by Freya Barker
The first thing I see is Stacie’s beautiful blue eyes, staring at me over her daughter’s dark hair. I can hear her continued soft whispers and Mak’s occasional sniffles. Stacie nods her head almost imperceptibly and I inch my way forward.
“Mommy’s right here, baby. Only a few bumps and bruises, but I’m fine. I promise. I’m not going anywhere. Mommy’s going to be right here...”
The litany of assurances brings a lump to my throat, as I sit down beside the bed and rest my hand on Mak’s back.
“Told you she was okay,” I add my voice to the mix. Mak’s head immediately turns to face me, and for the first time since Thursday night, when she kissed me goodnight, I see life in the little girl’s eyes. “Hey, you,” I coo, as Stacie falls silent, finally giving her ravaged voice a rest. “Is it okay if you sit on my lap for a bit? So Mommy can have a drink? I promise you can hold onto her hand the whole time.”
I don’t know what the right thing to do is here. All I know is that Stacie is hurting and Mak is scared, and I want to fix them both.
Initially it looks like Mak will balk, but then she surprises me with a little nod as she reaches out her hand.
“ARE YOU READY TO HEAD home?”
We simultaneously turn to the door as the doctor walks in, a stack of papers in her hand.
“Well...” Stacie hesitates, as the woman’s face falls.
“Yikes, dang, I’m sorry,” she hurries to amend. “Do you have a place to go?”
“She has a home, yes,” I insert, watching the two little girls, playing some game on the floor, paying way too much attention to the conversation to be healthy. Their nine-year-old worlds have seen as much devastation and uncertainty as I will allow.
I already tried to discuss it with my father, but I barely had a chance to get a word out, before Pops shut me up with a glare. “Boy, I may be old but I’m not too old to cuff your ears if you even think about asking stupid questions.”
That had settled that. The girls were coming home.
It takes the woman fifteen minutes to go over the list of aftercare, prescriptions for pain medication and some supplements, and cautions on what to look out for.
“Are you sure?” Stacie asks once the doctor leaves. “I don’t want to assummmm...” Her words are smothered when I cut her off with a kiss. “Okay then,” she mutters when I lift away.
She brushes distractedly at the bandage around her head, looking cutely flustered. My hands may be out of commission for a bit, but my lips work fine.
I turn my head to the girls at the sound of soft giggles. Their heads are close together and both of them, like mirror images, have a hand covering their mouths. To my surprise I see, more so than hear, Mak talk to her little friend. I glance over at Stacie, who is watching them as well.
With both Stacie and I dressed in some borrowed scrubs, since our clothes were not worth salvaging, Neil walks in.
“Ready, folks?”
“Where’s Pops?” I ask, looking around him down the hall.
“Gus is driving him home in your truck and he’s letting me drive his badass Yukon.” I have to chuckle at the big boyish grin on the younger man’s face. “Took me forever, but when I suggested the girls would likely be more comfortable with me in the car, he had to concede.”
Neil is pushing Stacie down the hall in a wheelchair, and I follow behind, each of the girls holding on to a wrist.
During the drive home, I half listen to the soft whispers of the two girls beside Stacie in the back seat. I wanted to insist she take the front, but she said she’d much prefer to be close to the girls. I gave in.
“I want to see the house,” Stacie says when we drive into Dolores. I shift in my seat to look behind me.
“I’ll take you,” I promise. “But not today. Jen contacted me earlier; she is at the house, working with the fire department to try and salvage as much as they can. She’ll be by later tonight.”
I hope that would be enough to get that idea put on the back burner, because I don’t want her to see what Jen warned me about earlier. Something Gus is on his way to deal with. Namely, Ben, who apparently has been camped out in his truck across from the wreckage of her house, passed out in a drunken stupor.
“Okay,” she says quietly, looking back at me, a serious expression on her face. I’m willing to bet, if not for the girls sitting right beside her, she would have a few pointed questions for me. That’ll have to wait till later.
“Stacie?” Becca suddenly pipes up. “Is it true that Nick is going to be Mak’s daddy?”
Neil snorts loudly beside me, before reeling it in, and I twist even further in my seat so I can see Becca’s little freckled-face. Mak, who is wedged between her friend and Stacie, has her head down and her eyes on her lap. Stacie looks a bit taken aback. As for me, I can’t keep the grin off my face, because if I have anything to say on the matter, that’s exactly what will happen.
“I don’t know, sweetie,” Stacie says, with an apologetic glance in my direction, before turning to the little girls. “I can’t see into the future that far ahead, but for now, Nick and his pops are nice enough to let us live with them. That’s kind of like a family, for now.”
“Not kind of,” I interject. “It is a family. We all belong.”
Becca smiles broadly, Stacie’s face softens at my words, but Mak—she looks up at me with that blank look back in her eyes.
CHAPTER 28
Stacie
“I can’t get hold of Ben.”
I stand up straight at the sound of Isla’s concern over the phone.
We got home yesterday to find Henry on crutches in the kitchen, with a removable cast covering the bottom half of his leg. Apparently he got checked out sometime the night before, and although he didn’t break anything, he’s torn some ligaments in his ankle. The cast is supposed to give him some added support while he heals. Quite the motley crew we are.
We watched a bunch of lighthearted movies with the kids yesterday and ordered pizza for dinner. The girls went to bed early, exhausted from the lack of sleep since Saturday.
Everyone is still sleeping, even Henry, who often beats me to the Keurig in the mornings. Of course, I’ve had more sleep in the past couple of days than everyone else combined, which is probably why I’m up with the birds.
I lean on the counter while the Keurig sputters and hisses, signaling my second coffee is brewed, when my phone rings.
“Isla? He hasn’t called you?” I know he’s been avoiding me, since my calls all end up with voicemail, but I thought for sure he’d have been in touch with his wife. “I mean, I thought it was odd he didn’t show up in the hospital, but I was given the impression he was busy dealing with the authorities.”
“Hospital? Authorities?” I wince at the shrill edge to her voice. “What the hell is going on? He never said anything! I haven’t talked to him since Saturday morning. It’s two days later without a word, and now you tell me there’s a hospital involved? What the fuck?”
Before I have a chance to explain anything, I hear sounds of a shuffle and then Isla’s Uncle Al is on the line.
“My niece is flipping the hell out, which in turn is upsetting the baby, so it’d be helpful if you talked to me, so I can calm this shit down.”
Trying to be as concise as I can, I give him the Cliff Notes version of events. The thing about Uncle Al is that, being former law enforcement, he knows when to listen and when to ask on point questions. Therefore it doesn’t take me long to get him sufficiently up-to-date, and Al asks me to hold so he can relay the information.
“Right,” he says when he gets back on the line. “Glad to hear you’re physically okay, and I promise I’ll give you all the appropriate sympathies for what you’ve been through—again—but where the hell is your brother? You’ll appreciate I’m not buying into him being busy and not calling his wife, when prior to this weekend he was calling her all hours of the goddamn day and night.”
Suddenly I’m really concerned. It didn’t occur
to me to question the story he was busy. I may have even considered he might have been a bit peeved that Nick has taken over his role as my protector, but none of that would have kept my brother from calling his wife. Something else is going on.
“That’s not like him,” I agree.
“No, it’s not. Now I recognize you may not be in any shape to go up the mountain and check on him, but is there anyone else?” he probes, and in the seconds following his question, I think, consider, and come to a conclusion that I’m not going to share.
“There is,” I lie instead, which is met with a heavy silence that I quickly fill with a follow-up. “I’m staying with Nick and I’ll ask him to go.” My fingers are crossed behind my back, as if that would negate my deception.
“Tell him to call his wife—this morning,” he grumbles before ending the call.
Protective as any of the men in my life, Al would not take kindly if he knew I am planning to head up that mountain by myself.
“Jesus. Close those damn blinds.”
My brother is not okay.
This time of morning there were few people on the road on my way into town, and even fewer on the road up the mountain.
I’d thought to leave a note on the kitchen counter and managed to sneak out undetected. I was tempted to stop for a macchiato when I spotted the coffee shop in the distance, but figured I’d draw too much attention with my head bandaged and my face messed up. Not to mention my attire. Dolores is pretty casual, but I’m sure my Hello Kitty PJ pants would turn some heads. Tempting, but I resisted and turned right instead, up the mountain.
Ben’s SUV was parked out front, so I knew he was home, but no one answered my knocks on the door. Luckily, Nick gave me back the spare I reattached to my car keys and I got in that way.
The place is dark and smells like a distillery. Even though it’s getting light enough outside, little of it is filtering through the blinds that are closed everywhere. I didn’t even notice my brother on the couch, leaning forward with his head in his hands, until now.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask, clearly surprising him. His head snaps up, his eyes squinted to slits, as he takes me in top to bottom.
“The fuck are you doing here? You look like shit.”
There are two empty scotch bottles on the table, and Ben is slurring his words, so I’m not taking what he says to heart. Instead, I place my hands on my hips and work up a good steam.
“Me? Let’s talk about you! You’re wife has been trying to get hold of you; she’s frantic. I’ve been trying to get hold of you since I got out of the hospital where, for the fucking record, you were painfully absent.” Ben’s head sinks down again, his shoulders slumping and part of me feels bad. “What are you doing drinking? I’ve never known you to drink in excess. What is going on?”
“Isla called?”
“She’s really worried, Ben. You’re not answering your phone.”
He reaches for his back pocket and tries to pull his phone free, and ends up toppling over, swearing up a storm.
“I’m hammered,” he admits, running one hand through his silver hair, while fiddling with his phone in the other. “It’s dead,” he announces, tossing it at the table and missing by a mile. It ends up hitting the carpet underneath the table, luckily.
“Where is your charger?”
“Kitchen.”
I bend over to pick it up when a wave of dizziness has me grab onto the edge of the coffee table.
“Fuck,” he bites off, leaning forward to grab me by the hips and pulling me down beside him on the couch. Then he drops his head back in his hands. I decide to let the silence speak and it doesn’t take long before he breaks. “I’m a fucking mess.”
I pull my own phone from my pocket and dial Isla’s number back.
“Hey, honey,” I tell her when she answers. “He’s sitting beside me.”
“Everything okay?” she wants to know immediately, and I decide not to pull any punches.
“I think he needs you here.”
“Is that her?” Ben asks, turning to look at me, his eyes haunted. Instead of answering, I shove the phone at him.
I get up, giving him the illusion of privacy as I walk into the kitchen to find his charger, pretending not to listen to his side of the conversation. I don’t care; I’m concerned about his wellbeing. He sounds defeated as he answers Isla with monosyllabic responses.
“Me too, baby. Me too.” I hear him say and tears sting my eyes as I busy myself making a massive pot of coffee. He’s gonna need it.
I hear his footsteps lumbering in my direction and resist turning around. He walks right up behind me and drops his forehead on my shoulder, and I wince at the wave of body odor and alcohol coming off him.
“I froze,” he mumbles.
“What do you mean; you froze?” I don’t move, bracing my hands on the counter, hoping he’ll keep talking.
“You’re lying there: soot, blood, debris covering you. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Not again.”
Now I move. I turn around and with my eyes closed against the tears wanting to fall; I throw my arms around his neck and bury my face in his neck. Stench be damned.
“Still here,” I whisper against his skin. “I’m fine. I’m still here.”
“Yeah,” he says, his arms tightening around my body painfully, but I ignore it.
We stand like that for what seems like a very long time, when he puts his hands on my shoulders and puts me back a step. His bleary eyes trace my face.
“Jesus, Sis. Jesus.” He slightly shakes his head, before glancing over my shoulder at the coffee pot. “Good. Let me grab a quick shower.”
“Excellent,” I respond, pretending both our eyes aren’t wet. “‘Cause you reek.” He starts walking out of the kitchen toward the back of the house, when I call after him, “We’ll talk after?”
Instead of answering, he gives me a thumbs-up sign over his shoulder. I’ll take it.
NICK
“I can’t believe you knew.”
This day started out with me angry at Stacie because she’d taken off without waking me. I won’t easily forget the twenty minutes of sheer panic at finding her gone, before Pops came in from the kitchen, waving her note between his fingers.
I was going to get in my truck and follow her up the mountain, but Pops held me back. He didn’t even have to say anything; all he did was point at the two girls on the couch, with eyes as big as saucers at my ranting. I shut my trap pretty fucking fast and dropped my keys on the kitchen counter.
Stacie showed up a few hours later, Ben’s SUV following behind. The guy looked like he’d gone on a serious bender. When Gus and Neil dropped off my truck yesterday afternoon, Gus mentioned he’d been drunk when he dropped him home earlier. They planned to check in on him again when they dropped off his SUV. He’d left that parked across from Stacie’s devastated house.
She was pissed, but when I tried to talk to her she’d cut me off, hissing, “Later.”
Well, it’s later; Ben went home with promises he wouldn’t drink again tonight. He’d wanted to clean a little, since Isla called this afternoon to say Uncle Al had packed up a U-Haul trailer, and they would be heading out first thing tomorrow morning.
The girls are in bed and so is Pops. He gave me a look before he made his excuses, knowing damn well I did something to end up in the doghouse.
“I thought it was under control,” I tell her, guessing she’s talking about the Ben issue, but with the way she’s white-knuckling her hold on that picture I’d shoved back in the closet, I can’t be one-hundred-percent sure.
It doesn’t matter, it’s clear from the way she rolls her eyes—or rather, her eye, since the other one is still pretty swollen—that I’ve clearly said the wrong thing.
“He’s my brother, my responsibility. I had a right to know something was wrong.”
“And you’re my responsibility,” I fire back. “When Neil gave me a heads-up, I made a judgment call, based on the fact that y
ou were just released from the hospital.” She opens her mouth to object but I raise my hand to stop her. “Let me finish; if anyone needed your attention and reassurance, it was those two, very scared and confused girls. So yes, I made that call and I’d make it again without hesitation.”
Stubborn and independent woman she is, her struggle to accept what I’m saying is blatantly obvious, but she eventually nods. Her way of conceding to my point, and that’s good enough for me. This isn’t about who’s right, it’s about what’s right.
I didn’t expect her to be done, and she doesn’t disappoint.
“Maybe you can explain then, why you had my picture in the closet in your bedroom. Paid a ridiculous amount of money for it, too. It’s creepy.”
I take the frame from her hands and hang it back on the wall, where I had it before. I lie down on my bed and fold my arms behind my head, my eyes on the gorgeous black and white print.
“Not creepy,” I finally say, turning my eyes on her. “I won’t lie, I’d have paid double that ridiculous amount to get my hands on that picture. Never thought I’d have a chance with you. I told you that. I still didn’t at the time of the charity auction.” She snorts derisively and I recognize this is something we’ll likely always disagree on, but that’s okay. As far as it comes to disagreements, I could think of much worse ones. “It seemed like the only way for me to have you close. I don’t regret it for a minute.”
“Then why did you hide it from me?” She wants to know and it’s a fair question, but I don’t know how she’ll take my answer.
“You just had plastic surgery,” I explain. “You were pleased with the results, I didn’t think you’d appreciate being confronted with a before picture every night. That was the only reason. Nothing nefarious.”
I watch closely for her reaction, but I can’t see much as she takes a long look at the picture. Then she moves to the other side of the bed and lies down beside me, her hand finding mine on the mattress.
