Author's Note:

AU from this chapter on.

Chapter Three:

That first night when Grace had gone home and told Will what had happened, he'd laughed it off and assured her that Karen couldn't have been serious and that she would probably show up in the office the next day. Grace went to bed that night hoping that Will was right and trying to drown out the little voice inside of her that knew he wasn't.

The next day when she went into the office she spent the majority of the time trying to distract herself from looking at the clock. As 11:30 came and went with no sign of Karen flying through the door, her heart sank. She continued to hope against hope but by 1:00, she could no longer ignore the obvious truth; Karen wasn't coming. She was surprised how sad she was about it. At first she tried to be angry – how dare Karen just quit like that after all of the crap that she'd pulled over the years and the things she'd let her get away with – but that didn't work. Then she tried to be angry at herself – why had she done that to Karen and why did she have to be so dismissive of her afterward? That one stuck a little more but it still didn't come close to overshadowing the sadness. The office was so quiet that Grace finally couldn't stand to be there anymore and left early.

The next day passed slowly and Grace did more useless doodling than actual designing before giving up and leaving early once again. Finally, on the third day, Grace went into the office and made the conscious decision to force herself to work. She wouldn't allow herself to leave until she had designed something so she immediately opened her notebook and began to sketch.

Sometime later, her work station was now covered in crumpled up rejects and her pencil had officially become dull. Her realization that it needed to be sharpened was immediately followed by her realization that she had no idea where the sharpener was. As she looked around the office for it, she wondered how it could be that someone who used a pencil every day for nine years had never found the need for a pencil sharpener. The answer to her question came as her eyes landed upon the elusive object sitting dead center on Karen's desk.

It appeared that in addition to filing her nails and consuming copious amounts of alcohol every day, Karen had also spent her time making sure every one of Grace's pencils was perfectly sharpened and returned back to their holders to await being used. Grace wondered how she had never noticed that and kicked herself for never thanking Karen.

Grace sharpened her pencil, forcing herself to put Karen out of her mind and get back to work. Suddenly a bit of inspiration struck and Grace began to sketch. She wasn't sure how long she had been working but just as she put the finishing touches on her design, she was startled by the phone ringing.

"Grace Adler Designs," she spoke into the receiver, "Oh, yes, I do remember you Mrs. Zelman…Well, congratulations on your new home and I would love the opportunity to work with you again. We'll just need to set up a time for a consultation so that I can see the space and get a better idea of what we have to work with. When would be a good time for you…Sure, the week of the 3rd should work for me. Let me just take a look at my calendar to get an exact date…"

As she sat in Karen's chair and pulled the calendar toward her, a hint of Karen's perfume wafted up and she was hit with another wave of sadness. She shook it off and flipped the calendar page to the following month to look at the week that she needed. There was something strange looking about this page in the calendar but she couldn't put her finger on it.

After settling on the 6th for her consultation with Mrs. Zelman, Grace wrote it into the calendar and flipped the page back to the current month. It was then that she realized what had been wrong with the next month – with the exception of a few appointments written in black ink on various dates, it was completely blank. It was a stark contrast to the current month's page which in addition to the appointments and meetings with clients written in standard black ink was covered with colorful doodles and messages written in Karen's handwriting. Grace flipped back further and saw that every previous page looked the same and she couldn't help but smile. Some of the doodles were funny and wildly-inappropriate like the one on February 4th that had a cartoon of a woman showing her breasts and wearing beads sitting on top of the words 'Mardi Gras' written in bold red letters. Some were just plain Karen-esque like the doodle on April 10th which simply said 'Pharmacist' and was covered with an array of multi-colored pills or the one on June 3rd that said 'Vodka Delivery' and had a startlingly accurate depiction of a bottle of Grey Goose on it. Then there were the ones that melted her heart a little like the one on February 14th which was covered in hearts and said, "Valentine's Day, have flowers and chocolates delivered for Gracie," or the one on June 1st, which had a picture of a donut decorated with an American flag made of frosting and said, "National Donut Day, pick up Krispie Kreme's for Gracie," or the one on September 23rd that said, "One week until Gracie's birthday. BUY PRESENT," and was underlined in red.

As she flipped through the calendar and saw all of Karen's little reminders, her heart clenched when the realization hit her that most of them were about her. She finally got to the last page that Karen had decorated before she'd quit and saw all of the colorful illustrations leading up to the days before she'd left and then the empty white boxes representing the days after she'd gone and Grace couldn't help but make the connection between those boxes on the calendar and her life. Karen made things fun and bright and cheerful when she was around and now that she was gone everything was dull and empty and boring.

This was the first time that Grace allowed herself to hear the voice in the back of her head telling her that she might have lost her friend for good. She had been so miserable being without Karen at work for the past three days but the idea that she might not come back at all and that Grace would have to be alone in the office, or worse hire someone else to do Karen's job, seemed unimaginable. As she allowed her fingers to trace over the designs drawn on the calendar, Grace tried to picture what it would be like to not have Karen around the office. There would be no one there to ignore the phone, or spill nail polish on the fabric swatches, or make fun of her outfits, or criticize her dates. There would be no one there to sharpen her pencils, or bring her donuts, or listen to her complain, or give her advice, or make her laugh. The more she thought about it, she just couldn't imagine her job without Karen and she certainly couldn't imagine her life without her.

As Grace snapped out of her daydream and back into reality she realized that she was still tracing the calendar. She decided that she had to put it away somewhere because it reminded her too much of Karen. She reached down to the drawer at the bottom of Karen's desk and as she pulled it open she heard rattling. When she looked inside the drawer she saw that Karen had accidentally left behind a bottle of gin. Grace lifted it out of the drawer and was surprised to find that it was nearly full. Karen must have just opened it the day she left.

In a matter of seconds Grace had convinced herself that despite Karen's obscenely robust inventory of liquor that she kept stored in the manse, she was most certainly in desperate need of this particular bottle of gin and that she absolutely had to bring it to her immediately. And if, by chance, she ran into Karen and got to talk to her, then so be it.