What You Leave Behind (5 page)

“I won’t ever give up on you, Harp,” Hilary answers steadily, wiping a tear away as it begins to roll down her cheek. “You don’t give up on the people you love.”

“Maybe that’s why this has been so hard.” Harper sighs and her own tears form, causing her voice to crack as she says, “I—I still love him.”

“I know, honey.”

“I shouldn’t—”

“Shouldn’t?” Harper looks down, ashamed, but Hilary hooks a finger beneath Harper’s chin and tilts her head up to meet her stare. “Harp, there’s no should or shouldn’t here. There’s no set way to handle this. You got your heart broken and like all fractures, it needed and obviously still needs time to mend.” Hilary swipes a tear from Harper’s cheek and gives her a solemn smile, one which Harper just barely returns. “You’ll love him less and less as time wears on. He’ll just be a scar. I promise you.”

“Do you love Dad less than when he—”

“Oh, no. Not at all. But that’s a completely different scenario.” Harper laughs softly at how taken aback her mother looks and how quick she is to answer, and Hilary shakes her head at Harper’s amusement, though she would rather that than the tears. “Really, though, it’ll happen. I may not know firsthand, but I’ve had many a conversation with your Aunt Marlene in the last few weeks and I can assure you she sure as shit hates your darling ex-Uncle Pete.”

“Liam didn’t cheat on me.”

“Yes, but Liam is still an asshole.” Hilary stops tiptoeing around Harper and lets her cautious façade falter completely, giving way to the fiery woman she really is, and it garners the response she hopes for. Harper smiles broadly at both the woman and the words. They simply stand there for a beat, staring at each other and smiling, until Hilary says, “Okay, on that note, if you’re truly okay…” She pauses until Harper nods. “I really need to go.” She looks down at her arm, as if a wristwatch is looking back up at her, and nods her head. “Yeah, it’s closing in on fuck-I’m-late o’clock.”

“It’s a good thing you own the place, then, huh?”

“Love you.” Hilary leans in and kisses Harper’s cheek before heading for the door, hollering over her shoulder, “Call if you need me.”

When Hilary leaves and the house is still, Harper wanders down to the kitchen to put on a kettle for tea. As it heats on the stove, she leans over the sink, her palms flattened on either side of the stainless steel, and stares vacantly out the window in front of her. It’s a brisk December day—she can tell in the fog of the window and in the way the branches of the bare trees sway softly in the wind. She thinks if she listens hard enough, she’ll be able to hear their groaning protests, but all she hears is the growl of her stomach. As the kettle screams, she pops bread into the toaster and stares at that instead.

After she’s eaten and the wind has died down, Harper ventures outside to fetch the morning paper and reads it over her second cup of chai. On cup three, she finishes the crossword puzzle, folds up the paper, and sets her dishes in the sink. As she walks out of the kitchen, the clock on the stove tells her it’s barely eight o’clock, and she sighs as she scales the staircase and returns to her room.

Harper’s feet still just inside her bedroom doorway and she looks over the space with a discerning eye, as she imagines her mother did hours earlier. Her desk is on the right, and the heavy oak and the pens, books, and trinkets that line it are all coated in a thin layer of dust. To her left sits her queen size, four-poster bed, with its sheets twisted beneath her crumpled blanket. She can’t recall the last time she washed her sheets and she strips the bed before she loses her drive, and hastily descends the stairs with the linen bundled in her arms. She shoves them into the washing machine and returns to her room with a rag, a bottle of all-purpose cleanser, the vacuum, and the intent to clean.

It takes her a lot less time than she thought it might and by a quarter to nine, her room is restored to its once standard luster. She sits in the middle of her floor, the freshly vacuumed high pile carpet soft on the backs of her thighs, and stares out the quartet of bow windows on the far wall and sighs. She can’t at all figure out how she’s spent her waking hours for the last three months of her life. She can’t recall doing much more than a little reading and cooking, a lot of napping and crying, and she can’t understand how those things filled a day, let alone multiple days and weeks, months. She can feel herself crossing a line, turning a corner. She’s restless and craving more than just existing.

Making a living seems close enough to living itself, or so Harper reasons. She tosses her Meat and Eat uniform onto her bed and heads across the hall, immediately turning the shower knob to full heat. As the bathroom fills with a warm mist, she discards her ratty clothing and steps into the shower. The near-scalding water flows over her skin, turning it crimson, and she listens as it beats rhythmically against the vinyl shower curtain. It’s hypnotizing, the feel and sound of it, and she wonders how she went so long without the simple indulgence of daily showers. Slowly, she washes her body and hair, then stands beneath the stream, making up for lost time, until the water runs cold. The bathroom is still warm despite the water losing heat, and she steps out of the basin without bothering to grab a towel. Through the steam, she catches sight of her distorted reflection in the fogged, full-length mirror on the backside of the door. She’s blurred and muted, but she can see her dripping hair, the lavender smudges beneath her eyes, and the harsh jut of her hipbones. She’s instantly reminded why she has neglected herself—Liam is everywhere. In the droplets of water raining from the split ends of her water-darkened cabernet hair, she sees that night that she walked alongside the highway in a downpour, away from him and toward darkness. The purple stains beneath her skin are the nights and days she could not find sleep, because he has haunted her dreams with his smile, his laugh, the feel of his skin, everything. The bones of her hips, reaching out toward their own reflection, recall the way they used to crash against Liam’s own, how they might have along the Rogue River that last night, if it hadn’t been the last. She doesn’t long for those things anymore. She’s sickened by them. She shakes her head at her reflection.
No
, Harper tells herself, and hears her mother’s words reverberating in her head—
You don’t give up on the people you love
. She isn’t giving up on herself. Not anymore. She grabs her toothbrush and deliberately stares at the sink, instead of the vanity mirror, as she goes about the rest of her long-abandoned routine, intent on forgetting Liam ever left a mark on any part of her—especially, her heart.

On the sidewalk outside Meat and Eat, in the stark light of midmorning, reality returns full stop as Harper makes out the vague outline of a crowd through the frosted glass double doors. Aside from her mother, Austin, and Dylan, Harper hasn’t said a word to anyone, and she isn’t looking forward to human interaction—something she somehow hadn’t anticipated when she decided to go to work. She doesn’t know how to respond to unwanted stares and prying questions. She wonders if she’s supposed to thank people if and when they tell her they’re so sorry to hear about what happened or if and when they say it’s his loss. She doesn’t know how to handle the sympathetic frowns and the pitying glances, the whispers and judgment. She doesn’t know what to do if instead of ordering lunch, people just come in to stare at the shell of a girl that Liam Barnes left behind. Though, given what Austin told her nearly a month ago at the pub, she’s almost certain all of Ashland, tourists included, already knows what has happened between her and Liam. With three months between the breakup and the present, she’s hopeful no one will focus on it, on her. With her fist around one of the door handles, Harper pauses to take a steadying breath before she pulls the door open wide. The small room is thick with customers, just as she expected, and it takes Harper longer than she would like to weave through them, behind the counter, across the meat cutting area, and into the back room.

“Harp?” The surprise is apparent on Hilary’s face when she looks up at the sound of the swinging door banging open and closed. She’s in the office just off to the left of the general purpose workspace, but she has a clear view of the door, of Harper “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

“I work here,” Harper laughs as she heads into the office, but quickly quiets when her mother’s confusion isn’t resolved. “Unless—do I still work here?”

“No—no, you still work here.” Hilary takes off her reading glasses and slides them into her hair, nestled against her silver bun. “Are you—did you want to work
today
?”

“If you could use the help, yeah.” Harper toes at the linoleum, uncertainty fueling the movement. “But if Kevin has everything handled, I understand.”

“You know how that Carter kid is. The only thing he knows about handling meat is how to beat his own. You, my dear,” Hilary aims the tip of her grease pencil at Harper, “are absolutely welcome to help. Always. And by
help
, I mean
save the day
. You want the counter or the office?”

“The office, I think. I haven’t really, you know, seen anyone since…”

“Oh, right.” Hilary’s eyes fill with understanding as she catches on. “Well, let’s ease you into things then. You go on and man the desk today—catering and call-ahead orders, inventory, all that fun, people-free stuff—and I’ll take the counter.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Of course.” Hilary’s smile is warm and as she moves toward the door, she hands off her grease pencil and kisses Harper’s cheek in passing. “If you need me, just yell.”

Harper is bent over a stack of inventory sheets at the stainless steel work table when Hilary pops in through the swinging door. She’s frantic and her cheeks are mottled, the same way Austin described her appearance on that September night. Because of this, Harper knows something serious is about to come out of her mother’s mouth, and Harper holds her breath, braces herself for whatever is coming.

“Can you go grab us some burgers?” Hilary asks, instead, and Harper’s breath floods out of her in relief. “It’s a madhouse out here and I’m starving.”

“Burgers?”

“Yes, burgers. Moo. Cow. That sort.”

“You realize burgers are made of meat, right? Which is what we sell here. Meat,” she deadpans in reply.

“Yes, but we sell
raw
meat.”

“And cold cuts.”

“You don’t make burgers out of cold cuts.”

“Fair point.” Harper puts down her pencil and pulls on her sweater. “Do you want anything else?”

“Fries and a shake, a strawberry one.”

“I like the way you think.” Harper grabs her purse from where it sits buried beneath a scatter of catering orders and kisses one of Hilary’s blotchy cheeks as she says, “Back in a few.”

“It’s good to have you back,” Hilary grins. “And not just for lunch runs.”

“Though, those help.”

“Yes, those help.”

Instead of following Hilary out through the swinging door and navigating through the lunch crowd, Harper turns on her heel and heads through the back to the delivery entrance, heaving the door open against the wind. It’s picked up since the morning, and as it wraps around her, she regrets not having driven her truck or brought her coat to work. Pulling her sweater down over her hands, she starts down the alley and toward Rhodes.

“Well, well, look what we have here,” Austin notes as Harper walks right by him, lost in thought. He’s sitting on the low wall just outside of the pub that houses flower boxes in the summertime, smoke pouring from his nostrils as he flicks cigarette ashes at the ground. She stops and spins, alarmed, and grabs the wall beside him to steady herself. “Sorry,” he tells her, shrugging sheepishly at the obvious surprise he’s caused her. His gaze falls to the placement of her hand beside him, only mere inches from his thigh, before trailing back up to look her in the eye. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I don’t know how I missed you,” she admits, gesturing vaguely toward him with her free hand. Head to toe, he’s vividly contrasted against the dull, grey stone of the building—red plaid, blue jeans, blonde hair, green eyes. She tries to remember if his eyes have always been so bright—the gleam of emeralds layered over the warmth of pine. “On break?”

“Off today. Playing hooky, technically. Truck wouldn’t start. And you’re what, taking up day drinking?” he jokes, shaking his head in mock disapproval as her eyes narrow and she shifts to lean against the wall beside him. She’s near enough that he can smell the lingering scent of her shampoo, peaches, and he thinks it’s a striking complement to the clean winter air, wishes she would lean closer. “It’s five o’clock in, like, Greenland right about now, I think.”

“No, no,” she laughs, shaking her head at his absurdity and sliding over just enough to give his shoulder a bump with her own. He turns his head and he’s one small forward bend away from nestling his face in her hair. He leans back, instead. He always leans back. “Lunch—burgers and fries for me and Mom. One can only last so long on deli meats, it seems. And, you may be shocked to know that the fine establishment of Meat and Eat only sells
raw
ground beef.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. Miss Harper Reed is back in business, huh?” Austin smirks grandly and claps a congratulatory hand on her back. His fingers rest against her sweater just a second longer than he knows they should, but Harper just smiles over at him. If she notices his lingering touch, she doesn’t seem to mind it. Austin tries not to be encouraged by this and deliberately pulls his hand away. He sucks roughly on the filter of his cigarette, exhales the smoke in a hurried stream, and keeps talking, anything to shift his attention from touching her. “She sent that jackass, Kevin, over once or twice, but we all know no one fetches lunch quite like you do, little lady.” Harper makes a face at him, one with a sideways glance and pinched lips that tells him she isn’t amused, and he raises his hands, palms facing toward her in defeat. “I’m glad you’re back, helping her. And I’m sure she is, too. I offered to come in on my lunch breaks and help serve or whatever, but she shooed me out of the shop, butcher knife in hand. I think she associates me with—well, with—you know.”