“There was also Monique. I could say Kelly was threatened by her—and she probably was—but I need to own my behavior. I might have been leading her on, and that wasn’t the right thing to do.”

“Monique needs to hear that.” She buzzed reception on her desk phone. “Do you have a moment?”

Monique trudged into Anna’s office, her usual bounce gone, her lips a dull shade of purple. “Yes?”

Her transformation shocked him. Was he responsible for this as well? He rubbed his hands and caught her eye. “Monique, I flirted with you, and I’m sorry. I meant what I said to you. You don’t need the attention of other people to justify being alive. You’re a great young woman who doesn’t need other people’s approval.”

She burst into a shower of tears.

“I mentioned to you before that your friend could have a more professional conversation. Would you like that?”

Monique bowed her head, a mumble coming from her chest. “You’ve got no idea how hard it is to work in a place where everyone else has it together. To be happy all the time when you’re broken inside.”

Actually, I do.

Anna leaned forward, offering Monique a tissue. “You’d be surprised just how many people feel that.”

The sense of vertigo was back. “Me included.”

Monique’s head snapped up to look at him. “Really?”

Daniel held back a laugh as Gramps’s wisdom again rang true. “There’s more to life than what we see. We all struggle with our own acceptance of truth, especially when it points to something we would prefer not to see.”

“Maybe you should put that in your next book.”

The spark within him flicked into flame. His next book. Maybe it was closer than he realized.

The phone out in the reception area rang, and Monique touched her Bluetooth headset as she gathered her composure. “Welcome to Crossroads Counseling. This is Monique.”

She nodded and shot another look at Daniel, her lips giving him a silent warning. Your editor.

Daniel took a deep breath. This was the call that could either save him or cost him everything. He hurried to his office to take it, steeled himself, and pressed the flashing red button. “Amanda!”

“Returning your call, Daniel.” Amanda’s voice was flat. Very flat.

A wash of anxiety covered Daniel in its usual anesthetic wave, but it was tinged with something different. Something almost justified. Something earned.

Daniel took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Forty-Four

The reflections of Daniel’s family stared back at him from the polished front window of Simon’s Film Lab. It had been a roller-coaster twenty-four hours since Milly stepped down from the railing. A reawakening of connection. A realization of a now uncertain future. But certainty in facing it together.