Page 95 of Dear Ripley

“Well, maybe it wasn’t the best way, but we all make mistakes when we’re hurting.”

“And what about all the other times? The times when I wasn’t miscarrying?”

“Nothing happened then. It was just… a silly mistake when I was struggling.”

Harlow sighed, heavy and worn down again. “Ellie, I know that’s not true. A surprising number of people were all too eager to reach out with apologies when it got around that we’d broken up and why.”

Ellie stared at her in shock. “What?”

“Yeah, sleeping with multiple people in the same friendship group is not the best move if you’re trying to keep people from finding things out. Especially not when one of them ends up dating my cousin.”

“Your… cousin?”

A bubble of shocked laughter built up inside of me. I wasn’t going to let it out, but I had to give it to Harlow for keeping that ace up her sleeve. Sometimes, the world really was a tiny little village. The kind of tiny little village where news got around.

My eyes moved to Ripley’s. Her expression was the same as mine.

Sometimes, the world was Jackson Point.

“Yeah, so,” Harlow said, relaxing somewhat, “the secret got out, everyone learned you weren’t as single as you’d made out, and, honestly, a lot of the women you slept with are really decent people. They were horrified to learn you’d been cheating. Even more horrified to learn you’d been cheating on your pregnant and miscarrying wife.”

There was a loaded silence where Ellie looked around shiftily, taking the rest of us in, and looking very much like she’d bolt out the front door if Morgan and I weren’t standing in front of it.

“It was just an accident,” she said eventually. “I didn’t mean to do it.”

“There actually isn’t a way toaccidentallysleep with a bunch of other people,” Harlow said, sounding, honestly, bored. I could only imagine how much that would frustrate Ellie. She was very clearly banking on Harlow still wanting and needing her, still believing every little thing she said.

But Harlow had grown a lot in the last few months. I was fiercely proud of her.

“You can’t throw us away now,” Ellie pleaded, changing tact. “You’re pregnant. We’re getting everything we ever wanted.”

“No.I’mgetting everything I ever wanted. And that doesn’t include a cheating ex-wife who I’m beginning to think was manipulating me all along.”

Therapy was going to be amazing for Harlow. Seeing through the fog was indescribably difficult sometimes, but, here she was, standing her ground, seeing what had happened to her, and choosing a better path—choosing herself.

“But I can give you everything. We’re meant to be together. You were always going on about Alicia and Ripley, and how they were soul mates, but we lasted longer than them. We’re the real soul mates, and I’m right here.”

I looked at Ripley, I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t surprised to hear Harlow had said that. I was surprised to hear Ellie claim to be better than that. I didn’t often think of myself as better than other people, but, for all the things that had gone wrong with Ripley, either of us cheating or leaving the other alone in something as horrifying as a miscarriage had never been a risk.

And she wasn’t even correct. They’d met, married, and divorced all in the time between our divorce and now. Ripley and I went back years.

Ripley stared back at me with that soft warmth I’d missed so much. Without asking, I knew we were thinking the same thing. We might not have made it, but we’d never been anything like Ellie.

Maybe some relationships didn’t last forever, but that didn’t mean they weren’t filled with love and respect while they did last. It didn’t mean they weren’t life-changing. And not in the way Ellie had changed Harlow’s life.

Harlow breathed a laugh. “We didn’t, actually—they’ve got years on what we had. And that’s not true. If you really love someone, you don’t betray them like that. Sure, people get hurt in love, accidents happen, people grow, change, need different things for a while, but, if they really love you, they don’t do what you did. People don’t treat the ones they love the way you treat me.”

She was right, and I wassoproud of her for saying all of it, especially to Ellie’s face, but I couldn’t help the spike in my breathing. The idea that people needed different things for a little while… but maybe not forever?

I caught the way Ripley was chewing her lip in my peripheral vision, and I knew she was thinking the same thing.

How was it possible to still be so much on the same page as someone after so many years? I wasn’t sure I believed in soul mates—not after losing Ripley—but, for the first time in a long time, I wondered whether Harlow was onto something.

Even if she was, I knew for a fact that Ellie wasn’t hers. A soul mate didn’t mistreat you like that. They didn’t stalk you, hunt you down like prey, try to control you and take every good thing you had away from you, or excuse their bad behavior as foolish mistakes.

“You can’t leave me,” Ellie said, her voice pitiful now.

“I already did,” Harlow said, strong, powerful even in her softness.

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