Page 234 of The Doctors Will See You Now

“Thank you, Jesus,” I said aloud, happy to be free of at least one current burden.

Detective Santos smirked. “It’s pronounced Hey-Zeus.”

Safely back in my apartment building—Detective Santos had been nice enough to have a cruiser give me a lift to a block up from the building—I stepped onto the elevator, waited for the doors to close, and then sank into the back wall.

All of my energy was gone.

The last ten hours felt like two hundred, and I hadn’t been lying when I told Detective Santos I would just sleep until it was over. Honestly, that felt like the only way to survive this shit.

The ding of the elevator pulled me from my thoughts, so I opened my eyes and stepped off as soon as the doors opened.

Digging the keys from my pocket, I inserted them in the lock and gave them a turn when the knob pulled right out of my hand.

“Harlow?” I asked, scrubbing at my face as she held the door open and gestured for me to come inside.

This is my apartment, right? What the hell is going on here?

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “How did you get in?”

Guiltily, she glanced behind her and then looked back to me. “With the help of my dad and your mom.”

“Christ.”

I looked past her to the couch. Bill and my mom sat there, hand in hand.

The last thing I wanted was to have to face my mom right now.

“Jesus Christ, Harlow!” I scrubbed a hand down my face and sighed in exasperation. I was fucking done. Part of me believed everything she was saying, but another part, the part that had literally been through the emotional ringer, didn’t have its usual ability to align important things like fault and consequences. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

She jerked like I’d struck her, and my mom jumped to her feet. “Enough, Scott. Come sit down and hear her out. We did, and that’s why we’re here. We all know you didn’t do this.” She moved closer, around the couch to right in front of me and took my hand. “All of us,” she stressed.

I pulled her into my arms and buried my face in her neck, a few tears pooling in my eyes. Sometimes, even at thirty-five years old, you just needed your mom.

She let me hold her for several minutes before she spoke again. “Come on, now. Let’s sit down.”

I nodded and moved with her, around the couch and the coffee table, and took a seat on a chair. I didn’t have it in me to sit next to someone right now.

“Harlow, honey,” my mom prompted. “Why don’t you tell Scott what you told us?”

Harlow nodded and took a seat on the couch. She looked like it killed her to do it, but she knew I was trying to put space between us, and by some miracle, chose to respect that.

“Okay. Well, you know I’d been struggling to come up with an article for this week.”

I nodded.

“And you know I told you last night that I’d finally come up with something.”

I nodded again.

“And you know that I asked you not to be mad?”

“Yes, Low. I know all of these things. What I didn’t know was that you were accusing me of being a rapist!”

“Scott, calm down, son,” Bill advised, taking a stand and putting a hand to my shoulder.

Harlow’s face lost all of its careful calm though. She charged, grabbing me by the jaws and ignoring all of the carefully constructed space I’d erected.

“I. Didn’t. Write. That.”