Prologue
Harper grabbed another empty box and started to fill it with old law textbooks. A glint of light caught on her wedding ring, and she stared at her hand. The ring was only a few grams, yet it felt like a tether, holding her to the Earth.
When she’d first gotten married, it had felt foreign on her finger, yet exciting. It had represented the everlasting love that she’d had for Kelly, her brand-new wife. Their love had no beginning or ending, just like that ring. It had codified the years they’d spent together, all leading up to that moment when they’d pledged their futures together.
After years of marriage, her ring had begun to feel like part of her body. When she took it off to shower or lift weights, it felt like she was missing something. If she forgot to put it back on, the depression in her skin and the tan line left the ghost of a ring all day while she was in the office, and she longed to go home in the evening and put it back on. She just felt off without it.
After she was blindsided by the devastating and senseless accident that stole her life, her ring weighed a lot more, like a lead weight that pulled her into the depths of despair. In the months since Kelly, her wife and soulmate, had passed away, she’d lost so much weight that now the ring swam on her finger, and she could barely keep it from falling off.
Yet, she couldn’t bear the thought of removing it. It was the physical link—in every moment of every day—to Kelly. The only one she still had.
Chicago, their condo, their routine…had also become aweight belt like the ones she and Kelly had used when they’d learned to scuba dive in Costa Rica. But rather than allowing her to find weightlessness like in Playa del Coco, it was holding her down in her grief, and she’d begun to fear she might never break the surface again. She’d finally had to accept that she couldn’t keep living their old life. In their condo. She couldn’t keep working at the same law firm where they’d both made partner and had offices a few feet from each other.
Every morning, when she opened her eyes, her loss clawed at her.
Every time she got on the “L” and had to sit next to a stranger, she was reminded that her forever seatmate was gone.
Every time she walked past the office that was once Kelly’s and saw the man the firm had hired tobackfillher position, it felt like thousands of tiny glass shards were scraping every square millimeter of her skin.
She couldn’t live like that anymore. So she spun her wedding ring one more time for good luck, taped the box of law textbooks Kelly had insisted they keep, and got ready to move south.
Chapter One
Charlotte Paulson stepped out of the convertible she’d been cooped up in for nearly twenty-four hours and squinted into the blistering midday Florida sun.
She didn’t have any sunglasses and was going to have to rectify that as soon as possible. She acknowledged that these were the sorts of problems she was bound to continue encountering. Impulsively pointing her car south on I-95 with nothing but the clothes on her back and a nearly empty briefcase was bound to have consequences. But she hadn’t known what to do after the investment banking firm she’d given her life to for nearly two decades had betrayed her. It was the first time in twenty-plus years that she wasn’t checking the markets incessantly, though not by choice. Her company had confiscated her phone as they’d escorted her out the door, making it impossible.
She’d been planning to go see her parents in Florida. Yet, as the land surrounding the highway had turned from trees to the lights of the city, a tightness had formed in her chest at the thought of them seeing her like this—broken and humiliated—and wouldn’t let her go. Her parents had always hated her fast-paced Wall Street lifestyle, and now that it had blown up in her face…facing them felt unimaginable. The closer she’d gotten to the exit that would take her to Gainesville, the harder the vise had tightened until she could barely breathe. Her fingers had cramped on the steering wheel and refused to take the exit rather than staying with I-95.
But the second she was past the large interchange, the lights of the confluence of highways behind her, the vise immediately released. So she’d just kept driving.
But without the GPS in her cell phone, she’d had no idea where she could even go. Her foggy brain had given her no choice but to keep driving. Miami was three hundred and forty-eight miles away. She thought maybe that would do.
When she’d gotten too tired, she’d rolled down the windows and screamed along with nineties’ and early two thousands’ angry rock music. Screaming out her hurt and anger and frustration and devastation at the top of her lungs to “You Oughta Know” felt amazing.
As the sun had risen out her left window somewhere in south Florida, she’d felt more awake, so she’d driven through the congestion that was Palm Beach to Miami, and it was just natural that when I-95 ended and she was suddenly on US Highway One, she kept going and didn’t stop until the road ended in Key West.
But now, eyes burning from the incredibly bright sun and standing in a rumpled pantsuit with an empty briefcase in front of what looked like a luxury hotel, she really wished she’d grabbed some clothes or toiletries. Or at least had a pair of sunglasses in her car.
“Ma’am, are you checking in?”
Charlotte blinked at the young Latinx man who barely looked old enough to drive and tried to clear the clouds her brain seemed to be locked in after not having slept for thirty-five hours. “Uh, yeah, I guess I am.” She slipped him a twenty with her keys and walked into the opulent lobby.
“Welcome to the Aqua Blu hotel, ma’am,” a sharply dressed receptionist said from behind the massive desk. “Are you checking in?”
“I’m hoping to,” Charlotte said. “But I don’t have areservation.”
The receptionist—Sally, she-her, according to her name tag—said, “You’re in luck. It’s the offseason, so we have a variety of rooms. Were you looking for the most economical, or are you looking for something with a view, a little higher in the building and facing the sunset, or a suite, perhaps?”
Charlotte hesitated as she contemplated what she wanted. Tried to contemplate, anyway. Her sleep-addled brain was not working the way she was accustomed to. “Maybe the…sunset room you mentioned?”
Sally smiled and nodded. “Sure. I just need your ID and credit card.”
Charlotte slid her hand into her cavernous briefcase and grabbed her small wallet.
When the electronic lock clicked on her door a few minutes later and Charlotte walked into the room, she tossed her soft leather bag on the floor, not caring where it landed. She shrugged her jacket from her shoulders and threw it haphazardly at the desk while walking to the sliding door. The door slid open with almost no effort.
The warm, humid air was a sharp contrast to the cold, air-conditioned room. Charlotte desperately wanted to sleep, but despite her exhaustion, the caffeine still jittering through her veins and making her hands quiver against the balcony railing didn’t seem likely to let that happen for a while, and she couldn’t imagine sitting with her thoughts for hours until her body metabolized the caffeine. Especially not sober. That was way too depressing.