The Caretakers

by Maxwell, Eliza

  He reaches out his other hand and, somehow, Margot finds the presence of mind to grasp it. He begins to pull her up, and Tessa thinks that maybe, just maybe, when this is all over, she might be able to breathe again.

  Margot’s arms are on the roof now, her shoulders even with the eave.

  And a shot rings out.

  Oliver scrambles backward, and Margot struggles to hold on. Her hands are slipping again.

  Tessa whips her head around.

  Winters. Winters is lining up to shoot again.

  “Get out of the way!” Ben shouts. But he doesn’t need to bother. Tessa is already moving, throwing her body over the pile of boards and barreling in Winters’s direction.

  “That’s my sister, you son of a bitch,” she shouts. “Don’t fucking shoot!”

  Winters doesn’t even glance at her. He doesn’t break his stance either, legs spread, arms outstretched, with both eyes open, aiming for Oliver Barlow on the rooftop.

  The sound of an engine fills the air, and another crash happens at Tessa’s back. She doesn’t have time to look. She has to get to Winters.

  She’s closing the distance between them, but she’s not fast enough to stop the pull of his trigger finger. If he shoots Barlow, Margot will fall. If Margot falls, Margot could die. Tessa can’t let that happen.

  But that’s exactly what is happening, right in front of her, and she’s helpless to stop it.

  And suddenly, she’s not alone.

  Tessa is so focused on Winters she doesn’t register the figure that appears at his back. Not until an old woman’s cane cuts through the air, faster and harder than it should be possible for a woman in her eighties to swing it.

  But swing it she does.

  Deirdre Donnelly’s cane smacks into Lloyd Winters’s face with a loud crack. He never sees it coming. The gun falls to the ground at his feet. Both hands fly instinctively to his face, as blood leaks between his fingers from his newly broken nose.

  But Tessa doesn’t have time to thank the old woman. Ben is shouting, and Tessa turns back to Margot.

  “I’ll catch you,” Ben is calling to her. “It’s okay, Margot. Just let go. I swear to God, I. Will. Catch. You.”

  Her sister is still hanging from the eave of Fallbrook, but her hands are sliding closer to the edge.

  Ben has rammed his SUV next to the house, pushing most of the debris out of the way, and driving over the rest. He’s standing on the hood of the vehicle, with his hands outstretched. There’s still empty air between Margot’s feet and his hands, but he’s there, reaching upward, waiting to catch her. Tessa knows, with every beat of her heart, Ben is not going to let her fall.

  “You can divorce me if you want to, you can throw me out of our house, you can toss my golf clubs in the ocean. You can tell me you never want to see me again, but my God, Margot, you’re going to have to tell me to my face. Let go now. I will catch you.”

  Tessa’s muscles are tight, her breath raspy in her throat. She can’t look away.

  Margot lets go.

  This time, when she falls, Ben is there to catch her.

  Someone clears their throat, and Tessa turns to see the Donnelly sisters standing behind her, Deirdre leaning on her cane.

  “The man with the gun, dear,” Kitty says, gesturing toward the house.

  Winters is gone.

  “Jesus,” Tessa cries, then runs toward the pile of debris that nearly blocks the front door.

  “Top of the stairs,” Deirdre calls. “There’s access in the ceiling that opens into the attic, if the ladder is still usable. And be careful!”

  Tessa squeezes past the mess cluttering the front of the house and falls through the nearly blocked front door Winters left open behind him.

  Gunfire cuts through the air. It’s coming from above her. But Oliver dropped his rifle when the balcony collapsed. Winters is shooting at an unarmed man.

  He lied to her. He has no interest in bringing his daughter’s body home to her mother. Or if he does, it’s taken a back seat to his need for Oliver to pay for what he’s done. Winters wants Oliver Barlow’s blood.

  Tessa takes the spiral stairs to the second floor, two at a time, refusing to think about the way they creak and groan beneath her. If they held Lloyd Winters, they’ll hold her. She hopes.

  At the top, a small set of stairs hangs down from a hatch in the ceiling. It leans alarmingly to one side, but Tessa doesn’t stop.

  She scrambles to the top as quickly as she can manage, ignoring the way the ladder swings beneath her. Pulling herself up, she looks around.

  The roof slopes at the top of the house, what’s left of it anyway. She can see the blue sky through the gaping holes where it’s collapsed.

  More shots ring out, louder now, and footsteps move across the roof, sending a shower of dust and dirt down from the rafters, giving her an idea of where Ollie and Winters are.

  She moves closer to the lowest opening in the roof. She can crawl out behind them.

  “And do what?” a small voice in her head cries. But she refuses to stop and listen.

  The men are shouting at each other.

  “You knew it wasn’t me,” she hears Oliver call. “You knew all along.”

  “So what?” Winters yells back. “So you served some time. I knew you had it in you, and I was right. You think I’m supposed to give a shit about your feelings?”

  Tessa is on the roof now, watching as Winters stalks Oliver, who’s taken cover behind a gabled section.

  “Your daughter had a lot to say about you, Winters,” Oliver calls, his words twisted with amusement. “She told me all about what a wonderful father you were. Before I killed her. How does that make you feel?”

  “You bastard!” Winters rushes Barlow. His right foot collapses a section of roof beneath him, but he pulls it from the hole and charges forward, barely breaking stride. “You goddamn bastard!”

  Winters levels his gun and fires, once, twice, click, click.

  He tosses the gun aside. It spins across the roof and falls off the edge. Winters stands panting, his hands hanging loosely by his side like a raging bear.

  He charges at Oliver again, but the other man is prepared to meet him. No guns, just two men trying to kill one another with their bare hands.

  “Stop!” Tessa shouts. “Stop it!”

  Neither of them listens. Shingles and boards give way beneath their feet, and the air is filled with the heavy thud of fists connecting with flesh.

  Tessa moves closer, aware, as neither of the men seem to be, of the instability of the roof beneath them. She shouts again, but her words fall on deaf ears.

  She casts around, searching for something hard and heavy. Anything she can use to break up the fight. There’s nothing. Not unless she’s willing to go back into the attic, and Tessa doesn’t have that much time.

  A choking, gasping sound pulls her gaze back to the struggle just yards away. Winters has his hands gripped around Oliver’s throat. Ollie is taller, lean and sinewy from his years in prison, but Winters has him on brute strength and hatred.

  His knuckles are white, and Oliver tries to pry them off, but Winters’s grip doesn’t ease.

  “Stop it!” Tessa screams. “Winters, stop!”

  Oliver’s eyes are bulging, his face turning an alarming shade. Tessa rushes forward, determined to put herself between them, but Oliver changes tactic. All at once, he pushes forward with every bit of his weight.

  Winters’s grip doesn’t loosen, but he stumbles backward, thrown by the other man’s momentum. Oliver continues, barreling into Winters and keeping him off balance. Two pairs of feet shuffle across the roof, in a strange and awkward dance, but Oliver takes the lead. He pushes Winters farther, shoving himself at the other man, even while his neck is closed in Winters’s iron grip.

  “No, no, no!” Tessa chants. With a sudden burst of clarity, Oliver’s intention is clear. “No!” she shouts. She runs forward, but there’s nothing she can do.

  Winters, unaware an
d uncaring of what waits behind him, is focused only on choking the life out of the man who killed his daughter. Tessa reaches out. Her fingers touch nothing but air. With one final twist of his body, Oliver turns and takes the two of them crashing through the colored glass skylight that sits above Fallbrook’s entryway.

  Tessa’s breath leaves her in a great and final whoosh at the sound of breaking glass and the impact of a body hitting the floor two stories below.

  Hand still outstretched, Tessa is on her knees. She can’t look. Yet she can’t stop herself.

  She opens her eyes, scoots forward.

  Lloyd Winters’s body is splayed across the entryway floor, one of his legs and his neck twisted at unnatural angles. Broken, rotting floorboards point upward at the sky where his weight cracked them in half.

  But she doesn’t have time to focus on the horror below. Another hand, belonging to another man, is gripping the frame of the skylight, broken glass cutting into his palm and fingers.

  With a sharp intake of breath, Tessa reaches down and grasps Oliver, wrapping her hand around his arm the way he’d done for her sister.

  “I’ve got you,” she says, her heart beating in her throat.

  He turns his face upward and meets her eyes. There’s panic in his, a panic that Tessa has seen in the mirror.

  “I’ve got you,” she says, trying to keep him calm. “Reach up with your other hand.”

  But blood is sliding down his arm, working its way between their skin. Slick, slippery blood they have no way to stanch, and sweat runs down Tessa’s face.

  Oliver’s arm slips a notch and she grips it tighter, willing her strength to hold.

  This man, no matter what else he might have done, knelt in front of Margot when bullets were coming in their direction. She can’t forget that. She won’t.

  His arm slips farther, and Oliver drops six inches more. She moves her other hand to help hold him, bracing herself as best she can.

  “Please, Ollie, your other hand.” Her voice is tight. She won’t lose him.

  But when he meets her eyes again, there’s no more panic. A calm has settled on him, and he gives her a sad half smile.

  “You were right, Tessa,” he says in a preternaturally tranquil voice.

  “Give me your hand,” she pushes out through clenched teeth. “Do it, Ollie.”

  Images flash across her mind. She’s sitting in Donna Barlow’s living room, promising she’ll try to help her son. She’s hugging her as she cries. She’s standing in the back row at the woman’s funeral, quiet tears on her face.

  She will not let him fall. She will not let another person fall.

  Blood is pouring now, loosening her hold. It’s sliding down her arm, pooling around her wrist, dripping from between her clenched fingers.

  “It was a nice spot,” Oliver says. Tessa can’t process the words through her single-minded focus.

  “Your other hand,” she cries.

  “A peaceful spot. Halcyon was the word you were searching for. I looked it up.”

  “Shut up, Oliver, and give me your hand.”

  He’s slipping.

  “Halcyon,” he says again. Then he closes his eyes.

  And releases his grip.

  42

  Tessa stumbles back down the stairs, lost and hurting. She can’t stop the feel of Oliver’s fingers sliding through her own, then grasping at air as gravity takes him.

  The same as Margot.

  No, not the same. It’s not the same.

  But she can’t make herself believe it.

  Bodies sprawl across the floor. Two lives gone. Wasted and gone.

  She doesn’t go to them. Doesn’t look.

  She could see from the roof that Oliver was dead, a jagged board protruding from one side of his neck. It’s not something she can bear to face up close. Eyes averted, she stumbles to the front door, to the small opening that’s not blocked, and squeezes her way through.

  The sun is blinding.

  Was it so bright before? Tessa’s eyes search out her sister, who’s clutched in her husband’s embrace.

  Safe. Margot’s safe.

  Tessa holds tightly to that.

  When her sister spots her, Margot leaves Ben and rushes to her.

  “What the hell were you thinking, running up there after them? You could have gotten yourself killed, you idiot.”

  Tessa doesn’t have anything to say to that. She’s cold, and she’s beginning to shake. Margot grabs her by the arms, and Tessa studies her face.

  They look so much alike, aside from those crazy curls. The world’s not always fair.

  “I’ve always been jealous of your hair,” she says softly. She’s so tired. She just needs to sit down.

  Margot stares at her, confusion clouding her eyes.

  “I think Ben might be tired too,” Tessa says, looking over Margot’s shoulder.

  Her sister turns in time to see her husband collapse.

  The Donnelly sisters stay with Tessa and Ben while Margot runs to the cottage to call an ambulance.

  Tessa helps Kitty hold pressure on the gunshot wound in Ben’s side.

  When the ambulance arrives, Deirdre insists Tessa go too.

  “There’s no room,” Tessa says, backing away.

  “She’s in shock,” Deirdre explains to the paramedics, one of whom jumps out and herds her to the open doors where they’ve loaded Ben on a stretcher.

  “I’m not,” Tessa insists.

  “Stop arguing and get in,” Margot shouts.

  Tessa does.

  She can see Kitty and Deirdre standing, framed with Fallbrook at their backs, then Margot’s car pulls in between the sisters and the ambulance, blocking her view. The ambulance takes them away.

  “Ben, I really need you not to die right now,” she says, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.

  The emergency crew works between them, and Tessa puts her trust in their hands.

  “If you’re going to confess your undying love, Tessa, I won’t stop you,” he says weakly, ending on a hissing gasp as an EMT does something at his side. “But I need you to know. Margot wasn’t a second choice. She was the right choice.”

  Tessa smiles but doesn’t open her eyes. “I know that, but if it makes you feel better to think I’ve been pining for you for years, by all means, go ahead. I’d hate to disappoint a man on his deathbed.”

  “We never would have worked, Tessa. Your bedside manner is terrible.”

  “Thank you, Ben,” she says. The tears are running freely now, and Tessa’s eyes burn with them. “Thank you for always being in the right place at the right time.”

  “Yeah, well, next time it would help if I didn’t have to track my wife through her phone because the pair of you keep hanging up on me.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Mr. Russell, this might hurt,” the EMT says.

  When Ben finds his voice again, he has one more request.

  “Tess, do me a favor? Could you steer clear of true stories for a while, at least if you’re gonna get your sister involved? Try some fiction for once. Maybe a baseball movie. Everybody loves a good baseball movie.”

  Tessa smiles weakly. His voice almost takes away the slippery feel of blood dripping from Tessa’s fingers as she grasps nothing but air. Almost drowns out the sound of Oliver’s body crashing to the ground.

  Ben is whisked away by emergency room attendants the moment they arrive at Westgate Memorial Hospital.

  Tessa is taken to a different room where she’s wrapped in a blanket, her feet elevated above her head.

  “I’m fine,” she insists, but the nurse continues to do what she does.

  Tessa gives up and waits.

  The gash on her leg is treated and stitched. Her hands are inspected and cleaned, but Tessa’s sure they’re just wasting time now. No one will answer her questions.

  Clad in a hospital gown after the staff insisted she remove her pants, Tessa waits some more, exhausted and impatient.

>   “You were right,” Oliver whispers softly in her head. “It was a nice spot. A peaceful spot. Halcyon was the word you were searching for.”

  The curtain to her cubicle is pulled back with a clatter. Tessa sits up straighter.

  “Ben’s in surgery,” Margot says. “They won’t tell me anything else.”

  Tessa leans her head back against the crappy hospital pillow.

  Margot looks around, spares a single glance for the uncomfortable-looking chair angled against the wall, then walks tiredly to the side of Tessa’s bed.

  “Scoot over,” she says.

  Tessa does and takes comfort in the warmth of her sister’s body at her side.

  They listen to the beeps of machinery and the rattle of hospital carts. The muffled voices in the hallway that proclaim the world hasn’t changed at all.

  “What do you think of when I say the word halcyon?” Tessa asks.

  “Is this a quiz?” Margot asks, her eyelids still closed.

  “No. No, it was just . . . something Oliver said. Before he . . .”

  Margot opens her eyes. “I don’t know. It’s like . . . an ideal time from the past, isn’t it? Halcyon days? I don’t know, Tess. You’re the one who went to college.”

  Tessa’s brows knit together. “But what does it make you think of?”

  Margot stares at the ceiling, blinking. “Before Dad died, I guess. When Granddad and Grandma Beth were both still alive. Sometime we were all together. All happy.”

  Tessa’s heart beats at double time, and she sits up straight in the bed.

  “Did you get the footage, Margot?”

  “What?” Her sister shakes her head, confused by the sudden change in direction. “From your assistant? I don’t know, I haven’t checked my email. I was a little busy hanging from rooftops and trying to keep my husband from bleeding out.”

  “Where’s your phone?” Tessa asks, ignoring the sarcasm. She jumps up from the bed and digs through her pile of dirty clothes. “Hurry.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” her sister asks, leaning up on her elbows and glaring at her.

  “Halcyon, Margot. A peaceful spot. Looking for some peace. Halcyon.”

  It’s been right in front of her, this whole time.