Page 60 of Finally Mine
Opening the door, she found Harper in the hallway.
“I know about Karen,” Harper said.
Any imaginary arguments with Aldo immediately took a back seat in Gloria’s brain.
Her friend’s eyes were red and puffy. She was wearing pajama pants and a National Guard t-shirt four sizes too big.
“I didn’t realize there was a time you didn’t know,” Gloria said, guiding Harper into the living room. Luke’s wife, his high school sweetheart, had been killed in a car accident the day Luke’s unit had returned home from a long deployment. She’d died on her way to pick him up. A travesty that, until recently, the entire town of Benevolence had assumed he’d never recover from.
“He was married, Gloria.Married,and he never said a word to me,” Harper said, pacing the short distance between window and door. “He lost the love of his life in the most horrific way.” She covered her face with her hands.
She was being called upon for comfort, Gloria realized. Tea. Isn’t that what people did to comfort hurt and tenderly care?
“I’ll make tea,” she announced.
“I’ll sit here and wonder what it means that the man I love with every piece of my stupid heart didn’t find it relevant to share the most important awful thing in his life with me,” Harper said, falling down onto Gloria’s couch with a noise between a sob and a sigh.
Gloria ripped open her beverage cabinet and debated tea flavors. Sleepytime, Energizing Citrus, or good ol’ English Breakfast? Definitely Sleepytime.
She put a kettle on, chose two cheerful mugs, and returned to the living room to clumsily offer comfort.
Sitting next to Harper, Gloria patted her friend on the knee.
“I shared things with him. Ugly things,” Harper said, sniffling.
Gloria handed over a box of tissues and said nothing.
“I told him about foster care and…and the abuse,” Harper said. “I trusted him withmyugliness.”
Wordlessly, Gloria squeezed her friend’s wrist.My ugliness.That’s exactly what it felt like to have those dark shadows inside her. Something terrible and ugly that needed to stay hidden so it wouldn’t taint anyone else.
“What did he say to that?” Gloria asked. What would a man say to the woman he cared for when she talked of a pain he could never take away?
“Not much,” Harper choked out a laugh. “Getting more than three words out of him at a time is physically exhausting. But he didn’t make me feel ugly or damaged. Why didn’t he trust me, Gloria?” Her eyes beseeched Gloria for a reason that wouldn’t hurt, wouldn’t bruise her heart even more than it already was.
The kettle whistled from the kitchen.
“I’ll be back,” Gloria said, patting Harper’s hand. “Hang in there a minute.”
She used the tea preparation to settle and collect her thoughts.
When she returned with a pretty tray of steaming tea and tiny cookies, Harper was blowing her nose and adding to the stack of tissues piled in front of her.
“Does this mean he doesn’t love me?” Harper asked.
Gloria set the tray down on the ottoman. “No,” she said definitively.
“He’s never said it,” Harper pointed out. “I assumed—hoped—he had a hard time saying it. But maybe it’s because he doesn’t feel that way about me?”
Gloria had never seen a man more in love with a woman than Luke Garrison. Whether he had the balls to admit it to himself or to Harper was another story.
“He cares. He asked you to stay.”
“Maybe he just needed a housesitter?” Harper sniffled.
That’s all Gloria had turned out to be for Aldo, hadn’t she?Shut up, Gloria told herself.This wasn’t her pity party.She had important friend duties to attend to, and she wasn’t going to mess this up.
“He cares for you, Harper. You know it. Don’t let this doubt take that away from you. Believe in your gut.”
