Chapter 40
JOSHUA
I drive to Molly’s apartment building before I can talk myself out of it.
It’s not too far from the office building and before I know it, I’m pulling up outside of the building.
The building is old looking but well kept.
It’s a five-story building with faded blue siding, little balconies, and a tiny parking lot with numbered spaces.
Molly’s spaces are both taken so I park in a guest space.
I get out of the car and slam the door shut behind me.
There’s a wind chime rattling somewhere on a balcony, a metallic tinkling that sets my nerves on edge.
I raise a hand and press the bell. I wait impatiently until the intercom crackles and someone speaks to me. Has Molly seriously given the wrong apartment number for her personnel file? Because the voice, while female, isn’t Molly.
“Hello?” the voice says.
“Umm hi,” I say. “I’m looking for Molly. Molly Matthews.”
“This is her mom,” the voice says, and I relax a little bit. I do have the right apartment. I wasn’t expecting a gatekeeper though. “Molly had a bit of an accident, and she isn’t seeing anyone right now.”
“I know about the accident. I’m Joshua Redfern. Molly is my secretary,” I say.
“Well, I’ll tell her you dropped by,” her mom says.
“No, wait,” I say. “I just … I need to see her. Please.”
She must hear the desperate tone in my voice because she sighs and then the lock clicks open.
“Come on up,” she says.
I whip the door open before she can change her mind. I hurry up the stairs to the second floor and find apartment number 203. I raise my hand to tap on the door, but I see it’s already ajar.
“Hello?” I call from the doorway.
“Come on in,” Molly’s mom calls. “Close the door behind you.”
I do as she says, and I find myself in a decent sized open plan living area. A woman who looks like an older version of Molly is sitting on the couch. She’s wearing cream pants and a pale green blouse which looks great with her red hair. She smiles and stands up and extends her hand.
“I’m Hayley,” she says.
“Joshua,” I say, shaking her hand.
“I’ll take you to Molly, but I’m not guaranteeing she’ll want to speak to you,” she says.
I feel my face fall with this news and Hayley looks at me for a moment.
“Nothing personal love. I mean she doesn’t want to speak to anyone right now,” she says. “But maybe you’ll cheer her up a bit.”
I follow Hayley across the living room and through a door on the other side of the room.
It opens into a small hallway with four other doors.
One must be the bathroom, and I assume it’s only two bedrooms judging by the size of it, so I guess the fourth door must be a closet.
Hayley knocks on the nearest door and opens it without waiting for an answer.
“Molly?” she says. “There’s someone here to see you.”
I can hear the voices of people on Molly’s TV and then they go silent.
“I told you I don’t want to see anyone,” she says.
“Ah well, I think you might feel differently when you see how cute this one is,” she says. She doesn’t give Molly a chance to say no to seeing me again, she just steps back.
“She’s all yours,” she says, and then she walks away and leaves me standing alone in the hallway. I step into the space she left and see Molly sitting on the bed in a pair of red checked pajamas. She’s sitting on top of the duvet, facing the large TV that’s mounted on the wall opposite the bed.
She looks like hell. Her face is deathly pale with dark shadows under her eyes like bruises.
Her hair is pulled back, but hastily, and several strands of it are falling loose around her face.
To me though, she is still the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and seeing her like this, all frail and broken just makes me want to wrap her in my arms and never let her go.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, and her voice is quiet, like she is wary of the answer.
“I needed to see you, to make sure you were ok. I went to the hospital. They said you’d left. I’m sorry, I got worried.”
Her eyes narrow.
“So, you came here? You looked up my address? Because that’s not creepy at all.”
“I needed to see you,” I say honestly. “Please. Just let me explain. Give me two minutes of your time. And then, if you still want me to, I’ll go.”
She hesitates, then she sighs and nods her head.
“Fine. But you can’t stand there like that the whole time. It’s making me nervous. Come and sit down,” she says.
“Hmm, us two on a bed together. Is that a good idea?” I say with a smirk.
This gets a laugh from Molly which makes her wince slightly.
“With my mom in the next room? I think we’re good,” she says.
Well, that’s promising. It’s only a no because her mom is here, not because she doesn’t want me.
I step inside her bedroom. In my fantasies, I’ve been here a hundred times, but I have to admit it’s never been under these circumstances. I perch on the edge of Molly’s bed about halfway down, facing her.
Her bedroom is small but neat. The bookshelves are packed full of books and a few ornaments, and there’s a small chair beneath the window with a throw blanket draped over it. A pair of hospital issue crutches rest against the bed next to her pillow.
There’s a stack of paperwork on the bedside cabinet beside Molly.
I spot the hospital’s logo, and I realize what they are – her discharge summary.
I catch sight of her name and the words possible concussion before she notices me looking at them and when she does, she grabs them and moves them aside.
“You’re not supposed to be out of the hospital,” I say gently.
She shrugs, then winces.
“They weren’t doing anything except checking my vitals and asking if I had insurance. I didn’t want to be there anymore.”
“You should’ve called me. I would have come to you.”
“I called a cab. Same result,” she says.
She looks away, her jaw clenched.
“Molly, I’m sorry you got hurt on my watch. Really, I am. I should have been there to protect you and …”
“Wait,” she interrupts me, and I stop talking. “You mean you don’t think I attacked Sarah, and she defended herself?”
I shake my head slowly.
“I never believed that. But I saw what happened.”
Her head snaps toward me.
“You were there?” she asks.
“No, but I watched the CCTV footage,” I tell her. “From the stairwell. Do you remember me telling you the communal areas of the office had cameras installed, but I didn’t tell anyone we had them. Well now I’m glad I didn’t.”
Her lips part in a half smile.
“I forgot about those cameras. What exactly did you see?”
“I saw you and Sarah arguing. And her hitting herself. Then you trying to leave and her pushing you. Watching you fall was awful. If I didn’t already know you were mostly ok, except for your ankle, I would have honestly thought you’d been killed.”
Molly’s eyes fill with tears, but she blinks them back fast, fiercely, as if crying would let Sarah win.
“She’s crazy,” Molly says. “She was going on and on about how I took her job and how bad I was at it.”
“Except you aren’t bad at it at all. You’re really good. You haven’t been making mistakes,” I say. “She was sabotaging you, trying to get you fired so she could have your job. Little did she know even if I fired you, she would have been my last choice.”
“She admitted to it?” Molly asks, surprised.
“No, but she dropped herself in it. Remember the restaurant booking? Redfart?”
“Oh God, don’t,” Molly moans but she’s smiling, and I smile back.
“She mentioned that incident today. Only you and I knew about that. She was setting you up,” I finish.
Molly goes very still and then she nods her head quickly.
“Of course. That’s why she was helpful. Or I thought she was being helpful at the time.
I didn’t know which restaurants would be appropriate for the meeting because I hadn’t been back in Boston long then and I went and asked the other secretaries.
Sarah recommended the place and said her sister worked there.
She must have had her sister change the name in the reservations book. ”
“That explains it. I did wonder how she managed to change the name,” Joshua says.
“I knew I wasn’t going crazy,” Molly whispers. “And it’s not just my job she wanted.”
She blushes a bit and I wait for her to go on.
“Somehow, she found out about me going to Oscar’s christening. Well, not just her, the whole damned office knew,” she says.
“Yeah, I blame my dad for that,” Joshua says. “He must have told someone.”
“Sarah is really into you. She was kicking off saying it was bad enough I took her job but now I took her man too,” she says.
“Well, she’s going to have a long wait on that one.
There’s only one woman for me, and I think I knew that all the way back there in Vegas,” I say.
She looks up at me and I know she’s about to tell me to stop, but I plough on before she can.
“I lied to you that night you know. When I told you there was a problem with the flight being over booked. There wasn’t.
I just couldn’t stop thinking about you. I came back for you.”
“You did?” Molly says and I nod my head.
“I did,” I reiterate.
“Don’t tell Sarah that for goodness’ sake, she’s already out to get me,” she says.
“She’s gone, Molly. I fired her the second I saw that footage. Security knows she’s not to be allowed into the building, and if she tries to come in for any reason, they’ll call the police. Don’t worry. She won’t touch you again.”
Molly closes her eyes, the tension starting to uncoil in her shoulders.
“You’re safe now,” I add, my voice quieter.
We sit in silence for a few moments, the hum of the small air conditioning unit the only sound in the room.
It’s strange, being here in Molly’s bedroom like this.
It’s intimate and yet it’s not. It feels both familiar and foreign all at once.
The silence is still a comfortable one, but I feel like I need to say more.
“Do you need anything?” I ask. “Some groceries? A ride to follow up appointments? Or maybe someone to yell at insurance agents?”
She gives a faint smile.
“You’re offering to yell at insurance companies for me?”
“I’d take a bullet before I’d call Blue Cross again, but yes.”
The smile grows, if only for a second. She looks at her watch and then at the bedroom door and she looks kind of on edge again. I reach out and take her hand. She doesn’t pull hers away and I take that as a good sign.
“I appreciate you coming,” she says. “But shouldn’t you be getting back to the office?”
I laugh and shake my head.
“The joys of being the boss means you can come and go when you please,” I tell her. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be but here.”
She smiles again, but she glances at the door again. I wonder if she’s worried if her mom comes in and catches us close like this, because if her mom is anything like mine, she won’t hear the end of it.
When Molly smiles at me, I realize, that for the first time all day, the anger is gone from me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still angry this happened, but it’s not this internal rage that threatens to spill over and make me do something rash now.
And the need to do something has been replaced by something else - something quieter, but no less urgent. I just want to be here by Molly’s side.
Not just to fix what’s broken. But to stay . I want to stay with Molly. Being with her feels like coming home.
I don’t want to drop that on her right now, not when she should be resting and not getting her stressed out, so instead of telling her how I feel, I make her laugh, and within minutes, we have gone back to how we always are when it’s just the two of us.
We chat and laugh, and we even flirt a little bit, and the whole time, Molly keeps my hand in hers.
Molly is in the middle of saying something when she stops abruptly, and I hear a door open somewhere in the apartment. Molly’s head snaps toward the door, and she pulls her hand from mine seconds before the door opens and a little girl walks in.