Page 69 of Theirs to Treasure
“You’re blamingmefor her inability to be reasonable?”
Since we went to her apartment with the pregnancy test, Zev has always been able to smooth things over with her, but this time she won’t even answer calls from him.
“We know where she is.”
True enough. Like a besotted teenager, I drive past her apartment at least twice a day. I suppose it’s some consolation that she hasn’t left the state.
For the first time in my life, I’m helpless.
Making decisions, taking action, kept Zev and I alive as children, and my coolness in emergency situations enabled us to keep the company going while our father was lying in the hospital, fighting for his life.
For weeks, I was in charge of the company, a position I wasn’t ready for. Then eventually I had to make the ultimate decision that no son should ever have to.
Frustration that I don’t know what to do pushes my anger to the bottom of my soul, and I sink into my chair.
“That’s the smartest thing you’ve done in a week.”
Eight days.
“Look at it from her point of view.”
There aren’t two points of view here. I’d know. I’ve considered every angle.
At night, I toss and turn, lift weights, throw myself into my work, and no matter which way I look at it, I come back to the same conclusion. “She doesn’t appreciate anything we’ve done for her.”
“Jesus, man. Get a grip.”
I have another whiskey.
“Harper is a grown-ass woman about to become a mother. She doesn’t need anyone to tell her what to do.”
We need to be together, and she has to understand that I’m looking out for our family.
If I don’t protect her, who am I? “I’m trying to take care of her, take some burdens off her shoulders.”
“That’s not your choice to make.”
Unable to contain my anxiety, I drum fingers on my thigh.
“Her whole life, she’s has been told what to do. And her conniving mother tried to get her to marry a cheating sonofabitch.”
“I fail to see what this has to do with me. With us.”
“In Vegas, you confronted her parents and Edward.”
And gave her little bitch of a sister a mouthful as well while I was at it. But I don’t point that out. “She needed her belongings.”
“Did it occur to you, even for a moment, to ask her whether or not she wanted you to do it?”
Furiously I scowl. “I was righting a wrong.”
“Listen to yourself.” He takes a sip of mineral water. “You are not judge, jury, and executioner.”
I don’t regret a single moment. Edward deserved everything that happened to him. The sound of that bone crunching had been satisfying, rewarding in a way few things have been. And my knuckles eventually recovered.
“Then you hired Hawkeye to find her. Imagine what that did to her sense of peace.”
“What aboutoursense of peace?” I counter. Knowing she was out there all alone and potentially carrying our child, a little boy or girl, the next generation. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I wanted a family.