And the next time she made a wrong move? Would she spend the rest of her life apologizing? “The trouble is I don’t think I was wrong and I never will. Not about this. Good-bye, Armie.”

She walked out, turning to the hallway that led to the parking lot. She could barely see for the tears in her eyes. She’d held them off until now.

Noelle was sitting there. She was a mess, her mascara dripping across her cheeks. “Lila, I’m . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that to you and Dad.”

This really wasn’t her fault. She sank down to the bench beside Noelle’s wheelchair because she didn’t want to loom over her. What she had to say needed to be said eye-to-eye. “I know, sweetie. I want you to think about this. You are enough. You are enough to get up and fight through and walk. You are the only one making yourself small. If you need me, you know where to find me.”

Armie stood in the doorway.

She got to her feet and walked away, feeling his eyes on her the whole way.

When she got to her car, she forced the tears back and drove toward the only place she had left to go.

chapter fifteen

“Hey, I brought you some tea.” Lisa stepped into the small apartment over Guidry’s that would serve as her temporary home.

“Thank you.” She’d held it together for hours, something she’d learned after years of working in trauma. Her own trauma could wait. Although when she thought about it, maybe she’d learned it in childhood.

Peanut looked up from his place beside her. The dog seemed to know something terrible had happened and he’d stayed close to her.

Lisa sat at the end of the bed, a worried look on her face. “I wish you would come to the house and stay there. I want to take care of you.”

Being taken care of was what had gotten her here in the first place. She’d fallen into the softest, sweetest of all traps, the one that seemed like heaven. But this afternoon that trap had sprung, and she’d been broken by it. She’d managed to crawl away, but she feared she’d left a big old chunk of herself back in that house where she’d briefly been happy. “I’m fine. It didn’t work out. We moved way too fast.”

That was what she was telling everyone who asked. It had been a mistake to move in together.