That didn’t even feel like a rationalization. It felt like the truth.
“I want myself back.”
“Then trust yourself. Find your sun.” He pulled her close, and she snuggled against his the hard muscle of his bare chest. It wasn’t so easy a matter as simply making a decision.
Or was it? Wasn’t that the whole point of that prayer, and of the feathers on her wrist? To remind her that how she saw her life, what she felt, what was important, that these things were her choice?
~oOo~
Two weeks later, Bev pulled her Prius into the parking lot of Pagano Brothers Shipping. Nick had obviously been waiting for her; he opened the building’s front door and was crossing the lot to her before she’d turned off the car.
He opened her door and gave her his hand, helping her out of the car. “What is it, bella? I’m worried.”
She’d called him and asked to see him right away. Still dazed, her mind a muddle, she wasn’t sure how to explain. “He…he…”
“Who? Beverly, what is it?” His hand was clamped hard around hers.
She swallowed and forced her brain to make a complete sentence and send it to her mouth. “He left me everything.”
Nick frowned. “What? Who? Mills?”
Hearing his last name like that sounded odd. “Chris, yes. He left me everything. His life insurance was in my name. The bookshop. Everything. He left it all to me.”
Still holding her hand, her car door still open, Nick stared at her. Then he blinked and closed her door. “Okay. Come in. We’ll sit. You’ll tell me everything.”
She’d never been to the warehouse before. Frankly, she was unimpressed. The front office and reception area was modern and tidy, absolutely normal for a successful but not massive business of its sort. Bev had plenty of office work on her résumé, and it looked perfectly familiar to her. Then Nick led her past a closed set of wide, walnut doors and down a hallway and through another set of double doors.
His office. This was more impressive, large and decorated in a sleek style similar to his apartment. He sat her down on a smooth, black leather sofa and then sat next to her.
“Tell me.”
His typically terse way of starting a conversation like this made her smile. How many times had he said those two words to her in their months together? He always said them as if there was no question that he should know. Even when he’d been so careful with her, in this, in his certainty of his way, he’d been the same. That bit of normalcy cleared her head.
“I got a call from Chris’s lawyer this morning. He wanted to see me. We made an appointment for Friday afternoon, but then I remembered that Carmen’s rehearsal dinner is Friday, so I called him back. He said he’d squeeze me in at lunch today.”
She could tell by the twitch in his jaw that he didn’t want those details. But there wasn’t much to the story. Chris had been buried last week. Bev and Skylar had handled the arrangements, because Chris’s parents and older brother were all dead.
His friends had been his only family, and he and Bev hadn’t been speaking. He had died truly alone.
Today, his lawyer was executing his will. Just as when her father died, there was no big reading like in the movies. There was a phone call. And then there were papers to sign.
She hadn’t signed them.
“I don’t know what to do. He must have made that will before our fight. The way we left it, he couldn’t have wanted me to have everything.”
Nick pulled her sun pendant out from under her top and laid it over the fabric. “Are you sure? It’s been months since that fight. He had time to change it if he wanted to.”
“But why wouldn’t he?”
“He loved you, bella.”
She sighed, her chest aching. “And I let him die alone.”
He grabbed her chin, pinching it firmly between his thumb and the side of his forefinger. “No. He made his choices. How long were you friends?”
“Eleven years. More.”
“Were you a good friend? Were you loyal and…honest? Were you there for him?”
“Not the way he wanted.”
“Beverly, stop. You’re looking for a reason to blame yourself. I don’t give a shit whether you take what he left you or not. You don’t need it. But don’t make the choice because you think you don’t deserve it. You were a good friend. He let you think he was happy with that. You did nothing wrong.” He smiled. “Shake it off, sunshine. You’re past all that.”
She was. Somehow, Chris’s death had helped her. It was an awful way to think about it, but it was true. It had been the proverbial straw, but instead of breaking her back, it had broken the grip of dark fear that had kept her from feeling everything she needed to feel so that she could surmount her pain and get back to herself. All of herself.