Barry sighs again. When he resumes speaking, his voice is barely a whisper, so soft Holly has to lean in to hear him.
“Elliot came to me and said you were using untested, unapproved human components in some of the samples. He found them in your lab. He raised the possibility of contamination in the actual products. He said you were . . . I believe his word was sloppy.”
The blood drains from Holly’s face. For Elliot, sloppy is the worst insult. Code for not following protocol. For working outside of ethical guidelines. For manipulating data.
In short, for everything she’s been doing.
“He must have misunderstood,” she says desperately. “He didn’t realize what . . .”
Barry raises his hand. When he speaks, his voice is so calm he might as well be discussing the weather. “He showed me the samples, Holly. I don’t know what you’ve been doing, and I don’t want to know. Dr. Harper is in charge for now, and she’s been warned to watch out for any irregularities. I sent Elliot away with a fat settlement, a strict nondisclosure, and a noncompete clause.” He shrugs. “If you prefer, you can think of it as an early retirement—that’s how I spun it. He can spend the rest of his life researching the life cycle of the purple sea slug or whatever the hell he’s into, sitting on a beach in Tahiti. I hear it’s a magical place.”
“Elliot’s a scientist,” Holly protests, but the fight has gone out of her. She can’t look at Barry. “He won’t be quiet for long.”
“He just has to be quiet for now, that’s all that matters. If he opens his mouth, if he reaches out to anyone, I’ll find a way to discredit him. It’s his choice. He can fund his own lab or he can lose it all. And Holly, keep in mind he came to me. Not you. He was all set to throw you under the bus. I saved you.”
“But why . . .” She trails off. It’s not the magnitude of Elliot’s betrayal that stops her, as terrible as it is. It’s the look in Barry’s eyes. It’s one she’s seen a hundred times before, an expression he wears when he’s facing down a particularly knotty problem and thinks he’s discovered how to make it go away. Always before, seeing that look has been a relief—it means whatever obstacle she’s facing is about to disappear. Now it scares her because it’s clear the problem he’s trying to solve is her.
“Why did he come to me? Whatever you were working on, it shocked him. He told me he didn’t know who you were anymore.” He passes a hand over his bald head, briefly closes his eyes. “And I have to say, there’s a lot of that going around.”
Not for the first time, she wonders what would have happened if she’d told Barry the truth from the beginning, when they’d first met.
If she’d told him, even if he’d thought she was crazy, her life might have been so different. To have her secrets out in the open would have meant having someone in her life besides Jack, besides Eden. Someone she could lean on. But the secrets she carried had become so much a part of her by then they had formed a hard exoskeleton, a barrier between herself and the rest of the world. She’d never thought anyone could believe her.
If anyone could have, it would have been Barry.
“I’m sorry,” she says at last. “You’ll never know how sorry I am.”
He looks at her for a long moment, his eyes probing hers. But the exoskeleton holds. He doesn’t see beneath it. Or maybe there’s nothing left to see.
“Look, Holly, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” he says, softening. “But right from the beginning, we were a team. What happened to that? If you were having trouble, why didn’t you come to me? Why jeopardize everything we’ve worked so hard for? And if you don’t want the company anymore, if it’s all too much, why not talk about selling it?”
Holly thinks of the new faces around the table, the new receptionist. Is that what Barry’s preparing for? A Darling Skin Care without her? “But I don’t want to sell,” she says.
He exhales and swivels his chair away, then back again. “You could have fooled me. Look, let’s take some time and think about it, okay? We used to run this place like it was a family and Darling Skin Care was our child. But maybe it should just be business from now on. I handle the day-to-day operations and you supply the famous last name, that beautiful, mysterious Darling cachet at launches and special events.”
Barry settles behind the table again, shuffles the papers in front of him. “Let me know if you run into any problems with the launch this week and I’ll do the same. I’ll have my assistant schedule a meeting before you leave to debrief. And Holly?” He glances up. “Don’t dismiss the idea of selling out of hand. The company could be worth millions in another year or two. It might turn out to be what you want after all.” He pauses, gives her a level look. “Besides, if you keep on this way, we might not have a choice.”
Holly doesn’t answer. What else is there to say? And suddenly the rage that fueled her march to Barry’s office is back. Barry’s secretary, the people waiting to see him in the outer room, keep their heads down. Some have seen her storm before. But what they don’t know is that she isn’t furious with Barry or Elliot.
She’s angry at herself.
Chapter Thirty-One
Grief, Holly knows from experience, doesn’t begin the day a person dies. The loss can start when the person is still alive, when the time is taken up with doctors’ appointments and tests and treatments and plans. The busyness helps hide the fact that you’ve already begun grieving.
Right now, Darling Skin Care is still the company she built with Barry, and she’s still busy. She does the afternoon meet and greet with another round of celebrities and beauty editors, then sits on a magazine panel with other skin care experts. Work has always been her escape, and right now it’s no different. But it’s a double-edged sword. What’s keeping her so engaged is also what she could lose. It’s a strange kind of torture, seeing the company as something that might go on without her. As just a business, as Barry put it, instead of the almost living entity the two of them coaxed into being.
But being tortured is better than going home to her empty apartment. Ever since her conversation with Barry, she’s been keenly aware of what she’s missing. She’s never had a personal life, not really. Not since the car crash. She’s had Jack, and then Eden, and a career she loved. And soon she’ll have none of the above.
She finds herself thinking of Christopher, the warmth of his back when she leaned against him on the bike, the ridiculous way he sparks something inside of her whenever he’s around, and it makes her blush. She shakes her head at herself. What’s inside her chest beats like it’s supposed to, but it’s just muscle memory. It’s not a real heart, and it hasn’t been for years.
* * *
When the building is quiet and most of the employees have gone for the day, she heads to her lab. Knowing Elliot was there, that he went through her notes and experiments, makes her feel violated. Still, she pores over them with a critical eye, trying to see the information the way he might have. Perhaps she’ll find something she’s missed before.
She works until late into the night, meticulously going over line after line of data. At some point, she falls asleep at her desk. She must, because she dreams that the entire building is filled with pixie dust, a shimmering golden blanket that carpets the floors, a thousand times more beautiful than the product she designed in the lab. And then the sun comes up and the soft dawn light touches the room, turning it from clinical white to rose gold. It’s lovely, and she reaches out a hand to capture it on her skin. But someone is calling her, and at the sound the sunbeams and dust scatter.
“Holly?” Barry’s shaking her awake. The light is ordinary fluorescent light, harsh and cold.
She blinks blearily, trying to make sense of his words, to shake off the loveliness of the dream and clear her head.