Page 52 of The Best Worst Mistake
Chapter 22
Silas
By the time my phone pings with a message from Ryan, Jules has thrown everything into her suitcase and is back to sitting on the couch across from me, waiting. The air between us is thick as we wait to find out whether or not my building had anything to do with Grant’s death.
My phone pings with a text.
The report is in your inbox.
I text Ryan back:
We may need separate planes out of here. Make the arrangements then stand by.
“What’d he say?” she asks, sounding breathless. She looks like she’s practically crawling out of her skin right now, having to sit across from me while we wait for the truth of that report.
“He sent it,” I confirm, trying to stop my hands from shaking when I hit the email icon on my phone screen.
I see it immediately at the top:
Subject: Smithfield building report
I tap it and nervously clear my throat. Terrified of what I’m about to read. Afraid of what it will mean for Jules if I confirm her worst fears: that everything about Grant’s illness could have been prevented, and that I was the man who didn’t do a thing to stop it.
I tap the PDF attachment and scan the summary page of the report. A rush of air escapes my lungs all at once when I get to the end. I hold the phone out to Jules for her to read it herself.
She’s white as a ghost when she takes the phone from me, her hands trembling just as much as mine. I can’t imagine how hard this last year has been for her, agonizing over what she believed was a preventable death. I wish she would have told me sooner.
I move to the spot on the couch right beside her, careful not to touch any part of her right now. She’s too engrossed in what she’s reading to notice. No one should have to read something that they’ve agonized over for a year sitting all alone on a couch. Even if she hates the person beside her.
She scans the document for what feels like an eternity, her breath rapid and unsteady, before scrolling through it a second time. Finally, she places the phone back down on the coffee table between us and the screen goes black.
I sit quietly, letting her digest everything she’s just read, giving it a chance to sink in for a minute or two. Maybe more.
“I don’t understand,” she finally says.
“I’m sorry you’ve been torturing yourself. I wish you’d have told me what you suspected sooner so I could have—”
“Proven your innocence?” she finishes, closing her eyes tightly. “Oh my God, Silas, I’m so sorry.”
I turn to her just in time to see a flood of tears stream down her face. As much as I want to wrap her up in a hug, like the one I held her in last year, to do anything I can to stop the relief that probably feels more like pain, I don’t.
I don’t move.
“I knew Ryan would have told me if something had come back as abnormal in the report,” I continue, more slowly, and as gently as I can. “I know how consequential it could have been if he hadn’t been diligent, if I had just assumed . . .” I pause, unsure of how to word what I’m trying to say without wounding her more. “But hewasdiligent. There’s nothing in that report tosuggest the Smithfield building had anything to do with Grant’s illness.”
She turns to me, her eyes already swollen, but she looks less angry than she did a moment ago. All this time, she’s been able to direct her anger about Grant’s passing at me, and I know from my own experience as an angry kid after my mother died, and again as a lost twenty-six-year-old after my father passed, that sometimes grief needs a physical outlet for the pain. Something, or in this case,someoneto blame for the tragedies that turn your insides out and threaten to eat you alive.
If Jules had needed an outlet for her grief, someone to blame for Grant’s death, I get it. I don’t blame her for wanting that. But all this time, I wish I’d known that it wasmeshe was blaming so I could have put her mind at ease a lot sooner.
I study her face, unsure of what to say. Not at all certain that I should be the one to say anything to her right now as the truth of his passing finally comes to light.
No one was responsible.
“Sometimes unexplainably awful things just happen to the best kind of people.”
“How can that be possible?” she whispers, releasing a fresh waterfall of tears down each cheek. She wipes them away slowly. “How could he just be fine one day, and then gone a few months later if it wasn’t that?”
“I remember the doctor saying Grant was more susceptible to it, right? Asthma as a kid, then into adulthood, plus they suspected a genetic deficiency on top of that, which they were about to do a genetic test for right before he . . .”
