Chapter Nineteen #2
“They probably thought I was snorting coke every night with the finance bros. Which I wasn’t.
I’ve never done that. But every time I talked to them, they’d make comments about the fast-paced lifestyle that I was becoming too enamored with.
Or that those people were corrupting me.
Which wasn’t entirely true. I was making the choices I needed to stay awake to work.
I was one of those people. And I feel gross about it, but the way they kept trying to say Wall Street was corrupting me really hurt my feelings at the time.
So, yeah, I pulled back a little and called less.
And then a little more and visited less.
And the next year, I had a major project at work that overtook my Thanksgiving and my Christmas so I couldn’t go home for either.
I went to Switzerland to talk a client off the metaphorical ledge.
And I can’t believe that I slowly cut my parents out of my life.
My parents, who paid for me to go to college.
The ones who taught me the value of an education.
I…feel like I’m not expressing myself well.
Because I keep justifying myself and my actions, and there isn’t a justification.
I was a shit. I made shitty decisions. I got sensitive when my parents called me out for them as any worried parent would.
And I didn’t talk to them for years. Which is so fucking shitty.
” She tipped her head back again. “I don’t deserve their quick acceptance of my apology. I really don’t.”
“I know you’re making yourself out to be the villain here—and I’m not saying everything you did was right—but it seems like they didn’t reach out, either. Maybe that’s what’s driving guilt for them too. They were so excited to see you today. They’re your parents, and they just let you walk away.”
“Yeah, but I froze them out.”
Harper squeezed her knee, hoping that her message would get through.
“Maybe. But the freeze of a relationship can’t only be on one side.
One person may initiate tossing the relationship into the freezer, but if the other person doesn’t try to put it on a hot plate or turn on the blow dryer to warm things back up…
especially when it’s your parents…I’m not surprised they have guilt too.
Nothing happens in a vacuum.” At Charlie’s incredulous look, Harper said, “I’m not trying to absolve you of anything, but drowning yourself in guilt isn’t going to do a fucking thing.
I can speak firsthand about that. You can only do what you can.
And while I know it feels like you’re the only wrongdoer to you, I’m pretty sure your parents feel like it’s their fault too.
And I don’t think they’re wrong. Objectively, and I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but any of you could have done something about this long before now. ”
Charlie huffed but didn’t interrupt.
“And the past is in the past. What either of you could have or should have done doesn’t matter.
The situation today is what it is. And you can either choose to move forward or continue to live in the past because of how you fucked up.
But that isn’t going to make your life, or your parents’ lives, more enriched. ”
Harper tried to ignore how some of that advice hit a little too close to home for her.
It wasn’t like she’d been able to move past losing Kelly or the guilt she had surrounding it.
But damn, she was apparently good at helping other people realize it since Charlie was nodding with a more hopeful look on her face.
Maybe Kelly’s idea to turn Harper into a bartender wasn’t half-bad. Who would’ve thought?
“You’re awfully insightful on the topic of guilt.” Charlie sucked half of her lower lip into her mouth. “Have you worked through some guilt issues of your own?”
Harper wanted to deflect. “We aren’t talking about me.”
“Maybe not, but the observation remains. We don’t have to talk about anything if you don’t want to, but I’m here if you do.”
Harper was taking a breath to shoot her down, but the earnest look on her face said she really did know something about what Harper was feeling, and it had her walls coming down in a way she hadn’t known since Kelly. “I have some guilt over Kelly’s death.”
“Still?”
“Yeah. I was sick the day she died. I’d been at a conference that she didn’t want me to go to.
And I didn’t wear a mask like she’d asked me to because I’d been vaccinated and boosted, and it was loud in the conference hall.
And I got tired of repeating myself over and over again when people couldn’t hear me. And I fucking caught COVID.”
“You could have caught it anywhere,” Charlie was quick to say.
“True, but it was pretty shitty of me no matter what. She’d asked me to be safe, and I wasn’t.
So I got sick and was quarantined in the basement of our house the day her ‘L’ car had a catastrophic mechanical failure on her way home.
She was sitting in the first car where she always sat when we weren’t together, especially if it was dark, and was crushed when the train derailed, and the first car fell.
” Harper tried to hold back tears, surprised she was sharing this much with Charlie.
Yet, it felt natural. She never would have pictured opening up about Kelly’s death while sitting in a robe on a hotel floor, talking to a woman she was dating who was soaking wet.
Not that she’d pictured opening up like this.
Ever. But Andrew’s regular persistence was apparently working.