Page 5

Beyond that uncanny valley, Bishop looked weary to his core. Exhaustion worn in deep purple bags beneath his eyes. Fear worn in a heavy crease between his brows. Hope worn in tight lips pulled ever so slightly at the edges, as if caught between relief and sadness.

She should have felt more sympathy than she did. Molly knew that. But of all the people she’d asked after, that Bishop was her first official visitor after only briefly speaking to Roy felt like a punishment more than a reward.

After several seconds of truly uncomfortable staring, during which time the nurse fussed over Molly’s heart rate, Bishop finally sat on the hard plastic chair on the far side of the room. It groaned under his weight, and he winced like the creaking was a protest to his presence.

To Molly, it was.

“One hundred over seventy-five; that’s very good,” the nurse said as the blood pressure band on Molly’s arm deflated.

Bishop didn’t say anything.

Molly didn’t say anything.

“Blood oxygen is a little lower than I’d like.” Molly may have stopped breathing for a moment there.

Bishop opened his mouth like he might speak, and Molly had to look at the drop tile ceiling. No words ever came. Not until the nurse spoke again.

“We have you scheduled for a final round of imaging, and then it looks like we’re prepping you for discharge.” She glanced between Molly and Bishop. “I should be taking you over there right now, but why don’t I give you two a couple of minutes?”

And just like that, Molly was alone in her room with Aster Bishop.

He stood when she looked over at him. Too formal. Chokingly awkward. It echoed, horrifyingly, of the last time she’d been alone with him. That had been at graduation, together in a small room prior to delivering their respective speeches. Hers as valedictorian. His as class president. Four years of a vicious academic rivalry, and all its adjacent cruelties, coming to a close. He’d stood when she entered the room, then looked like he regretted it—then, bafflingly, gestured for her to have his seat. Molly didn’t know which of them was more shocked by his stilted “Good luck” when she was called to give her speech. He’d corrected himself a beat later, adding, “Don’t choke.” And that was that. The last thing she remembered him saying to her.

Molly nearly hit the call button on her bed. She couldn’t do this. She liked to think she was a mature, well-adjusted person. But no amount of maturity could prepare someone for the absurdity of a situation like this.

Still, he said nothing.

She said nothing.

And that nothing gobbled up all the air in the room, leaving her to feel like she was suffocating beneath her sheets.

“Do you know anything about my dad?” The question burst from her, the only one she could think to ask when her alternatives were “Are you still a pompous ass?” and “How the hell did we end up married?”

Appallingly, he also seemed like her best option for news about her dad, who, to Molly’s last recollection, was on the back end of two heart attacks in the last year.

When Bishop tensed, Molly soldiered on, desperate. “The hospital staff doesn’t know anything, and so I haven’t—”

“I told him not to come.”

In that one sentence, any attempted goodwill she’d been trying to conjure for Bishop withered away.

“Why?” Her voice was surprisingly level.

Bishop stepped closer, mouth open like he meant to say something else, but nothing came out. His face twisted before he finally managed a weak response. “His arrhythmia has been . . . not great. His doctors have concerns about him flying. I didn’t think—I didn’t think you’d want him to risk it. Arizona to Connecticut is a long flight.”

“You told him not to come—not to be here for me—because you thought you knew what I’d want?” For what must have been the thousandth time in her life, Molly hated that her dad had moved back to Arizona during her sophomore year at boarding school. Even if she understood the need to follow decent job opportunities and live closer to Molly’s elderly grandmother, that move had still turned geography into a very real logistical challenge between them. One that often chafed.

Bishop’s posture sank, a kind of emotional defeat evident in his exhale. Molly wasn’t used to anything but a staggeringly confident Aster Bishop, swaggering through life like his mere existence was a gift to all of humanity.

He’d called her “Charity Case” more than her own name because she’d been a scholarship student.

He’d spent several months tallying the price of all his shoes and watches relative to Laburnum Preparatory Academy’s tuition and then reminding Molly how many days of her education he was wearing at any given moment.

He’d made her sob in a bathroom stall over a particularly well-landed insult on at least two separate occasions.

He’d once accused her of plagiarism and tried getting her expelled.

And then he’d fought her tooth and nail in their grade point rankings, nearly taking the valedictorian title for himself as if he didn’t already have everything.