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Pushing aside the hurt, he said, “I’m sure you do.”
Her brief hesitation before leaving the office likely came from her realization that this might not end the way she intended. He watched her go, then glanced at his watch. He didn’t have time to talk to Janessa before they started to see patients. It would have to wait.
He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to deal with it. The pain that came from discovering he didn’t know Aria the way he thought he did was nearly crippling.
But now he had answers, and that’s what he had wanted.
However, he was really having abe careful what you wish formoment.
With a sigh, Gareth closed his eyes and said a prayer for strength to get through the day with this new information weighing down heavily on him. He couldn’t be distracted while he tended to patients. They were coming here for his professional attention, and he owed that to them.
He spent time doing what he usually did, perusing the files of the patients he’d see that day, while he waited for Janessa to let him know his first patient was there. All the while, he ignored the file that Nora had left on his desk.
It wasn’t until Janessa tapped on his door that he reached over and picked it up, sliding it into the drawer of his desk before he left the room.
“Can we eat lunch in my office?” Gareth asked Janessa after he’d stopped her in the hallway when his last patient of the morning had left. “I need to talk to you.”
She frowned but nodded. “I’ll just go grab our food. I put it in the break room already.”
Gareth didn’t much feel like eating, but he knew he should have something. He hadn’t eaten anything yet that day, and the countless cups of coffee he’d already drunk ate at his stomach.
When Janessa walked in, she carried two wrapped subs. She closed the door, then handed him one before sitting down on the chair opposite him.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
After a moment’s debate, Gareth pulled the file Nora had given him out of the drawer and leaned forward to set it on the desk in front of her. He hadn’t read through it, but he was pretty sure it contained everything Nora had told him earlier. Possibly even more.
Janessa’s brow furrowed as she picked the file up. “What’s this?”
“The reason Aria left.”
“Really?” She quickly flipped the file open and sat back to read it.
Gareth unwrapped his sub but left it sitting on the desk while he waited for Janessa to react. He really hoped that she hadn’t known about any of it.
“She wasfired?” Janessa asked, her voice pitching higher. “Fordrinking? That makes no sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“Aria never drank. When we were in college, people would try to get her to drink at parties, and she never indulged. At least not that I ever saw.” She looked back down at the file. “This happened a few weeks after her mom died. Before she came here, she’d been working as a cashier.”
“What about the drug addicts for roommates?” Gareth asked. “Did she ever mention that to you?”
“No. She didn’t. She mentioned moving, but she said it was to a smaller apartment since she didn’t need a two bedroom one after her mom died.”
Gareth was relieved that Janessa hadn’t known about any of this before asking them to hire Aria. Still, it really hurt to realize that the woman he’d come to love had lied by omission to all of them.
“So you didn’t look into her background before asking us to hire her?”
Janessa’s shoulders slumped. “I didn’t think I had to. She was at the top of our class and took everything so seriously. I mean, I did too, but she was so much more focused than anyone else. So I had confidence that she would be a great addition here. I made assumptions that I guess I shouldn’t have.”
The pain on his sister’s face fed the anger that brewed inside Gareth. He struggled to reconcile the woman he’d fallen for with the one that was coming to light now. That struggle also fed his anger.
Gareth didn’t get mad very often. Sure, he had occasional bursts of temper, but this prolonged forest fire of anger wasn’t common for him. He had no idea how to extinguish it. So far, everything seemed to feed it rather than help to extinguish it.
“I’m sorry,” Janessa said, her shoulders slumping. “I thought I was doing a good thing.”
“You were. This is not totally your fault. Aria should have told you about the firing, at the very least.”
