Page 98 of I Hope This Finds You Well

All my blood heats up and pulses through my pores. It’s exactly what I feared, yet worse with its vagueness.

She hasn’t sent it—she hasn’t even finished it—but she will. And it will all be over for me. Everything will have been for nothing.

My breath is pitchy, and it’s like the world is shrinking around me. My fingers twitch to delete it. Ineedto delete it. Except another wave of doom hits. She can always write anotherone. There’s nothing I can do to actually stop her from emailing him.

It’s pure survival instinct. My only plan is to make the part of the email about Ellie disappear into the ether. I need to silence it. Except as soon as I delete the last paragraph, I realize I need to fill it in with something. I type:Jolene sucks.Might be helpful to have her credibility challenged just a little these days. I’m scheduling it to send for when I’m long out of the building. I’ll make sure to scan out with my card to solidify my alibi—

“What are you doing?”

I jolt so hard in Caitlin’s chair it rolls into her cabinet. I swing around and Cliff is standing behind me.

“Cliff!” I blabber. What the hell is he even doing here?

His expression twists as he takes in the scene before him: me in Caitlin’s chair, an email sitting up on her screen. I’m about as guilty looking as they come.

“Jolene, what the fuck are you doing?” he repeats, his voice darker than I’ve ever heard it.

Everything inside of me is shaking. I try to say something, but all the words die in my throat.

He raises an eyebrow at me. “Are you reading your colleague’s emails? That’s a fireable offense.”

A stilted chuckle comes out before I can stop it, like my brain has finally snapped.

Cliff’s mouth falls open.

And everything I’ve done lately twists like a spiky corkscrew inside my stomach. This is who I am—despite everything I’ve tried, I’ll always be the same person.

“Jolene.” Cliff’s voice cracks. He’s standing a few feet away from me, holding himself very still. “I need to know what you’re doing. Please tell me the truth.”

The truth. I shudder a breath, shallow and wheezy through my dry lips. There’s no other way.

“I was altering one of Caitlin’s emails.”

Cliff flinches backward like I’ve slapped him. “I can’t—you can’t do this, obviously. I have to report this.”

I nod. “I know.”

And that certainty, the knowledge that it’sfinallyover, breaks the dam. A sob pulls from me before I can stop it.

They’re big, ugly tears. Old tears, like they’ve been waiting inside me for months—years, even—and now that they’ve been released, there’s nothing I can do to stop them. I bury my face in my hands and bend my head toward my knees, a futile attempt at hiding what’s happening, because my entire body is shaking.

“Jolene...” Cliff says, voice so small I can barely hear him over my weeping.

“I’m sorry,” I try to say through the lump in my throat. “I lied. I didn’t tell you—I didn’t tell—”

I hear his footsteps on the padded carpet. They come to a stop right in front of me. From my bent-over position, I see the tips of his shoes infront of my own. I hoist myself up in the chair and he’s looking down at me, devastated.

“What didn’t you tell me?” he asks carefully.

Everything,I want to say. A million things—a million lies. But it all comes back to one thing. The biggest lie of all is the one I’ve been carrying for years.

“I told you my friend died in high school. Her name was Ellie,” I start, wiping at my face with my sleeve. “I didn’t tell you why I moved away.”

He nods, silently allowing me to continue.

And it’s just like the tears—once the story starts, I can’t stop it. “It was horrible, the way she died. We were at a party, we drank too much, and she got hurt. It was an accident. I—I couldn’t save her.” That part, at least, finally feels true. “But I was the only one who was with her when it happened, so there were rumors. People started to say I hurt her. It got out of hand. Everywhere I went, it was like all anyone could see was that version of the story. After a while, I started to believe it too.”

Cliff’s jaw ticks, but he doesn’t say anything.