Aldo gave a shrug and debated answering. “Sometimes it’s like my mind can’t tell the difference between what’s happening and what’s happened. It’s like this blur between history and present. And sometimes the only thing that clears it is pain.”

“Maybe that’s why you push your therapy so hard?” Harper mused.

“Maybe that’s why I push everything so hard.” He had a lot to prove. To himself first. He wouldn’t say he was in the same mental swamp he’d been in when he first came home. The PT helped, and getting back to his own home would help more. But he still wasn’t right in the head. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever get right again.

He thought of Gloria. Wondered if she’d ever be able to accept him like this. Would she want him like this? Or would she recognize the wounds beneath the surface?

“So what’s Gloria’s apartment like?” he prodded. It was torture, gleaning information about Gloria from Harper. It was a little game they played. She knew why he was asking, but he played it off as casual conversation. He’d known she had moved. Knew where. Had even taken a post-midnight walk down Main Street her first night there to see if her lights were on.

“It’s so perfect for her,” Harper said. “She’s already got everything unpacked and decorated, and you can just tell it makes her so happy. She’s right there in the middle of everything, too, which I think is good for her.”

Aldo grunted.

“Speaking of, when are you going to stop avoiding everyone?” Harper demanded. They stopped at the lake’s edge. The water made tiny, steady waves against the shore.

“I’m not avoiding everyone.” He was. He hadn’t been back to work yet. Hadn’t gone out to eat in town. Hell, the only time he left his mother’s house was for doctor appointments or late-night strolls—limps—when the walls were closing in on him.

She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “No one is going to think you’re anything other than Aldo Moretta.”

It wasn’t true. But she couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to have to face the fact that you were less than you used to be. That you were always going to be less than. And that everyone else would see it, too.

“I really want to punch you in your face right now.” Harper’s words caught him off guard.

“What the hell, Harpsichord?”

“I can see you churning through this whole bullshit ‘woe is me’ garbage,” she said, her voice raising and cutting through the summer noises of kids playing and squirrels arguing, birds chirping.

“I don’t know how to make it stop. Okay? Happy?” He started to stalk off and was reasonably pleased when he was able to.