Thursday morning the doctor gave Dad a cautious green light health-wise, saying he could be back in the city as soon as the next day and back in the office next week.

I pulled out of the lane for the familiar drive back to Manhattan. My ankle was good enough to drive and Ava was curled up next to me in the passenger seat.

Since last night she’d been distant.

I wanted to ask her what had happened, but part of me was afraid she’d thought about my question and was ready to turn me down.

“Wait for me.”

“I’ll think about it.”

My fingers tapped out a rhythm on the steering wheel.

“You must be looking forward to being home,” I prompted.

“Mhmm.”

“Is Alexis ready to kill me for kidnapping you?”

“Probably.”

I was usually content to live in my head, but today the silence was agonizing.

An hour from home I pulled over at a gas station. I opened the door to get out but stalled, finally shutting it again with both of us still inside.

“Listen, Ava. I know something happened last night. It’s not like you to be this quiet.”

She set the sketchpad down and looked up at me with troubled eyes. “Nate, your mom said something. About Hannah. About the drugs.”

So that was it.

“Nate, did you ever—?”

“No. God, no, I never did drugs.” Reaching for the memories was like opening Pandora’s box. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about it, but if it’d get us back on solid ground, make her stop looking at me with the unease written all over her face right now, I’d tell her.

“I found the needle in the garbage when we were still at school. Hannah said it was a friend’s. I didn’t find any more, so I believed her. I should’ve questioned it. I didn’t.

“The night it happened, she and Jamie’d both been using. I heard it in her voice when she called to say they’d driven off the road before we got the tox reports. She was hurt. Scared. When I asked about Jamie, she started crying. I called an ambulance. It beat me there. I followed it to the hospital. She was still alive. Jamie … I never got to say anything to him.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Ava said softly.

I didn’t agree, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue. Too many people absolved themselves of responsibility in this world. This wasn’t only my fault, but it was my fault. If only I’d questioned the drugs, looked for answers behind Hannah’s pretty smile when she said they weren’t hers. If only I’d cared what she and Jamie were doing that summer, instead of blocking it out because I was afraid to ask. If only I’d been more careful before bringing that girl home, hadn’t let myself get completely bowled over by her at the expense of my family, my life, hers.

I forced my attention back to the present.

“Is that what was bothering you?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“All right. I’m going to get a drink. Want anything?”

She shook her head and I got out of the car.

The attendant at the gas station handed me the key for the dingy washroom when I asked. I threw up in the toilet, then looked at my pale face in the mirror.

Reflected in it I saw Jamie’s face. Hannah’s. My parents’ anguish, then their disappointment.

Last fall had been the darkest hell. To cope I’d stayed away from home. I’d drowned my pain in work during the day and a string of faceless girls at night. Drugs weren’t even an option thanks to the way Jamie and Hannah had died. But the panic attacks were the worst. I’d wake up with a weight on my chest, unable to breathe. Thinking about the way her voice had sounded on the phone and her small frame had looked in the hospital bed. The doctor telling me I’d never see my brother again. My parents’ faces when they found out.

Looking at the spotty bathroom mirror, I imagined pulling my fist back and smashing it into the glass. How it would crack, pieces flying. The pain and the satisfaction.

Instead of indulging, I delivered the key back to the attendant, grabbing a Snapple from the fridge and handing him a twenty. “Keep the change.”

I got back into the car, feeling Ava’s eyes on me.

“I need you to understand something. You were the first one in months who didn’t ignore my issues or send me pitying looks. Since then I’ve been trying. Trying to get back on the path I’ve been working toward instead of sabotaging myself. No matter what you feel for me or decide to do, I want you to know that you’ve done more for me than anyone could’ve.”

I started up the car and pulled back onto the road.

Her voice a few minutes later surprised me.

“You said yesterday you didn’t choose to be a lawyer, or that you don’t remember doing it. Do you ever think about being something else?”

I frowned. “I’ve invested the last eight years of my life, Ava. Even if I wanted to be something else, I wouldn’t know where to start.” I’d planned on being partner in my father’s firm since sophomore year of high school, and taking it over some day. Making it better by finding a way to balance pro bono work with the high-profile cases Townsend Price was known for.

“It’s easier than you think. Decide what you want and then take a leap.”

I shot her a look. “Maybe easy for you. You do what you want, when you want. No worrying about the future or the past.” It was ballsy and I admired her for it. But I had too much at stake.

“Lex’s parents wanted her to run a bank and she turned her back on it.” Ava said it as if it was exactly the same situation I was in. The same expectations.

“That’s great. But I’m not— Hold on.” A call from the office came in on my cell. I slid on my headset and tapped it to answer.

“Nathan. How are you doing?” Emma’s voice.

“Better now. Thanks for the crutches.”

“Anytime. Listen, we need to talk. I think we’re near a resolution on one case.”

The familiar rush surged through me at the thought of diving back into the fray. “Trust you to wrap up my cases without me.”

“Well, we’re not there yet. Adams just has a couple of questions. He thinks we have enough to press them into a settlement.” The defendant in this case was an insurance company that had taken a man’s pension from him and refused him long-term disability after an accident at work. I’d put in weeks on this case, and it was good to see it coming to a close.

“Put the squeeze on. I don’t care what their number is.”

“Great. Are you coming in this afternoon?”

I thought about it. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“Glad to have you back, Nathan.”

The comforting feeling of being competent took over, fading out some of the loss of control. Of not being able to be who I wanted or with who I wanted.

When I rang off, Ava was watching me with a strange expression. “It’s not that you can’t, is it? You love this.” Her voice was cooler than it’d been a few minutes ago.

I tried to remember what we were talking about. “Love what?”

“This!” She waved a finger at me, the car. “Who you are. What you do. It’s not that Townsend Price needs you, Nate. You need it. I could see the way your eyes lit up when you were on the phone. Even if you didn’t choose it, you crave it.”

Her words got my back up. “I thought you said I craved righting wrongs.”

“You do. But is that all you want? Or is it about following in the Townsend footsteps?”

We’d entered the city and crossed the bridge. It was getting harder to split my attention between the road and our conversation.

“So you’re questioning my motives because I can’t see myself dropping everything to start over.”

Her voice tensed. “That’s not what I’m saying. But it’s easy to dream, Nate. It’s harder to follow through when you can’t make everyone happy and still do what you want.”

Something about her words chafed. “Are you talking about me or about us?”

Ava looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world. “Nate, you ask me to wait for you, say things will work as soon as the lawsuit isn’t between us. But we’re not even in midtown and you’re back in lawyer mode. This week we were in an alternate universe. It was easy to get lost in each other. Now we’re back to our lives and everything that pulls us apart.”

What does that even mean?

I didn’t have an answer, but I turned it over in my mind.

When I pulled up in front of our building a few minutes later instead of heading for parking, Ava looked surprised. “You’re not coming in?”

“Not right now. I’m going to the office for a few hours.” I had a suit at work. Going in meant I could finish out my day and do something productive.

She shut the door, leaning in the window. Her expression said she’d proven her point but was sad to have done it.

“All right, Nate. I’ll see you later.”