by Devney Perry
“Well . . . now you know and you can do something next year. January twenty-sixth. Rowen’s is March fifth.”
I already knew his birthday was April thirteenth. I’d asked Noelle at Thanksgiving so I’d be sure not to miss it.
“First year together. I wanted to do something special.”
“That’s sweet,” I said, lifting my hand to stroke his cheek. “But just do it next year. I can wait.”
“I can’t. So guess we’ll just do it now,” he said.
“Do what now?” I asked.
“Put my ring on your finger.”
“What?” I breathed.
“Got a ring in the gun safe out in the garage. You feel like wearing it for the rest of your life?”
I blinked a couple of times and replayed his words in my head to make sure I had heard them right. Then my face split into a wide smile as my heart swelled with overwhelming happiness. Nodding, I whispered, “Yes.”
Jess’s proposal wasn’t a big show of flowers and diamonds. He didn’t try and wow me with a huge affair or a fancy surprise. But it was pure Jess. He felt like doing it right there, so he did it.
And it was perfect.
His wide, white smile matched my own. His ice-blue eyes were shining bright. He leaned down to kiss me but I couldn’t bring my lips together. My smile was permanent.
“Love you, baby,” he said into my teeth.
“Love you too.”
“You want me to go out to the garage and get your ring?”
“Later,” I said.
I forced my lips together so I could kiss him.
After he made love to me again, he pulled on some clothes and went to get my ring.
In one night, Jess had helped erase my fears. Because when I looked at him now, I didn’t see the hole in his side or all the blood. I didn’t hear his heartbeat flatline.
I heard him asking if I wanted to wear his ring for the rest of my life. And I saw the light dancing in his eyes after I’d said yes, gladly, knowing that ring wouldn’t leave my finger until the end of my days.
He was right. Anything could happen to us but while we had the chance, we were going to live it good. Together. With Jess as my husband and me as his wife. With Rowen as our daughter and, one day, her siblings that we made together.
We were absolutely going to live it good. The best.
Rowen and I were at the dining room table the next morning, eating our breakfast.
Since I had a few minutes with her before preschool, I could talk to her about Jess and me getting married. I wanted her to be the first to know.
And I wanted to tell her by myself.
Not that I didn’t think Jess would be great with her, but it had been just the two of us for so long, I wanted to make sure she knew that I loved her and that Jess and I getting married would never change that.
“Roe?” I called as she finished a bite of Froot Loops.
“Yeah, Mommy?”
“I wanted to talk to you about something, baby girl. Something about me and Jess.”
“What is it?”
“Well, Jess asked me if I would marry him last night. In a wedding. That means he would become a part of our family forever. I want to marry him but I also want you to be okay with that.”
“Isn’t he a part of our family already?” she asked.
I let out a small chuckle. “Yes, sweetie. I guess he is already a part of our family.”
“If you have a wedding to Jess, does that mean I get to wear a pretty dress?”
“Of course. Any dress you want,” I promised.
“Yay! Can it be purple?”
“You bet. Whatever you want.”
I smiled as she went back to her cereal. Not much fazed my Rowen. Or maybe she didn’t get what I was telling her. But it didn’t matter. She’d understand it eventually. All she needed to know right now was that we were her family and we loved her.
While she finished eating, I gave my gleaming ring another thorough inspection.
A round-cut diamond, about a carat and a half, sat in a solid white-gold band. The edges of the diamond were encased in white gold so that the stone wouldn’t snag on anything. The band itself had smaller diamonds all the way around, inset into the metal.
“Mommy?” Rowen called, taking my attention away from my ring.
“Yeah?”
“Does that mean Jess can be my daddy?” she asked quietly. Her fingers were drumming on the table and she wasn’t looking up from her cereal.
“Do you want him to be your daddy, Roe?”
“Yeah. If he wants to,” she said.
“I think he’d really like that, sweetie. Maybe tonight when he gets home you can ask him.”
A huge smile broke across her face. “Okay.”
I smiled too, letting a warm wave of happy course right through my body and settle straight in my heart.
“Help! I need help! My son, he’s in trouble!” I heard shouted from the ER doors.
A tall, lean man rushed in with a teenager at his side. The kid was barely moving. His father had ahold of him underneath one of his arms, the other braced behind the kid’s back. The kid’s head was hanging down and his feet were dragging on the ground.
I shot up from behind the desk and ran to the wall to grab a wheelchair, pushing it over as fast as I could so the father could drop his son into the seat.
“Come this way,” I ordered, immediately wheeling the kid to an ER room. The second I cleared the doorway, I pushed the call button for Everett.
When we got into the room, the father helped me get the kid into the bed. Once he was lying back against the pillow, I got a look at the kid’s face.
Him?
It was the face of the asshole punk kid who had come to my house on Halloween and broken all my pumpkins. The same asshole punk kid who had threatened me on my lawn before Jess had shoved him into the back of a police car.
Eff.
I turned to his father.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong with him, sir?” I asked.
His father ran his hands through his short brown hair. “Scottie. His name is Scottie. And I don’t know what’s wrong. He was supposed to be in school. It’s a Friday. Why wasn’t he in school? I just don’t know what he was doing at home. He left for school this morning and I was meeting my wife in Bozeman. I was driving over to pick her up at the airport. But I forgot my wallet so I had to turn around. I came home and saw his car in the garage. Then I found him passed out on the living room couch.”
Pausing to dig in the front pocket of his khaki corduroy pants, he pulled out a handful of red and yellow pills.
“Here,” he said, handing them to me. “These were on the coffee table. One of them was open and there was powder everywhere.”
I took the pills and set them on a tray at the same time Everett came rushing into the room.
“You paged?” he asked.
“Yes. This is Mr. . . .”
“Pierce. Scott Pierce.”
“Mr. Pierce. He found his son passed out at home not long ago. These pills were next to him,” I told Everett.
Everett started asking Mr. Pierce a series of questions after ordering me to get an IV started in Scottie’s arm.
“Are you going to pump his stomach?” Mr. Pierce asked Everett.
“No, I don’t think we’ll need to. Those look like oxycodone pills. If he took them or was inhaling their contents, then we can get rid of the opioids in his body by using an antidote. Do you have any idea how much he’s taken?” Everett asked.
“I don’t know. Why is he taking pills? He’s a good kid. Why is he doing drugs?” he asked the room.
“Mr. Pierce, I’m sorry to ask. But did you find a note with these pills? Any indication this was an attempted suicide?” Everett asked.
“What?! No. Scottie wouldn’t do that. Never. He’s a good kid.”
I had a feeling that Mr. Pierce didn’t know as much about Scottie as he liked to think. After all, not three months a
go, he’d been vandalizing other people’s homes, including mine, with no regard to the homeowners’ feelings or the consequences of his actions.
“Okay. We’ll get the antidote started. It will take a while to work through Scottie’s system. Would you like us to call anyone for you?” Everett asked.
“Ah . . . no. I’ll step out and call my wife,” he said and left the room.
“Gigi, let’s give him the max dose of the antidote,” Everett ordered. “If he doesn’t wake up in an hour, give me a call. I’ll swing by before then if I can but I’ve got a couple other patients upstairs to see to. It might take me a while to finish up with them. Just call if anything comes up.”
I worked for the next fifteen minutes to get Scottie situated with the IV drip and to admit him into the hospital’s system. His father hadn’t returned to his room yet. He was pacing back and forth in the waiting room with his phone attached to his ear.
Where had Scottie gotten the pills? Had he gotten them from his parents’ medicine cabinet? Or were these from the same dealer that Jess was looking for?
Unless he confessed to buying them illegally and agreed to discuss it with the police, I didn’t think there was anything Jess could do. And this kid didn’t seem like the type to confess to anything. He hadn’t confessed to vandalizing the country houses on Halloween, why would he confess to participating in illegal drug trafficking? But maybe an overdose and a trip to the emergency room would scare some sense into him, or at least some sense into his parents.
Scottie groaned when I came into his room.
“Scottie? Can you hear me?” I asked.
He slowly shook his head and opened his eyes, groaning again.
I stayed by his side for a few minutes until he finally started to come to.
“Where am I?” he asked groggily.
“You’re in the hospital, Scottie. Your dad found you at home. Did you take some pills?” I asked.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Wait. I know you. You’re that bitch who got me arrested. Fuck you. Where’s my dad?”
Okay, so a trip to the emergency room hadn’t scared any sense into him. He was still an asshole punk.
“Nice,” I mumbled. “Your father’s in the waiting room. I’ll get him.”
But right as I was about to leave his room, he said, “You tell that cop boyfriend of yours about this, cunt, I’ll fuckin’ gut you. Your kid too.”
I froze in the doorway, my back to Scottie. I was glad he couldn’t see the effect his words had on my face, that he couldn’t see the terror he’d caused.
I couldn’t make my mouth work to respond and I didn’t try to find the courage to try. I just forced one foot in front of the other and kept moving forward. With every step, my heart beat so loudly it blocked out all other sounds.
Everett was heading my way. He must have seen the panic on my face because he stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me.
But I didn’t stop to talk to him. I just kept walking straight to my manager’s office where I told her I needed to be done for the day. She knew something was wrong but she didn’t ask questions. She just let me go.
Then I went straight to Quail Hollow and collected my daughter. It was an overreaction, but I needed her with me, close at my side so I could be sure nothing would happen to her. That I could protect her.
Hippocratic oath be damned. The second Jess got home tonight, he was going to learn all about Scottie Pierce and his threats against me and Rowen. Because if I couldn’t protect her, I knew that Jess could.
It was a little after five and I was expecting Jess home in an hour. I didn’t want to have our normal Friday night meal at the café. Scottie Pierce’s threat was still too fresh. I needed to stay inside in my home where I felt safe.
I also didn’t want to discuss Scottie’s threat with Jess in public. I didn’t know exactly how he was going to react but it wouldn’t be good. Likely, he’d blow a gasket and shout obscenities for ten minutes. That, or he’d go all silent and scary and get that menacing look in his eyes.
Scottie’s words had been looping in my ears, and every time I heard them, a shudder would run down my back. I’d been queasy since leaving the hospital.
I wouldn’t feel one ounce of sympathy for Scottie, no matter how badly Jess retaliated. The punk couldn’t talk to people like that. If his parents weren’t teaching him that lesson, Jess would.
Since we wouldn’t be eating out tonight, I was in the kitchen working on dinner while Rowen watched her iPad in her room.
I was standing at the kitchen sink, washing my hands, when a flicker of light caught my eye from the window. The sun set not long after five o’clock during these winter days so the light was easy to see in the darkness.
It was just like the light I had seen last month. But this time, it wasn’t going away and there wasn’t just one light, but two, both of which were moving toward the farmhouse, growing bigger and bigger as they came my way.
My heart thundered as the lights came closer. My nervousness turned to full-blown panic as bodies emerged, attached to both lights. I couldn’t make out any features but I knew they were men. Men walking out of the woods, holding flashlights and walking to my house through the snow.
It wasn’t right, I could feel it. This situation was wrong. People didn’t hide out in the woods and walk up to a house in the dark. Worry and fear took control of my mind and I stood at the sink, panicking, watching them get closer.
What the hell was I doing? Men were coming to my house and I was just standing here, watching?
I snapped out of my trance. The men hadn’t crossed the backyard yet so I had a minute, maybe two, before they were at my door.
One minute wasn’t enough for me to get Rowen and drive the hell out of there but it was enough for me to get my daughter out of the house.
Sprinting upstairs, my heart beating out of my chest, I grabbed her off her little bed. She started to protest when I took the iPad out of her hands but then she looked at my face and knew things weren’t right.
I needed her to hide but it couldn’t be in the house. What if they came in and searched for her? On the spur of the moment, I decided to send her to the garage. It was locked and she could get in by crawling through the cat door.
“Roe, I need you to do exactly what I say,” I said as I carried her down the stairs. “No questions, baby girl. Just do it. There are some men walking up to the house and it’s scaring Mommy because I don’t know who they are. I need you to run to the garage, sweetie. Crawl in through the kitty door. Hide out with Mrs. Fieldman and the kitties until Jess gets home or until I get here. Do not come out for anyone else. Just me or Jess. No one else. Even if you know them. Got it?”
I felt Rowen’s panicked breaths against my cheek but I didn’t stop moving.
“Got it, Roe?” I repeated.
She nodded.
“Good. That’s my good girl. I love you. You can do it.”
I pushed her out the front door, glad she hadn’t taken off her boots when we’d gotten home.
“Run. Rowen, run.” I hoped that whoever was approaching hadn’t made it to the house quite yet.
Her eyes filled with tears but she turned on her heels and ran to the garage.
I shut the door and crept to the living room, crouching by the window as I watched her cross the front lawn.
I had just sent my baby girl outside alone and in the dark. Panic morphed to horror. Had I made the right choice? Would she be safe?
When her little bum disappeared through the cat door, I breathed a sigh of mild relief. I would never take that garage for granted again, or the fact that Jess had gotten it built so quickly.
She was safe. Until I knew what was happening, she was safe.
I slipped away from the window and curled into the living room corner. Then I waited. Waited for the something bad I knew was coming my way.
The ticking clock on the mantel was booming, much like my heart.
Why hadn’t I grabbed my phon
e? I should have grabbed my phone. Stupid!
I’d been so worried about Rowen that I’d left it on the kitchen counter.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid!
Before I could make a dash to the kitchen, boots thudded as the men made their way over the porch. Every step was like a tremor, exponentially increasing my fear with each shake.
The doorbell rang.
What? I didn’t know what I had expected, maybe for them to kick in the door or break through the glass window, but a ringing doorbell wasn’t it.
Was I being paranoid? Had Scottie Pierce’s threat pushed me over the edge of sanity?
I forced myself to stand and walk to the door.
Until I knew exactly what was going on, I didn’t want these strangers poking around the house. I especially didn’t want them going anywhere near the garage. I needed them to stay focused on me and away from where my little girl was hiding.
I squinted through the marbled glass window, hoping to see who was here. One man’s back was to the door, but my panic subsided a bit at the other’s familiar face.
“Everett?” I asked, inching the door open.
“Hi, Gigi.”
“What are you doing here? And why did you come through the woods?”
But before he could answer, the man he was with turned around.
John Doe.
The man who had been beaten to a pulp my first day working at Jamison Valley Hospital. What the hell was going on here? Why was Everett with John Doe? And what was his real name?
My mind raced through its memory banks. Benson. Alex Benson. That was his name.
“We need to go, Carlson. The cop usually gets home around five-thirty or six. You want me to grab the kid?” Benson asked Everett.
“No!” I screamed. Pure terror ran through my veins.
“Leave her. She’s nothing and there isn’t time,” Everett said.
My panic lessened marginally now that I knew he wasn’t interested in Rowen.
An evil gleam was shining from Everett’s brown eyes. “Time to go, Gigi.”
His hand flashed before two prongs jabbed into my ribs a split second before the whole world went black.
