4. Coworker Is Cute
4
COWORKER IS CUTE
“A re you eating ice cream for dinner?” Jordan, Justine’s sister, asked her at seven.
“Maybe,” she said around a mouthful.
“Your day was that bad?” Jordan asked.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t. Just a lot going on.” And to learn, with names and faces on top of it.
“How hard can it be?” Jordan asked. “All the drugs have names on the bottles, just find them, and count.”
Her sister was laughing on the other end. It’s like it was a joke between then.
Jordan was in her residency right now as a surgeon. The last thing her sister needed in her life was what they went through as a family a few months ago.
What they were still going through.
But her sister couldn’t just pick up and leave like Justine could.
Did she feel bad leaving her younger sister back in Indiana? Yeah, she did.
Jordan had always been stronger than her though.
At least in her eyes.
“Maybe I forgot how to count,” she said.
“Not likely,” Jordan said. “You were probably annoying people by stating policies and procedures you spent all weekend reading.”
She wouldn’t comment on that. It was true. Her sister would only laugh.
And she tried to point that out today to Garrett Mills and felt like an idiot afterward.
“Are you not working today?”
“My one rare day off. I was there all weekend and spent most of the day sleeping. I won’t sleep tonight.”
“Sure, you will,” she said. “You fall asleep the minute your head hits the pillow.”
“So do you,” Jordan said. “We get that from Dad.”
She didn’t want to talk about their father, but she couldn’t hide her head under pillows anymore.
“We did,” she said softly.
“Are you okay?” Jordan asked. “Maybe you shouldn’t have left here.”
“I couldn’t stay,” she said. “Too many reminders. You’re busy enough that no one is paying attention.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jordan said. “I’m following in Dad’s footsteps in the hospital he worked at. He was murdered by our stepmother. You think I’m not being talked about or looked at? You didn’t work in the hospital like me.”
“I know,” she mumbled, trying to swallow through the lump in her throat. “I’m sorry, Jordan. I feel guilty I deserted you.”
“You should and you did,” Jordan said, laughing.
If it wasn’t for the fact she knew her sister was joking, she might have started to cry.
“I had to do it. Elise wasn’t leaving me alone. She never bothered you.”
Elise was their stepmother who was currently awaiting trial.
“Once she found out all the funds were frozen and she didn’t have enough money for her defense,” Jordan said. “She was hounding you.”
“Not my fault,” she said. “Dad had his reasons for putting everything in our names and only leaving that one joint account for Elise’s use.”
She knew those reasons.
Her stepmother was a drunk.
It seemed the past year Elise drank more or wasn’t around and passed out or hungover, with her father making one excuse after another.
But many knew the truth.
What they didn’t know were the dirty lies that Elise was spreading that she shot their father in self-defense.
Justine couldn’t listen to another thing said about her father that she knew wasn’t true.
“She knows not to call me,” Jordan said. “I’ve cursed her out one too many times when we were younger. You were the nice one between us.”
She laughed. Jordan was fiery and wouldn’t put up with their stepmother trying to boss them around.
Justine’s light blonde hair and eyes always gave off the illusion she was an angel.
In her father’s eyes, she felt like that.
Their father didn’t remarry until Justine was fourteen and Jordan was twelve. It’d been hard to accept, but she wanted her father happy.
For eight years after her parents’ divorce, they’d lived with their father and rarely saw their mother. Elise coming into the picture upset the dynamics more for Jordan than it did her.
“I’m not sure about that,” she said. “I just didn’t argue as much as you did.”
“And because of that, Elise thought she could talk to you.”
“She tried to pressure me,” she said. “It didn’t work.”
“Bribe,” Jordan said. “That was the word you used all the time. She tried to buy your friendship and approval.”
It made her think of Garrett Mills today coming in with donuts.
She probably gave off the wrong impression when she said that, but it was a trigger for her.
She’d backed up as fast as she could when she realized what she’d been doing.
“It didn’t work,” she said. “Is she bothering you now?”
“No,” Jordan said. “You know I changed my number. She hasn’t been able to figure it out. I blocked her emails. What about you?”
“Just the normal. I ignore it as best as I can. I’m not giving her money. Dad left it all to us. End of story. The last thing I’d do is give her anything for her defense. Even if what she says is true.”
“Never!” Jordan yelled. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing!” she yelled back. “You know as well as I do that nothing she says is true. But my point is, even if Dad was this horrible person she is telling everyone he is, I still wouldn’t give her a dime. She’s stupid to even think that.”
“I’m hoping she drowns in a bottle of vodka one night. It would serve her well,” Jordan said.
She’d had a lot of those thoughts too but wouldn’t voice them like her sister. “I don’t think it would surprise anyone.”
“You’ll come back for the trial, right? When it happens?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Depends on if I can get the time off. I had to relocate for six months.”
“What?” Jordan asked. “Why am I hearing about this now? What is going on?”
She hadn’t wanted to burden her sister with her minor problems when she knew Jordan had so much going on with her career and was grieving their father too.
She explained the situation. “So I’m not far, just not in Boston. It’s a completely different lifestyle here. Today was my first day.”
“You’ve been there three days,” Jordan said. “How do you even know what is or isn’t different enough?”
“Well, the fact I’m sitting on my balcony right now and don’t even hear any neighbors is one thing.”
Though she was in an apartment complex, she was in the smallest building and the furthest away. Someone had told her it was a new building and that more would be built in the coming years.
She wouldn’t be here when that happened, with any luck, and wouldn’t hear that noise.
She was enjoying the quiet.
“That’s great,” Jordan said. “Maybe it’s a good thing that you’re there. Do you have a space for me if I get a break and want to fly out? Not that I see that happening, but I might in the next six months.”
“I’ve got a sofa,” she said. “If not, we’ll get you a hotel.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Jordan said. “The two of us always do.”
“We do,” she said.
“Other than your new place, how is everything else? That has to suck that your apartment is empty and you’re paying on that.”
“They are paying for this place,” she said. “And I subleased mine out. So I’m actually making out better than I thought. Not that we have to worry about those things.”
Jordan laughed. “No. Good old Dad. I had no clue how much money there was, did you?”
“No,” she said. “Do you think that is why Elise did it?”
It wasn’t just the investments, the assets, or their cash accounts. It was a life insurance policy that their father had bought years ago when they were younger in case something happened to him. Two million dollars. One million for each of his daughters.
She and Jordan knew none of this.
When their mother found out their father was murdered, she called right away to find out whose name was on that policy. Like her mother thought her father would have forgotten and left his ex-wife’s name on it.
Guess her father had foul taste in women when it came down to it, but from what she’d seen, her mother’s name never was on it. They were taken out for the children after her parents divorced.
“I don’t know why she did anything,” she said. “Elise says she doesn’t remember, then said it was self-defense. The fact she was drunk as hell when she called the police after she shot Dad kind of hurt her case.”
“No ‘kind of’ about it. It is good for us,” Jordan said.
“Yep.”
“Dad had defense wounds on him,” Jordan said. “I just don’t know what to think.”
“Can we not talk about this?” Justine asked. She didn’t want to start crying again.
“I know,” Jordan said. “I’m sorry. But you can’t avoid it forever.”
“I’m not,” she said. “We are talking and I want to stop now.”
She didn’t need the reminder that she ran away, but she wasn’t stupid.
“Sorry,” Jordan said. “How many more spoonfuls of ice cream did you eat just now?”
“Enough,” she said, setting it down. “I’m going to get sick. Between this and donuts at work.”
“Donuts?” Jordan said. “You never eat donuts.”
“I had two of them. They were there. A doctor brought them in to welcome me.”
Jordan laughed. “Was he cute?”
“Actually,” she said, “he was.”
“I bet you’re blushing right now,” Jordan said, laughing.
“Only a sugar flush,” she said.
“No,” Jordan said. “I know my big sister. You’re embarrassed because you think a coworker is cute and don’t want to think that.”
“There is nothing wrong with thinking that,” she said. “I’ve got eyes and he was in front of me.”
“Listen to you sounding all prim and proper over it,” Jordan said. “I won’t bug you anymore.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“And ice cream sounds good so I’m going to get some too,” Jordan said. “Need to call DoorDash for it though.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think I can get that here.”
She hung up with her sister and bent over to get the ice cream container after she stood up, her eyes landing on the road behind her building. Not right behind it that she could hear traffic that loudly, but enough.
A guy was jogging on the side of the road, moving fast with a purpose as if he was trying to outrun something on his heels and wasn’t sure he’d be able to.
Funny how she knew that feeling well.