What You Leave Behind (27 page)

It begins with a to-go lunch from the pub and the
welcome back
kind of grin Dylan gives her. She returns to her old running route, the one that snakes by Liam’s house and the lumberyard. As she fills her gas tank at the station in the middle of a Sunday, she talks to a neighbor and tells her, “Sure, a book club sounds like a lot of fun,” as she programs her number into the woman’s phone. At Safeway, as she picks out pears, an old classmate invites her to a “little get-together” and Harper smiles and nods, asks what time she should be there. When the get-together turns out to be a full-blown party, Harper drinks beer from the keg and laughs along with Clare and a group of girls neither of them know about how the party is
so high school
. But it isn’t high school and she knows it, because if it were, she’d be on Liam’s arm and Austin would be pouring shots of tequila. Instead, she sips her beer and talks to a guy with curly black hair and at the end of the night, she sleeps in her bed alone and doesn’t want it any other way.

She lives for herself, on her terms, and loves the feel of it.

***

It’s Clare’s idea, Harper moving in, but Dylan excitedly pitches it to her over drinks at the pub on a Thursday. Clare smiles beside him, her hand on his arm, as he describes the floor plan, as if she hadn’t spent whole days lazing around Clare’s place before he moved in. He talks up the claw-footed tubs, the rectangular sky lights, the tiny, one-person balconies outside each window on the upper floor. The rent is reasonable and Clare promises to never cook, Dylan vows to battle all pieces of technology and bugs that cross her. Harper drinks her beer and basks in the glow of their smiles, in the warmth of a new path unfolding right before her eyes. She doesn’t make it to the end of the bottle before she says yes. Dylan buys them another round—a celebratory round—and tells her more, and she listens as if she’s never seen it before.

Harper sits Hilary down the next morning to a table set with blueberry waffles and coffee and breaks the news. She talks, tells her of tubs and balconies, but Hilary’s eyes don’t shine in the same way that hers did. She buries her face in a mug of coffee and stares over the rim at the carafe of orange juice, only gives a few nods and says nothing. Harper’s smile dims and she leaves her mother alone at the table and goes to pack her things.

She tells herself she won’t cry, but she does, and it’s at the sight of her toothbrush leaving the holder beside Hilary’s. Hilary hears Harper from the floor below and the pang in her gut hurts so badly that she can barely stand it. She finds her perched against the sink basin, staring at the toothbrush holder with her chin in her hands, and she understands, hugs her and tells her that it’s okay. “I’m not sad,” she says. “I’m just going to miss you. This is pretty sudden, you know?”

“I got over-anxious and told Dylan I could move in today, but I can—”

“You’re ready,” Hilary tells her and plucks her toothbrush from the holder, presses it into the palm of her hand. “You’re ready, even if I’m not.”

Hilary takes the morning off, leaving Kevin to fend for himself, pilfers boxes from behind the other shops on Main and helps Harper sort through her things. She packs away her mementos, her books, her shoes while Hilary looks on and tells her stories, gives her advice for living on her own. Jokingly, she asks about Dylan and his motives, and Harper tells her she thinks Dylan and Clare are days away from an engagement, from upgrading to a house better suited for a family. She sees her pout at the words, at her long-abandoned wants for similar things, and changes the subject, but it doesn’t last long. They pack the rest of the boxes in relative silence and they carry them one-by-one, until the bed of her truck is filled to the brim.

“Last one.” Hilary’s mouth pinches into a frown, one that she tries to pass off as a smile, as she holds tight to the box in her arms for just a second longer before setting it with the others. When it’s in, Harper lifts the tailgate, and wipes her palms on the back pockets of her jeans, and leans over to wrap her arms around her mother’s neck. Hilary returns the hug with ferocity, and Harper knows there are tears rolling down her cheeks, falling against her hair where her mother’s chin rests. She could only be strong for so long and Harper is thankful that she didn’t cry sooner—Harper would have instantly followed suit. “I’m going to miss you, Harp.”

“I’ll be right down the road.” Harper presses her fingers harder into her mother’s back, before releasing her and holding her at arm’s length. She looks at her sternly and says, “I’m not leaving you.”

“I know, I just—” She clears her throat and scuffs a boot against the pavement, and Harper hates the sight of her mother—her strong and beautiful mother—crumbling before her. She has to live for herself, though—she promised herself that she would. Harper wraps her arms around her once more. “Okay,” Hilary murmurs, nodding. “Okay.”

As she drives away, she can’t bring herself to look in the rearview mirror. She knows Hilary’s crying in the middle of the street, and she knows she’ll see her in the morning at work, that she’ll invite her over for dinner in the coming days. She isn’t leaving her, just leaving her childhood home, leaving what it stands for and who she used to be within its walls. It’s hard to keep her heart so hardened, but she has to—the few shards she’s strung together in the last few months are all she has left.

Her mother loves her and will understand.

Clare’s house—her house—isn’t too far, just a handful of stop signs and turns, and she parks behind Dylan’s SUV in the narrow driveway. He hears the grumble of her truck’s engine and comes out to greet her with a smile and open arms. She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or hug him or push him away. The varying degrees of emotion, with nothing more than a few minutes and a few blocks in between them, make her stomach turn. He watches as her face contorts into some kind of half-happiness, half-agony, and decides for her, crushes his arms around her.

“Oh lord, Harper.” Dylan half-sighs, half-laughs, and squeezes her harder. “Buyer’s remorse?”

“She cried,” she says with an exaggerated whimper, pulling away and turning back to her truck. She knocks open the tailgate and climbs onto it, grabs the first box and tosses it down to Dylan. He catches it with ease and sets it on the ground, sits at her feet on the creaking tailgate. “Get up—these boxes aren’t going to carry themselves.”

“Talk to me, first.” Dylan tugs on the leg of Harper’s jeans and she toes his side with her shoe to scoot him over before sitting down next to him. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

“You know, with all I’ve been through, it’s getting a little easier to break hearts.” She says the words with an air of sarcasm and a needless batting of her eyelashes. Dylan doesn’t laugh as she hoped he would, doesn’t break the tension, and she sighs, leans her head against his shoulder. “Fine, it fucking broke 
my 
heart, but I have to do this. I have to do things for me, now.”

“You have to give it to her, though. This was all pretty sudden. Can’t blame the gal for getting teary when her only little girl packs up and moves out. Especially, after the wild ride this year has been. For both of you. She just got you back.” Harper nods and lets her legs kick over the side of the gate. She stares at the concrete beneath her, notes how it’s not the brick and oil-or-something-like-it stains she’s used to, and she nearly cries. Dylan sees it and, before her tears can sting her eyes, he says, “If Mama Reed didn’t know better, I’d be afraid she thought we were some kinky threesome kind of couple—triple? That would be a triple.” Harper laughs dryly and Dylan pokes fingers into her sides until it’s real and roaring laughter. When she’s gasping for air, he relents and gets her to her feet in the bed of the truck. “Come on. These boxes won’t carry themselves.”

***

Harper settles into life with Dylan and Clare quickly. She and Dylan share the cooking duties, and Clare—oven and stove inept—always does the dishes, despite her manicure, the they’re continuously chatting and smiling and comfortable. They watch movies in the living room late into the night and drink beers in the back yard, all bundled in blankets and coats on top of an air mattress lain on the frozen grass. Hilary comes over every now and again and Dylan takes to teaching her how to grill the meat she carves so nicely—Clare even learns a thing or two at Hilary’s urging. Harper feels happy and it doesn’t feel forced, doesn’t feel like it’s what’s expected of her, but what is natural and right.

Her life feels whole again—without anyone but herself needed to make it so.

“It’s nice to see you smile so much,” Dylan tells her in the yard one night.

She simply smiles in return, further accentuating his point, and murmurs, “I’m happy.”

Clare laughs and leans over to clink the neck of her beer against Harper’s. “Living proof that you don’t need a man to be happy,” she chimes, and Harper counters, “I’ll drink to that,” while Dylan playfully pouts.

“I didn’t think I would be—happy, I mean.” Neither Dylan nor Clare tries to buoy the suddenly serious turn their conversation takes. They lean into each other and listen intently as Harper goes on. “I hope they are, too. Is that weird—for me to want them to be okay?”

“I think it speaks volumes about the person you are, honey,” Clare tells her. “You’re one hell of a human—the good kind.”

“I miss them as—as friends, you know?” she says after a bit of silence and another half of a beer. “I just miss having them in my life. Especially, Liam. Ten years, I dated that man, spoke to him every single day, and it’s only been a handful of months and I can barely remember what his voice sounds like.” She takes a swig of beer as Dylan pats a hand on her knee and Clare scoots over to drape an arm across her shoulders. “I just wish that, you know, that they were still in my life. Because as happy as I feel and as good as it is now, I feel like something is missing—they’re missing. And I think that as long as they are, as long as this tension exists between us, it’s going to be that way.”

“They were at the bar a few nights ago—together,” Dylan offers. The look on Harper’s face isn’t entirely readable, so he continues, “Seemed like old times for them. No punches or anything. So, there’s that.” Harper and Clare both look at him, as if waiting for more. He only shrugs and says, “All I’m saying is, maybe they’d go for it.”

“Look, you’ve come incredibly far, and I thought that before I knew 
everything
,” Clare says, turning to look at Harper straight on, “and if you think that you can form some sort of something with them, without breaking your own heart, if you think it’ll make you happy, then I say go for it. Because, really, I honestly think you’ve already bottomed out and them turning down a round of drinks or a daytrip to the lake doesn’t have nearly the potential to damage you as anything else they’ve done before.” Harper nods, her eyes wide and her lower lip tucked up between her teeth. “I say go for it.”

“I agree,” Dylan adds, less eloquently. “How’s about the next time they’re at the pub, I give you a call and you two waltz in and casually bump into them?”

Harper smiles slowly and tells him, “Let’s dance.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The leather sofa groans noisily beneath Liam’s weight as he settles a throw pillow in his lap and readjusts his posture on the overstuffed cushions for the tenth time in fifty minutes. He’s uncomfortable in every sense of the word, even if the office has all the comforts of home, personal touches and soft fabrics. There’s no fooling him, though—this is a psychiatrist’s office.

That takes the comfort right out of it.

He distracts himself by staring absently out the window at the signs of spring awash in the bushes that line the property, as he tunes out the lecture he’s being given. He’s heard all about how these things take time and the virtue of patience, and knows Dr. Rosenwald will carry this sermon right through to the end of their hour-long appointment. It isn’t that he doesn’t care, it’s just what happens after ten sessions—they start to lose their mystery.

He started going back in January, a few days after Austin bashed his face in on Harper’s lawn. He’d already been talked into attending some Narcotics Anonymous meetings by Pete, in lieu of charges following his Christmas Eve burglary of Barnes Drug and Beauty. Dan hoped without the pills, he’d get his head on straight, but one look at his son’s face when he came home from the fight two weeks later—the tears trailing through the blood—he decided it was time for outside help.

Since then, he’s managed to reconcile with Austin—it remains tense at times, but mostly, things are alright. Neither of them has thrown a punch since that Friday in January. He’s also apologized to his parents and Pete—thanked them for their willingness to help him, instead of punish him for his actions. Most impressively, since starting therapy, he’s talked his way back into his internship at Ashland Community, with the heavy persuasion of his father’s backing and the full release of his medical records, indicating he is continually seeking treatment for a legitimate psychological diagnosis—an anxiety disorder.

He has a justifiable reason for why he did what he did. There were rapid fire changes in his life—completing medical school, moving home and acclimating to his old life, starting his internship, returning to his job at the drug store, the pressure and expectations that came from his anniversary—and he wasn’t mentally equipped to cope with the stress that came from their culmination. The anxiety manifested as feelings of powerlessness, a sense of confinement, and a need to escape. He was consumed by it.

In hindsight, he knows it makes sense, but a reason is not an excuse, and all of the reasons in the world won’t change the past.

Ten sessions in and he still doesn’t know how to explain things to Harper.

He doesn’t know if he can, or if it will even matter.

When the secretary rings the bell that indicates their session’s time has expired, Liam’s attention returns to the doctor just as he’s being handed a new prescription for his SSRI.