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  “I thought you wanted to shatter ceilings. Doing audits for the college travel department is hardly a breakout.”

  “I agree.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “But I need an internship in a related field, and that’s all I could get around here. No one in Darlington even wants an intern, especially a queer one.”

  Rory snorted. “Being wanted and being needed are very different things. What if Beth could get you a shot with a CPA doing real taxes? You think you could handle a less-than-gregarious welcome?”

  Elliot hoped her smile showed all the defiance she wanted to feel. “You can’t change the world without a little pushback. I’ll be sure to wear my big-girl boxers to work.”

  The sun had already set when she returned to the office, so she had no real sense of how long she’d been working. Darkness was the norm this time of year. She went to work before dawn, sat in a windowless hospital room for hours on end, and returned to work again after dusk. Even when she managed to get outside during daylight hours, a bitter gray film covered the sky and everything below. Stock photos of January in central Illinois didn’t appear on postcards or travel guides. Instead, they filled depression pamphlets or news stories on Seasonal Affective Disorder.

  She stared at the paperwork in front of her. The payroll reports for several local businesses provided her the only respite from the gray of her world. Numbers were black and white, literally and figuratively. They never blurred together for her. Focus was easy to come by within the even rows and clearly delineated columns. She liked the challenge, the puzzle, making order out of chaos. She liked the control. Maybe these days she even clung to it. But there were worse addictions to feed.

  The back door creaked slowly open, and her shoulders slumped. The only person who used that entrance this time of night wouldn’t bring order or a sense of control. She took a deep breath and removed her dark-rimmed glasses, folding them neatly before laying them on the precisely stacked pages before her. “Good evening, Beth.”

  “Hi, Kel.” Beth stepped into the circle of light from the single overhead lamp. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, her dark curls windblown. “I brought you some pork chops for dinner.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I know.” Her smile was so sweet Kelly had to set her jaw against the push of emotions.

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Are you sure?” Beth set a stack of Tupperware containers on the corner of her desk, and the smell of home-cooked food filled the space between them.

  The air grew thick with scents that carried memories. Her stomach growled loudly. As if the events of last weekend hadn’t been hard enough, now even her own body betrayed her. “Maybe I could eat.”

  Beth wordlessly unpacked the food. Pork chops, scalloped potatoes, green beans. She laid out a fork and a knife, then unscrewed the cup top on a metal thermos. Each piece neater and tidier than the one before, Beth had thought of everything. She always did.

  Kelly bit her lip to keep from saying something caustic. Anger was a natural defense, but she couldn’t direct it at Beth. She’d already done enough of that for one lifetime.

  “The tea is decaffeinated so it won’t keep you up.” Beth claimed the seat across the desk, bright blue eyes expectantly searching her face.

  The tea was the last thing Kelly worried about keeping her awake tonight. She bowed her head to pray, both out of habit and as stalling tactic, but instead of reciting an internal Our Father or Hail Mary, her mind remained focused on Beth’s presence. The smell of her shampoo mingled with the aroma of her cooking. Please, God, give me strength.

  She lifted her head and opened her eyes to see Beth still there. For some reason it surprised her, as if the simple prayer may have caused the temptation to simply disappear. The absurdity of the thought annoyed her. “Are you going to sit there and watch me eat?”

  “Actually I wanted to talk to you while you ate.”

  Suspicion mingled with curiosity. Beth had worked hard to remain friendly over the past two and a half years. She never forgot a birthday or let Christmas pass without a little gift. When they ran into each other in social settings, she always asked about Kelly’s father, work, church. Even when Kelly tried to avoid her— or worse, push her away, which had been often in the early days— Beth refused to let her sulk or hide. Still, a prolonged conversation over dinner was more contact than they’d had since the night Beth had walked out.

  “Don’t wait on account of me.” Beth motioned for her to eat, and the light caught the diamond on her left ring finger.

  Kelly looked away and slowly cut a piece of the pork chop. “I’m not very good company.”

  “It’s okay, I came prepared to do most of the talking.”

  Resigned, Kelly stabbed at the meat with her fork, then added a few green beans, hoping to swallow some of her unreasonable anger with the food, but as soon as she took a bite, all the lingering resentment melted along with her resolve to stay stoic.

  Holy Mother. In the long lonely nights, she’d convinced herself she’d exaggerated Beth’s abilities in the kitchen— among other places— but now she realized she’d accepted false comfort. At least on this count. She tried not to go any further with that thought process and instead focused on shoveling another bite into her mouth.

  “I visited your dad Sunday evening,” Beth said softly.

  The comment pulled her from the food stupor, but she said nothing.

  “The nurse said I’d just missed you. She also said you were there for four or five hours every day.”

  “So much for privacy regulations.”

  “She didn’t release any of his medical records,” she said soothingly. “In fact he was sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake him, so all I know about his condition is what I’ve heard around town.”

  Kelly snorted, “I can only imagine.”

  “He’s well liked, Kelly. He’s on the prayer list of every church in Darlington. People are concerned.”

  “People like to gossip. The story gets bigger every time it goes around.”

  Beth knew better than to argue that point with her. “Then why don’t you tell me the truth?”

  “He had a stroke,” she snapped, but Beth didn’t flinch. She didn’t even frown.

  “And?”

  “And he’s stable now, but he sleeps a lot.” She shook her head. “Too much. He wakes up and he doesn’t remember where he is right away. It’s like he’s all there, but not immediately. He processes everything slowly. You can see it in his eyes, but he can’t … he doesn’t, um … he can’t really talk anymore.”

  Beth’s smile fell into a grim white line. “At all?”

  “He tries,” she said, taking another bite to buy her time, but the taste had grown flat and bland now. “He slurs his words, but it’s more than that. It’s like he doesn’t really remember them. Like he can look at a pencil, and see it, and know what it is, but when he opens his mouth he says ‘cat’.”

  Beth reached out, sliding her hand across the desk, but Kelly pushed her chair back.

  “It’s just going to take time. He’ll be okay.”

  “Of course he will, but it must be so scary and frustrating.”

  “Yeah.” Frustrating, upsetting, infuriating— for him and for her. “But it’s too soon to know what’s permanent and what’s an aftereffect, or a side effect. We might not know for a year.”

  “A year,” Beth whispered, and Kelly once again felt the weight of the timeline.

  A year of worrying, of second-guessing, or imagining the worst. A year of uncertainty. Her stomach clenched, and she pushed the food away. “I really should get back to work.”

  “Kelly …”

  She held up her hand. She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t need Beth to tell her she couldn’t keep up this pace. She didn’t need someone else to reaffirm her fears or fuel the fire of her already blazing self-doubt. “I have to finish these audits before tax season starts next week.”

 
“I arranged for you to have an intern,” Beth said evenly. “She can start as early as Monday.”

  Kelly blinked at her a few times as the words sank in. They weren’t what she’d expected, not the argument she’d prepared herself for. Beth was supposed to say, “You can’t work so hard. Go easy on yourself. Give yourself time.”

  “It’s up to you of course, but Elliot is a hard worker and smart. She’s older too, more experienced, more mature. Not your average college kid.”

  “What?” Maybe her father wasn’t the only one with delayed processing skills.

  “She’s in her last semester of the five-year Bachelor’s/Master’s accounting program at Bramble. The only thing between her and the CPA exam is an internship.”

  Kelly knew the program. She’d read about it in the paper. She and other local CPAs had even met with the dean to advise on the practical content. The students would be better prepared to do taxes than some of the people working full time in other offices around town. Hell, she’d probably have more knowledge in some areas than Kelly had for her first few tax seasons. Why was she considering qualifications of an intern she neither asked for nor approved?

  “I know, I know.” Beth cut off her interruption before she had a chance to make it. “You don’t need the help.”

  “Damn right I don’t.” She stood abruptly. “And what gives you the right to arrange for someone to work in my father’s business?”

  “Nothing’s formal. It’s just an idea. But it’s a good one. Elliot is special. I care about her, and I care about you. You two could be a good fit for each other right now.”

  “I’m not a fit for anyone right now.” She paced the small office space, fists clenched so tightly her fingernails cut sharply into her palms. “I can’t.”

  “You don’t have to be anything you’re not. You’re in control. It’s your choice.” Beth remained calmly seated. “Whatever you want is fine. This is about you. No, maybe not completely about you. I guess I’m doing this for me, too.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, me. Well, us, I guess.”

  Her chest tightened.

  “We go back a long way, Kel. I know you don’t like to remember, but—”

  “Beth …”

  “We’re more than how we ended.” She pressed on quickly. “You were there for me when my parents died. You and your dad both. You were my best friend when I needed one.”

  Were. Past tense.

  They’d been so young, little more than children, though it hadn’t seemed that way at the time. Beth had been so fragile. Kelly had felt strong and steady by comparison. She didn’t like their dynamic nearly as much with the roles reversed, but the connection was still strong enough to zap the anger clean out of her.

  “You were there for me, every morning, every night. You made sure I ate and that I got the financial help I needed. You got me through work and pain and everything in between,” Beth continued softly. “I know I can’t do all that for you. I know you won’t let me.”

  You could if not for the ring on your finger. “We’re not nineteen anymore.”

  “No.” Beth shook her head with a smile. “You look exhausted, and I’m going gray. We can’t stay up all night anymore, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t eat cherry pie three meals a day, either.”

  She finally smiled at the memory of all the sympathy food they’d consumed sitting barefoot on Beth’s front porch. They’d watched so many sunrises just to assure her she’d made it through another dark night. Even after weeks of those sugar-laced vigils, she’d never felt as tired as she did right now. How much longer could she really go on like this? And tax season hadn’t even started yet.

  “I know you don’t want me here every night,” Beth said, and Kelly crushed the desire to correct her, “but I won’t leave you to face this alone. So you have two choices: Either you put up with me underfoot every minute messing up your filing system and asking too many questions about taxes and how you’re feeling, or you give Elliot a shot at getting the job done right.”

  The choice was not as easy as Beth probably intended, not as clear as it should’ve been. The thought of working with her closely, regularly, held more appeal than it should, and that’s ultimately why it couldn’t happen. Beth had made her choice. They both had. Trying to pretend there could be anything else between them would only offer false comfort, and while right now any comfort seemed welcome, this was only a moment of weakness. She didn’t need comfort. She needed logic, answers, progress.

  And yes, maybe even an intern.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “This intern, she would work for me? She’d be an employee?”

  “Not exactly. She’s a student. She’d have a teacher who would supervise her and give her a grade.”

  “But I’d pay her?”

  “Yes, but minimum wage would be enough. She’s mostly here for course credit. You’d report on job performance to her supervising professor by filling out a progress report mid-semester and then at the end of the internship, and show him samples of the work Elliot did. Technically, you’d be more like a guest instructor. You teach her things and give her assignments, but in the end you don’t have any responsibility to grade her.”

  She bristled at the arrangement. “That seems unfair. The college just hires them out for low wages? Sounds like indentured servitude.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. She gets college credit, meets her internship requirement for licensure, and gets some hands-on experience to help her pass the CPA exam and get a paying job.”

  “Can I fire her?”

  Beth laughed. “You haven’t even met her, and already you want to fire her? Don’t you think that’s a little harsh?”

  She smiled in spite of the gentle rebuke. Beth had a way of putting her concerns into perspective. She used to find the trait maddening, but now she added the quality to the long list of things she should’ve appreciated more. “I don’t want to get locked into something I can’t control down the road.”

  Beth’s smile faltered for the first time all night. “I know this about you.”

  Her jaw twitched. She’d walked right into that, but there wasn’t any use denying the truth neither of them could overcome. She wouldn’t apologize for who she was. Maybe she should have three years ago, but time had passed, and if she couldn’t change for Beth, she sure as hell wasn’t going to do so for some intern.

  “Why don’t you send the intern by later this week?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “No,” she said reflexively. “I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on, so actually I hate to be bad company, but would you mind letting me get back to it?”

  Beth rose gracefully. “Of course. I’ll see myself out.”

  Kelly nodded and pretended to sort some papers. She should’ve thanked her for the dinner, for thinking of the intern, for caring. Instead she listened for the sound of the door latching behind her before dropping her head to the desk with a dull thud.

  Chapter Three

  Weather was one of the few areas where Darlington could compare to Chicago. The cold wind sweeping across the vast Midwestern plains felt bitter and biting, and probably a lot of other not-nice b-words. Bitching? No, that’s what she was doing. Never much of a morning person, Elliot scowled at the elements and flipped up the collar of her chocolate-colored wool coat. If she had to trek across a frozen tundra at ass o’clock in the morning, she at least wanted to look good doing it. She loved the deep, rich color of the coat as much as she enjoyed the way it hung thickly down to her knees, a veritable comfort blanket with style. She imagined she cut a pretty imposing figure among the freshmen and farmers who were up this early, but she liked to think she’d stand out just about anywhere. Clothes helped project confidence both inwardly and outwardly so she dressed for the life she wanted, not the one she had. She pictured herself strolling down Wall Street or the National Mall in Washington, DC. Money equaled power, and the power to regulate money was sup
reme power.

  That little pep talk gave her the fortitude necessary to cover the few blocks to Darlington’s closest and only coffee shop. As soon as she opened the door, the warmth of steam mixed with the comforting aroma of freshly brewed java caused her to whimper.

  “Easy there, Rockefeller,” Rory said, taking her by the elbow. “Beth already ordered you a cappuccino with a double shot of espresso.”

  “Marry her now, or I swear by everything holy, I will.” Elliot sank into a chair at the table closest to the door.

  Rory’s laugh was rich and deep as she sat down next to her. “I’m working on it.”

  “Here.” Beth set a steaming mug in front of her. “Nurse it. Don’t chug.”

  Elliot mumbled some incoherent words of thanks and sipped deep enough to break the thin layer of foam.

  “Better?”

  “It’s not what anyone would call a good cappuccino, but it’s infinitely better than the alternative of doing without in these pre-dawn hours.”

  “You do know the sun actually rose over an hour ago, right?” Rory asked.

  “Sunrise may have technically been an hour ago, but dawn is whenever I deem it appropriate to fully open my eyes, and this is definitely earlier than that.”

  “How do you plan to change the world from your bed?” Beth asked.

  Rory and Elliot both snickered.

  “Never mind. I walked right into that one. Sometimes I think you two really are the same person.”

  “But I’m much younger,” Elliot said.

  “And I’m better looking,” Rory quipped.

  Beth sighed. “Kelly’s going to kill me.”

  “No.” Elliot looked up at her quickly with what she hoped came across as sincerity. “I promise you I can do this. I won’t let you down.”

  Beth’s smile turned downright motherly. “I know. I wouldn’t have put you in the line of fire unless I felt certain you could handle the challenge.”