“Great. I will.” He gestures at her desk, her flurry of activity. “If you’re leaving, we can walk out together.”
For fuck’s sake. And then we will part ways, Jackie thinks, me to my husband and, because it’s Friday, you to your new squeeze. How quaint. “I’ve got to close up everything, so you go ahead.”
He appears disappointed, hurt even. “Are you sure? I don’t mind waiting.” He points at the window. “It’s getting dark already.”
Jackie bursts out laughing, unable to edit herself any longer. As Harlan knows, she walks on campus by herself at all hours. It’s perfectly safe. His protective gesture is misplaced and odd as hell. But when she sees his eyes darken, a splinter of fear slides into her chest and lodges there. She’s seen that look of his twice before. It’s unnerving as hell, and she quickly sobers, changes the subject, eager for him to leave. “I’ll text you about the game after I talk to Miles.”
“I’d appreciate that.” He picks up his bag from where it leans against the chair. “Glad I caught you. I wish we saw each other more often.”
“We should.”
“Take care, Jackie.”
He leaves, his long strides echoing down the hall. She hears the door latch click open.
“I will.” She holds her breath until the door closes and the lab is silent.
“Take care” isn’t a Harlan phrase, at least not as a pleasant wish, which is why when she replays it in her mind exactly as Harlan spoke it, without his presence making her ears buzz and her brain seize, it sounds more like a warning. Why on earth would he be warning her? Maybe her guilty conscience is affecting her perception. She should be warning him about her, given her crazy stalking.
Still, she is not misreading everything. She didn’t invent that cold, dark look.
Jackie waits in her office, perched on the edge of her desk, to ensure Harlan has given up on her for the evening. Why did he bother to see her in person? He could have raised either issue easily via text—and the question about Nasira did not have to be raised at all. The only reason for him to drop by was to be able to judge her reaction to his oddly confrontational questions. She should have called him out, been more direct from the start. It’s a bad habit of hers, letting Harlan drive the conversation, call the shots without any pushback.
Maybe it’s because one of the few times she did push back, she learned her lesson.
In February 2010, Harlan’s mother died unexpectedly of a stroke in her sleep at her home in Newton, Massachusetts. She was seventy-seven years old. Harlan received the news at home on a Saturday morning, so Jackie was there, as she had been for most Saturday mornings for nearly two years. Harlan took the call in the kitchen, where he was making coffee. Jackie was upstairs, drying off from a shower, and heard his hushed tones through the open bathroom door. In Jackie’s experience, Harlan received few calls at home, which she attributed to his status as an only child and his preference for a clean separation between work and personal activities. She dressed, wrapped her hair in a fresh towel, and went downstairs.
He looked up, phone in hand, when she entered. Jackie noticed the coffee had finished brewing, but he hadn’t poured it. The refrigerator door was ajar.
“Everything all right?” she asked, careful not to suggest she had any right to information.
“That was Miranda, the woman who helps care for my mother.” His voice thickened. “She called to say that my mother died last night.”
Jackie came to Harlan’s side, slid her arm around his waist, and held him close. “I’m so sorry.” She waited for him to lay the phone down or put his arms around her anyway, but he didn’t move. She pulled back and studied his face. He stared over the top of her head. He was clearly in shock. Well, no surprise; it had been sudden.
“Miranda hopes to arrange the service for next weekend. She knows I have duties during the week. It was thoughtful of her.” His voice was wooden.
Jackie had heard Miranda mentioned once or twice before. Harlan didn’t talk much about his family, saying there wasn’t much to talk about when one is the only child of two only children. Harlan’s father, a physicist at Princeton, had died in a boating accident when Harlan was in college. His mother had moved back to her native Boston soon after.
Jackie reached up and laid her palm against Harlan’s cheek. “Let me know if I can do anything, okay?”
He nodded, but she wasn’t sure he was listening.
Jackie stepped around him, poured the coffee, and slid a mug over to him. She sipped hers and waited for Harlan to speak. She had questions but didn’t want to bombard him.
Without a word, Harlan left the room. Jackie followed him to the foyer. He grabbed his wallet and keys from the hall table.
“Harlan?” Driving was probably not a good idea on the heels of such news.
He half turned. “I’m fine, Jackie. I just need some air.”
She was about to offer to accompany him, but he was already out the door.
Jackie spent the next two hours tidying the bedroom, making breakfast, and researching flights to Boston. When Harlan returned, he was subdued, but not as closed down as previously.
“I’ve made something to eat.” She gestured to the fruit salad, yogurt, and toasted bagels on the counter.
“Thanks, Jackie.” He took a seat at the counter and spread cream cheese on a bagel. “I’ll leave Thursday so I have time to take care of things there.”
Jackie mentally ran through her schedule. “I can shuffle a couple of things and leave then, too.”
He lowered the bagel onto his plate. “You don’t need to come.”
“I want to.”
“Really, it’s not necessary.”
“This won’t be easy. I want to be there for you.”
“No, Jackie.”
Jackie let it go—for the moment. But over the next two days, she became convinced she was right. Harlan was fiercely independent, but that didn’t mean he had to bear his grief alone. It wasn’t healthy, even if he wasn’t close to his mother, visiting her only twice a year. Once he had described her as “ordinary and quite pretty,” and there had been no hint of animosity. But Jackie knew that no one loses a parent without fallout, so on Tuesday evening she brought it up again, and again he refused her company. She dug in. Being in a relationship meant supporting each other in difficult times, even if that relationship had many rules. She and Harlan might not be on a track to marriage, but they cared for each other deeply. Faced with this tragedy, she would show him how much.
“Harlan. In this one instance, you are not the best judge of what you need. I’m not going to try to steer anything or judge how you’re feeling in any way. I’m simply going to be there.”
“Jackie, as I said before—”
She covered his hand with hers. “I’m going.”
In the days running up to the Sunday service, Jackie was proved correct. Harlan seemed grateful for her company during lunch with Miranda and the minister and went so far as to ask her opinion on the choice of hymns. “I don’t know why she asked for singing,” Harlan said. “She hated church music.”
“I’m with her. But the usual choices are popular for a good reason.”