“Jason?”
“It’s bleeding, Soph! What do I do?”
“Don’t move her. Heads bleed a lot, so it probably looks worse than it is.” He heard footsteps, doors slamming around his cousin. She never stopped talking. “I’ll be there in five. Pressure on the wound, but only if you can do it without moving her head or neck.” He heard a car door, an engine starting. “I’ll call nine-one-one on my way."
"Bernie's here, he's already on with them."
"Good. Put your phone down and focus on Sunny.”
He hung up and put the phone back into his pocket, his fingertips brushing over the engagement ring box. It sent a sharp pain straight through his heart, and it hurt so much he couldn’t think for a second. So, he snapped himself out of it by calculating Sophie’s ETA. Two miles to her place, maybe a little less.
He tried to press his hand to Sunny's head, to apply pressure like Sophie had said, pressed his other hand flat to her cheek to keep her head and neck from turning and was still not pressing hard enough to stanch the flow. “Sunny, come on. Come on, wake up. Talk to me.”
It was hard not to pull her into his arms and rock her, and apologize six ways to Sunday for pressuring her. He'd anticipated that she might say no. He had not expected her to flee in panic.
Sophie came bounding down the path, hollering at Bernie to go back up and wait for the ambulance. Then she moved Jason aside and took over.
He felt guilty as hell, wished he'd listened to his inner voice and not pushed her. Dammit, look what he'd done. What if she wasn't okay? It was half torture, half relief when the EMTs joined Sophie, forcing Jason to step aside. He could only watch as they worked, two young locals, and his cousin Sophie. He had to move around to see between their bodies. They got a neck brace onto her, and then a backboard under her. Once she was strapped down, Sophie pressed sterile pads under her head and wrapped gauze around and under her chin to keep it there. Then she gave a nod, and the two guys carried her up the hill to the ambulance waiting on the back lawn. Bernie had moved his truck, but he waited at the top.
Sophie’s hand fell on his shoulder. “I’m gonna ride along, just in case. You can bring my car or your truck. Your call.”
“Truck,” he grunted. "I'm used to it. Won't have to think."
“Okay.”
“Is she gonna be okay, Sophie?”
“No way to tell you anything without some X-rays and a CT scan. Unless she comes to on the way.” She let go of his shoulder and started up the path, and Jason hurried after her, looking back only once at Sunny’s favorite spot.
The ice bucket sat on the little glass table, cubes melting. The open wine bottle rested inside, their glasses on the table. And the clay red boulder beside the pavilion was stained with Sunny's blood.
Chapter 4
Jason would’ve called her family if she had any. She didn’t. She'd been an only child. Her parents had died in an avalanche while skiing the Swiss Alps when she was just a baby. She'd been raised by a series of foster parents since then. She was entirely on her own.
He’d always admired that she managed to be so happy and well-adjusted even though she had no kin. Not that she didn't have a dark side, she did. Everyone did. He'd been with her three years before he'd seen her lose her temper. People being mean to children or animals were a surefire way to set her off. And man when she went, she went. He'd seen her capacity for fury when a young mother had smacked her little toddler's cheek at the grocery store. The look that had come into Sunny's always-smiling eyes had given him a chill right to his bones. She'd snatched the woman's wallet right out of her hand, opened it, read her name aloud, handed it back and said, "I'll be sure to spell it right when I call social services later."
Then she'd visibly caught hold of herself, schooled her expression before she looked at him again, and walked out of the store, leaving him to pay for their purchases while she waited in the car.
There was a temper in there. That had been his first glimpse of it, but he'd seen it once or twice since. She kept it carefully controlled and deeply buried. He had a theory that she had reason to. But she didn't talk about things like that.
He didn't know how she'd grown up without family. So much of who he was today had been shaped by life with his brothers on his parents’ Texas estate. His mom still lived there with her second husband. His dad was with him still, here in Big Falls, and married to the widowed saloon owner Vidalia Brand.
Thinking of Vidalia reminded him of her notorious family text loop. Everyone was on it; her five daughters—one of whom was his half-sister—all their husbands, his own two brothers and sisters-in-law, and his dad. The loop was overused for mundane things, and often irritating because of that. You could silence it at night, and have seventy-five messages waiting in the morning, none of which had anything to do with anything.
This, however, was one of those rare occasions when he was damn glad of the loop’s existence.
He texted the family. “Sunny fell. Hit her head. Tucker Lake ER.”
The questions came pouring in after that. In a way, it was a relief. A distraction from the waiting.
Before another hour had passed, Joey had joined him in the waiting room. He’d brought pizza. Rob's wife Kiley showed up with her dad, Jack Kellogg, in tow. Kiley had tears shining on her freckles when she ran up and hugged him. She loved Sunny like a sister. “Is she okay? What happened? Did she jump before or after you popped the question?”
He blinked. “She didn’t jump, she fell. And how do you even know about that?”
“We all know,” Joey said. “And in case you didn’t get the memo, Jay, if you tell a secret to one of us, you tell it to all of us.”
“I didn’t know,” Jack said. “If that’s any comfort.”
Jason acknowledged Jack just to be polite. It was decent of him to come, but Jason didn’t trust the guy.
“Rob and Dax are delivering a foal or they’d be here, too,” Joey said.
“It’s the roan,” Kiley added. “She’s having trouble. Dad thought I was too upset to drive myself, so he brought me."
“Emily’s helping with the colt, so I came solo," Joey said. "She said it might be a while but not to worry. She's seen worse.” Joey lifted the lid of the pizza box. "Have a slice, big brother. You’ll feel better.”
“I can’t.”
“So, what happened?” Kiley asked.
"Yeah, I was about to ask the same question." That was Jimmy Corona. He'd just entered the waiting room from the hallway, and he was in uniform, down to the hat and the badge. "Can we talk a minute in private, Jason?"
Jason got a little shiver right up his spine. "No need to be private, Jimmy. We're all family here."
"Yeah, um, this isn't a family kind of conversation."
"Why don't you just say what you mean, Chief Corona?" Kiley said. She crossed her arms over her chest and planted herself right in between Jason and Jimmy, the little freckle-faced warrior. Jimmy was family. Calling him Chief Corona had been a message, and he'd clearly received it.
"Damn, my brother married a hellion," Jason said. "Stand down, Kiley. Jimmy, we don't need privacy for this. I'll say it in front of everyone. I really messed up. This was my fault."
"Tell me everything that happened," Jimmy said. "Don't leave anything out. I'm gonna record it, so no one can put words in your mouth later on."
"Who'd wanna–"
"Here. Let's sit." Jimmy took a seat at a small round table in the waiting room, laid his tape recorder in front of him.
Sighing, Jason sat across from him. He took a deep breath. "We met in the pavilion. Drank a glass of wine. I asked her to marry me. She freaked out, stormed away, slipped on the top stop, fell and hit her head on the boulder."
"Okay," Jimmy said nodding. "But can you slow it down a little? Go step by step. You asked her to marry you and she freaked out, and then what happened? Physically, what happened? Where was she? Where were you? Who touched who–"
"Who touched who?" Jaso
n stood up. "What the hell are you asking me, Jimmy?"
"Just tell it again. Slower. I need to have it down, okay?"
Jason closed his eyes, and called it all back into his mind. "She turned to leave me. She was upset. I went around in front of her, like to block her from the stairs. I told her she wasn't leaving until we finished talking. It was stupid. I was mad."
"Did you put your hands on her?"
"Of course not!" The words burst from him.
His brother Joey moved right up beside him, clamped his shoulder hard with one hand. "This is starting to sound like an interrogation, Jimmy. Should I call my brother a lawyer?"
"I don't need a lawyer."
"Then tell me the rest," Jimmy said.
"It's Bernie Jennings, isn't it? He was there, and I remember him saying something weird to me, but I was too worried about Sunny to pay any mind. What does he think he saw?"
"You first," Jimmy said. "Finish the story. You stepped in front of her and told her she couldn't leave."
"Right. Like a freaking caveman. She reminded me that 'no' is a complete answer, shoved me out of her way so hard I almost fell on my ass, which I richly deserved. Then she took two steps, hit the wet stairs and fell."
Jimmy nodded. "Now think real hard, Jason. When she shoved you, did you grab for her in any way?"
"I told you, I didn't touch her–"
"But did you reach for her?"
He frowned hard, thinking back. "I might've reached out for something to keep from falling, but I caught my balance." He tried to re-visualize in his mind exactly what he remembered. She'd shoved him sideways with both hands, hard. He'd gone stumbling to the left, and kind of flailed his arms right. She was already striding past him as he wobbled, caught his balance, righted himself.
"I suppose from a distance, it might've looked like I was reaching for her. I wasn't. I was trying to keep from falling."
"But you didn't touch her," Jimmy said.
"I didn't touch her. I've never touched a woman in anger in my life, nor would I. She just…fell. She just fell. I saw it happen and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. She'll tell you the same thing herself, when she wakes up."
Sophie came into the waiting room, and he forgot everything else and went to her. “How is she? Is she okay?”
His cousin nodded slowly. “I think she will be," she said, and everyone in the room sighed in relief. "She’s stable for now.”
She had more to say, but hesitated and Jason thought he knew why. “You can’t tell me more. We’re not family. Not legally.”
“You’re her health proxy,” she said.
“I had no idea.”
“She filed it in my office last year. Just in case, she said. So, I can discuss this with you. But everyone else—”
“You’ll fill us in,” Kiley told him.
It didn’t feel like a question. “Yeah. Sure, I will. You and Angie are her best friends–shoot, someone should call Angie!”
“I already did,” Kiley said. “Go on with Sophie, and then get back here so we know she’s okay.”
He nodded and looked at Jimmy.
"Go on," Jimmy said. "I'll hang around until I can talk to her, so she can set the record straight."
"Okay."
Sophie took his arm and guided him out into the hall, across it and around a corner, talking as they went. “She’s still unconscious. There’s no skull fracture, no visible damage to her brain. We’ll watch her closely in case of swelling and wait for her to wake up. We’re not gonna know much more until she does.”
He followed her through a set of doors, around a corner and, finally, into a room. Sunny lay in the bed. There was a big white patch on the upper left side of her head, right behind her ear, and there was no hair around its edges.
“You shaved her head? She’s not gonna like that, Soph.”
“Yeah, she’s not gonna like this either. And I could probably lose my job for showing you, but you’re family. Family comes first. And this is…this is something you need to know about." She shook her head slow.
“What are you talking about?”
She moved up beside the bed and peeled back the bandage.
There, tattooed onto the scalp of the sweetest, kindest, sunniest gal in Big Falls, the girl whose personality matched her name, was a swastika.
“What the…who…how did that get there?”
“Well, don’t look at me, I don’t know how to make a prison tattoo, but that’s what it looks like. Amateur, blue ink, a real hack job.”
“Why would Sunny have a tattoo like that? Sunny? Of all people?”
Sophie shook her head slowly. “I don’t know, Jason. I don’t know, but maybe it’s a good thing your proposal got interrupted.”
Age 15
Mary was still flush with excitement when she sailed through the front door at 9 p.m. She could not believe what had happened to her that day. Things like that just didn’t happen to girls like her.
“What the hell are you smiling about? You know what time it is?”
That was her father’s greeting. Like ice water thrown on the warmth that had been suffusing her entire being. “I put on a crockpot of chili this morning. Extra spicy. And there's still a full loaf of the bread I baked over the weekend. Wasn’t it all right?”
“I’m gettin’ sick of crock pot food. When is stupid softball season over, anyway?” Brax whined.
She'd been playing for five seasons. He knew the schedule as well as she did. “I pitched a no-hitter today,” she said. She was a freshman, and this was her second year on the varsity team. They were saying she was the youngest pitcher ever to throw a no-hitter, male or female.
“Well, aren’t you special?” That was her dad.
“We made it to the sectionals. I’m starting pitcher from now on.”
“At least that’s something to be proud of.” Almost before she could feel surprised at her father’s rare praise, he ruined it. “The previous starting pitcher was a black girl, wasn’t she? Good you put her in her place. Just don’t forget yours.”
She didn’t know how her father knew who the starting pitcher had been before her, and she didn’t bother telling her dad that Gemma had busted her wrist earlier in the season. The catcher tried to throw down on a runner stealing second. Gemma forgot to duck and got hit.
She was a good pitcher. And a nice person. People seemed to like her, but Mary wasn’t allowed to talk or socialize with what her father called the impure races. Which was like, half her school. Seemed to her like most of the planet.
Life was easier when she obeyed without question. It hadn't ever occurred to her to question her father’s take on things until high school. Now it seemed to be happening more and more frequently. She got into trouble every time, too.
“We have a rally tonight,” her dad said.
“I’m kind of tired. Maybe I could skip this one?”
“You’re the Grand Exalted Nighthawk’s daughter. No, you can not skip this one. Mouthy little bitch.”
Yeah, she thought, Grand Exalted Nighthawk, a made-up title for his made-up group of eighteen, most of them related. But she didn’t speak her thoughts out loud or even mutter them under her breath. Obedience was always the safest course.
"And we're out of cookies. You've got an hour."
Cookies for eighteen pigs in an hour's time, she thought. No problem. She was good at this. She whipped up a quick batch of big, soft sugar cookies with a hint of orange zest and sugar sprinkles. While each batch baked, she hurried through a shower, put on fresh clothes, including a worn-out white pride T-shirt, and loaded up the tiki torches and cardboard signs.
Chapter 5
Sunny came around slowly, like swimming to the surface from cold, deep water. She felt pain in her head, a familiar pain. She’d felt it before, and for one brief moment she was reliving the most terrifying moments of her life, fighting to escape, held down, hurting.
And then she realized all that had been long ago. She was lying o
n her side in a strange bed, facing a white wall with white curtains. The bedside stand, the tray table—she was in a hospital. How odd.
There was a gentle touch on the sore spot of her head. Then Jason’s voice. “How did that get there?”
“Well, don’t look at me.” She knew that voice, too. Doc Sophie, Jason’s cousin. “I don’t know how to make prison tattoos, but that’s what it looks like. Amateur, a real hack-job.”
“Why would Sunny have a tattoo like that? Sunny? Of all people?”
Oh, God, they'd seen the tattoo. Her most shameful secrets were being ripped out of hiding, exposed to the blinding sun while Jason looked on.
“I don’t know, Jason. I don’t know, but maybe it’s a good thing your proposal got interrupted, huh? I mean, this makes me wonder if any of us really know Sunny at all.”
"You're wrong," Jason said. "I know her."
Jason couldn’t leave the hospital. He couldn’t. He sent the others home, and ate the cold pizza Joey had left behind, and paced the waiting room. He tried to watch some TV. He even went outside and walked around the parking lot for a while, looking at the stars and thinking about Sunny. He'd loved her. Thought she was the one he'd spend the rest of his life with. But now, everything was different. That faded blue hate symbol on her scalp looked like it had been there a while. The lines were rough, uneven and jogged wildly here and there. It was crisscrossed with scars. He didn’t know what to think.
A woman with a creamed coffee complexion and pixie short platinum blond hair came into the waiting room, looked around, focused on him. He didn’t know her. She wore a pale gray suit, narrow skirt, matching blazer, unbuttoned over a light blue blouse. Her shoes were light blue, too. She came right over to him.
“You must be Jason,” she said. “I’m Eve DuVall.” She extended a hand and he shook automatically. “How’s Sunny doing?”
“She’s still… I’m sorry, who are you?”
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