Page 8 of Finally Mine
Gloria’s body still sang with minor aches and pains as she climbed the steps, but she was getting better. She was healing. This visit was part of the healing. Thanking and apologizing to the woman who’d been marred by her own personal violent nightmare.
Still, a letter would have done the job.
The front door opened into an empty foyer. The rooms on either side were bare except for a flat-screen TV and an antique sofa that looked about as comfortable as a cinder block. It felt like an abandoned house. No pictures on the wall, no furniture to speak of. There was a story here, too. Gloria was sure of it. But they were a long way away from story-swapping friends.
She followed Harper back the hallway on lovely, worn hardwood floors to the pretty and—again—bare kitchen. Harper grabbed two plates from a cabinet and stacked them on the island. “Can you grab the bread for me?” she asked, unpacking sandwich ingredients from the refrigerator.
Gloria blinked and reached for the loaf of bread on the counter. She’d expected to come here and apologize, taking her lumps and the blame. Not make herself at home in a virtual stranger’s house and make herself a sandwich.
Harper pushed a cutting board and ripe tomato into Gloria’s hands. “Would you mind slicing this?”
“Sure,” Gloria said, staring at the glossy red skin of the tomato, wondering what alternate dimension she’d walked into.
Gloria sliced, and Harper buzzed around the kitchen. “Roast beef okay with you?”
“Sure.” Gloria said again, kicking herself for her limited conversational abilities.For the love of God, come up with a different word!“But you really don’t have to go to all this trouble.”Good. A whole sentence. Nice work.
“Well, you’re helping,” Harper insisted with a wink. She dropped a dollop of mayonnaise on two slices of bread. “So what brings you to Luke’s unfurnished abode?”
Gloria laughed softly. “Itiskind of Spartan,” she observed.
“I don’t know if he’s a minimalist or what,” Harper confessed.
“Commitment phobic?” Gloria suggested.
“Even when it comes to furniture, it seems,” Harper agreed. She handed Gloria a plated sandwich. “Water or soda?”
“Water, please,” Gloria answered automatically.There. She remembered her manners.
They ate side-by-side on barstools at the island. The only seats available.
Gloria tried to focus on the sandwich, but the words she needed to say were bubbling up in her throat. “Harper, I just wanted to thank you,” she said, breaking the silence.
Harper swiped bread crumbs off of her lower lip. “You’re welcome. But it’s just a sandwich.”
Gloria laughed. “Not just for the sandwich, which is really good, by the way. For helping me with Glenn at Remo’s. It’s been going on for so long, or at least I’ve let it go on so long, that I felt like everyone had stopped seeing me.”
She paused, took a breath. “It took me seeing the situation I helped create hurt someone else to realize that it had to stop. And I’m sorry for that.”
Yes, she had planned to leave Glenn. But Gloria wasn’t sure she would have had the guts to press charges, to turn over all those humiliating photos to the police, if the man she’d once loved hadn’t hurt someone else. That made her even more disappointed in herself.
Harper shrugged off the apology. “It was worth it if it helps you build a life you want. How are you?”
“I’m okay,” Gloria said, pushing the pickle spear around her plate. “I’m staying with my mother for now. And I pressed charges.” Feeling an unexpected lightness in saying the words, Gloria picked up her sandwich and took another bite.
There was so much silence in shame. Maybe getting the words out would ease a small bit of her burden?
“That’s very brave of you,” Harper said.
Gloria shook her head. “It would have been braver had I done it years ago.”
Harper patted her hand lightly. “Life moves pretty fast. There’s not a lot of room for coulda, shoulda, woulda.”
“Sometimes that’s all I can think about. How different my life would be if I had gone to college or never started dating him.”Whoa, Nelly. First, she couldn’t form a coherent sentence and now she was spilling her guts?
Harper’s big gray eyes widened with understanding. “Maybe now you have that chance? See what your life would be without him in it.”
Gloria didn’t know why she was blurting out her secret shame to a complete stranger. It must have been the roast beef. But she couldn’t stop the flood of words. “It’s hard. I don’t really have any friends left. I guess it’s not easy to be friends with someone who keeps making the wrong decision over and over again. Eventually, everyone has to decide whether or not it’s worth it to keep trying.”
