5. Death by Decaf #2
Cole sees me staring at him, and he beckons me out with a come-hither finger. I despise his stupid sexy fingers.
“Juniper Marie Mercer, are you in there?” Marley calls next.
How the hell does she have my full name?
Opening my door in my pajamas, holding my own fully caffeinated coffee, and wearing what I’m sure is a look of bewilderment, I step out onto the small porch.
“You weren’t at breakfast, dear,” a small older lady says, rushing the stairs. Well, she would consider it rushing. The woman has to be in her late seventies.
I set my coffee cup on the porch and meet her somewhere in the middle, where she shoves a basket into my belly.
“I’m Dollie, Frank’s wife. We hadn’t seen you in twenty-four hours. There are protocols here, deary.”
“Protocols,” I repeat. “For…missing breakfast.”
“For any unexplained absence exceeding twelve hours,” Marley shouts from below.
“Turn on your damn hearing aid, Marley.” Stanley points to his ear while wearing a duh expression.
Marley does something on her phone, then returns to her clipboard. “It’s in the community handbook, section four, subsection B. Shall I send you a copy?”
“Ah, no…thanks. I was working. I’m fine.”
“Working.” Marley draws out the word while she writes it down. She’s probably writing me a ticket.
Cole’s chuckle causes goose bumps to rise on my arms, but I refuse to look at him.
Instead, I focus on a woman walking through the golf cart brigade.
I haven’t met her yet, but she’s watching me with calm, assessing eyes.
She has a silver bob and reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck, and where everyone else radiates concern, she emotes… patience. The unnerving kind.
The kind I’ve been forced to visit with at various times in my life.
“I’m Bea,” she says when she catches me staring. She doesn’t seem to have a golf cart. “I’m also a semi-retired therapist, but that’s not the point.”
It’s very much the point, and every alarm bell in my body chimes at once.
“I’m fine,” I say again, firmer this time. “Really. I just got caught up in work.”
Bea tilts her head. Not in challenge. Not a confrontation. Just a quiet, measured look that makes me feel as though she’s dissecting all my lies. “Your brother once said that to me too.”
My—she knows Nolan?
“Do you often throw things away?” she asks. “Or only when someone you love betrays you?”
The baked goods nearly slip from my hands.
She’s seen the videos. Obviously. At over two million views, who hasn’t seen them? Nana Mae probably had a showing party with popcorn on the big screen over at the clubhouse for her—what did she call it—Screen & Steam club?
But there’s something about the way Bea asks—without judgment, without the morbid curiosity I’ve gotten from everyone else—that freezes me to the spot.
I don’t even have an answer. Not one that doesn’t crack open something I’m not ready to analyze.
“I—I should get back to work,” I manage while actively avoiding the concern on Cole’s face.
Bea nods as if she expected nothing less. Asshole old lady.
I’m panting as they all make haphazard U-turns in Cole’s driveway.
Bea’s question lingers long after she’s turned away.
I close the door and lean against it as if it’s the only thing holding me up.
“Both,” I mutter. “The answer is…both.”
My phone buzzes while I’m elbow deep in bank statements that afternoon. Unfortunately, I’d had to leave the sanctuary of my apartment and face a yawning, grumpy-assed Cole to get the statements I needed.
Group chats are bad. Private messages are worse. Glancing around the conference table, I listen for any signs of life. Cole’s been so quiet, I wonder if he fell asleep at his desk.
It would serve him right.
Fen: Hey, don’t freak out.
Great opener. Very calming.
Junie: What?
Fen: Grace’s account was picked up by the Scout Report. They ran a piece called The Other Side of Sorry.
My stomach drops to my ankles.
Fen: They didn’t use your name, but they used your photo. The window video is embedded. Grace did an interview.
Junie: She did WHAT?
Fen: Hudson already sent a takedown notice for the photo. But there’s more.
She’s still profiting from the misery she created.
Fen: They also called my office asking where you are. Someone, likely Mr. Fissile, tipped them off that you haven’t been seen and might have left town. They don’t have a location yet.
I read that line three times.
They don’t have a location yet.
Yet.
Junie: What did you tell them?
Fen: I’m a PR professional, Junie. I told them nothing and implied they’d be hearing from our legal team, which is just Hudson in a bad mood, but they don’t know that.
Fen: I’m staying at your house so it looks like someone’s home now.
Fen: Stay OFF socials. Don’t post anything with a location. And maybe tell Cole to make sure nobody at the compound is live streaming you—or the Safe Haven check-in committee again either. I’ve already had to scrub those.
Outside, Stanley is currently making his third lap of the block with a GoPro his grandson gifted him mounted to his golf cart.
They might be a problem.
Junie: I’ll handle it.
Fen: Handle it like a normal person or handle it like Spite-Berry? Remember, that’s an important distinction right now.
Junie: Goodbye, Fenway.
Fen: Never mind. I texted Cole. Let him handle The Havens.
I drop my phone face down and then press my palms into my eyes until I see stars.
Grace is doing interviews. She knew the audience would fall for her.
And now her fame-chasing is actively attacking me because my pain has a shelf life and the world is ready for their next installment.
I came here to disappear. To do the work, to earn money, to figure out who I am when the Internet stops watching.
That’s the real problem here. I don’t know who I am or who I want to be—and I’ve always had a plan. Plans are safe. Plans give me purpose. Purpose keeps me out of trouble. Purpose keeps me safe.
How did my life get so derailed that I’ve landed in the one spot where privacy is a theoretical concept, while being hunted by a tabloid, enduring wellness check protocols, untangling a financial crime, and trying very hard not to notice that my boss still smells like cedar?
“Ugh. What the hell are you doing, Junie?” My forehead crashes to the table, and I bite my tongue to keep from screaming at the unfairness of it all.
I wallow for all of thirty seconds before Cole curses loudly.
Through the window, I catch sight of him in the yard.
He’s on the phone, and from the rigid set of his shoulders, I’d say it’s not a good call.
He drags a hand through his hair—a gesture I remember from a hundred late nights at the kitchen table in Boston when he’d be hunched over his internship application, design ideas, or tiny models he’d build while I pretended to do my calculus but was really just watching him.
Well, at least until Natalie started sending me photos of myself staring at him like a lovesick puppy dog. Her jealousy had a nasty mean streak I absorbed more than once.
He pockets his phone and stands there for a moment, staring at the ground.
Even his posture is familiar. I memorized it at my mother’s funeral.
I’ve mimicked it ever since whenever I’ve needed armor.
It’s what happens when you’re forced to carry a load that’s too heavy but you’re too stubborn to set it down.
I could go out there and check on him. I could ask if he’s okay.
Instead, I pick up my phone.
Juniper & Her Berries:
Junie: I got wellness-checked by retirees today. They have protocols.
Fen: Are they adopting you?
Fen: Did they add you to the newsletters? Can you get me in?
Hudson: Please tell me you’re eating actual food and not just gas station garbage.
Junie: I ate a muffin, MOM.
Nolan: How’s Cole?
Outside, I know Cole’s reading the messages by the way he hangs his head.
How’s Cole?
Cole’s drowning in a financial disaster his own family created. Cole’s—
Cole’s a big boy who can answer for himself, so I ignore my brother’s message, knowing a reply from Cole will never come.
Maybe his silence is my version of spite.
We’re standing at the same impasse, blaming each other for not being the first one to cross it.
Teenage me would have flung myself at his feet.
Twenty-four-year-old me knows better. Love is not a renewable resource, and I don’t have much left to give. Not anymore.
I won’t be that girl again—not for someone who has already proven he can so easily walk away.
I close the chat and open my next file, but Bea’s question nags at me.
Do you often throw things away, or only when someone you love betrays you?
No reason to examine why my mind files that question next to Cole’s name instead of Grace’s.
Some things are better left in the dark.
I know that better than anyone.