34

“Your sister is creepily neat.” Harper said as she walked through Darcy’s tiny living room. Ben followed her gaze and took in the two-bedroom apartment.

The wall leading from the hallway into the living room was lined with built-in bookshelves. The books were arranged by color family. An overstuffed leather chair sat in the bay window overlooking High Street. A perfectly accented gray and white throw was draped across the chair and a matching pillow was tucked in the corner. Her couch was dark gray, with similar pillows and blankets symmetrically arranged, and on the coffee table three different medical journals were set at ninety-degree angles across the smooth wooden surface.

Harper continued to wander, but Ben stopped in the center of the living room and lowered onto the sofa. His heart ached with the complete perfection of the space. His sister was drowning. She had always been meticulous about her space from the time they were too small to know they were moving more often than the rest of the world. After his rotation in psychiatry, he better understood Darcy’s need to keep order with her things. When her life felt chaotic, like moving every six to twelve months, Darcy could command her surroundings. Her apartment, the place he was fairly certain she had called home since starting her research project five years earlier, showed ample signs her life was spinning out of control long before her grant funding was terminated. And, unfortunately, Ben knew why.

“Hey, do you think your sister has a preference over which dress she wants for Christmas Eve?” Harper walked into the living room holding two dark green dresses. “Her note says, ‘one dark green dress from the middle of the closet for church.’ She has four dark green dresses. I assume she doesn’t want the silk brocade, but I don’t know if she wants the sweater dress or the shirt dress? What do you think?”

Harper looked at Ben for an answer, but when she locked her gaze with his she dropped both dresses and slid beside him on the couch. “Oh, my goodness, what’s wrong?”

Ben wiped the tears streaming down his cheeks and shook his head. “This place.”

“Your sister’s apartment?”

He nodded. “This is awful. She’s in so much pain. How did I not know? Why didn’t I force her to make up with me?”

Harper squeezed his hand and began to gently stroke his back. The comfort of her oozed through her touch. “You didn’t know. It’s OK. You two seem to be getting back on track.”

“Yes, but this…” he said, glancing around the room. “This is how Darcy deals with pain she can’t manage. The more out of control her life becomes, the more order she tries to make with her environment. This perfection isn’t simply losing her grant funding. She only found out about the grant the day of Lulu’s accident. She wouldn’t have had time. Does her bedroom look the same?”

Harper nodded. “Her closet is arranged by type of garment and then by color. Even for an interior designer it’s a bit much for me.” She unwound her scarf and slipped off her coat. “All right, Dr. Bennett Langston, it’s time to talk. What happened?” Harper loosely crossed her hands in her lap and leaned back into the corner of the sofa.

Silence hung in the small space, practically yelling at Ben to share the heartbreak of losing his sister for the last five years, or rather the elongated loss over the last decade. How could one secret have such a devastating impact? He glanced at Harper and settled into his end of the couch. “It started with a secret relationship.”