Six
Daphne parked on the street and walked up the driveway to the large Victorian that didn’t quite feel like home yet.
Most of the house was dark, but as she started to climb the stairs to the second-story apartment, a single lamplight in the living room below caught her eye.
Squinting into the dimness, she grinned at the sight of Hugh in his buffalo plaid robe and the fuzzy bear slippers Izzy had given him last Christmas.
As if sensing the wave of affection surging toward him, he glanced up and grinned. Then, with a tilt of his head, he issued an invitation she’d rarely been able to refuse.
She slipped quietly inside and stepped lightly across floorboards whose squeaks and groans she hadn’t had time to learn. “Is Izzy asleep?”
He nodded. “Fencing practice wore her out.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t turned in early, too.” She sank into the tall wingback chair across from him. “You have a big day tomorrow.”
“The trip to Toronto will be easier from here than it was from Syracuse.”
“That was the point of the move,” she said, even though there was more to it.
“You don’t mind me going?”
“Of course not. You have to work hard to keep us all living the quality of life we’ve grown accustomed to. Fencing lessons aren’t cheap … probably. I honestly have no idea.”
He laughed lightly. “It’s easier to play sugar daddy in Buffalo than in London or New York, but mostly, I wanted to make sure you could handle our daughter’s burgeoning social schedule along with the first week of working with your new clients.”
“I don’t have very many of them yet. I’m sure I can manage playing chauffeur to our young swordswoman/scholar.”
“Everything falling into place at your office? You know I’m always eager to play interior decorator.”
She grinned. “Should I need any statement pieces of art, I’ll call on you, but things went well tonight.”
He arched his eyebrows. “Do tell.”
“I met all of Gillian’s colleagues, and they’re amazing.
Quite a contrast from the boss, though they all seem quite taken in by her.
Still, they were open and fun and willing to listen.
I got the sense they care deeply, both about their work and about each other, like they’re friends brought together by a shared sense of purpose. ”
“Marvelous. And perhaps if they’re that close, they can soften the sharp edges on your old schoolmate.”
“I doubt it.” Daphne blew out a little huff of frustration as she remembered Gillian standing in the doorway to the snuggery as if she found the idea of stepping fully across the threshold one step too far.
“While Gillian has always been a little too concerned about projecting the perfect image, she’s never been particularly susceptible to peer pressure. ”
“A rare combination to care about how one’s perceived by others without actually bowing to their will,” Hugh said. “One you have in common.”
“What?” Daphne snapped a bit too loud, then grimaced and lowered her tone. “I don’t care what people think of me.”
Hugh snorted softly. “Maybe not all of them, but you wouldn’t have been so huffy about this woman’s initial reaction if it didn’t matter at all.”
“I can be annoyed by someone’s behavior without giving credence to their opinion.”
“That’s a real tightrope to walk, Darling, but I mostly commend your ability to keep the judgment of others from holding you hostage. You wouldn’t be able to do the work you do if you cared too little, or too much, for people.”
She stared at him for a second, letting his words sink in without quite accepting them.
“It’s a compliment, my dear. Accept it.” He laughed lightly. “If everything went well, what’s got your hackles up?”
She sighed. “My hackles are fine. I think I’m still coming down from letting new people in.”
“Understandable. Humanity is exhausting. I had a meeting with a new client today who has new money and no taste. She even floated the idea of a, and I quote, ‘safari room’ in her McMansion.”
She chuckled. “Okay, you win most trying new colleagues award for the day.”
“Ew, she’s a customer, not a colleague. Don’t give her that kind of power.”
She wondered if the same could be said for Gillian.
She wasn’t a customer, but she didn’t have to be a colleague, either.
She didn’t have to be anything more than a woman across the hall.
The thought further soothed Daphne as she stood.
“That’s a good reminder to end on. Will I see you in the morning? ”
“Unlikely, given your sleeping habits.”
“Hey, I could be a morning person.”
He laughed outright this time. “And warrantlessly risk the harm of everyone in a five-mile radius? No. You’ll have to take the morning shift all week. I’ll get Izzy to school tomorrow, then head out from there.”
“Thank you.” She dropped a kiss atop his head. “Travel safe and come home with wild stories of your exploits.”
“Exploits and triumphs, as always,” he called gently after her, and she had no reason to doubt the assertion. He’d never given her any reason to doubt either his sincerity or his capabilities. Still, as she climbed the stairs to her own space, for some reason, she thought of Gillian.
She paused, midstep, midway up. Did she think of Gillian the same way she thought of Hugh?
At least in that sense? Surely not. Hugh was the person she counted on most in the world, and Gillian was …
what? An archnemesis? She smiled at the hyperbole, perhaps a dramatic holdover from her teenage self.
No, Gillian was a prickly if distantly aloof thorn, a complicating factor, a wrinkle in the fabric of a life she’d been eager to smooth.
There was no need to equate her with sincerity or capability, though maybe she’d always been the latter.
To Daphne’s knowledge, Gillian had never failed at anything that mattered to her, even if those things varied greatly from what mattered to Daphne.
Or at least they always had before. Only tonight, they hadn’t entirely. Gillian clearly cared about her work. She also seemed to love her people enough to allow herself to listen, to consider their curiosity, even to let them tease.
Daphne had seen a softness in her, fleeting and yet undeniably present, almost vulnerable in the moment when the topic of prom night had come up.
Gillian hadn’t snapped or withdrawn. She’d surrendered to the memories Daphne had the power to share, and in doing so drained all Daphne’s desire to do so.
Then, in the moment when Gillian’s picture-perfect professionalism had yielded to her friends’ gentle ribbing, the way her entire facade had cracked, letting something more radiant shine through, Daphne’s heart had nearly seized.
Had that been what piqued her interest? Something sincere amid all her carefully cultivated expertise?
She shook her head and began to climb once more. She couldn’t dissect slivers of something Gillian kept carefully guarded. She’d lost too many nights’ sleep splitting hairs and looking for the good in people with a microscope.
No. Daphne was past the point of accepting scraps.
She needed to surround herself with people who oozed genuine generosity, and she suspected she’d found that in Robin, Brooke, and Tegan.
She had to let that abundance sustain her rather than search for crumbs Gillian clearly hadn’t intended to drop.
“Morning.” Brooke stuck her head in Gillian’s office door, startling her so thoroughly the papers she’d rested on her knees fluttered to the floor.
“Whoops.” Brooke came in, then crouched down to help collect them.
“Don’t worry about it,” Gillian said quickly, but it was too late. Her most detail-oriented friend had already paused to peruse the subject matter.
Glancing up, Brooke’s blue eyes filled with concern, or maybe it had already been there before she even came in. “Harlow’s monkeys?”
“Just a review,” Gillian tried feebly.
“Are you about to take my job teaching at the college?” Brooke stood but continued flipping through the pages.
“Hardly. Maura hasn’t spoken to me since Robin started dating her only child.”
“Should we send Robin a thank-you note for that? Or does it bother you that your most steadfast and committed mentor is no longer actively positioning you as her heir apparent?”
Gillian shook her head. The topic was too big to face within the more pressing chaos of her current moment.
She hadn’t even thought about Maura when she’d pulled those files, which might speak to the vast number of things on her mind, or perhaps the recency of various conflicts.
“I’m not focused on the five-year plan at the moment. ”
Brooke sat down in the seat usually reserved for clients, but Gillian got the distinct sense she was about to have those roles flipped. “Want to talk about this?”
“The study?”
Brooke smiled placatingly. “Sure, if you want to tell me why you’re reviewing foundational concepts from intro psych classes you could teach in your sleep—”
“Would we call this foundational?”
“I guess it depends on what you’re taking from a study about stuffed monkeys.”
“Harlow put animals in a situation where they had to choose between attaching to a surrogate ‘mother’ with the ability to provide food versus one providing comfort, and every single one of the primates bonded with the one providing comfort.”
Brooke pressed her lips together as if trying not to laugh. “Thanks for the recap.”
“I’m not recapping. I’m questioning why an experiment based basically on the abuse of primates has been extrapolated so thoroughly into human development. It’s almost unquestionable.”
“I think plenty of people have questioned the methodology and ethics.”
“But not the findings. It’s been so thoroughly accepted that a group of therapists will sit in a room and nod sagely as a hippie on a full-sized bed declares, with faux authority, that physical touch is a vital human need, essential to good emotional and mental development or sustainability.”
Brooke sat forward. “I’ve been wondering when you’d circle around to the good part.”