Trouble Brewing

by Selena Kitt

  You couldn’t have known, Katie.

  That’s what Tyler whispered to me over and over that night as I cried in his arms in the hallway of the hospital, rocking me like a baby who just refused to be comforted.

  I don’t know if I couldn’t have known. I blamed myself enough that I was pretty convinced I could have. But no matter how often I played the what-ifs out in my head, nothing, nothing ever would or could change what happened on that beautiful afternoon day. It should have been a perfect homecoming. Rob and Sabrina back from the tour, Sabrina’s surprise puppy coming home.

  Instead, it turned into a nightmare.

  I remember getting out of the car and lugging the crate out. For a puppy, she was pretty heavy! I wasn’t really paying much attention to Jennifer. Rob and Sabrina came out first, and I noticed how big her belly looked, compared to the last time I’d seen her. I was going to have to get used to that. And she still had three months to go!

  Tyler and Sarah came out onto the wide front porch behind them, already carrying puppy things. Rob was trying to keep Sabrina from seeing those before she saw the surprise.

  Sabrina shaded her eyes, watching me with a puzzled expression as I opened the crate and let the puppy loose. It was like a movie moment. The puppy ran straight for Sabrina like she knew just who she belonged to, and Sabrina opened her arms, laughing and squealing and looking up at Rob with so much love shining in her eyes.

  It should have ended there, at least in a movie. It would have been the perfect ending. But because I was stupid, because I hadn’t paid enough attention, because I didn’t recognize Rob’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Catherine, it all started to unravel.

  I remember crossing the little bridge, the one that went over the water, to the front door. Tyler was there, grinning, watching Sabrina exclaim over the puppy. Sarah was there, too. Everyone was talking at once, and I’d almost forgotten about Jennifer.

  Then Rob asked who she was, and I explained that Vanessa hadn’t been there, that Jennifer had wanted to come along, to tell them about the puppy. The puppy was wiggling in Sabrina’s arms, and I was petting it, and somehow, I ended up with the dog. I don’t honestly remember how that happened.

  I just know that one minute, we were all laughing and talking and ooo-ing and ahh-ing over the puppy, and the next minute, Jennifer had pulled out a gun. Except she wasn’t Jennifer. Rob and Tyler both recognized her right away, calling her Catherine, and I felt like all the blood had drained out of my body when I saw what she had pulled out of her purse.

  At first, she pointed the gun at Rob. They were talking, although I didn’t register much of what they were saying. Tyler and Rob were on high alert, both of them talking, trying to calm her down. Sarah put her arms around me, and I glanced back, looking at Sabrina, who was edging her way off the porch. Where was she going?

  It happened so fast. I thought to grab my phone and call 911, but the puppy was wiggling in my arms. Then I saw a flash of white out of the corner of my eye and saw with great relief that security was coming on the electric golf cart, and they had guns.

  Thank fucking God.

  I thought it was over then. Sarah was crying, and I realized then that I was crying, too, and the puppy was trying to lick both our faces as Catherine pointed her gun at Rob. She didn’t even notice security coming up behind her, not at first, and when she did, when she turned her head to look at them and Tyler jumped her, I screamed.

  I heard Rob yelling at him, telling him not to, but Tyler did it anyway. He wrestled Catherine to the ground, and then Rob did, too, and then I thought, it’s over, it’s over, it’s okay, it’s over. As fast as it had begun, it ended.

  I heard the gunshot, and Sarah screamed, but no one was hurt. Then it went off again. I was fairly sure it was Catherine’s gun, but still, between Rob, Tyler and security, they had her under control.

  “Call 911!” Tyler called hoarsely. He’d been the first one to jump on her, and he was the first one up from the pile. He was looking straight at me. “Call 911! Hurry!”

  I handed the puppy to Sarah, reaching into my pocket for the phone. The puppy was frantic with worry and fear, picking up the emotions of everyone around her, and Sarah couldn’t hold her. The puppy took off running, heading off the porch, and I whistled for her, even as I dialed 911.

  “911, what’s your emergency?”

  I opened my mouth to say, but my breath caught in my throat.

  The puppy got there first, her brown muzzle dark red when she looked up as Tyler knelt down beside Sabrina. Rob had just discovered what his brother already knew, and I heard him give a howl of despair that brought me to my knees.

  No. No, no, no.

  “She’s been shot!” I screamed into the phone. “Please come quick!”

  “Can you give me your location?”

  I didn’t even know who I was, let alone where I was.

  “They need an address,” I told Sarah, who was suddenly there beside me. I handed her the phone.

  “She’s breathing,” Tyler told his brother in a low voice. “She’s alive.”

  Thank God. The puppy saw me, on my knees on the lawn, and she gave a whine, running to me, as if she thought I’d gotten down on her level as an invitation. I scooped her into my arms, sobbing into her bloody fur.

  I remember Tyler coming over, whispering something about it being okay, but I knew better. There wasn’t going to be an okay after this. There couldn’t be.

  An ambulance came for Sabrina, and Rob left with her. The police came for Catherine, and they had a lot of questions, which Tyler and Sarah handled, along with the security guys.

  I sat on the porch with the puppy, who eventually fell asleep in my lap, after all the afternoon drama, wishing the earth would open up and swallow me whole. I watched the police cuff a now-subdued Catherine and put her in the back of a squad car. She sat there, just glaring in our direction, while Tyler and Sarah answered all their questions.

  And all I could think was… this is all my fault.

  If Sabrina lost her baby. Oh my God, if Sabrina died? It would be all my fault. If I’d just taken Tyler or Sarah with me. If I’d just looked a little closer at the “dog-trainer” who called herself “Jennifer.” If I hadn’t been so careless, so stupid, so…

  “Baby?” Tyler came and put his arm around my shoulder. The puppy in my lap stirred and cocked her head at him. I didn’t even look up. “You okay?”

  “No,” I whispered, putting my head on his shoulder.

  Okay wasn’t an option anymore. It wasn’t even in my vocabulary.

  I didn’t know if anything was ever going to be okay again.

  Chapter Six

  When Rob came out and told us Sabrina was through surgery and everything was fine—the baby was doing well, Sabrina was in and out of consciousness, but doctors thought she was out of the woods—I literally collapsed to the floor, sobbing.

  I’d held it together until then, but once Rob delivered that news, I was so relieved, I cried so hard I could barely breathe. Rob told us all to go home, that he was going to stay with her. We couldn’t see her yet, anyway, so I reluctantly agreed. Jesse took us all home in the car, Tyler in the middle of the back seat, me on one side, Sarah on the other.

  Daisy met us at the front door when we got back, and she looked like she’d been crying. She had a newly washed puppy in her arms, who licked my tear-stained faced thoroughly, as Tyler told her the news—Sabrina and the baby had both come through the surgery fine.

  Then Daisy really did cry. We all did. Great, big, fat relieved tears. She insisted we eat dinner—the pork roast she’d made especially for Sabrina, who wasn’t there to eat it. It had been sitting, finished, on the stove for hours. She heated plates for us in the microwave. I think we were all still in shock, but it could have been worse, Sarah kept saying, and she was right.

  It could have been so much worse.

  And then it got worse.

  By then, I thought we were done with the phone calls for the night. It
had to be one or two in the morning by the time Tyler and I went to bed. Tyler had been talking to everyone on his cell all night long. Rob had called, then Celeste, who was on her way back from Europe. His bandmates each called after they heard what had happened. Word was spreading quickly, and I wondered how long it would take for the media to pick up and run with the story.

  Tyler was on the phone with Trouble’s manager, Arnie, when I went in to take a shower. I just used it as a good place to cry again, the water drowning my tears. By the time I came out, Tyler’s phone was resting on the night stand. He was still dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and he held his arms out to me.

  I climbed in bed with him wearing just a t-shirt, resting my head on his shoulder, so filled with guilt I could barely even think, let alone talk. He kissed the top of my head, stroking my clean, slightly damp hair, and I wondered if he knew what I was thinking. If he knew I was blaming myself, that I thought everyone else was blaming me, too.

  I’d almost gathered up enough courage to say so when the phone rang.

  Tyler answered it quickly, sliding his thumb across the bottom of the screen. “Hello?”

  I glanced up at his face, watching as he listened. I couldn’t hear who it was or what they were saying, but the longer it went on, the paler he looked.

  “I’m on my way,” Tyler said finally. “We’re coming.”

  My heart sank.

  “Rob?” I whispered, knowing already somehow and Tyler nodded. “Is she… Sabrina… is she…?”

  Dead?

  I couldn’t finish the sentence. I even shoved the thought away. It couldn’t be. Please, God, this couldn’t be happening. I wouldn’t let it happen. I could fix this, somehow. I just had to think of how…

  “She’s okay but…” Tyler swallowed. “They say she’s going to lose the baby.”

  “No.” I shook my head, denying it. “No, Ty. No. We can’t let that happen. No!”

  I got up and wandered around the room, looking for my clothes. I’d forgotten where I’d even put them. Everything I’d worn earlier had Sabrina’s blood on it, where the puppy had rested on my lap.

  “Katie…” Tyler sat on the edge of the bed, watching me as I got dressed.

  “We’ll go to the hospital,” I said, my voice sounding steadier than I felt. “Call Celeste. Isn’t there someone you can call? A doctor? Someone? Anyone?”

  I stood in the middle of the room, my hoodie half-on, half-off, meeting his eyes. There was so much sadness in them, it was hard to meet his gaze. I yanked my sweatshirt down and scowled at him.

  “Don’t just sit there! We have to do something!”

  “Katie,” he said again, so sad, shaking his head. He held out his arms. “Come here.”

  “No!” I practically yelled it. That’s all my head would say. No, no, no, no!

  NO!

  “Rob said there wasn’t anything they could do,” Tyler told me, his voice hoarse. “It’s happening. They can’t stop it. And the baby is too little—”

  “No!” I did yell it this time.

  The doctors had said Sabrina was fine!

  The baby was fine!

  This was like some sick, twisted joke.

  It couldn’t be real.

  She was out of the woods, Rob had said.

  Go home, he had said.

  Everything’s fine, he had said.

  “Katie!” Tyler called after me as I grabbed my purse and ran out of the room.

  I bolted down the stairs. I didn’t even know where I was going. I’d forgotten where I was—that this was California, not home. That I didn’t even have a car. How was I going to go anywhere? I couldn’t even drive to the hospital to see my best friend, who had been shot because of me, who was now losing her baby because of me…

  “Katie, baby,” Tyler murmured as he came out onto the porch and found me sitting barefoot in the dark.

  I fought him when he went to put his arms around me. I screamed at him and tried to punch him. He just grabbed my wrists and let me scream. They weren’t even words. They were just sounds coming from my throat until I was hoarse. Sarah came out onto the porch, flipping on the light to see what was going on. She had tears streaking down her face, and I knew, in that instant, that Rob had called her, too.

  But I didn’t cry. I was shaking all over, so mad I could have broken Catherine’s reedy little neck with one snap if she’d been there in front of me, but I didn’t cry. Tyler held me until I stopped struggling, still panting from the effort it took for me to try to escape what I was feeling. But it was impossible.

  Jesse came out and got the car. Tyler got me a pair of shoes. Then Daisy came, too, telling us the puppy was sleeping in her crate and would be okay until morning. The city lights passed by in a blur as Jesse drove us all to the hospital in the middle of the night, and Tyler answered the phone again.

  This time it was Celeste. Her plane had just arrived at LAX. Tyler told her to take a cab to the hospital. We’d meet her there. Sabrina was losing the baby, he told her. There was nothing anyone could do.

  I punched the car window so hard, I broke two fingers, although I didn’t know it, not then. Because I just kept hitting it until Tyler grabbed my arms and held me, whispering my name and rocking me, as if it might bring me some sort of comfort.

  But I was beyond comfort. Beyond sanity. Beyond reaching.

  There was no coming back from the dark place I was going.

  And I didn’t care.

  Funny, it was the doctor in the emergency room who prescribed my relapse. He gave me Oxycodone for the pain, after he fixed my broken fingers. I filled the prescription at the hospital’s 24-hour pharmacy, took two of them and floated away.

  That was after I held Esther.

  They named her Esther.

  She could fit into the hand that I hadn’t broken. She was that small, that fragile, and then she was gone. I managed to cry, and I choked out an apology to Sabrina, still bloody and bandaged from her surgery, but I don’t think she really heard me. She looked dazed, not quite there. She’d gone to a place far away, a place I didn’t know if she could come back from.

  I was familiar with that place. I was going there, too.

  I remember a sea of faces. I recognized all of them—Sarah, Celeste, Jesse, Rob, even Daisy—and the words that came out of their mouths. It’s not your fault, Katie. You couldn’t have known. I didn’t even have to say the words and they knew what I was thinking. They all knew, because it was the truth.

  It was my fault.

  And there wasn’t anything I could do about it now.

  The milk was spilled, the horses escaped from the barn.

  This was the fuck-up of all fuck-ups. This was Katie at her best and her worst. Selfish Katie, who had decided fucking her boyfriend was more important than running the errand she’d promised Rob she’d do. Self-absorbed Katie who had been so distracted and, in a hurry, to get back to her rock star boyfriend, she hadn’t paid close enough attention to the woman who insisted on coming back to Rob’s house with her.

  Katie had fucked up again. Royally, completely, beyond repair.

  Everything was broken.

  I just wanted to die.

  I told Tyler that when we climbed into bed again that night. Except it wasn’t night anymore. It was six in the morning, and the sun was just coming up over the horizon. Tyler pulled the black-out curtains, covering the sliding glass door, leaving us in darkness.

  He’d only let me have two of the Oxy for the pain—my hand still throbbed, but that wasn’t what really hurt the most. He held me close, told me not to blame myself, but it was too late for that. He kissed my bandaged hand, doing everything he could to comfort me, but I was too far gone.

  I waited for him to go to sleep.

  He was exhausted, and I knew it. His long flight, jet lag, the horrible events of the day, they all caught up to him. He thought I was asleep, and he fell asleep. I heard his breathing grow deeper, more even. And still I waited. I stared at the dark shadows
of the room, the memory of Sabrina and Rob’s baby, so still and perfect and gone, burning behind my eyes.

  It wouldn’t go, no matter what I did.

  So, I got up, quietly pulling on a pair of jeans—the bloody ones—in the dark. In the front pocket of those jeans, I found car keys. I knew Sarah’s Mustang was still parked in the driveway where I’d left it. I’d seen it when we stumbled, bleary-eyed, into the house.

  The house was silent. We’d all come home together, and we’d all gone to bed to crash in the early morning hours. Rob was the only one who was still at the hospital with Sabrina, grieving the loss of their daughter. The baby whose image I couldn’t get out of my head, no matter what I did.

  I crept down the stairs and outside, shutting the door behind me. I had remembered my purse, and my phone, but I’d forgotten my shoes.

  I also forgot about the gate, but I didn’t need a code to get out. Just to get in. It swung open, motion detectors sensing the car as I approached, and closed silently behind me. Would that set up an alarm of some sort, I wondered? Would security know I’d gone?

  Tyler said they’d stepped up security, after Catherine had started making threats. A lot of good that had done. I’d brought Catherine right past those gates. I’d let the enemy in.

  My fault.

  I’d known where to get drugs at home. I was a stone’s throw from Detroit at home. Drugs were pretty easy to come by. Tyler had laughed when I told him I thought getting drugs in L.A. would be harder.

  “Sweetheart, people do lines in the bathrooms here,” he told me. “They have drug parties. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to score.”

  “So that drug dealer on speed dial thing, that’s true?”

  “I can have drugs delivered to my house.”

  Turned out, it wasn’t hard to find someone to sell me what I was looking for.

  It wasn’t hard at all.

  “Katie?”

  I jerked awake, hitting my head on the steering wheel and howling in pain. For a moment, I actually saw stars. Then I heard the pounding on the driver’s side window and looked out to see Tyler fogging the glass with his breath.