The Long Way Home (41 page)

The street in front of her condo was slick with rain, which had been falling since early afternoon, and she knew she was lucky to find a parking spot close to her door. She dodged puddles. Water splashed up on her legs and her skirt anyway, but she barely noticed.

The red message light was flashing on her phone, but she ignored it. She dropped her briefcase near the door and kicked her shoes half across the room. She went straight into the bathroom, turned on the shower, peeled off her clothes and tossed them back into her bedroom where they landed on the floor. She left them there, as if somehow they’d conspired with Christopher in his decision to cheat on her.

“Bastard.” She stepped into the steam and cursed softly under her breath as the hot water stung her back.

She stood under the steady stream until her skin began to pucker. Reluctantly, she got out and dried off. She dressed in her oldest sweats—gray fleece washed so thin the fabric was almost see-through in places—and an oversized navy tee. She went into her spare bedroom, where she stored things she either had no immediate use for or didn’t have time to deal with, and found a large box that had delivered a down comforter the winter before. She’d been filling the box with clothes she planned on taking to a thrift shop, clothes that were now dumped unceremoniously onto the floor.

She dragged the box into her room and tossed in all of Christopher’s belongings that he’d left at her place. She opened her closet and tossed in the robe he’d left there and a few extra shirts, then added clothes from the dresser drawer she’d been happy to empty out to make room for his jeans, underwear, and a few sweaters. She spied a book that rested on the table next to his side of
the bed—a political thriller—and tossed it in. It landed spine out, the pages splayed on top of his jeans. She hesitated, fighting the urge to smooth out the creases and close the book, but she resisted after she reminded herself that she’d been the one to recommend it to him.

She was tempted to remove a few key pages so he’d never know who the bad guy was and how he’d set up the hero, but even her wrath wouldn’t permit her to deface a book.

“You’re lucky I have a conscience,” she muttered.

She tossed in a pair of sneakers she found under the bed, then returned to the bathroom for his toothbrush, shaving stuff, and the body wash he preferred over hers. Her apartment stripped of everything that was his, she pushed the box into the hall, then dragged it down one flight of steps. She opened the first-floor door and shoved the box out, positioning it so that it sat directly in front of the trash.

Sophie trotted back up the steps, her phone in her hand, texting as she climbed:

Your stuff is in a box behind my building. The trash-men come at nine
.

She hit send just as she arrived at her door.

She’d hoped that the purging of her apartment would make her feel a little better, but she still had that huge lump in her throat and that gnawing pain in the pit of her stomach. She thought of calling a friend, thinking some sympathy might make her feel better, but she stopped dialing mid-way through making the call. She couldn’t face the actual telling of it, couldn’t bring herself to speak the words. It hurt too damned badly.

I caught Chris with someone …

She frowned. She’d been so focused on
him
that she’d ignored his partner. Now she found herself wondering who that someone might have been. Was it someone she knew?

She tried to recall the voice she’d heard coming from the backseat—had it been familiar?—but in her shock, she hadn’t paid close enough attention. She gave it her best effort but couldn’t make the voice play back in her head.

The phone rang again, and Christopher’s voice filled the apartment for the fourth time. This time she sat and listened. This was the man who only two nights ago had declared his undying love for her. The man she thought she was in love with. The man she might even build a life with.

She listened to his words of apology—at one point she even thought he might be shedding a few tears—and his sworn oath that “she” meant nothing to him. That it hadn’t been planned, that it had just happened.

“The way your car ‘just happened’ to be parked in the darkest, most remote part of the garage?”

She rolled her eyes in disgust and left the room before he finished leaving his message. She had reports to write explaining that day’s debacle in the courtroom. Her heart might be burning and her insides in an uproar, but there was still work to be done.

It had been a long, rough night, and the morning found Sophie feeling almost as angry and hurt as she had the night before. She awoke with a massive headache, killer circles under her eyes, and a grumbling stomach. She scrambled an egg and forced herself to eat it, then popped a few Advils.

“This is no day to spare the concealer,” she murmured as she applied her makeup in front of the bathroom mirror.

She put on a red silk tank under her gray suit, and while ordinarily red heels would have been frowned upon in her ultraconservative office, today she felt they
were a necessity. She brushed her black hair from her forehead and popped gold disks into her ears. She might feel like crap, but she was determined to look like a million dollars.

There was something about looking good that always made her feel better. And she did. Right up until the minute that she walked into the conference room for an early-morning meeting and saw the smirk on the face of one of her co-workers.

The smirk was like a shot to Sophie’s gut.

Celene Hayes. I should have known
.

Sophie glanced away as if she hadn’t noticed, and kept her gaze on the memo she’d been handed, even when Christopher entered the room and Celene moved over to give him a place to stand next to her. Sophie continued to act the professional, listening attentively though an ocean’s roar of pain filled her head and she could feel Chris’s eyes on her the entire time. Finally—mercifully—the meeting ended, and though she wanted nothing more than to bolt from the room, she walked leisurely to her office and closed the door, pretending not to notice the looks of sympathy from several others as she passed. But once the door was closed behind her, Sophie leaned back against it, squeezed her eyes tightly shut, and wished that the roof would fall on her head.

It took less than two minutes for her desk phone to buzz. She debated whether she should ignore it, but it could have been someone important. Like her boss.

“Soph, it’s Kristin.” Sophie’s best friend in the office apparently hadn’t been blind to what had gone on. “What the hell?”

“I’ll tell you at lunch.”

“It’s my day in district court,” Kristin reminded her. “I won’t be here. Tell me now.”

“Christopher and Celene were …” Sophie sighed. “I
caught them together in the backseat of his car. In the parking garage.”

“In the
parking garage
? Chris and
Celene Hayes
?” Kristin gasped. “Is he nuts? She’s the office skank.”

“Apparently Chris didn’t get the memo.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to pretend I don’t know either one of them. What else can I do?”

“You’ve got more balls than I do. If Cal did that to me, I’d be off and running for some nice quiet corner where I could nurse my broken heart and suck my thumb in peace. Right after I sent him screaming into the night with a fork in his eye.”

“Running away doesn’t solve anything, and while I do love the image of Chris with something sharp painfully protruding from his face, I’ve prosecuted enough domestic violence cases to know I don’t want to go where they send you.”

“There is that,” Kristin agreed. “But either way, running or incarcerated, at least you wouldn’t have to look at him with her every day.”

Kristin had a point, Sophie considered, one that was driven home when she left the confines of her office around eleven and saw Christopher go into the library, followed within seconds by Celene, who closed the door behind her.

Yeah, Kristin definitely had a point.

“Of course, you can come visit. Stay as long as you want.” Sophie’s borhter, Jese, had been delighted when she called and asked if the following weekend would be convenient for her to visit. “We never get to spend time together since I moved.” Jesse paused. “But is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine.” Sophie swallowed hard. “Well, Christopher and I did break up this week.”

“I thought the two of you were getting serious.”

“Apparently that was only one of us.”

“What happened?” Jesse asked.

“I don’t feel like going into it right now, if that’s okay.”

“Sure, but if you do feel like talking …”

“I know. Thanks, Jess. I’ll see you on Saturday morning.”

“Can’t wait, kiddo.”

Jesse was three years older than Sophie, and was now making his home in St. Dennis, Maryland, a small town on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. He’d gone there to join their grandfather’s law firm, and had found the love of his life. Jesse and Brooke would be married in a month and Sophie thought their love story had “happily ever after” written all over it. She couldn’t be more pleased for her brother—he’d always been a good guy and if anyone deserved to be happy, it was Jesse. She smiled, recalling how he’d always taken his role as big brother very seriously. On the phone, she downplayed the situation with Chris because she could imagine Jesse’s reaction and she didn’t want to deal with any more drama this week. She just wanted to put Christopher out of sight. With any luck, out of mind would eventually follow.

Sophie somehow made it to the end of the week without breaking down in the office or losing it in court. When she asked her boss for the week’s vacation she’d been floating he’d readily agreed. The fact that she had no trials on the docket for the next several weeks made it easy for him to say yes. If anyone in the office—including Chris and Celene—thought she was running away, well, let them. It might very well have been the truth.

On the other hand, Sophie decided she’d rather think of this trip as
running to
, rather than
running from
.

After all, who wouldn’t love a week away in an idyllic little bay town with nothing to do but relax, visit with a favorite relative, and eat glorious food? If at the same time, a broken heart began to mend, so much the better.

“F
OR
some reason, I always think the drive to St. Dennis takes longer than it does.” Sophie took a seat at her brother’s kitchen table and sipped the iced tea he’d just poured for her.

“Why didn’t you fly?” Jesse leaned back against the counter. “That would have taken even less time.”

Sophie shrugged. “I guess I just wanted some time alone.”

“Last I heard, you live by yourself.”

“Not the same as having hours alone in the car. When I’m home, I’m either working on a case or sleeping.” Or snuggling with Chris, but there was no reason to mention that, now that
that
chapter had ended. “It was good for me to have some uninterrupted time to think, put things into perspective.”

“You going to share that perspective?”

“I don’t think you’ll like it.” She finished the tea then shook the glass so that the ice clinked.

“Try me.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about making some changes in my life.”
None of which you’d approve
, she could have added.

When she hesitated, he gestured for her to continue. “Such as …”

“Such as maybe exploring other career options.”

“Other career options?” He frowned. “What other options? I thought you liked your job. I thought you enjoyed being a prosecutor, bringing the bad guys to justice and all that.”

“Well, yeah, I do like that part,” she admitted. Choosing her words carefully, she added, “I’m just not sure that law is the right field for me, at least not forever.”

“This has something to do with you breaking up with what’s-his-name, doesn’t it.” It wasn’t a question.

“Maybe. Probably.” Time to fess up. “To be honest, yeah. But this isn’t something that hasn’t occurred to me before. It just seems that now might be the best time to explore other options, maybe see if there isn’t something else I’d rather do.”

“So why the rush? Why now?” Jesse was still frowning. “It sounds to me like a bunch of rationalized B.S.”

Sophie sighed. “When you get totally entrenched in something, it’s harder to move away from it. The longer you do something, the more difficult it is to give it up and try something else.” She averted her eyes. “I just feel that if I don’t do something now—try something new—I’ll never do it. I’ll be a lawyer forever.”

Jesse chewed on the inside of his cheek, a sure sign that he had been not only listening but giving some thought to what she’d said. “And that would be bad because …?”

“Because maybe I’d be happier doing something else. Maybe the law really isn’t the right thing for me.”

“Like I said, rationalized B.S.”

“Jess, I need a change.”

“This guy really did a number on you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. He did. But he also made me think about some things that I’ve been avoiding.”

Brother and sister stared at each other for a long moment.

“Look, the truth is, I went to law school because I thought that was what was expected of me. You, Dad, Mom … everyone in the family is a lawyer. Okay, Dad’s might not be the footsteps either of us wants to follow—him having been disbarred and all—but there’s you and Mom. Not to mention our grandfather and uncle. The law is like the family business, Jess. I never thought I’d have a choice.”

“Okay. I get that part. I can understand how you might feel that way.” Jesse nodded. “Sure. But what’s the alternative? What else would you do? I mean, you’ve never done anything else.”

“Not true.” Sophie smiled. “You’re forgetting about all those summers when I worked at Shelby’s. Every year, college right through law school.”

“The diner?” Jesse choked on his iced tea. “You were a short-order cook.”

“I loved every minute in that place,” she confessed. “That was the best job I ever had.”