Benjamin’s voice drifted over, warm and a little teasing.
“And the renovation? Are you really going through with the whole second-floor rebuild? For a family? Harold, come on. Are you finally settling down on us?”
I couldn’t hear Harold’s answer. It was low, mumbled, and short.
But I saw his shoulders lock up under his linen jacket. The kind of stillness a person gets when a question has landed too close to the bone.
Something in my stomach dropped.
For illustration purposes only
A second-floor rebuild. For a family. Harold didn’t have a family. He’d never married or had kids.
His parents were in Arizona. His sister lived in Boston with three teenagers who wouldn’t be caught dead in his guest room.
So, who was the family?
I stood there, holding a cocktail napkin I didn’t remember taking, and I felt the ground beneath the pool deck tilt very slightly.
I turned back toward Harold, and the memory of his drained face at Mia’s words sharpened into something I didn’t want to name yet.
I stood a few feet behind Harold, waiting for a pause in his conversation with Benjamin.
Suddenly, my eyes drifted up, almost against my will, to the back of his ear, and I replayed Mia’s words.
