Page 87 of Her Rival

"Yeah."

"I'm going to make you something to eat. I'm going to put on the TV. I'm going to put a blanket on you. I'm going to sit next to you on the couch and we're not going to talk about anything important for the rest of the afternoon."

"Okay."

"And then tonight."

"Tonight."

"You're staying."

"I'm staying."

"In my room."

"In your room."

"Okay."

We got out of the car. I held her hand up the path. Unlocked the door. Held it open for her. She walked in. The house was quiet. The afternoon light came in through the wall of glass in the kitchen and lit the island and the coffee cups still sitting where they'd been at ten that morning. The cups we'd drunk from and not yet washed because we'd been on our way to an interview that had turned into something else.

She walked to the kitchen. She put both hands flat on the island. She stood there.

Then she leaned forward and rested her forehead against the cold stone of the counter, and her shoulders started to shake, and I came up behind her and put my arms around her from behind without picking her up, without moving her, without performing any of the comfort I'd performed in three different rooms in the last seventy-two hours. Just held her against the counter while the shaking went through her body and ran its course and finished and ended.

She straightened up. She wiped her face on the back of her hand.

"What are you making me," she said.

"Grilled cheese."

"Brynn made me French toast."

"I know. I'm making you grilled cheese. I'm calling Brynn and she's going to tell me what to put in the grilled cheese to make it exactly the way she makes it, and then I'm going to make it exactly that way, because today is a day when grilled cheese is what's happening and you're going to eat it."

She almost smiled.

She did not smile.

But the corners of her mouth did the smallest thing they'd done since walking into the conference room two hours earlier, and I caught the small thing, and I let her keep it.

"Okay," she said.

I made the grilled cheese. She ate half of it. I ate the other half.

We sat on the couch. I put a blanket on her. I put the TV on. I sat next to her.

She fell asleep against my shoulder around three.

I let her sleep. I sat with her against my shoulder for the rest of the afternoon and I didn't move and I didn't check my phone and I didn't do anything other than sit with a woman whose father had been removed from her life that morning by four men in suits and a Caldwell security van and a piece of paper drafted by a lawyer who'd never lost.

She slept for two hours. She woke up at five. She looked at me.

"Hi," she said. Hoarse.

"Hi."

"Is it over."