Page 30 of Harper

“Mm-hm,” I mumble, using the sleeve of my fleece pullover to swipe away a sudden deluge of self-pitying tears.

“You’re not,” she says, her voice concerned. “You never cry. What’s going on?”

It’s a lonely thing to carry around a secret so dark and so big that you can’t share it with anyone. No one in my family knows what happened. No one knows what I did. There is only one person on earth who knows. She lives far away in Oregon, and I avoid seeing her because it hurts too much. Memories of what happened are too sharp when we’re together.

“Harp? Talk to me.”

“I miss Mama,” I say. This isn’t a lie, really. I do miss my mother. Sometimes I wonder if my mother had been alive all those years ago, if she’d have offered different advice and if her advice would have led to me making a different choice.

“Aw, shoot,” says Parker, who was six when Mama died, and has very few clear memories of her. She places her hand on my knee and squeezes lightly. “I’m sorry, hun. Anything I can do?”

I sniffle. “Nope.”

“Maybe you could talk to Dad? Or Gran?” she suggests.

I wish I could, but neither my father nor my grandmother knows what happened, and I’ll die before telling them. Theywouldn’t hate me like Joe would, but their disappointment in me and my choices would be almost as unbearable.

“Or! Hey! What about Aunt Charlotte? Maybe you need a weekend in Oregon with our favorite aunt?”

I’m glad I have sunglasses on, so Parker can’t see me wince in pain. She doesn’t mean to make things worse, but inadvertently, that’s exactly what she’s doing.

“N-No. I’ll be okay,” I manage to say, swallowing over the lump in my throat.

As we turn into our driveway, Parker parks the Jeep and turns to me.

“I love you, Harp. You know that, right? You’ve been the best older sister-slash-mama that any little sister could ever wish for.”

Her use of the word “mama” hits me so hard, it takes every ounce of strength in my hungover body not to turn into a puddle of tears on the spot. Somehow, I muster the last dregs of my strength and turn to her.

“Thanks for that, Park. I love you, too.”

***

Joe

“Why’d you skip my party?”

Like I need the Alutiiq Inquisition first thing in the morning.

“I didn’t skip it,” I tell Sandra, cradling the phone between my shoulder and ear as I open the police station door and step inside. “I got sidetracked.”

“With Harper-fucking-Stewart,” she says.

“Please don’t call her that,” I say. “But as long as we’re on the subject, who’s been talking behind my back?”

“Layla Antonov.”

Damn it. Of course. Layla and Wyatt were headed to Sandra’s place yesterday when they left the biergarten.

“Who knew Layla was such a giant gossip?” I ask, grabbing my messages out of Vera’s hand on the way back to my office.

“Why are you hanging around with her?”

“Layla?”

“Harper, shithead.”

“Not that I owe you an explanation, but I wasn’t. I was sitting with Layla and Wyatt having drinks. Hunter came over and sat with us. Harper came over looking for her brother, and sat down, too.”

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