“Don’t be silly,” Nora said, already feeling like an ungrateful heel. “You’re amazing. A little too amazing sometimes, but still amazing.”
“So I didn’t overstep my boundaries by cooking a meal for your family?”
She hesitated before saying, “Of course not.”
Jane plunked a hand on her hip. “Tell me the truth.”
Nora swallowed. “Okay. I’m sorry. The truth is I did feel a pang of jealousy seeing you enjoy a meal with my family when I wasn’t there.” She took a breath. “I was worried about being friends with my boss, and now I know why. I want to be myself, but I’m afraid of disappointing you, letting you down, and making you regret hiring me.”
“No. Stop,” Jane said. “This is my fault. I need to learn boundaries.”
Nora nodded. Jane was right about that.
Silence floated between them before Jane turned to open her car door.
“I’ve hurt your feelings, haven’t I?” Nora asked. Exactly what she’d been afraid of doing.
Jane shook her head. “It’s not your fault. It’s all on me. This is how I scare people away. I’m needy, and your family is so kind and inclusive . . . and I thought you must be so busy with two kids and a husband, and I just wanted to help take the load off for a day.”
Nora felt horrible. As she should. “I’m sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were only trying to help, and here I am making you feel bad about it.” She met Jane’s gaze. “Let’s pretend we never had this conversation and start over.”
“Really?”
Guilt rolled over Nora for not only hurting Jane’s feelings but wishing in that moment that Jane had never reached out to her with a job offer. Her relationship with Jane, in such a short time, felt like a wild roller-coaster ride. Despite all that, she said, “Really.”
“You’re the best friend a girl could have.” Jane opened her arms, and Nora hesitated before stepping closer. Jane wrapped her long, slender arms around Nora and pulled her so close that Nora’s left cheek was pressed against Jane’s perfect breasts. Nora smelled a hint of floral with musky notes; the fragrance wasn’t aggressive or overwhelming, but being held this way felt awkward, restrictive, and it made Nora feel vulnerable. And yet she didn’t move, figuring one slightly aggressive hug wasn’t going to kill her.
When Jane finally let go, Nora’s relief was palpable. And that made Nora sad. She should be feeling happy to have a friend like Jane—a friend she could be honest with, someone who would be there for her when she needed help. A friend she could trust.
But Nora felt none of that. Perhaps she was being too hard on Jane, and true friendship would come later.
Jane climbed in behind the wheel of her BMW.
Nora waved goodbye as she drove off, determined not to allow herself to feel guilty about what she was feeling. Maybe this was exactly why Jane had a difficult time making and keeping friends—she tried too hard to make everyone like her.
Nora headed back to the house. Someone had let Tank inside. Excited to see her, Tank rushed to greet her, his bottom wriggling. Nora scratched Tank’s rump just above the tail. “You’re a good dog, Tank.”
The dog’s toenails clicked against the wood floor as he followed Nora up the stairs. She made a mental note to bring Tank to the groomer, but right now she wanted to check on Trevor. While sitting at the dinner table, Nora had noticed his pale face and downturned lips, and it troubled her.
Trevor reached for his desk lamp and flipped the switch off. Even with his door open, it was pretty dark. He started counting. “One . . . two . . .” His eyes shot open, and he flipped the light back on. His heart was racing wildly inside his chest. He couldn’t even count to three.
Even though he was seeing a therapist, and she was nice and everything, she really hadn’t helped him much. In fact, nothing had changed since he’d nearly drowned. He’d always been what his mom referred to as “fragile” as far as being afraid of the dark, and normal kid things, like thinking there was a monster under the bed waiting to grab his foot if he climbed out of bed. When he was eight or nine, he used to wake up in the middle of the night in a state of terror. He would shout and scream as he ran through the house to wake everyone up, certain there was an intruder in his room. The incident in the pool, though, had changed everything. He avoided going out at all and spent the majority of his free time in his room. He used to bring their dog, Tank, for long walks. Lately his mom or sister did it.
Tank came running into his room a few seconds later, and he pulled his earbuds out.
His mom entered, too. “Hi, kiddo. I’m going to take a shower and go to bed. Don’t stay up too late.”
“Okay.”
“Did you enjoy your time with Jane?”
“It was okay.”
Mom looked doubtful. She wasn’t easily fooled. “What happened?” she asked.
He shrugged, then leaned over and petted Tank on the head. “Good boy,” he said. “Jane put Tank outside for no reason. He wasn’t bothering anyone.”
“But other than that, all was good? It looked like you were all having fun when I came home.”
“Sure. It was fine.”
“You’re doing that leg thing again. Did something else happen?”
Sure enough, his leg was bouncing like it usually did when he was upset or worried. He did it so often that he didn’t even realize it anymore. “I guess it just seemed like Jane was trying too hard.”
“To get to know you?”
He nodded. “She seemed desperate, Mom. She wanted to know everything about us. She asked me to set the table while she cooked . . . and then came the questions, one after another, about Dad and Hailey, sports and hobbies and teachers at school. When she found out I like to do coding and programming, she got super excited and said I could intern at her company.”
“Well, I think you’re a little young for that.”
“That’s what I told her, but she said it was her company and that she was in charge and could do whatever she wanted.”
“I guess that’s true to some extent, but—”
“You want to know what’s really weird?” Trevor asked before she could finish her sentence.
“What?”
“I’m a pro at finding out everything you would ever want to know about anyone on the planet, but I can’t find anything on Jane Bell. At least not before she started her company.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Nora said. “After she first contacted me, I did my own search and came up empty-handed.”
“It’s weird.”
“Not everyone spends time on social media.”
“Yeah, but it’s not easy to completely erase all data,” he said. “All you need is an email for someone to collect info on you.”
“True, but there are plenty of removal tools to erase people’s pasts.”
“But those don’t always remove cached information.” Although his mom had worked for years at a company that created, tested, and validated chips used in desktop and mobile devices, and now sold products that streamlined data for companies, she didn’t seem to know much about the inner workings of it all. Trevor had been fascinated by computer technology since he was six years old.