Coming Home(95)

“Okay, relax,” Leah said with a laugh as she sat down next to her. “We’re two college-educated women; we should be able to put this thing together in a couple of hours. I mean, there are instructions, right? We’ll just follow them. How hard can it be?”

Holly looked at her incredulously as she gestured to the disaster on the floor in front of them, and Leah smiled. “Alright, go in the kitchen. Take a break. Get us something to snack on and let me reorganize everything in here.”

“Okay,” Holly said as she stood, stretching her arms over her head before she hopped over the mess in front of her and made her way to the kitchen.

Leah started by flattening out all the crumpled pieces of paper and figuring out which ones were the instructions, and then she organized all the planks, screws, bolts, and panes of glass in the order in which they’d be needing them. By the time Holly came back with chips and salsa and a beer for each of them, she had worked out a fairly straightforward system. She explained it to Holly, and for the first ten minutes or so, the only words spoken between them were either asking for parts or reading instructions.

Holly was working on securing one of the shelves to the backboard while Leah attached the hinges to the glass doors, when suddenly—without even fully deciding to do it—Leah spoke.

“Danny told me his secret.”

“Really?” Holly said, sifting through the pile of screws. “When?”

“Yesterday,” she said, this time with a bit of trepidation as she realized she’d just opened the door to a conversation she wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to have.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” Holly said, awkwardly twisting the screwdriver with both hands. “So…what is it?”

Leah chewed on the inside of her lip as she finished securing the hinge. She had never been as conflicted over something as she was about this—in fact, as the day wore on, the warnings were getting louder while the pull she felt toward him intensified. And as uneasy as she was to discuss this with Holly—or with anyone for that matter—maybe doing so would help her start to make sense of what she was feeling.

“Okay, well, remember how I told you his friend died a year ago?”

“Yeah,” she said, shaking out her hand before she continued twisting the screwdriver.

“Well, turns out he’s been on life support this whole time. Danny says he’s gone. No brain activity or anything. But his family is still hoping for him to turn around.”

Holly grimaced. “Ugh, that’s so sad. Did he finally tell you how it happened?”

“Yeah,” she said, her stomach turning. “He, um…it was a bar fight.”

Holly’s hand stopped twisting as she glanced up. “A bar fight?”

Leah nodded.

“So like, he was killed?”

“Technically, yeah.”

“Oh my God. That’s horrible.”

“I know,” Leah replied softly, looking back down as she started working on the next hinge.

Holly sat there unmoving for a second before she shook her head, turning her attention back to the screwdriver. “As awful as that is, I don’t understand why he was so afraid to tell you that.”

Here we go.

“Well, that’s not the secret. I mean, that’s part of it, but…that wasn’t the part he was nervous to tell me.”

“Okay…” Holly trailed off, leaving the floor open for her to continue.

Leah cleared her throat softly before she said, “Danny was there the night it happened. He got involved. Went after the guy who did it.”