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“Are you sure that’s going to work?” Annie asked.
A bit of wind left Lucy’s sails, because in truth, she wasn’t sure. She was hoping—really, really hard—but there was no guarantee. And the doubt in Annie’s voice faltered her faith.
“It’s not a slam dunk, but it’s something,” she offered. “If we can expose him as having lied about that, then there’s doubt about all of his denial.”
Another heavy silence weighed the line. Lucy had not expected gleeful cheering given what they were up against, and she couldn’t blame Annie for being nervous. The optimism she had felt in Joanna’s office, she realized, was mostly due to knowing she had someone in her corner. Someone willing to risk it all to stand beside her.
“You’ve very brave, Annie. I hope you know that, no matter what happens.”
Annie sniffled. “Thanks for saying that, because I’m starting to question if this was too much.”
“Most brave things involve risk, otherwise they wouldn’t require bravery to do them.”
She heard Annie smile. “You’re very wise, Lucy.”
“Well, I am older now, so.” She grinned into her phone, impressed by her own enlightened words. “And speaking of being old, I wasn’t calling just to be flattered. I wanted to check on you and to invite you to my birthday party tonight.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I know all this seems like I did you a favor, but really, it’s the other way around. I needed your help and I didn’t even know it until it happened, so thank you. My party is at Perch at eight. I hope I see you there. I have to go.”
She ended the call before Annie could protest or come up with some nonsense self-deprecating reason she didn’t deserve to come to the party. Her invitation made her realize there was someone else she wanted to invite to her party as well, someone else who had helped her in a way she didn’t even know she needed until it happened.
And that invitation would have to be delivered in person because she was still without a phone number for a particular attractive bartender she couldn’t seem to stop running into.
“So, Joanna is in on all this? She’s taking down her own brother?” Oliver asked, bringing Lucy back to the moment.
“She’s doing her best to,” Lucy said optimistically while still being aware that it could all go wrong.
“And you are...?” Oliver watched her circle her desk to sit at her computer.
“I’m doing my best too.”
He heaved a sigh. “Don’t worry; it’ll all be fine. Everything is fine.”
She opened her email to draft a damage-control message to her clients, and his words rang around her head like church bells on an empty street.
Everything is fine.
Her mantra, her gospel. The thing she said to her clients and to herself ten times a day. It struck her, profoundly, in that moment that she had not said it once since waking that day.
Because nothing was fine.
“I’m not okay,” she said.
Oliver snorted, busy with his phone. “Join the club.”
She stood up and felt the tension of honesty she’d been fighting all day stubbornly settle into place. And she didn’t resist it. “I,” she started with more conviction, “am not fine. Nothing is fine right now.”
For all the times she convinced herself she was fine, and everything was fine, when in fact neither were true, she was surprised her mouth could even form the words. That her brain allowed her to admit it when she’d been trained to bury discomfort and pretend everything was okay. In place of the fear she expected, the panic that would push her carefully balanced world into unrest, she felt strength in admitting the truth.
“I’m not fine,” she said again. “I haven’t been fine for a long time.”
Whether it was her tone or her admission or something else altogether, Oliver stopped thumbing his phone and looked up at her. It was written all over his face, clear as day that this wasn’t news to him, and it struck her that convincing herself she was happy was the biggest lie of them all.
She wasn’t fine. And in admitting it, she felt something slide into place. A missing piece that was equal parts terrifying and gratifying.
Is this my lesson?she wondered. Was this what the universe had been trying to show her all day?
