"What... what happened?" she said.
"He was at some building he was getting restored down in the Village when I called him. He thought I was serious about sending those documents, so he rushed out to his car to try and get to my lawyer's office. There was a garbage truck he tried to swerve around..."
She gave him time, offering her hands. He accepted them, holding tight like a drowning man to a bit of driftwood.
"He told me not to blame myself for the accident, that it wasn't my fault. He told me..." he choked up, taking some time to clear his throat, "He told me he wishes things had been different. And then—And then he said I looked so much like my mother, and how I reminded him of her, and how he missed her so much. And how that wasn't my fault, either."
He laid his head against her shoulder.
Epilogue
Gwen fished for her apartment keys in her purse, finally snagging her finger through the key ring. Today marked a full three months since Henry's funeral, and she wanted to make sure everything was nice before she went to meet Aiden and Beatrice at Starbucks.
She also wanted to sneak a few more lines into the conclusion of the essay she'd finished yesterday. It just needed something a little extra to tie all those arguments together.
That was on her mind as she shoved the door open with her shoulder. This new semester was going so much better than the last one.
Everything was going better, really. Higher grades, more confidence in school, that sort of thing. And Aiden seemed to be gearing up for something big. He'd taken over the company in his father's absence, and had been busy with that, but he'd always made sure to make time for her.
Gwen walked by the kitchen, intent on going to her room and getting some keyboard time in at her laptop, when she stopped and did a double take.
The kitchen was empty. Nothing in the fridge, not even that expired bottle of ketchup that had been sitting there since before she and Aiden were a thing, the cutlery drawer was devoid of knives, forks, and spoons. Even her little trash bin was gone.
Her pulse ratcheted.
She practically body checked her bedroom door open. Her creeping, dreadful suspicions proved themselves true.
There wasn't a stick of furniture in her bedroom. Her tiny bed was gone, her desk, her laptop with its un-submitted essay. Even the perpetual pile of laundry was absent from its traditional corner!
The rest of the apartment proved similarly empty. They'd taken everything, up to and including that old TV that she couldn't pay someone to get off her hands.
"How?" Gwen muttered, that dread settling into her stomach. How could this happen again? She didn't have a roommate to swindle her this time. She'd unlocked the door to come in, so they hadn't broken through that.
The windows in every room were shut and locked. It was like they'd teleported all her stuff out.
The only evidence was a few dusty boot prints on the linoleum of the kitchen floor, and a dark mark on one of the walls where something, presumably the couch, had rubbed against it on its way out the door.
"No no no..." Gwen said.
When someone knocked on the door, Gwen nearly jumped out of her skin. Her first thought was thought it was the burglars. But it couldn't be them; they'd taken literally everything already.
She went over and looked through the peephole to see Aiden standing on the other side. He was supposed to be waiting over at Starbucks, but she was instantly glad he was there. She wrenched the door open.
"I've been robbed!" she said, throwing herself into his arms, "Oh, Aiden, they took everything! Even my ketchup!"
He wrapped those big strong arms around her and kissed her forehead in between gently trying to calm her. "Hey, come on, it's okay. Don't worry about your ketchup."
"I don't care about the ketchup! What about my laptop? It has my essay on it! Oh, God, I'm going to fail that class! Should I call the cops?"
"I wouldn't," Aiden replied.
She sniffled and realized how puffy her face must look when she was like this. She changed her mind; it wasn't a good thing that he was here. It would be just her luck for him to suddenly decide she was ugly and dump her or something.
"Why not?" she said, regaining some composure.
"Because your stuff is fine."
"Oh? You know the burglars? Are they clients of yours?" she said, irritated at his cavalier attitude. Not everyone was rich like he was.
"Actually, I'm their client."
"What?!" she said, pushing away from him. A few neighbors had poked their heads out of their doorways to see what all the commotion was about. She ignored them.
He held up his hands in surrender, but his smile belied the gesture. "Yes, and they're not burglars. They're a moving company. Beatrice recommended them to me. I gave them that spare key you gave me; they came in while you were in class."