“I should have said ‘I deserve better.’ No, wait. I should have demanded better.” Gloria’s bedroom ceiling was annoyingly impassive. She’d gone to bed early. But her thoughts were still roiling with all of the things she could have, should have, said to Aldo Moretta earlier.

The stupid, sexy, haunted jerk.

One look at him, all scruffy and gruff, and she’d wanted to run down the stairs and jump into his arms. Then he’d had to open his mouth and be New Aldo. New, angry, wounded Aldo. He didn’t want her anywhere near him. He’d made it abundantly clear on two occasions now.

She should just let it go.

“But he owes me an apology,” she argued with the ceiling. And an explanation. Gloria wanted to hear the words explaining why he went from wanting to date her to wanting nothing to do with her. She wanted him to spell it out for her, and then she wanted her chance to tell him he was an ass.

She heard a knock on her front door and kicked the covers off.

Opening the door, she found Harper in the hallway.

“I know about Karen,” Harper said.

Any imaginary arguments with Aldo immediately took a back seat in Gloria’s brain.

Her friend’s eyes were red and puffy. She was wearing pajama pants and a National Guard t-shirt four sizes too big.

“I didn’t realize there was a time you didn’t know,” Gloria said, guiding Harper into the living room. Luke’s wife, his high school sweetheart, had been killed in a car accident the day Luke’s unit had returned home from a long deployment. She’d died on her way to pick him up. A travesty that, until recently, the entire town of Benevolence had assumed he’d never recover from.

“He was married, Gloria. Married, and he never said a word to me,” Harper said, pacing the short distance between window and door. “He lost the love of his life in the most horrific way.” She covered her face with her hands.

She was being called upon for comfort, Gloria realized. Tea. Isn’t that what people did to comfort hurt and tenderly care?

“I’ll make tea,” she announced.

“I’ll sit here and wonder what it means that the man I love with every piece of my stupid heart didn’t find it relevant to share the most important awful thing in his life with me,” Harper said, falling down onto Gloria’s couch with a noise between a sob and a sigh.

Gloria ripped open her beverage cabinet and debated tea flavors. Sleepytime, Energizing Citrus, or good ol’ English Breakfast? Definitely Sleepytime.

She put a kettle on, chose two cheerful mugs, and returned to the living room to clumsily offer comfort.

Sitting next to Harper, Gloria patted her friend on the knee.

“I shared things with him. Ugly things,” Harper said, sniffling.