180 Days and Counting... Series Box Set books 1 - 3

by B. R. Paulson

  Cady still needed her husband. She still needed Bailey's father. But Zach never wore a seatbelt. The passenger seat was empty. Had he crawled out like Cady was doing? She wouldn’t fit through the crunched holes of the door windows. The windshield, however, was still wide enough to squeeze out. The missing glass was more evidence than she needed that Zach hadn’t crawled from the car.

  Not a religious woman, Cady found herself praying deep in her aching abdomen that he had gotten out already. Maybe he was trying to find a way to get her out as well.

  Cady had to get out of the car. Claustrophobia pushed in around her, sucking the sanity from her skin. She had to get out. As she moved, jagged glass pieces crunched under her. She couldn’t escape them since they marked her path outside the windows onto the blacktop.

  Elbow crawling, Cady held her hands in tight fists beside her collarbones as she inched forward, bit by bit. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly how long she worked to escape, but the immediate exposure to the moving cold air declared her freedom instantly. She stopped for a minute when her feet were free.

  She held still for a moment, trying not to dwell too much on the fact that everything hurt and she had no idea where she was. Squeezing her eyes shut, she took a deep breath but things still hurt. Steadying her fast breathing, she finally registered what was driving her nuts.

  A ding-ding-ding continued breaking through her thoughts. It sounded like a car’s subtle alarm that someone had left a door open or keys in the ignition. She cocked her head to the side, but the sound wasn’t coming from her car.

  Army-crawling from inside the vehicle had left her elbows scratched up. There was a jagged chunk of glass stuck in her upper thigh, digging deeper and deeper through the denim of her pants.

  Outside the car, she rolled to her back, flopping her arms to her sides and staring up at the sky. Her breath puffed out in front of her and the freezing air finally registered. What was she doing? Lying there in the dark with the frozen ground beneath her? Where was her husband? Had anyone else gotten hurt?

  Someone needed to call for help. Someone… She leaned forward, resting her head for a moment on a blank section of the street to gather more strength. After a second, she pushed herself over to lie on her back and then reached down to pull the glass from her leg. She didn’t care if she wasn’t supposed to leave it in or not. The relief from getting that chunk out of her flesh would be worth any blood lost.

  Her fingers slipped on the angles but she finally got a solid enough grip to yank the shard from her leg. The relief as it slipped out of her thigh was worth it and she tossed the glass to the side, breathing as deeply as she could.

  Moaning from a few feet past her car pulled her gaze from the clear sky above her. “Zach?” Her teeth chattered as she breathed as deep as she could and then held her breath again as she forced herself to roll over and try to crawl. But she couldn’t move far. Everything hurt so bad. She should hold still and wait for help. What if she had a cervical spine injury?

  What if Zach was still alive and needed her? She closed her eyes and whispered, “I'm coming. Just a minute. I'm coming.” She could move her hands which meant she could do something. She slid her palm across the pebbles of glass strewn around outside the car. She bent her legs and inched her butt upward until she could push up enough with her arms to get to all fours.

  But everything hurt.

  What if she crawled across the icy blacktop? Why hadn’t there been any other vehicles out that way? How long had they been out there?

  She made herself get up. The smell of spilled gas and burning flesh curdled her stomach.

  She stumbled to her feet and then to the side, leaning against the upside-down side of her car. A culmination of the last few moments caught up to her and she leaned over, vomiting over the side of the car. Steam rose from the contents of her stomach and she ignored the residual splash on her boots.

  At least she was still standing.

  The acrid smell of vomit mingled with the other odors of the night and Cady had to get away. She focused on following the direction of the moaning.

  Off in the distance, about a hundred feet, headlights from another car showed the vehicle wedged tight between two bull pines and the front door had been snapped off the frame of the car.

  Cady straightened and then pressed her hand into the small of her back. A stiff chunk of her hair fell across her face and she winced. Reaching up to push the hair off her face, she fingered the hair, crinkling the frozen pieces in her fingers. Warm blood was seeping from under her hairline and freezing in her hair.

  Before shock broke through her adrenaline, she dropped her hand and teetered around the car, using the tires and edges of the undercarriage for support.

  There were only pieces of the scene she could take in at a time. The broken glass. She could process that and the way it looked like stars had fallen to the ground.

  Around the hood of the automobile, she clapped her hand over her mouth and half-crouch-walked to the ditch just off the shoulder of the highway. It was probably safer that direction anyway.

  Zach lay on the ground, clutching his chest. His moaning had faded, replaced with a slight mewling sound that was in sync with his breaths. He wasn’t dead yet.

  Yet. She hated that she had said yet. Even with all of their problems, she didn’t want him to be dead ever. She wouldn't wish that on anyone. She knelt beside him in the snow, ignoring the bite of the freezing ice at her knees and dug her hands into the blood soaked material of his shirts.

  “I need you to hang on, Zach. Please, we just made plans.” She bit her lip but it didn’t matter. One of the times she couldn’t control her emotions was justifiable. Her husband…

  He didn’t acknowledge her presence or her words, raising his gaze toward the sky and mumbling. Cady pushed on his chest, but he pushed her hand away, finally giving a sign that he knew she was there.

  Cady looked around the scene, dazed. She had to do something to help him, but what? He wouldn’t let her touch him. Why was her brain so fuzzy? She must have a concussion. She couldn't figure out what to do.

  The inability to think in the moment wasn't normal for her. She had training. She knew what to do. She couldn't breathe, something had triggered in her and she didn't know what she was doing.

  Zach’s moaning changed, shifted into a gurgling in and out, lower and less strident than the rasp had been when it had been similar to hers.

  And then suddenly, he stopped moaning. His hand fell to the snow at his side and he never shifted his gaze to her face. He just stared up at the sky with the empty reflection of the black and stars in his already dimming pupils.

  The silence of the scene penetrated her awareness. She glanced down, taking his already cooling hand in hers as she looked around to see something, anything.

  They couldn’t have been there for more than a few minutes, but it felt like years had passed. She hadn’t been drinking. She had been the designated driver. Zach was going to try to fit in better with her. He wanted to make things work.

  Blinking away the tears gathering in her eyes, Cady lifted her gaze from Zach’s hand and stared blankly at the chunk of twisted windshield wiper protruding from the left side of his chest.

  Cady fell to her backside, crab-walking on the slope of the snow-covered ditch away from him. She shook her head back and forth, unable to believe what she was looking at. She hadn’t been able to save her husband. Squeezing her eyes shut, she dug her fingernails into the soft flesh of her palm. She had to snap out of it. Shock could come later.

  There had been another car. Maybe Cady could help that person. Her inability to save Zach drove her. She had to be able to save someone. Anyone. She didn't look at her husband again, as she pushed herself to her feet and stumbled toward the other car.

  Had anyone called for help or was she the last person alive on earth?

  Approaching the other car, Cady leaned down, looking inside the car. Fortunately, the driver had been wearing her seatbelt.
Unfortunately, she stared out the windshield with blank eyes fixed in an eternal stare and her head bent at an awkward angle.

  Turning, Cady heaved, her stomach aching with the lack of contents to spew but still trying anyway.

  Wiping her mouth, Cady turned, taking in the scene again and gasping for air. How was she the sole survivor? Why had she been spared?

  She refused to believe that a simple seatbelt had saved her life when the other driver hadn’t made it either. None of it made sense. While she wasn't a believer in anything altruistic or religious, she knew something had taken a role that night.

  Cady couldn't breathe and she couldn’t look toward her husband. What about her cell phone? Where was her phone? She could call for help. Or… Something.

  Instead of looking for her phone to make a call, Cady sank again to her knees in the snowy ground between the two cars and the two dead bodies. She rolled back to her butt and pulled her legs up to wrap her arms around her knees. Leaning her head forward, she rested her slick forehead on her forearms.

  How in the world was she going to tell Bailey her father had died?

  She gazed up at the sky. Blue and red lights flashed in the distance, the lights reaching up through the spires of the dark trees.

  A headache raised itself along the back of her neck and up toward her temples. She leaned back, laying on the snow, welcoming the cool relief of the snow on her back and other wounds.

  What was she going to tell Bailey, if she died? The illogical distortion of the phrase brought out a smile and she blinked slowly at the sky.

  Was that sirens or was that car still dinging?

  Would help get there in time?

  She wasn’t sure she cared.

  Chapter 8

  Cady

  Her world had changed in minutes.

  Cady pulled her feet up on the Adirondack rocking chair on her back porch. She curled her toes around the edge of the seat, the cold wood rough under her sensitive skin. Her nerves shifted between heightened awareness and an almost resolute numbness. She couldn’t decide which one felt better.

  Glancing down at her toes, she dimly registered that pale white flesh was a sign of potential frost bite. Her breath had long since stopped puffing like smoke in front of her. As if separated from inside herself, she detachedly decided to get up before her feet fell off.

  Pushing herself from the chair, she ignored the chill of the frozen deck under her feet and padded inside. Cady inhaled sharply at the sting of the warmth on her skin. How long had she been out there? She didn’t even care.

  When had she gotten home? Sometime after the… wait, she’d been in an accident.

  Cady pressed her lips together.

  She blinked, trying to focus on the incidents leading up to that moment where she stood in her house half-numb, but she couldn’t get past the word accident. She didn’t want to remember. Most of it was a blur… but the important parts…

  Her goal would have to be to focus on the blurry parts. Those didn’t sting. Those didn’t bring a sharp pain to bludgeon against the inside of her skull. Her arms hung limply by her sides. Which blur did she focus on more? There were so many. She couldn’t remember the ambulance ride, or being checked over at the hospital. Signing the papers…everything in the hospital had been a blur.

  Leaning against the wall, Cady crossed her arms, lifting one hand up to touch the new bandage that angled down over her forehead. The doctors had said she’d cracked her skull pretty good on the driver’s side window when she’d… Her left hand fingers wouldn’t unclench. Staring at her chicken coop from the back deck hadn’t helped clear the chaos in her mind. There was so much to process and she didn’t want to.

  She glanced down at her fist balled and tucked into the bend of the opposite elbow. She slowly lowered the hand she’d touched her head with and took her left fist to rest in her right palm.

  What was there left to do? She had to acknowledge the final part of the night she wouldn’t look directly at.

  Slowly, she forced her fingers open, watching as Zach’s wedding ring came into view, framed by its own impression on her skin. Checking her over and getting taken care of had been the easy part. She’d been released fairly quickly since it was a quiet night and her accident had been the only one across three towns.

  According to the police – thankfully not Steve – they were putting in their report that the other driver had been drinking.

  She’d signed her own statement. She’d backed away when she’d been asked to sign paperwork on Zach.

  Zach. Paperwork. In Idaho there was a law that you could bury your own kin on your own property with certain stipulations in place. They had to ask what she wanted to do with the body as if he was a piece of property to be handled.

  What did they normally do with dead people? Do that, she’d whispered as she’d grabbed her stack of papers and run from the room.

  Zach was never going to come home. She didn’t know what made her sicker – that she’d been hoping he wouldn’t come home from a trip or that she had to tell Bailey that her father was gone.

  Nausea roiled in the back of her throat.

  How was supposed to tell her daughter?

  Too much had happened over the last twenty-four hours. Too much for her body to assimilate. Cady rushed through the living room, the kitchen, and then through the mudroom into the downstairs bathroom and hurled herself face first onto the toilet seat. She clenched the resin seat and her back arched as her body rejected the grief she tried to force on it. Her empty stomach recoiled again and again on the demands to purge itself from pain. There was nothing to offer. Her body didn’t respond well to grief.

  Expunged of all energy, she slumped to her knees and then to her side, lying on the cool tile and staring at the oak trim with eyes half-open. The barest edges of light pushed through the mountain range, snuck into the kitchen, and down the floor into the bathroom. The light crept closer and closer, crossing Cady’s viewpoint and rising up the outside bowl of the toilet.

  Placing her hand in front of her face, she dropped his ring. The slight ding as it hit the floor broke the dam holding in her tears and she closed her eyes.

  She couldn’t breathe. If she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t sob, but then why were they ripping from her mouth with such jagged insistence?

  Zach had promised her he was going to try harder, that he was going to make an effort. It was a first time since they'd had Bailey that he'd actually offered any constructive comments instead of just criticisms. He’d offered to fix his behavior. Fix him.

  Even while she’d been frustrated with him, she’d glimpsed the boy she'd fallen in love with.

  And now he was gone.

  Her gasps calmed and she stared morosely at his ring as it stared at her. Was his death her fault? No, she hadn’t been drinking and driving, but she hadn’t demanded he get his seatbelt on. Ignore the fact that he hadn’t put on a seatbelt since she’d known him.

  She had to blame someone and she was the only one around.

  It was too early in the morning to go to bed. Too late to call anyone. Did she even need to talk to anyone? She would probably stew in her guilt for the foreseeable future and talking to anyone in that very instance wasn’t going to be constructive at any point. A clacking sound registered and Cady lifted her eyes to find the source.

  After a moment, she realized her teeth were chattering. She had ignored the signs of shock because she didn’t care. Of course, shock had set in, but to what extent?

  Cady wouldn’t be able to sleep even if she tried. Even if she had the energy to get off the ground and climb the stairs to bed, she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  She clenched her teeth together, refusing to let them chatter until they shattered. In the too-early silence, as her breath puffed through her lips, the sharp yipping of coyotes off in the distance caught her attention. They would go after something weak. Maybe they sensed her lying there in all her brokenness.

  The moisture under her e
yes seemed to set in, her skin pulling taut as it dried.

  Cady would have to tell someone. But who? Who could she call? She couldn't call his family yet. The family lived on the east coast and had never liked her. That kind of a call would need to wait until she had gathered enough strength to deal with the accusations and meltdowns that were guaranteed.

  Maybe she could call her parents. Would it be too early? Right then, she didn’t care. Her mom would want an immediate phone call. She would be upset, if she found out Cady hadn’t called as soon as possible.

  With shaking fingers Cady pulled her cell phone from her pants pocket and winced at the time flashing on the home screen. She dialed her mom's number. Six-thirty in the morning. Hopefully they would be up reading the paper or having coffee, anything that would be less jarring than Cady waking them from a peaceful slumber.

  The phone rang three times before her dad answered. His hello was groggy and stilted, testifying to his sleeping. Great, she hadn’t lucked out. They were resting and she’d disturbed that. Mom had said Dad hadn’t been feeling great the last few weeks and Cady had just pulled him out of sleep. She wasn’t helping him get better by doing that.

  Cady cleared her throat and rolled fully to her back. “Dad, it's Cady. Um, is Mom there?” She couldn’t tell her dad. For some reason she needed to talk to her mom. She needed another woman to hear what she had to say.

  “Sure, Cady, is everything alright?” Her dad's voice slipped from groggy and stilted to sharp and alert. The chance that something was wrong with his daughter was enough to snap him from sleep. He pulled the phone away from his mouth and spoke off the line. “Margaret, get on the other line, something’s wrong with Cady.”

  Her parents had listened to Cady’s suggestion and left their landline to their house intact. Her dad grumbled about the extra cost, but at times like that one, the landline was the only way to have both parents on the phone without some drawn out process to connect calls.

  The other line picked up and Cady’s mother was there. “Cady? Is everything okay? Why are you calling so early? How is that little girl of yours doing?”