’ve been after eight already since she was closing the store tonight.

“Not much. Just watching TV.”

Greer looked at the television and back to me. “Ummm… It’s not on.”

I blinked a few times. “Oh… I meant I was about to watch television.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “Okay, well, mind if I join you?”

I shook my head. “Of course not.”

“I’m just going to go get changed. I ordered some alcohol-free wine. I’m going to put it in a wine glass and pretend it’s real.”

“Alcohol-free wine? So grape juice?”

“Basically. It’s a cabernet.”

She came back a few minutes later wearing sweats and an Emory sweatshirt I’d bought her at least seven or eight years ago. She held two glasses and passed me the one in her right hand.

“Yours is real. You looked deep in thought, so I thought you might need it.”

“Thanks.” I sighed. “I do.”

She sat down at the other end of the couch and tucked her legs underneath her. “So what’s going on that you’re staring at the TV and don’t even know it’s not on?”

I smiled. My sister knew me so well. “It’s nothing, really. I’m just overthinking things.”

She sipped her faux wine and wrinkled her nose.

“Not good?” I asked.

“You know when you leave an open bottle of wine around for a few months, and then you want to have a glass of wine and that’s the only shit you have left?”

I chuckled. “Sadly, I do.”

“It tastes like that.”

“It’s going to be a long nine months,” I said.

“You ain’t kidding.” She sipped anyway. “But talk to me. What are you overthinking?”

I sighed. “Well, today Merrick and I went shopping for my new apartment. When we were in line at HomeGoods, there was a little girl in the cart ahead of us. Merrick kept staring at her. It seemed like he recognized her or something, and then he abruptly said he was going to wait in the car.”

“Okay…”

“The little girl was with her dad, and he looked a little freaked out too, so after Merrick left, I asked him if they knew each other. Turns out, the little girl is his ex’s daughter. Merrick told me Amelia had cheated on him, and he found out when she had her accident. But the little girl wasn’t even three, and I could’ve sworn Merrick said Amelia died around three years ago.”

“Hmmmm... Could you have gotten the timeline wrong?”

“Maybe. But what’s bugging me is how Merrick acted afterward.”

“How did he act?”

“He barely spoke and then just dropped me off here. I didn’t even have my bag with me.”

“So seeing the little girl upset him?”

“That’s what it seems like. Maybe I’m overreacting, but it felt like the thirty-second exchange they had rewound the clock on our relationship.”

“I do think you’re reading into it. It was probably just an emotional reminder of a hard time. Things like that can pack a punch if they’re thrown at you when you least expect it.”

“Yeah, I guess…”

“Do you know Amelia’s last name?”

I nodded. “Evans. Why?”

Greer picked up her phone. “You said she died in a plane crash, right?”

“Yeah.”

“There must’ve been some press coverage.” She shrugged. “Let’s Google.”

Before I could reconcile why googling a dead ex felt wrong, my sister turned the phone to show me a headline.

“Woman survives crash during flight training. She didn’t die on impact?”

“I don’t know all the details, but no.”

My sister scanned the article. “This was written in July a few years back, so it would’ve been thirty-one months ago. How old was the little girl you saw today?”

“Her dad said she was going to be three in two months. So thirty-four months?”

“Welp, then that little girl was in her mom’s belly when the plane crashed, and Amelia survived for at least a few months after.”

Oh, God. There was a lot more to the story than I knew. I sighed. “Well, I guess there’s a reason for a lot of emotions to bubble up then.”

“That’s probably all it was.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

Yet deep down, I wasn’t so sure.

• • •

Monday morning, I walked into the office with an anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t heard from Merrick since he’d dropped me off on Saturday afternoon. Whatever uneasiness I had was magnified tenfold when I unlocked the door to my office and opened it.

The overnight bag I’d left in his apartment was on the couch.

I froze, feeling the wind knocked out of me. It took a solid thirty seconds before I walked over. When I did, I unzipped it and peeked inside, not certain what I was looking for. But whatever it was, it wasn’t in there, because I found only my clothes and toiletries packed neatly. I looked around the room—to my desk, the coffee table, the small end table next to where I usually sat. What was I trying to find? A note, perhaps? But there was nothing.

Again, I did my best to convince myself I was overthinking. Merrick had returned my bag before I got here so I didn’t have to sneak upstairs to get it later. He probably thought he was being helpful. He knew I was paranoid about people here at the office knowing.

I walked over to my desk and forced myself to start the day.

Yeah, he was being thoughtful.

I was being silly for reading into it.

I could picture it now. He probably went out for his morning run and brought it here on his way down when no one was in the office yet.

Maybe he thought I might need something from it early this morning.

It was actually a sweet gesture…

Wasn’t it?

I looked over at the bag on the couch again, and my heart sank.

If it was such a sweet gesture, why did it feel like my bags had been packed and I’d just been kicked to the curb?

Luckily, I had an eight o’clock appointment, so I didn’t have too much time to dwell. Since the market was open from nine thirty to four, I’d quickly found my schedule filled with a lot of 8 AM and 4 PM appointments. Which I was grateful for right about now. I needed something to distract me.

My first patient was a woman I’d met only briefly when HR walked me around on my first day. Her name was Hannah, and she was a junior-level trader, but probably about thirty. We did a typical first meeting, getting to know each other a bit and letting the conversation flow where it may. When the conversation came to a lull, I nudged our chat around to the office.

“So you work for Will, right?”

She nodded.

“How is that, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I like him. He’s very open and honest, even when I’m not going to like his feedback. He has a way of softening a blow by making you laugh, but I always know where I stand with him.”

“That’s really great to hear.”

“Yeah, it’s why I’m happy in my position and don’t have a desire to move up too much farther. I don’t think I could work directly for someone like Merrick.”

“Oh? What makes you say that?”

She shrugged. “He seems nice enough when you talk to him one-on-one, which I’ve had occasion to do when Will was out. But you never really know what’s going on in his head. My friend Marissa was a manager here. When her boss left, she wound up reporting to Merrick for a while. After a few months, he called her in to talk about her position. She thought she was getting a promotion, that he was giving her the open position her boss had held.”

“That didn’t happen?”

“Merrick fired her instead. Can you imagine? She went in thinking she was getting a promotion, and instead, she got canned.” She shook her head. “I’ll stay where I am with a layer between us. Besides, my income isn’t limited by my position. It’s only limited by my abilities and what I put into it.”

I did my best to smile, but her comment hit home.

By midday, the tossing and turning I’d done last night had started to catch up to me, and I needed a cup of coffee. There was none made in the break room on my floor, so it was the perfect excuse to take a trip upstairs. I had to walk past Merrick’s office on my way. Unfortunately, his lights were on, but no one was inside, and his assistant was on the phone. My shoulders slumped as I made my way down the hall. When I walked in, Will was standing at the coffeemaker.

I walked up next to him. “Oohh… You just made a fresh pot?”

He offered his usual grin and pointed to the coffee dripping down. “This is the good shit. From my personal stash.”

I smiled. “Are you going to share the good shit with me or hog it all for yourself?”

“I’ll share. Although, I should warn you, my stuff is not cheap, but it is addictive.” He winked. “Kind of like me.”

I chuckled. Hannah was right. Will was pretty great.

The pot finished brewing, and Will filled my mug before pouring himself a cup. He leaned a hip against the counter. “So how long is the boss gone for?”

My forehead wrinkled. “Gone?”

“Yeah, he sent me an email yesterday saying he was flying out to California, but he didn’t say when he’d be back. I figured you knew.”

I couldn’t hide my frown. “No, I didn’t even know he wasn’t in today.”

One of the reasons Will was successful was because he was very perceptive. His eyes swept over my face, and he quickly changed the subject. He lifted his chin, motioning to my mug. “So what do you think?”

I sipped. The coffee was good, but at the moment everything had a bit of a sour taste to it. I forced a smile. “Delicious.”

By six o’clock that night, I still hadn’t heard anything from Merrick, so I bit the bullet and sent him a text.

Evie: Hey. Just checking in. Heard you were in California. You hadn’t mentioned the trip, so I wanted to make sure all was okay.

Even though I wasn’t an emoji person, I included a smiley face at the end, trying to make the text feel casual. I sat at my desk, turning a piece of sea glass over and over between my fingers as I waited for a response. After a minute, the text went from delivered to read, so I held my phone in my hand, expecting a message to come in any minute.

But a few minutes passed.

Then ten minutes.

A half hour ticked by.

And suddenly it was almost seven thirty and still no response. Of course, I tried to give myself a pep talk again.

He was probably in a meeting.

It would be rude to text.

He’d message me back soon…

Unfortunately, soon didn’t happen until after ten o’clock that night. And the response did little to alleviate my bad feeling.

Merrick: Just a business trip. If you need anything, Will should be able to help you.

I frowned. I definitely needed something, but it wasn’t Will who could give it to me.