"What’s in the box, honey?" Susan sat down and patted the seat next to her. "Come sit by me so I can look at you. You look tired, sad. I’d hoped the next time I saw you there would be a smile on your face."
Damien tried to force one, but it fell flat. "I brought you some of Jessica’s things… her swimming trophies, her yearbooks, and photo albums from college. It really should all come back to you, and I’m sorry it took me so long to do it. I just couldn’t go through her stuff."
He wasn’t even sure what had possessed him to do it now. But when he’d decided to come to Chicago, he’d pulled out the taped boxes in his closet and had quickly sorted out some things for Jessica’s parents. It felt right to give pieces of Jessica back to them.
He had needed to do this, see them.
"Are you sure?" Susan’s hand was reaching for the box, but she stopped.
"Yes. These are from before we met. I kept the pictures of Jessica and me."
Susan opened the box, and a half an hour later, Damien was finding that it wasn’t as hard as he had imagined to watch Jessica’s parents go through her personal possessions. Susan only teared up once, when she found a grade school report card, but for the most part, she and Fred smiled, laughed, reminisced about the items they pulled out.
They had healed. Damien could see it. They missed Jessica, they loved her, but they had accepted their loss and were prepared to focus on the good times.
He wanted to be able to do that, but he wasn’t there yet. Wasn’t sure he’d ever be.
"So, are you seeing anyone? Is there a special woman in your life?" Susan asked casually, her reading glasses perched on her nose.
"No." He shook his head. There was no explaining his relationship with Mandy. He was her boss, her one-time lover, and he hoped her friend.
"I’m sorry to hear you say that," she said quietly. "I’d hoped by now you would have moved on, found happiness."
"No," he said, because again it was the simplest answer.
"Cutting yourself off from family and friends – not being happy – that’s not what Jess would have wanted for you," Susan said, stroking his arm.
That statement gave Damien pause. He ran his finger over the edge of Jessica’s yearbook, squeezing the tip of his finger between the pages until he felt pain. "You think so? Because I was never really sure what Jessica wanted."
Fred gave a laugh. "Ain’t that the truth. Our Jess wasn’t easy to live with. She took after Susan that way."
Susan smacked his leg. "Watch it."
Damien didn’t think it was anything to laugh about, but for the first time ever he allowed himself to think thai maybe all their problems hadn’t been his alone. Maybe no matter how much he loved her, it never would have been enough to make Jessica happy. They hadn’t been right for each other.
Maybe if she hadn’t died, they would have gone theii separate ways.
Maybe none of that mattered because he was the one alive and she was dead, and hopefully Jessica was at peace.
"Well, I need to take off." Damien stood up. "I haven’t even seen my parents yet."
Then he had one more stop to make before he met up with George to sign the listing papers.
He had to visit the tattoo parlor.
Chapter 20
Mandy picked at her chicken Caesar salad and worried. Caroline stared at her as she wiped her lips on a napkin. "You’re really worked up over him. You’ve fallen for Demon Sharpton, haven’t you?"
Her head snapped up, and Mandy glanced around the restaurant. They were just across the street from their office and anyone could be listening. That was the last thing in the world she needed, rumors running around the office about her and Damien. Not seeing any secretarial spies, Mandy waved away a fly and dropped her fork. "Is it that obvious?"
"I’ve never seen you like this." Despite a summer breeze tumbling down Fifty-second as they ate outside, Caroline looked cool and put together.
As usual, Mandy felt as though she’d run an obstacle course on her way to lunch. She was hot, blown, and sticky. And she was certain her deodorant had given way on the elevator down.
"Ben certainly didn’t produce this kind of reaction from you. It makes me wonder if there is more to your feelings than you realize."
Oh, she realized them all right. "I’m terrified that he’s got into trouble. We had this sort of fight yesterday at the ultrasound." Maybe fight was the wrong word, but they’d certainly not left each other in a happy place. "Then he just took off. He never leaves the office like this. And he hasn’t even checked his e-mail. Where could he have gone?"
"Maybe he’s at home. Maybe he just needed a mental health day." Caroline touched her hair, smoothing it. "Did you know that sixty percent of women and twenty percent of men have called off sick because of a bad hair day?"
Mandy knew without a doubt Damien wasn’t a contributor to that statistic. "Damien would not call off sick because his hair looked bad. He would be bleeding out his eyes before he called off work." Which made her wonder if he was in his apartment, bleeding out his eyes.
Her stomach churned. "I don’t even know where he lives! Oh, my God. He could be dead."
"If he was dead, he would not have had the forethought to cancel all his appointments first." Caroline took a bite of her Cobb salad. "Why don’t you just call his cell phone? You’re his secretary. Surely you know his cell number."
Mandy felt a huge sense of relief that she could contact him. "You’re right. I have it in my Palm Pilot." She bent over and started digging around in her purse. "How did you know you were in love with Brad, Caroline? Was it this eureka moment?"
"Well, no, not really." Caroline’s voice was puzzled. "I just knew that Brad was the man I wanted to spend my life with. I knew we were right for each other. And of course, I love him."
Mandy lifted her head. She stared at Caroline, thinking that somehow her roommate had managed to do it all so nicely and cleanly. She’d met a responsible, attractive man at her previous job, dated, gotten engaged, bought a great apartment with him, and was planning the perfect wedding.
While Mandy was pregnant with one man’s child and in love with another.
She’d never thought of herself as a difficult person, but she sure in the hell wasn’t making things easy on herself either.