“I hate myself when I think about what I’ve put you through.”

She sighed, long and heavy, the sound of her breath echoing inside the car. “Any tears I’ve cried over you have been because I care so much. Surely you understand that.”

He made a noncommittal noise.

They sat there, he at her house and she in her car, with phones to their ears and saying nothing. Was he wishing she’d change her mind, like she wished he would? Hoping she’d say this was stupid and ridiculous, and could they forget the last ten minutes ever happened?

Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. She’d never know.

Tears fell freely from her eyes, and she didn’t want him to hear her fall apart. “I need to go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“When?” he asked, but she’d already lowered the phone from her ear.

She hung up, dropped the phone on the passenger seat, and let herself cry.

The two weeks that followed were the worst of Lauren’s life. Worse than the days after discovering Will’s infidelity and deception. She’d thought she’d loved Will and that she knew what it was to have her heart broken.

Losing Andrew was a hundred times worse.

She called her friend Kate a few times, needing someone to talk to, but she wished she had someone to hug and talk to face-to-face. The fact that she didn’t feel she could be that open with Emma or Kiara about it just made her feel more isolated.

She spoke to her dad once, and he excitedly described a new electronic dispensing machine he’d purchased for the pharmacy that would speed up the process for both the pharmacists and technicians. Between the uncertainty of where her job stood at Coleman and the loneliness she felt, Lauren had an unusual sensation of homesickness for her uncomplicated prior life in Oklahoma. She’d been an outsider in her family, true. But she had good friends and had never suffered acute pain like this. Before, she’d focused on the negative aspects of working with her dad. But now, she was considering the positives, and there were more than she thought.

Then, on Friday morning, two weeks after the run-in between Andrew and Gavin and when Andrew was admitted to the hospital, Lauren had an email waiting in her inbox. Dr. Hawthorne wanted to meet with her, but he didn’t specify why.

So here she was, about to step off the elevator and head to Dr. Hawthorne’s office, terrified of what she was about to hear.

His door was open, and she stopped short of entering, knocking lightly on the frame.

Dr. Hawthorne’s gray head tilted up from where it had been bent over paperwork on his desk. He stood and motioned her inside.