8. Harry
— ? —
Harry
The hallway is quiet at midnight.
Visiting hours ended four hours ago, but no one has asked me to leave. I’m sitting in a plastic chair with my back against the wall and my arms crossed, with my eyes fixed on the window in Jules’ door.
She’s asleep, or pretending to be. Her face is turned toward the wall, away from the door and away from me.
Odette stops by on her rounds. She’s been kind to me all night, bringing coffee I don’t taste and offering blankets I don’t use and suggesting in gentle tones that I might want to go home and rest.
“Mr. Winslow.” She stops in front of my chair. “You’ve been here since yesterday afternoon. You need to sleep.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“I haven’t.” I straighten up in the chair. “I’m not leaving.”
She sighs, but there’s understanding in her eyes. “At least let me bring you some more coffee.”
“Thank you.”
She disappears down the hall and returns a few minutes later with a paper cup. The coffee is terrible, bitter and lukewarm, but I drink it anyway, because it gives my hands a job.
Around 12:30 the elevator opens, and a man in a suit steps off, looks around, and heads toward me. It’s my head of security.
“Mr. Winslow.” He walks up to my chair and holds out a familiar jacket that stinks of smoke. “We got this out of the conference room. I put your phone in the pocket.”
I take the jacket and pull out my phone. The screen is cracked but functional. I turn it on and wait for it to boot up.
“How’s Mrs. Winslow?” he asks.
“She’s alive.”
“I’m glad. Avery’s locked out, like you asked. She can’t get into the building or any of your accounts.”
“Good.”
He nods and heads back toward the elevator, and I barely notice him leave.
My phone has finished loading. Notifications flood the screen, emails and texts and voicemails, and I ignore all of them except one.
I have eleven missed calls from Jules.
There’s one text under them, sent at 1:19. Locked in bathroom 10th floor.
I open the call log and stare at the timestamps.
The first one came in at 1:07 p.m., and they kept coming in bursts until the last one at 1:29.
That’s eleven calls in twenty-two minutes.
She called me eleven times while she was trapped in that bathroom, while the smoke filled the room, while she thought she was going to die.
And I didn’t answer.
I will never delete these calls. For the rest of my life I will keep them on my phone, to remind me what I almost lost.
I look at the timestamps again and try to match them to where I was.
At 1:07 I was in the stairwell, fighting against the crowd, trying to get up to her floor while bodies pushed me down.
At 1:11 I was coming out of the lobby doors, gulping air and looking for her face in the crowd.
At 1:15 I was pushing through the crowd on the east side of the building, looking for a green blouse.
At 1:21 I was borrowing a phone from a woman in HR and dialing Jules’ number, listening to it ring and ring, not understanding why she wasn’t picking up.
At 1:29 I was standing on the street with Avery pulling at my sleeve, staring up at the tenth floor, minutes before the headcount told me she had never come out.
She was calling me. Over and over, trapped in that bathroom with the smoke closing in, she picked up her phone and called me, and every single time I didn’t answer.
I stare at the call log until the screen dims.
My phone buzzes in my hand with Avery’s name on the screen.
I let it go to voicemail. It buzzes again, and again, and again.
I should block her. I should cut her off completely, the way I told my security team to cut her access. But first I want to hear what she has to say.
I open the voicemail and press play.
“Harry, please call me back.” Her voice is thick with tears, the familiar sound of Avery in distress.
“I’m so worried about you. I can’t believe what happened.
I’m just devastated about Jules. Is she okay?
I need to know she’s okay. And I need to talk to you.
Please. You’re the only one who understands me. ”
There’s a pause and a shaky breath, and then her voice shifts, and the tears get harder and more theatrical.
“I can’t believe any of this is happening. I didn’t do anything wrong. Jules always had it out for me. She never gave me a chance. And now everyone’s going to believe whatever she says, and I’m going to lose everything.”
The voicemail ends, and I play it again.
I’ve heard this voice a thousand times. For twenty years I’ve heard Avery cry and beg and ask me to protect her, and every time I’ve heard distress and vulnerability and a girl who needed me.
For the first time, I hear what Jules has been hearing for two years. My wife almost died in a fire, and Avery is worried about what people will believe.
I block her number and delete the voicemail.
My phone buzzes again. This time it’s my number two.
“Mr. Winslow, I know it’s late, but we have urgent matters regarding the building. The fire marshal’s first finding is faulty wiring on nine. The insurance people want a meeting, and there are reporters calling…”
“Handle it.”
“Sir?”
“The building, the insurance, the reporters. Handle all of it. I’m not available.”
There’s a pause. In three years of working together, I have never once told him to handle anything without my oversight. I have never delegated a crisis, and I have never trusted anyone else to make decisions that could affect the company.
“Yes, sir,” he says finally. “I’ll take care of it.”
I hang up.
Through the cracked door of Jules’ room, I hear a voice. It isn’t Jules. It’s a woman speaking in the cheerful tones of a nurse.
“Okay, Mrs. Winslow, I’ve got your sister on speaker. She’s been calling the ward since last night. Just tell her what you need her to hear.”
I stand up from my chair and move closer to the door. Through the crack I can see Odette holding a phone up near Jules’ face.
Jules is speaking. Her voice is barely audible, broken and ragged, but I can make out the words if I strain.
“I’m okay. I’m alive. I just…” She coughs. “I was trapped. In a bathroom. The fire…” She coughs again. “I kept calling Harry. I kept screaming for him. And he wasn’t…” Her voice breaks. “He wasn’t there.”
I stand in the hallway with my hand flat against the wall, and I listen to every word.
“I don’t know what happens now. I just needed to hear your voice.
I needed someone to…” She can’t finish the sentence.
There’s a pause while her sister talks. “No. Don’t come.
Keep Mom and Dad home too. I can’t have anybody see me like this yet.
” Her voice wobbles. “I love you. Tell them I love them. I’ll call again when I can. ”
The call ends. Through the crack I see Odette murmur to her gently, and I see Jules turn her face back toward the wall.
I pull out my phone and call my number two back.
“Sir? Did you need anything else?”
“Avery. I want her moved to the other building across town, starting tomorrow. She doesn’t come back to mine. She doesn’t touch my calendar, my email, any of it.”
“She’s already locked out, sir.”
“Then move her for good. New desk, new boss, new everything. I don’t want her anywhere near this building or my wife.”
There’s a pause. “Sir, that’s going to take a few days to…”
“Tonight. Wake someone up if you have to. I want it done before morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hang up.
Moving her is a half measure, and I know that. Jules asked me to cut Avery out completely, and I’m sending her across town instead of firing her outright. Part of me still can’t bring myself to put the girl I grew up with out on the street with nothing.
But it’s the fastest way to get her out of Jules’ world, and right now that’s what matters.
Then I call Hazel, because she should hear all of it from me, and she picks up on the first ring even though it’s past one in the morning.
***
At 3 a.m., I can’t take it anymore.
I’ve been sitting in this chair for hours, staring at the window in Jules’ door, watching the monitors blink and the nurses come and go. I’ve drunk three cups of terrible coffee and ignored a dozen phone calls, and I still can’t shake the sound of her voice telling her sister that I wasn’t there.
I get up from my chair and slip through her door.
The room is dark except for the soft glow of the monitors. Jules is lying on her side, facing the window, and for a moment I think she’s asleep.
Then she speaks.
“You’re not supposed to be in here.”
Her voice is rough, barely a whisper, but clear enough.
“I know.”
“I told you to leave.”
“You did.”
The silence stretches. She doesn’t tell me to go. She just lies there with her back to me, and her breathing is slow and uneven.
“Why are you still here?” she asks finally. “Why won’t you just go?”
“There’s nowhere else I’d be.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I have.”
She’s quiet for a moment, with her back still to me.
“Have you eaten?” she asks.
“No.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Probably.”
“You should eat.”
“I will. Later.”
The monitors beep softly in the dark.
“Are you in pain?” I ask.
“I’m fine.”
“Jules.”
“I said I’m fine.”
We both know she’s lying. I can hear it in her voice and see it in the tension of her shoulders and the rigid line of her spine, but she won’t admit it, and I won’t push.
“The nurses said you could have more medication if you needed it.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Okay.”
She shifts slightly, adjusting her position, and I hear the small catch in her breath that tells me the movement hurt. She’s angry and hurt and exhausted, and I can’t fix any of it just by standing here.
But I can’t leave either.
“You should be home,” she says. “Sleeping in an actual bed. Dealing with the building, the insurance, all of it.”
“I don’t care about any of that.”
“You should.”
“I don’t.”
She doesn’t answer for a while. I stand there in the dark, watching the rise and fall of her shoulders and listening to the beep of the monitors.
Then I see her eyes move toward the cup of water on the bedside table. It’s only a glance, barely perceptible, before she catches herself and looks away.
I pick up the cup without a word.
She doesn’t turn around, but she doesn’t tell me to put it down either. I move to the side of the bed and hold the straw where she can reach it. She shifts slightly and takes a few slow sips with her eyes still fixed on the window.
When she’s done, I set the cup back down.
Her blanket has slipped off her shoulder. I reach out and adjust it, pulling it up around her and tucking it in the way she likes. My thumb brushes her jaw before I can stop it.
For a few seconds, neither of us moves.
Then she says, “Get out.”
“Jules…”
“I mean it. Get out.”
I step back, and I don’t argue. Tonight, doing what she asks is the only thing I have left to give her.
“I’ll be right outside,” I say.
She doesn’t respond.
I slip out of her room and pull the door almost closed behind me.
I’m standing in the hallway, trying to get my breathing under control, when the elevator dings.
Hazel steps out.
She’s wearing a coat over what looks like pajamas, and her gray hair is loose around her shoulders. I called her a couple of hours ago. She must have found someone to cover the home and gotten straight in her car.
She looks at me, and the expression on her face is one I’ve never seen from her before, and it’s disappointment.
“Harry,” she says. “We need to talk.”