Page 2 of An Engagement for Erica

“I agree,” he said. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Thank you for that,” she said.

Her voice resumed, but something wasn’t right. She was blinking her eyes, then her words sounded almost slurred to him, her hand went up to grab the side of her head, and before he could say another word, she was face down on the table.

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BITTER PILL

Seven Months Later

“It’s midnight.What are you doing out here, Erica?”

“Contemplating my life.”

Her sister, Harmony, snorted. “Okay, Oscar.”

Erica turned her head from staring out at the water in the distance to see her ray-of-sunshine younger sister standing there with her hands on her hips, the moonlight cascading over her head making her look like a frustrated angel.

No one would say that Erica was an angel. At least not in the past several years.

“I thought I graduated from that nickname when we moved here months ago,” she said.

“I thought so too,” Harmony said, moving over to sit on the edge of the dock next to her and dangle her feet in the water too. “Until I looked out the window and saw you sitting here. I didn’t know if you were going to toss yourself in knowing there was no one around to save you.”

“Give me a break. I’d never do that,” she said. Life was precious and she knew it. Didn’t mean she was loving it at all times though. “And I know how to swim.”

Harmony put her arm around her sister. Maybe Erica leaned into her sister some. There’d been a time when she didn’t need the comfort. Or didn’t want it.

She wanted and needed it now and that was a bitter pill for someone as independent as her to swallow.

But might as well swallow it with all the other pills she had to take in her changed life now.

“You know how to do a lot of things,” Harmony said. “Wonderfully too. Which doesn’t explain why hours ago we said we were going to bed and I get up to go to the bathroom and look out the window to see you sitting here staring out into space. You’re scaring me again.”

Erica sighed. “Nothing to be scared about.”

“Worried then,” Harmony said. “I thought when we made this move, that we were starting over. You’ve made so many changes and look great. We are all so proud of you.”

“Geez, thanks,” she said sarcastically. “You’re making me sound like a recovering addict who hasn’t been charged up in three weeks.”

Harmony giggled. “There is that dry sense of humor that I love. It’s wiggling its way out of your toes. And you were an addict. A work addict. You can’t scare us like that again. Seriously, do you want me to have to deal with Mom alone? I cry no fair. It’d make me think you don’t love me anymore.”

“No,” Erica said. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Thank God,” Harmony said, letting out an exaggerated sigh. “So what has you out here in the middle of the night being food for the bugs and contemplating your life? I thought things were going so well with your business.”

Starting her own consulting firm had been a leap of faith and more stress than her last job in some ways, but the freedom to call the shots in another.

A different level of work frustration and nervousness but one she had a much better handle on because she could back away if she needed to.

“They are,” she admitted. “Better than I thought.”

“Then what is the problem?” Harmony asked softly. “Do you miss living near all the action? It’s not like you had much of a social life so I can’t believe it’d be that.”

The move from just outside of New York City to the little tourist town of Mystic, Connecticut, should have been enough to bring out the defibrillator for anyone who had somewhat of a life that they’d given up.

But as her sister said, she didn’t have one.

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