Sunday night she couldn’t sleep. None of her regular tricks—hot bath, soothing book, warm boozy drink—worked. Finally, she turned on a documentary, and the soothing voices talking about an old sports scandal lulled her to sleep, at least for a few hours. But she woke up at four with that look on Max’s face in her head, and she knew she’d never get back to sleep.

At five a.m. Monday, she went to the gym for a spin class. She thought it would make her feel better, but instead she cried the entire time. Thank God she also sweat so much no one had seemed to notice.

She showered at the gym and threw her work clothes on there. At least she didn’t have any meetings that day and could hunker down in the office and get work done and not talk to a soul.

She shut off her feelings and worked steadily for almost two hours—she finished a brief, she replied to dozens of emails, she went through a pile of documents for discovery prep, and was deep into the PowerPoint for their next pitch when Ellie knocked on her door.

“I was wondering why the light was on in your office. What in the Lord’s name are you doing here?” Ellie asked. “It’s barely eight a.m. I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever seen you at this hour in my life.”

Olivia shrugged. She really wasn’t in the mood to get into everything with Ellie right now. Hopefully, she could play this all off—the makeup she’d thrown on when she got to the office after the gym should mask any of the lingering signs of her tears, and she’d learned from her many years working for terrible bosses how to pretend she was okay at work.

“I couldn’t sleep. I was worrying about all of this stuff, so I decided to just come in and dive into it.” She made herself laugh. “It’s made me realize you’ve been right all of these years about getting into the office early—it’s great to be able to dive into work without any of the distractions that are there in the late afternoon, operating on adrenaline and a huge cup of coffee instead of a sugar high and then low from my three p.m. snack.”

Ellie narrowed her eyes and came farther into her office.