“You’re welcome. I know when to keep my mouth shut. I don’t want to get on your bad side if I can help it.” She had in the beginning, which made me feel awful. I apologized for being a bitch at first.
“It’s not a big deal. I think I needed it. I was just so nervous about working at my first real big girl job and I was so worried I was going to screw it up that I never opened my mouth. Another boss might have fired me, or just given up. You didn’t.” The praise made me blush.
I dropped Lilia off at her desk with another secret project (I’d given her quite a few lately) and headed to see if I could catch Dad. He was out to lunch, but Mrs. Andrews told me when he’d be back.
“Is everything all right, dear?” She noticed the poorly-concealed dark circles. Fucking fantastic.
“Sort of.”
“I, ah, overheard that Mr. Lucah Blythe was not going to be in to work today. I just wanted to know if something had happened.” She asked it in a really nice way, but I knew if I told her, it would get back to Dad and I didn’t want that to happen without talking to Lucah about telling him first.
“Things are going to be fine. They were just rough there for a few hours. I’m not sure if Lucah wants me talking about it, so—”
Mrs. Andrews put her hands up to stop me.
“Say no more. It’s completely personal. I didn’t want to pry, I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything I could do.”
Not really. It was up to Ryder.
“No, but thank you for the concern. It means a lot to me, and I know it does to Lucah as well.” Between Sloane, Chloe and Marisol being their fabulous selves and Mrs. Andrews and Dad being so nice about Lucah being out, we had all kinds of support that we never asked for. Funny how you never know who’s on your side until you need someone on your side.
“You’re family. You know I think of you as my own daughter.” She was going to make me cry if she kept talking so I just thanked her again and went back to my office so no one would see the tears forming in my eyes.
It took a few more minutes to get myself back together again and I realized I still had to go see Violet. That should be fun.
Her office was down the end of the hallway, on the opposite side as mine. I knocked, since her door was closed, but she called out to me to come in.
I didn’t know what I expected, but her office wasn’t that different from mine. Not too many pictures, or clutter or useless crap that a lot of other people seemed to need around them at all times. She had a few plants, and some generic watercolor prints, but that was about it.
She was typing on her computer, and didn’t look up.
“Hold on one second, I just have to finish this thought.” She typed a few more words and then looked up at me with a smile.
“Hi, Rory.”
“Hi, Violet.” There was another pause as I wondered if I could sit in her extra chair or if I should just stand there because this was just a quick question.
Violet seemed to realize that she hadn’t offered a chair.
“Oh, please, sit down. Sorry about that. I was thinking about something else.” I sat down and she put a smile on her face.
“So, what can I, um, do for you?” It didn’t feel like the right thing to say, but I said it anyway.
“This is kind of embarrassing, actually. I feel absolutely weird asking you about this, and feel free to tell me if this is completely inappropriate, but I just wanted to make sure that Lucah was okay? I noticed he was on this list of absent employees.” Every day, an email was sent around to everyone listing the absent employees, and those that were on vacation. It saved a lot of them from getting massive amounts of email when they weren’t there to check it.
“Oh.” It didn’t seem that . . . inappropriate, I guessed. She probably didn’t have anyone to ask, and she knew I would know the answer.
“He’s fine. Just, um, dealing with some things.” Maybe she could read between the lines. I almost wished she would have told me what she wanted to ask me ahead of time so I could have texted Lucah and asked him if it was okay to tell her. I mean, what was the protocol here? What would he want her to know?
“Say no more. I’m going to guess it involves that brother of his. Ryder was always trouble, even when he was barely a teenager.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling at the same time. “I’m sure he’s probably told you some of the stories.” Yes, he had. Also, could I go now?
“Anyway, I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t in a car accident or something. We might not be together anymore, obviously, but you never stop caring about someone, even when you break up.” How much caring were we talking about here? I almost wanted to stay and ask her, but I needed to get back to work so this day could be over, so I could go back to the hospital.
“No, he’s fine.” I wasn’t going to elaborate. If Lucah wanted to tell her later on, he could do it himself, but for now, it was not really her business.
“Oh, good. Sorry about this being so weird, but I don’t have his number anymore, and I didn’t know who to ask about it.”
“No, it’s fine. I get it.” Not really.