Page 78 of Letting Go

"I had a friend say to me just a few days ago that acting responsible for everything including stuff you have no control over is kind of a cop-out. Wandering around guilty all the time only hurts the people you love. Man up. You did the right thing by your brother. You were not the one waving a gun. You didn't pull the trigger."

I can’t believe I'm the one with sage advice. "You need to keep doing what you're doing. You help people."

We chat a little longer which is weird in and of itself. Jackson dives in an out a few times taking the temperature of the conversation. Raymond never asks for an apology for killing his brother, and I never offer one. Taking full responsibility also means seeing clearly.

Five days later, after my statement to police is recorded in two sessions, and visitors come and go, a panel of doctors sweep in and the lead, an older woman in her fifties, gives me a clean bill of health as long as I follow some restrictions.

In other words: rules.

But I'm starting to wonder if one of these rules is not seeing Chloe. She's not been around the whole week, and all I hear are tepid responses. "She's busy at The Inn," "She's helping with the downstairs," "They're just really busy," and the one most common, "She needs to rest."

I can't help feeling she's avoiding me.

Chloe's been packing me food from the kitchen though: rolls, boxed sandwiches, cookies, and small dinner bowls of pesto, lasagna, and heavy stew. Even orderlies stop by my room to smell the food. There are short notes from her, but no Chloe. I'm not worried, just concerned. I hope she isn't overthinking what happened in the alley. She killed a man in self-defense. But it's still hard to take—to internalize you’ve taken a life.

Finn and Nic arrive to pack me up and I leave the prescription drugs, both mine and the bottle Mateus gave me, on the sink shelf. I heal better without meds. I hate being groggy.

It feels great to be in street clothes. My strength is coming back almost in waves, but there are those rules: no heavy lifting, no heavy respiratory exertion, no taking chances. The lung could collapse again and sudden drops in blood pressure are common after arterial injury. It all sounds so fucking formal.

Finn's driving which feels weird too. Nic always drives. Having him in the back seat is like driving with someone's dad. We're the same age, too. He just seems so, grownup.

It’s a cloudy day and breezy cool. We're heading toward October and what will be a warm Indian summer, but right now there's a chill in the late afternoon.

I hear Nic stretch out in the back seat as we pass the onramp to I-95.

"I don't need the scenic route," I say. I just want to get home.

"We're not going to your shitty little studio apartment," says Finn.

Suddenly I think they are heading back up to Echo Bay. I realize I'm not ready to see Chloe though. I want to be stronger, healthier. I want to be myself. Finn makes a right, heading towards the shore again. But we are not driving to The Inn either apparently. There's a strip of newly renovated buildings that have gone up along the boardwalk. We stop in a new concrete empty parking lot and Nic starts to get out of the car.

"What are we doing?"

Nic turns around, his face unreadable. "Finn and I have something to talk to you about."

They can't fire me. Not after all of this, but I can see how Finn might be angry enough to let me go. Claire could have died. They share a glance.

"You good?" Finn asks.

I raise my hands and drop them. "What are you two doing?"

Finn presses the key fob and the car blips and locks. The two of them hardly say a word. By the time we reached the top floor of the building and the elevator dings "Fourth floor, you may exit the elevator," I'm a little lightheaded.

Lightheaded and confused. There's nothing here—just some high-end carpeting being laid by guys in the back, and glass windows that wrap the entire top. Large cubicles are going up: four big ones and a wall of meeting rooms.

"What is this?"

"This," says Finn, "is yours if you want it."

I take a step back.

"We need to open up a new office here, a real office not a one-room satellite with a crappy fax machine. We just landed a security contract with the Jetport, and the new Convention Center is opening. That's going to draw a lot of people, and we landed that contract too.

"You want me here."

Nic speaks up, "We're expanding. One of our partners is up here already." Nic nods at Finn. "And I don't think this guy's moving back to Boston."

"You want me to run this office." I realize when I say it, it’s not a question. I need to sit down.