Page 68 of Hold

“Bye, baby.”

“It’ll be okay,” Jake said, and she was so touched by his comfort that she looked up at him. So she saw Liam’s large frame through the window in the front door, and once she saw it, she couldn’t look away.

Jake opened the door, blocking him from her view, but she’d seen him in the window, and he looked like a slab of granite, staring at her as if the week before had never happened. She could hardly believe it had herself.

Jake hustled himself out of the door with one brief backward glance at her, so she tried to smile and raise her hand, but when he was gone, she felt tears drying on her face. She hoped he hadn’t seen them.

After that, she went into automaton mode. She got showered and dressed, woke Benji and fed him and dropped him off at the bus, and went into work. So far, so good. But work had always been slow, and today was no different.

While she waited for the phone to ring, she worked on her class assignments, spreading books out around her and shamelessly using the company’s internet connection. She tried to focus on the words in front of her, but she kept getting stabbed by memories.

Stab. There was Gabriel, eyes soft, telling her he’d never stopped loving her.

Stab. Liam, above her.I’m crazy about you, T.

Stab. Gabe, with a job, with stability, promising a new swathe of wonderful things.

Stab. Liam, creating stillness and calm just by being in her house, even when he was rolling his eyes at a broken window.

By lunchtime, she’d shoved the books aside and just sat with her head in her hands.

“Is everything all right, Ms. Fielding?”

Dr. Marion was standing in front of her, some papers in his hand. She hadn’t even heard him come up.

Dr. Marion came from the UK and he was young; he’d gotten his doctorate a couple of years ago and had worked here ever since. He’d only known Thea in student mode, and she liked him for that; he had no expectation that she would do anything other than study at her desk.

As she looked up at him, she was aware her face was probably still pinched from two nights of no sleep. “I’m fine, thank you for asking,” she said.

“Studying hard, I see.”

“Yes, but I have time if you need something.”

He looked at the papers in his hands as if he’d forgotten they were there. “Oh! Yes. Could you write these up into Excel?”

“Sure.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so,” he said, “you’re looking a little peaked. Not quite the thing.”

“Oh. Thank you. I’m okay. Not quite the thing today, maybe, but I’ll be completely the thing tomorrow.”

“There’s a big difference between working for your bachelor’s and your master’s,” he said. “More pressure, more research outside class. Are you sure you’re not taking on too much?”

“No!” In all this craziness, the one thing she had to hold on to was her dream of teaching. “No, I’m fine, really. It’s not the classes. Must have been a full moon the last couple of nights. Stopped me sleeping, that’s all.”

He looked at her with a scientist’s skepticism for such a vague correlation. “All right, well, let us know if you need a rest.”

“I don’t! Thanks though!” She opened her eyes wide, trying to look as awake as possible, and flashed a big, fake Fielding smile at him. He smiled back and, thankfully, walked away.

Thea went back to her head-in-hands position. Dr. Marion’s notes swam in front of her eyes.

Maybe shewastrying to do too much. Maybe her ill-advised—but hot—week with Liam was a symptom of a mind driven mad by two years of studying and mothering and working and trying to do it all. But what was the alternative?

Find a rich husband.

Not really an option. She didn’t have the looks or the confidence to sell herself that way. Oh, or the morals, of course, although some days, when they were eating hot dogs for the third time that week, she wondered.

Use the rest of the trust fund.