I hang around Ellie’s apartment and I try to make her better. I try, and I try, and I try and nothing works. I offer to make her food and I clean up, but it’s all futile. There’s nothing I can do to take the pain away. After a while I bury myself in work. I turn on my laptop and do what I do best.

It’s not official yet, but I have my job back. It happened sometime during the fog of the last few weeks. The report that Ellie made against Blake became public knowledge and that was what pushed the Board of Directors to make the decision to ax him. Well, as soon as they did that, my attorneys reached out to them and made a suggestion. Since they didn’t have any good options for Blake’s replacement, why not go on the offensive and blame my firing on him. This isn’t entirely untrue. In fact, it’s probably ninety-nine percent true, so that’s what they went with. Saving themselves some paper and effort, Owl’s public relations team only had to put out one statement: firing him for allegations of sexual misconduct and hiring me back on a temporary basis.

But all of my good news is impossible to share at a time like this. Ellie is lost to the world. She’s here, but not really here. Her body is present, but what about the rest of her? Where is she? I look at her staring out of the window. Her best friend is dead. And there’s nothing I can do to fix it. I can’t bring her back. I can’t even say anything that would make it alright. And now, there’s this damn letter. Why did Caroline have to leave that stupid letter? Why couldn’t she just let Ellie go on believing that this whole thing was an accident? Why does Ellie have to be the only one who knows the truth?

When things get really tough, when I can’t bear to watch her suffer all day and all night, I go into the office. I lie to her about where I’m going, even though she doesn’t really ask, and I leave. The world outside continues to spin around the sun as if nothing has happened. It doesn’t know anything about the sorrow that Ellie’s experiencing inside her apartment, and maybe it’s better for it.

After work, I wander the streets of New York to kill time. I stop by the library, check out a couple of books, and look through the romance section. I don’t see any of Ellie’s books there. Maybe they should be. She has so many people reading and buying her eBooks, why shouldn’t she be stocked in the library as well? Unfortunately, this isn’t a rhetorical question. I know the answer. Self-published books, no matter how good they are, don’t get sold to libraries. At least, not very often. Libraries are mainly interested in buying traditionally published books because there’s still a stigma against Indies. Ellie mentioned this earlier and I found out a lot more about this ever since. I would really like to give Ellie the gift of seeing her books in a real bookstore or library. Perhaps that can take her out of her funk.

I come back to Ellie’s apartment with a heavy heart. This place is dreary and dark and full of bad memories. There are also good ones, but the black ones dominate right now. I want to go back to my place, but she refuses to come with me. She says she wants to be at home right now. Of course, I could go home by myself. But can I really do that? Should I? What if Ellie gets so sad that she also does something…irreversible? Until Caroline, I did not think this was possible. But now? Ellie is not herself. She’s lost somewhere and until I get her back, I don’t trust her on her own. I need to make sure that she’s going to be okay.

“I picked up some Thai food,” I say, placing all the takeout bags on the kitchen island.

“Okay,” she yells from the bedroom. I wait for her to come out, but she doesn’t.

“What are you doing?” I walk over. I find her sitting at her desk, staring out of the window.

“Nothing really. Just trying to write.”

“How’s it going?”

“Not well. It’s all…blank. It just doesn’t seem worth it anymore.”

It’s statements like these that really make me worry. Her writing has always been an escape for her. It has always been something that she absolutely had to do. Even before she wrote romance. I remember her telling me about writing her short stories and going over each word, sentence and paragraph with a fine-tooth comb. Her writing is the most definitive thing about her; it’s the way that she relates to and understands the world.

“Maybe you should just take some time off, to clear your head,” I suggest, but what the hell do I know about writing? Is time off even a good thing? Or does it just entrench you further in this pit of writer’s block? The latter is typically the case when it comes to writing code - something I do know a thing or two about.

“Hey, come out and have some food,” I say after she doesn’t reply. “I want to tell you something.”

Ellie grabs a seat across from me and picks up a spring roll. She stares at for a while and plays with it but doesn’t take a bite.

“I should’ve told you this sooner, I know,” I start. “But with everything that has been going on, I wasn’t sure where to start.”

“Okay.”

“I sort of got my job back.”

I watch her as she processes this statement. After a moment, her eyes light up.

“What do you mean?”

I give her the overview of what has been happening over the last few weeks. She puts the spring roll down as she listens. At the end, she gets out of her seat and wraps her arms tightly around my neck.

“Oh my God, are you serious?”

I nod. She kisses me on the lips. Tears run down her cheeks and she starts shaking uncontrollably. I pull her close to me and hold her until she stops.

“Are you okay?” I ask after a moment.

“Yes, of course! I’m more than okay,” she says, wiping her tears. “I’m just so happy for you. So, is this for good?”

“I don’t know yet. They fired Blake for good. And the board asked me to come back for a brief period of time as an interim CEO. Probably to keep the peace so to speak, to make sure that the investors don’t start scrambling and the stock price doesn’t continue to fall.”

“That’s great,” she whispers, giving me another kiss.

“They say that they like my ideas, the ones that Blake rejected when he took over. And at least, they never really made it clear to the public why I left, they’re now blaming it all on Blake to save some face.”

“Well, it was pretty much his fault.”

“Very true.”

I’m honestly shocked by how well Ellie takes the news. I mean, I knew that she would be happy for me, but not this happy. I didn’t think she would have much of a reaction.

“I’m actually sort of surprised by your reaction,” I say as we both dig into the Thai food. “You have been in such a funk lately—“

“Yes, I know,” Ellie says, finishing her spring roll and reaching for another. “And this news…I’m just so happy for you. Everything was just going to shit, you know. This really makes me feel better.”

We enjoy the rest of our dinner over a few episodes of Friends on Netflix. I’ve only seen a few of them, but Ellie finds that unacceptable. According to her, Friends is the type of show that will always improve your mood no matter how down in the dumps you are. A few hours later, right before we are about to turn in, Ellie’s phone rings.

“I’m not going to answer it,” she says. “I just want to get into bed and snuggle.”

“I like the sound of that.”

She brushes her teeth and her hair and climbs into bed next to me. I’m about to turn off the light when she reaches over me and looks at her phone.

“This is the DA from Maine,” she says. “What could he have to say?”

I shrug and look at the time. It’s after nine in the evening. Probably nothing good.

“It looks like he left a voice mail.”

She puts it on speaker phone.

“Hi, Ellie, I’m sorry to call you so late. But I’m afraid I don’t have very good news. I am going to have to drop the case against Tom Lackey since we no longer have Caroline’s testimony. There may be a way to move forward if you are willing to be the star witness and your friend, Aiden Black, is also willing to testify, but I’m not sure. It’s a long shot. Can you please give me a call back at your earliest convenience?”

“He’s going to drop the case?” Ellie asks with tears welling up in her eyes. I shake my head.

“Not necessarily. Not if you and I testify on her behalf.”

Ellie starts shaking and buries her head in her knees.

“He still said it was a long shot.”

I put my arm around her shoulders and pull her close to me.