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“I hear you, Lolo, but I’m not sure if I’m the kind of person who lets my guard down easily enough to talk to a therapist.” That’s Ruby’s most succinct way of brushing the suggestion aside for the moment, but she hangs onto Harlow’s hand. “I want to help you right now, though. I want you on your feet and feeling solid again.”
A tear slips down Harlow’s cheek and she swipes it away with the hand that her mom isn’t holding onto.
“Would you consider coming down to Shipwreck Key with me for a bit?” Ruby asks, hoping that Harlow might consider it. “I know it’s a tiny island, but I think it would be good for you. It might help you to decompress. And if there’s no one actually on Shipwreck Key for you to talk to, I bet we could find someone in Destin.”
“Therapists do Zoom sessions now, Mom,” Harlow says patiently, patting her mom’s hand with pitying like she’s an out-of-touch invalid.
“So does that mean you’ll come down with me and stay for a while? We can pay your rent here and I’m sure your boss will give you a leave of absence—“
“Yes,” Harlow says, nodding and smiling for the first time since Ruby arrived. “Yes, I want to go home with you, Mom. I don’t want to be here right now. I’ll talk to my boss, but a lot of my work can be done remotely anyway, so I don’t think it will be a problem.”
Ruby nearly shudders with relief; leaving Harlow in New York after the shooting is the very last thing her mom heart wants to do, so the thought of holding her youngest child close and taking her back to Florida for a little R&R makes Ruby insanely happy.
“How soon can we leave?” Ruby asks. She’s already thinking about booking plane tickets, setting Harlow up in the bedroom she’d stayed in when she was down for the bookstore’s opening, and cooking her dinners that they can eat together out on the porch, watching the water and breathing in the soothing ocean air.
“Let me call my boss and pack a few things. Want to leave tomorrow?”
“Yes, let’s get a good night of sleep, and then we’ll head out on the first flight,” Ruby says, opening her arms and hugging Harlow as she falls into them.
“Mom?” Harlow asks, her voice muffled by Ruby’s hug. “I know it sounds babyish, but can you sleep in my bed with me tonight? I don’t want to be alone.”
The pain her daughter’s voice brings tears to Ruby’s eyes and she holds her tighter, pressing her lips to Harlow’s head and inhaling the intoxicating scent of her own child.
“Yes, baby girl. I’ll be right there next to you. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
Athena
Athena is almost entirely sidetracked by news of the bar shooting. She feels a cold chill running the length of her body the second she hears that Harlow was involved, and she literally cannot get warm again until she gets to New York and sees with her own eyes that Harlow is okay.
Her trip to Manhattan is quick—she gets there late at night after Ruby has arrived—and she sleeps on the couch, happy to have her mom curled up with Harlow. Eldrick and Banks take turns standing guard with Athena’s agent, Corbin, and there isn’t a single second when someone isn’t on hand to watch over the three women. But when Harlow and Ruby leave the apartment the next day to board a flight to Florida, Athena has no choice but to get back on the train bound for D.C. and carry on. After all, she has a job to go back to, and her mom is going to take amazing care of her sister on Shipwreck Key.
All eyes are on Athena as she walks through the Library of Congress. People know what’s going on in her private life whether she wants them to or not, and the fact that her family is still front and center in the twenty-four hour news cycle means that every update on the bar, the shooter, the victims, and the fallout is everywhere.
At her desk, Athena makes the mistake of logging in to a couple of her favorite news sources just to see what else is going on in the world, and the headlines scream at her:
WAS GUNMAN TARGETING HARLOW HUDSON?
CONNECTION BETWEEN SHOOTER AND FORMER FIRST DAUGHTER?
GUNMAN TAKES HIS OWN LIFE AFTER KILLING EIGHT, INCLUDING FORMER OLYMPIAN; FORMER FIRST DAUGHTER SURVIVES
Athena feels a headache coming on and reaches for her coffee, nearly knocking it over as someone raps on the open door behind her. She jumps and spins in her chair.
“Diego!” she says, feeling torn between surprise, excitement, and the mix of emotions she’s still feeling about her sister. “Hi.”
“Welcome back,” he says, leaning against the door frame with one suit-jacketed shoulder. He slides his phone into his pocket and watches her seriously. “I’m so sorry to hear about the situation with your sister, and I won’t ask if she’s okay because I’m sure you get that question a million times a day, and we can all see on the news that she’s fine.”
Athena is using a paper napkin to mop up the little bit of coffee that sloshed from her mug when Diego knocked.
“She’s getting there,” Athena says diplomatically, remembering how her dad told her to always say things that had a positive spin, but that revealed nothing.
“Good, good,” Diego says, running a hand through his dark, shiny hair. “What I really wanted to ask is, how areyou?”
Athena pauses her coffee mopping, holding the wet napkin in her hand. “I’m fine,” she says, forgetting for a second to say something more upbeat. She reconfigures her answer. “Actually, I’m processing the whole situation and trying to figure out how to help my family from a distance. My sister went home with my mom for a while, so they’re together, and I’m here in D.C.”
Diego makes a face. “I’ve been away from family. No fun.” He puts his hands into his pockets casually. “Hey, would you want to go out—maybe have dinner? I know you’ve got a lot on your mind, and making dinner alone is probably the last thing you want to do.”
He’s assuming she’s single. Athena feels a wash of shame to know that a gorgeous man in her age range has looked at her and immediately clocked her as a sad singleton. Diego sees her and knows that she’s a boring librarian who goes home alone at night to hand wash her cardigans and hang them in her small bathroom, to order takeout from the various restaurants in her neighborhood, and to watch documentaries in her fuzzy single girl pajamas while she folds laundry on her coffee table.
