by Matayo, Amy
“You need to go straight to the airport and fly home. Mom’s had an accident.”
Everything after those words is a blur of numbness and frenzy. How I made it to the airport in one piece is anyone’s guess, but certainly not mine. I remember nothing but one thing.
Four rings.
That’s all the time it took to turn my world inside out.
CHAPTER 13
Riley Mae
He left without a word.
Just like that.
Like all the others before him, like everyone will in the future. One wrong decision is a mistake, but two wrong decisions is a habit. I should have known better than to believe this time might be different. I’ve made a habit out of trusting untrustworthy men. I won’t make that mistake again.
I force the tears back, refusing to shed one more tear over him or anyone else. Not now, never again. I barely win the battle as one escapes down my cheek, but I’m not surprised. Six days isn’t enough time to adjust to losing everything you love.
You might think that after one-hundred forty-five hours, thirty-seven minutes, and twelve seconds, a person would learn to deal. Learn to cope. Perhaps even begin to thrive. You’d be wrong, of course. Failure to thrive isn’t just relegated to babies, a harsh truth I’ve learned in the countless hours I’ve stood staring at them. One wiggles in front of me now, an oversized-newborn who spent a little too much time cooking inside its mother before making his impressive entrance into the world. He’s huge, thriving, and happy. And contentedly unaware of the town he was born into and the suffering that comes with it. I’ve never wished for my childhood back, but here I am. Jealous of a baby. Like I’ve done nearly every day for a couple weeks, I press my forehead against the glass and stare.
“There you are, Miss Floss. We’ve been looking for you. Your grandmother is ready when you are.”
Cheryl, my grandmother’s nurse—I learned her name during one of our many joint battles against my grandmother’s temper—walks up to stand next to me. Odd that she’s on this floor, but I’ve been gone for a while, and my daily routine isn’t exactly a secret. I tell my grandmother about these babies every afternoon when I return from my daily trek, and she tells them to any orderly willing to listen. “My granddaughter’s got baby fever. Maybe I’ll be a great-granny before I die, after all.” It’s her new mantra and my new normal: wake up, visit my grandmother, visit the babies, explain that I am not ready to be a mother, and repeat. When your life flips upside down in a matter of days, you create a new way to live. With my home gone and my bakery shut down, the hospital is all I have left. It and a tiny garage apartment I’ve rented from Mr. Joyner that I still haven’t told my grandmother about. Today is the moment of truth, considering the apartment is now her home too, and I’m taking her there in a few short minutes.
“She is? I still need to pack her things, and—”
“Already done. I took the liberty of doing it myself. With her shouting instructions at me the entire time. I hope that’s okay.”
I can’t help but smile. “If you managed to get through packing without any bruises to your ego or self-esteem, then I’m glad you took the task off my hands. I probably wouldn’t have fared so well.”
We walk toward the elevator, and I push the button.
“Any word on the bakery? When it might open again?”
I shrug. My shoulder feels weighted. “It won’t. I don’t have the money, and I didn’t own the building. Which makes me SOL, to put it mildly.”
She sighs. “This town won’t be the same without your bakery. My son always requests your cupcakes for his birthday. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t.” And I wish she hadn’t told me. Now I’m even more depressed. At one time, kids’ birthday parties were a much-loved highlight of my job. Any reason to celebrate. Birthday parties, graduations, weddings. Now, joy has escaped my grasp.
An image of Chad holding up that purple dinosaur clicks from inside my mental camera lens, and I blink. I don’t like thinking about Chad, but still, he’s always there. I’ve found myself irrationally scanning the town for a glimpse of him, when I’m buying groceries, driving through fast-food, filling my car with gasoline, but of course he isn’t there and never will be. He’s a mirage…mere wishful thinking.
I thought he was different. I should have known better than to open myself up to him. That might be the worst part, to learn I can’t even trust my own judgement. I’m done getting hurt by men who should know better. Loss is easier to accept when you grow numb to its effects.
The elevator doors open, and I step in next to Cheryl. After a quick scan at my features from the interior wall of mirrors, I avert my gaze. I’ve never seen myself look so defeated. From my downturned eyes, my drooping shoulders, and my dragging feet. Even my pink hair looks lifeless, a difficult task for a color meant to be cheerful. My cheer is gone along with my reason for existing. The only thing in front of me now is the inevitable crushing of my grandmother’s spirit when I tell her she has no home. Since she’s been lucid, I haven’t developed the courage. To help support my cowardly ways, I had the hospital staff cut the cable to her room and install Netflix and a couple other non-news channels. Showing up each morning with an ongoing supply of cupcakes helped convince them it was the right decision.
Now it’s the moment of truth, and there’s no way to avoid the inevitable. My grandmother and I will be a matched set—lost, tearful, and displaced—much like of the rest of the town. Now that she’s turned a very dangerous corner, I’ve discovered that misery does indeed love company. It’s constantly looking for people to join its pity party.
“Grandma, put that down.” I rush across the room and practically slap her bag out of her hands. “And sit back down in the wheelchair. You aren’t well enough to carry things, or for that matter, walk out of this hospital.”
“Oh, hush up. I am too well enough. They’re letting me go home now, aren’t they?” I wince over the back of her head and hold the wheelchair steady as she lowers herself into it and swings her feet onto the footrests. She sits back with a labored groan. “Alright then, let’s leave this hell hole and go home. No offense,” she quickly says to the nurse.
“None taken,” Cheryl says with a smile, casting a frown at me. She still doesn’t know? she says with her eyes. I avert my gaze because I don’t need the guilt. “It’s been a pleasure, Mrs. Floss. But I hope to never see you back here again.”
“Makes two of us.” She raps her armrest with a knuckle, my sign that I need to start pushing. I wheel her down the hall, careful not to jar her, careful not to bump anyone in the hallway as we walk. Things are still crowded and jammed with people. Considering an entire wing remains nothing but rubble and chaos, congestion has become a reliable feature…as reliable as IV drips and cream-colored cafeteria trays.
My grandmother startles me when we reach the end of the hallway and she lets out a yell.
“Julia!”
My head snaps up. I was looking down, trying to control the stubborn wheels of the well-used chair, when the name catches my attention.
“Well, Katherine, where have you been? I tried to call you several times, and I went to the bakery a couple days ago. Did you know it’s closed? Why did it close? Where will my Paul work when he gets back on his feet, if not for the bakery?”
Hearing his name makes everything swim. My head, my vision, my legs. It’s been nearly two weeks with no word or sign of Paul, and now she’s saying he’s here?
“Paul? He’s at the hospital?”
Julia Tyler nods her head, her expression morphing from surprised to solemn in the matter of a single blink. “Yes, Riley Mae, he’s been here since the day after they found him. You didn’t know? They took him to Select Specialty first because it was a bit touch and go considering his head injury and his broken leg, but when he stabilized they brought him here. Thank the Good Lord, because the daily drive across town got to be a bit much, what with all the closed roads and emergency vehicles ever
ywhere.”
“But…he’s not…dead?”
Julia laughs, a hesitant look in her eyes like she can’t decide if I’m crazy or relieved. When she figures it out, I hope she informs me.
“No Riley Mae, he’s not dead. Is that what you thought all this time?”
“It’s what everyone thought.”
“It’s not what I thought,” my grandmother speaks up, “though I guess nobody considered asking for my opinion.”
“Grandma, you’ve been heavily medicated for almost a week. Asking your opinion on Paul’s whereabouts would have made as much sense as asking your opinion about the latest Stock Market numbers. Ten bucks says you wouldn’t have contributed a thing to the conversation.”
“Only because you kept me in the dark.” She huffs, offense fighting with pride for a seat at the table. I did keep her in the dark. I’m still keeping her there. My relief over Paul’s discovery is slightly pushed to the side as worry about the house takes its place. The moment we climb into the car is the moment the truth will rear its ugly head. There will be tears and accusations, disbelief and questions. Standing here seems like a good alternative.
“What happened to him?” I ask, genuine curiosity crowding my mind. I imagined him dead or injured; I certainly didn’t imagine him lying in a hospital bed just one hallway over.
His grandmother takes a minute to compose herself, then takes a deep breath and launches into an explanation. “Doctors believe he got sucked through the picture window when it broke. He was found almost fifty yards away from your store, unconscious and bleeding from the head. They think he hit a light pole or some other blunt object before the funnel deposited him on the sidewalk. It was a miracle, really. When he gets better, you’ll have to come see him.”
Her words alarm me. “How bad is he right now?”
“He’s better in the sense that he’s spoken a few words and remembers his name, but he’s not well enough for visitors. We have to keep him quiet so that his injuries can heal. Maybe you could come back next week to see him?”
I nod, too dumbstruck to ask anything else. Paul’s alive, something I didn’t see coming. It’s proof that you can think you know what’s going on with people, but you never actually know unless you hear things firsthand. Assumptions should come with a fine for all the trouble they cause, even if the trouble is merely mental. All the hours I’ve spent worried about his whereabouts, convinced he was lying dead somewhere, and all I needed to do was walk down the hall.
My mind flashes to Bella and the way I’ve assumed her abandoned and uncared for. With visions of her come unwelcome visions of Chad.
I’m tired of thinking about him. You shouldn’t give attention to people who don’t deserve it, and Chad Gamble has proven he doesn’t deserve it.
“I’ll come back next week,” I say, gripping the wheelchair handles a little harder than before. “If he wakes up, will you tell him I’m glad he’s okay?” I hesitate. “I’ll tell him about the bakery when he’s feeling a little better. He was a good worker. If I still had a reason to employ him, he would certainly still have a job.”
Julia cups my cheek. “I know he would, sweetie. We’ll rebuild around here eventually. That bakery of yours won’t be closed forever.”
I attempt a weak smile. I don’t have the heart to tell her it will be. The money it would take to relocate and reopen is money I’ll never have. We thought I might once, but that line of thinking was misguided. Optimism has never served me well.
We say our goodbyes, and I lead my grandmother out of the hospital and into my waiting car. Maneuvering a woman in pain from a wheelchair to the front seat of a sedan isn’t as easy as one might think, but after much groaning and twisting, the deed is finished. Winded and anxious, I climb behind the wheel and put the car in drive. While I’m thinking of a way to broach the subject, my grandmother beats me to it.
“Okay, let’s get home. You wouldn’t believe how ready I am to shower and climb into my own bed tonight.”
My face goes slack at the same time my heartbeat skyrockets. Broaching the subject has come down to ripping off the bandage, and it’s going to hurt. I clear my throat.
“About that. Grandma, I have something to tell you…”
CHAPTER 14
Chad
“Boys, I’m fine,” my mother says from her spot in the old recliner, her broken and casted arm lying across the armrest. “You both need to stop fretting over me and get back to your lives.”
“You’re fine now,” Liam says with a whine I recognize from twenty years ago. Some things stay with you forever. My brother’s legendary whine is one for the history books and comes with a bonus: it always works. Makes me wonder if he ever used it on Dillon when they were stuck on that island. Maybe that’s why she fell in love with him; he whined his way into her heart, and she let him just to make him shut up. I smile to myself.
Funny how thinking of Liam and Dillon as a couple doesn’t fill me with jealousy like it did only a few weeks ago. Deep down, I know Riley is the cause. If only I could connect with her, then maybe I would feel less uneasy. I stand up to make my mother another cup of tea just to get my mind off the fact that I have no idea where Riley is. Until my plane landed in Nashville, it never occurred to me to ask her for a phone number that didn’t belong to the bakery. The bakery is no more. My access to Riley would seem every bit as nonexistent.
“Son, your mother doesn’t need tea,” my dad says when I place the steaming mug on the table next to her. She offers me a grateful smile and picks it up, balancing it with her bad arm. “She needs to be left alone so she can heal. Do you see the state of this place? By the time she gets better, the house will probably need to be condemned.”
He chose the exact wrong thing to say to me right now. “Then get up and clean it, Dad.”
“Excuse me?” Tension radiates off my father’s skin and slithers over to me. I’ve never once spoken to him like that, and everyone in the room is stunned. Me most of all. “You want to rethink that tone, young man?”
I stand unmoving with both hands locked behind my neck, feeling self-conscious and working out an apology in my head. But then I snap right out of it, and lock eyes with my dad.
“Actually, no, I don’t. My mother—your wife—fell off a ladder and busted her head and arm on the concrete floor because she was trying to organize the garage. And you know why the garage needed organizing? Because of all the end-of-world crap you’ve filled it with since I was a kid. I can barely turn around in the garage because of all your cans of beans and bags of rice that we will never eat. Not to mention, they’re probably infested with bugs by now. We’ve never even parked a car in the garage, Dad. It’s ridiculous. So, clean up around here yourself. Stop expecting everyone else to deal with your mess.”
I glance at Liam, half-expecting him to stick up for our father or at the very least, reprimand me. Instead, he’s barely holding laughter in check. I roll my eyes at the idea that neither one of us has stood up to our father before. I’m thirty years old and feel thirteen when he’s around. My dad has a way of making people feel small.
“Chad’s right, Dad. You need to start helping Mom more,” Liam says, and I feel a rush of pride. He’s confident in all areas of life, but he’s just as insecure in this house as I am. I glance at my mother, but she’s wide-eyed and motionless, the cup of tea still perched under her chin as though she’s afraid to move it. I’m sick of seeing her fear. I’m sick of all of us being too timid to speak our minds.
“And another thing.” I’m on a roll and picking up steam on my way down the hill. “I have a friend in Springfield, someone I met while I was there helping with tornado relief. Just a few weeks ago, she had a home, a bakery, loyal customers. Now she has nothing but a flattened house and bakery that no longer exists. So, to hear you talking about your dirty house as though it’s an actual problem? It isn’t a problem. For the love of everything holy, get up and clean it and let Mom drink her tea in peace.”
I op
en the front door and slam it behind me; not my proudest moment, but it sure felt good. I sit on the front steps with my head in my heads, breathing in and out and telling myself to calm down. It feels good to unload, but you pay for it afterward. After a handful of minutes, the front door opens, and Liam lowers himself next to me. We don’t speak right away. Brothers don’t always need to.
“What’s her name?” I expected a lecture, a high five, maybe? I didn’t expect this.
“Riley Mae Floss.” I stretch out every word to emphasize my frustration with life. I’ve gone and fallen for a girl that I can’t even locate. Worse, unless I fly back to Springfield and organize a search, I won’t.
“The girl from the magazine article?” I nod. The People story came out yesterday, a half-page article about a bakery that no longer exists. Some wait years to get a mention like that. Riley waited a couple weeks, and the timing couldn’t have been worse.
“What’s she like?” he asks.
“She has pink hair and a great smile and smells like cupcakes and is the last person in the world I ever thought…”
“You would fall for?”
I press my lips together and open them hard. “Yep.”
“She pretty?”
“Beautiful, but she doesn’t know it.”
Liam sighs and leans back, one arm resting on the porch behind us. “And she really lost everything?”
“Everything. To top it off, when the tornado hit, one guy was killed while sitting in her shop and her grandmother was hurt badly. She was still in the hospital when I left. It’s been a horrible few weeks for Riley, and Dad’s in there complaining about his inconvenient life.” My blood is still simmering just under the surface.
Liam breathes a laugh. “I’ve never looked up to you more, older brother.”
I look at him sideways. “You’re not pissed off?”
“Yes, but not at you.” He looks over his shoulder at the house and then stares out at the yard. We grow silent again, but it’s comfortable.
