Will stopped pacing, put his hands on his hips. “I am,” he said, and for the first time, he actually believed it. He thought of Nora in her bathroom, her lit-up eyes every time they put in a new bathroom fixture. The pleasure she took in new things, when she let herself. “And she is, too. I mean, different from how she—”

“Obviously, I’m keeping up,” Gerald deadpanned.

In spite of his shitty night of sleep, Will suddenly felt alive with energy, his head swimming with this revelation, this perspective. He loved Nora, and it wasn’t rash, or reckless, or selfish to feel it. To say it. To live it for the rest of his life, if she’d let him. He was not his parents. He didn’t have to love the way he’d seen love at first.

“Gerald, I absolutely have to go. I’ve got to make a list of my failings, or something.”

“Don’t do that. It is very clear that your problems aren’t mine.”

“Right,” Will said, momentarily deflated. “Right.”

Gerald looked down at his watch. “A bit longer than the ten minutes you requested,” he said.

Will couldn’t help but laugh. “Of course. I’ve kept you too long. I appreciate you—”

Gerald waved a hand in dismissal. “No need,” he said, looking flustered. “I’ll certainly expect to see you back at work to-morrow.”

Will nodded, somehow comforted by this return to Gerald’s particular brand of professional rectitude. “Certainly,” he echoed.

“Very good,” Gerald said, and turned on his heel to head back inside.

But watching him go, Will had an impulse—sudden and sharp, the kind of feeling he’d trained himself to ignore for years and years, the kind of feeling he’d long told himself he ought to avoid. He wondered how many opportunities he’d missed in life like this, all because he was afraid of being rash or reckless or selfish.

Hell, he thought. Why not?

“Gerry,” he called, and waited to get fired.

His boss stilled, and Will held his breath.

But then Gerald turned around, his eyebrows raised. “Yes?”

“I’m sure this isn’t very professional,” he said, pausing to clear his throat. “But I think you might be my best friend.”

There was a long, painful second of silence across the parking lot, during which Will thought he might die of embarrassment, right at the moment he’d finally gotten his life figured out.

And then Gerald Abraham reached up and smoothed his lapel.

“Well, Will,” Gerry answered, moving to tuck his hands into the pockets of his perfectly pressed, pristine white coat, “since we’re out here in the parking lot, I think it is fine for me to say that the feeling is entirely mutual.”

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Nora hadn’t expected the blood.