Without a Net

by Kimberly Cooper Griffin

  The characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialog in this novel are either the products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2019 by Kimberly Cooper Griffin

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission or additional detail, contact the author at the address below.

  Printed in the United States of America First Edition 2019

  Edited by Jennifer Renton

  Cover and interior design/layout by Matthew LaFleur

  Night River Press

  Denver, CO 80209

  NightRiverPress.com

  Without a Net

  ISBN (Hardcover): 978-0-9972190-7-4

  ISBN (Paperback): 978-0-9972190-8-1

  ISBN (eBook): 978-0-9972190-9-8

  Visit the author’s website at

  http://kimberlycoopergriffin.com to order additional copies.

  Without a Net is dedicated to Summer,

  my favorite wife.

  Also by Kimberly Cooper Griffin

  Life in High Def

  Chasing Mercury

  Acknowledgements

  Without a Net spent many an afternoon torturing my writing group; Lake McCleary, Carrie Repking, and Beth Escott Newcomer. I’m grateful for your brilliant insight, inspiration, and precious patience while I figured out how to turn what was once a dark and brooding story into something that wouldn’t drive my readers into a crippling depression. I miss writing with you wonderful ladies.

  Thank you Jennifer Renton. Your editing magic makes my wandering prose stronger and clearer than I ever thought possible.

  Skeeter Buck, I’m grateful that we met in our children’s kindergarten class. You helped me find the courage to publish my stories, and gave me a path to get it done. You rock!

  Summer Cooper Griffin, without you I would be nothing. I owe you everything.

  1

  Two and half months ago

  A shard of golden light of snuck around the edges of the closed bedroom blinds, making its way across the pillow until it pierced Fiona MacGregor’s eyes through her closed lids. They fluttered, but did not open. She grimaced and pulled the comforter over her aching head with a groan. It wasn’t the light that had woken her up, driving a brutal spike through her head. It was the delivery truck that sounded like it was rumbling through her bedroom. She tucked the covers against her ears as defense against the head-splitting sound and tried to summon back the black and empty nothingness of sleep. It was no use. The truck came to a stop outside her window with a piercing squeal of brakes. The engine idled with an uneven growl. Doors opened and slammed. Horns blared. Men’s voices shouted an argument about double-parking. Every sound was an agony and all Fiona wanted was to drift away.

  Any other time, the constant noise of the city was a comfort to Fiona, but at this moment, she’d do anything for the blissful sound of silence. As she took a bleary inventory of her body parts, pain registered from every sector. Especially her head, which ached with a fury she’d never experienced before. Her mouth tasted disgusting and the smell of alcohol exuded from every pore. Gingerly, she rolled from her back onto her stomach. Limp strands of her long brown hair stuck to the perspiration on her pale face as she pulled the pillow back over her head. Where was Mrs. Rickles when she needed her?

  As if in sympathy, the truck noise stopped and Fiona slid back into a dreamless sleep.

  2

  “I can’t thank you enough for letting me stay here, Aunt Vi,” Meg Jordon said as she dropped a backpack near the front door of the third floor apartment. She was out of breath from running up the stairs. The moving truck had just pulled up and she’d directed them to a loading zone Aunt Vi had said they could use in front of the building across the street.

  A middle-aged woman poked her crew-cut styled head out of the kitchen. “What can I say, Megsi? It’s the least I can do for the daughter of one of my oldest friends.”

  As one of her mother’s best friends, Aunt Vi wasn’t Meg’s aunt by blood, but by choice. Meg had known Vi her entire life.

  “Well, I hope it’s not an inconvenience. I don’t have much. Most of the stuff on the truck is going on to Seattle.”

  “Not at all. It’s a guest room, but most of my guests don’t sleep there, if you know what I mean.” Aunt Vi wiggled her eyebrows suggestively before her head disappeared back into the kitchen and the sounds of dishes being washed resumed. Meg laughed. She’d gotten used to Vi’s ribald humor over the years. Besides, Vi’s girlfriend Sherri meant there wouldn’t be a stream of different women coming through the apartment. Or, so she hoped.

  “Still, I owe you one,” she said, as she added the apartment key Vi had given her to her keychain.

  The sound of running water stopped and Vi came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a dishtowel.

  “The room is fully furnished so you should be comfortable.”

  “I’m sure I will. Anything beats the dorm bed I slept on the last three years. I’ll only need a couple of boxes. Mostly clothes, books, and art stuff. The drivers from the moving company are parking across the street, like you said.”

  Aunt Vi moved the curtains and looked across the street. “Ah, yeah. I meant the loading zone a half a block up. But it should be okay if it’s only a couple of boxes. By the time the old lady from the building across the street makes it out to yell at them, they’ll be pulling away.”

  Meg joined her at the window. “Ooops! I could have sworn you said directly across the street!”

  Aunt Vi laughed and ran her hand over her short hair. “I might have. At my age, you say a lot of stupid shit. Anyway, parking is one of the downsides to living in the city. It’s always hard to find.”

  “That’s what my mom said, so my Jeep is one of the things going back to Seattle.”

  Meg’s cell phone chimed the receipt of a text message and she pulled it from the back pocket of her shorts. It was the truck driver.

  Vi grabbed a couple of beers from the refrigerator and waved them enticingly at Meg as she read the message. She glanced up and shook her head. It wasn’t yet ten a.m. and it was a little early for beer. She waved her phone and moved toward the door. “That was the movers. They’re across the street and some guy is giving them a hard time about not having a permit for the loading space. I better get down there.”

  “Must be the old lady’s son. They take turns yelling at people who get too close to their building. It’s a perfect excuse to have a beer,” Vi said, cracking both beers open despite Meg’s protest. She handed one to Meg. “Cheers, Megsie. To being roomies!” Meg knew she had lost this battle, so she tapped the neck of her Blue Moon against the one in Vi’s hand, and took a drink before she put it on the table next to the door and bounded downstairs to the moving van double-parked across the street.

  3

  The roar of a diesel engine wrenched Fiona from her cocoon of sleep again, the metal against metal of grinding gears flaying her brain. Visions of flying out of bed and smashing windshields ran through her mind. She would have done it, too, had she not been dying from her self-inflicted misery of the night before. To make things worse, a piercing back-up signal started up, heightening her torture with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Her own dry alcohol-infused breath threated to suffocate her under the pillow she was h
ugging over her head. She whimpered, praying for silence. The gods were either busy or ignoring her.

  “Whaddaya think you’re doing, ya fuck, ya? This zone is for residents of this building! Move your fuckin’ truck, or I’m callin’ the cops!”

  The voice belonged to Harris, the son of her next door neighbor, Mrs. Rickles. How had a tiny, soft-spoken woman like her given birth to such a hulking, loudmouthed man? Fiona feebly attempted to throw her pillow at the window and pulled the covers over her head.

  An indistinct female voice responded, but Harris wasn’t having any of it.

  “Oh, yeah? I’ve heard that one before. Fifteen minutes, my ass! Your driver has taken longer just parking this piece of shit. Get it outta here!”

  The woman’s voice responded again.

  “I don’t care, lady! Get it moved!”

  The woman spoke again.

  Harris must have liked the woman. “Okay. Twenty minutes. Not one minute more.”

  The rumbling of the diesel engine cut out and relative silence filled the room. Fiona sighed in relief. Normally she appreciated the territorial behavior of her next door neighbor, the self-appointed building watch captain, but today it only added to the number of decibels she was being forced to suffer through, making her cranky.

  With silence restored, Fiona emerged from the covers and sat up in bed. Big mistake. It loosened her fragile grip on her equilibrium, triggering an overwhelming wave of nausea. She lurched out of bed and immediately tripped over the pillow she had thrown, before stumbling into the bathroom across the hall just in time to fall to her knees and re-experience the tapas she vaguely remembered enjoying at the bar the night before. The second time around wasn’t as delightful as the first.

  Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Fiona flushed the mess away but stayed close to the bowl, uncertain she was done being sick and too weak to move. Exhausted, she dozed with her head resting on the toilet seat, her body slumped against the cold porcelain and hard tile flooring, which felt surprisingly good against her hot skin through her cotton pajamas. A distant concern about her hair dangling in the toilet water nagged at the back of her brain, but it wasn’t enough to initiate a reaction. She couldn’t even begin to think about moving. Not yet.

  Eyes shut, she drifted in and out of sleep with her cheek resting atop the toilet seat. Self-recrimination would come later; the effort of moving, followed by hurling tapas, had sapped what little strength she had. The warm embrace of sleep pulled her back in. Within minutes, a string of saliva was dangling from the corner of her slack mouth and the sound of her breathing was the only noise in the otherwise silent room.

  4

  “You all set?” Vi hovered outside the open bedroom door of the guest room, which would be Meg’s home for the next several months. “Is everything comfy-cozy?”

  “It’s great,” Meg smiled. “Very homey.” She’d already gotten used to the smell of Chinese food from the corner restaurant which permeated the entire building. The bed she was sitting on was comfortable and the sparse furnishings in the room were nice. Aunt Vi’s spare room was perfect for her.

  The moving guys had finished bringing her stuff up, making the room feel like her own space already. The morning had gotten off to a rough start with the argument between the movers and a jerk from across the street, but she’d smoothed that over. Now, she was on the bed with her Mac propped up on her lap.

  Vi tilted her chin at the computer. “You getting ready to post something on the social media about getting to stay with your crazy old Aunt Vi? You need a selfie with me? I’m game. We can do this!” Aunt Vi smoothed the sides of her crew cut hair and hiked up her chinos.

  Meg laughed. “Definitely later. Right now, I’m checking to see if the ICVA has sent the results of my exam yet. It’s a compulsion. I look at the site, hoping for results, at least a hundred times a day.”

  “Is that the vet test?” Aunt Vi walked into the room and peered around to see the screen.

  Normally Meg bristled at nosiness, but with Aunt Vi, it was different.

  “Yeah. It’s the International Council for Veterinary Assessment. The licensing agency for all of North America.”

  “You’re not worried about passing it, are you? You’re the most smartest person I know!”

  “Not really,” said Meg, honestly. She wasn’t being arrogant. She had studied hard and knew her stuff.

  “Good. Your mom told me you were second in your class. Cornell’s no school for slouches from what I hear. I’m not an expert, I know. My education is only from the Navy.”

  Meg looked up from what she was doing. “Hey. Don’t sell yourself short, Aunt Vi. You served your country. Right now, I’m more excited to see if I can call myself a bona fide veterinarian.”

  Aunt Vi sat down on the edge of the bed. “You still planning to go work with your other aunt?”

  “Assuming I pass the licensing part, I’ll have to take the Washington state boards. But, yeah, I’ll go practice with Aunt Claudia in Okanogan this fall.”

  “Oakie-whatsit?” Vi scowled comically. “Is that a real place?”

  Meg laughed. “Okanogan. It’s in North Central Washington State.”

  Aunt Vi patted Meg’s leg. “Well, I’m sure you’ll pass and your less-favored aunt will be happy to have you join her. I know your mom would rather have you in Seattle. She’s told me as much. It’s been hard for her to have you and your brother living across the country.”

  “Okanogan is definitely closer than I am here. It’s about a four-hour drive.”

  “What about CJ? Is he planning to go back home? Where is he these days?”

  Meg shook her head. Who knew what CJ was up to? She was a little tired of people expecting her to know. CJ and she hadn’t been close since before college, but just because they were twins, people thought they were two parts of the same person. “I’m not sure. He left Ithaca and went to Europe last year after he failed the bar. I know Dad expected him back a while ago. He’s supposed to retest and join the law firm, but so far, all CJ has been interested in is partying. He calls Mom and Dad once in a while to check in, but with Grandpa’s trust, he can stay in Europe for a long time before he has to worry about making a living on his own.”

  Vi shook her head and tutted. “You two are like night and day. I love him, but that boy sure needs some sense knocked into him.”

  Meg had to agree with Aunt Vi. She scrolled through her email and sat up with a start. Her stomach was suddenly full of butterflies. Actually, they felt more like bats, whirling and churning against her guts. “Oh! It’s here. The email is here!” With a trembling hand, she moved the cursor over the message, but she didn’t open it. “I’m so nervous. I don’t know if I want to look.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t worried.”

  “I wasn’t until now.” She stared at the unopened message. This was it. The point where her real life could be starting.

  “So, what’re you waiting for?” Aunt Vi asked. “Just open it. You got this.”

  Meg was surprised by her sudden jitters. She selected the message. The first line started with “Congratulations”. She breathed out a huge sigh as the bats subsided. She’d done it!

  “I passed!” She was officially a veterinarian. All the hard work and then the waiting. The moment seemed so small, sitting on a borrowed bed, staring at a computer screen. She wasn’t one for over the top responses, but it seemed almost anti-climactic.

  Aunt Vi patted Meg’s leg. “Good job, Megsie! I knew you would do it. Your mom’s gonna be proud.”

  “I should give her a call to let her know.” Meg shifted her laptop to the bed beside her, picking up her phone. She couldn’t wait to tell her.

  Aunt Vi stood up. “Tell her I’ll give her a call this—”

  The front door squeaked open and a rattle of keys sounded from the living room. Aunt Vi’s head
swung around.

  The phone rang in Meg’s ear as she looked at Aunt Vi to see if she was expecting someone.

  A woman’s voice called down the hall. “Sorry I’m late, Love. My shift ran long.”

  Aunt Vi slapped her hand to her forehead but she was smiling. “I forgot Sherri was coming by after her shift at St. Anthony’s. Say hello to your mom for me.” She disappeared through the doorway, shutting the door behind her.

  Meg liked Aunt Vi’s girlfriend Sherri, and she felt rude for not going out to see her. The phone rang a few more times and went to voicemail. It was three hours earlier in Seattle, after all. Meg left a short message telling her mother she passed the exam and hung up.

  She could hear Aunt Vi and Sherri in the living room but not what they said. It sounded a little intense, so she decided to give them some privacy and opened the laptop to read the letter again. Holy shit! She was a real veterinarian now!

  5

  Fiona woke up when her left hand fell into the toilet water.

  While she slept, she had somehow managed to wedge her body between the toilet and the vanity shelf. Her right arm, tucked under her head, was numb, and her neck had a kink in it from the unusual position. When she tried to move, she whacked her head on the toilet paper dispenser and found that her right hip, which was supporting most of her weight, had fallen asleep against the cool tile floor. As she extracted her hand from the toilet bowl and wiped it on her pajama bottoms, she attempted to force open her eyes, only to suffer the full effect of the pounding headache trying to shatter her skull. She needed water, but her traitorous stomach threatened to revolt at the mere thought of ingesting even that innocuous liquid.

  She squinted into the too bright room. With shaking arms she slowly pushed herself up to sit on the edge of the tub. A nice warm shower was what she needed, but the spinning threatened to force her back onto her knees any time she moved. The mere thought of the effort that would be required to get into the shower thrust her forward over the toilet again. A whimper escaped her as she sat back up after another fruitless retch did nothing more than cover her body in a thin sheen of sweat and further abuse her already throbbing abdominal muscles. Her aching stomach didn’t even have bile in it to bring up.