“She said, ‘Why haven’t you called me?’ and ‘We really need to talk, handsome,’” Walt told Susan under his breath during dinner.
“She called you
handsome
?” Susan whispered. “She was flirting with you while the kids and I were right there across the room?”
She waited until after the horrid 7-Up cake was served for dessert (even the kids didn’t like it) before she approached Melissa, who, in a rare moment, stood by herself near the guest-room door. She was sipping a glass of red wine. “Melissa, can I show you something?”
“Why, sure, Susan,” she said with a big phony smile. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you all night long. I just had a smidge, but your Tater Tot casserole was to die for!”
“Well, thank you.” Susan opened the guest-room door, then nodded toward the bed. A pretty, brunette teenager was sitting there with an open book in her lap. Two toddlers sat on one side of her, and Mattie was curled up on the other side, just starting to doze off. “I don’t think you’ve had a chance to really see my boys,” Susan whispered. “That sleepyhead is our two-year-old, Matthew….”
“Oh, he’s a darling,” Melissa said.
“Isn’t he though?” Susan replied, quietly closing the door. She pointed to Michael, out on the deck. Holding a sparkler, Michael turned and smiled at her. “And that’s our eight-year-old, Michael. He looks a lot like his dad, doesn’t he?”
“He sure does,” Melissa agreed. “And just look at those eyelashes. He’s going to be a real heartbreaker.”
“Speaking of breaking hearts,” she said, pulling Melissa to the corner of the living room. “Now that you’ve seen my children and talked a little bit with me, I hope you understand what I’m about to say, Melissa. If you come near my husband or try to call him again, I’m going to come after you. And you’ll have a very difficult time teaching your yoga class with two broken arms.”
Melissa let out a bewildered laugh. But then she must have seen the seriousness in Susan’s eyes, because the smile vanished from her face.
“Do you understand?” Susan whispered. “I know what’s been going on. Walt told me everything. I’m only going to say this to you once. Lay off.”
Melissa stared at her and nodded. “All right,” she murmured. Her hand was shaking a bit as she gulped down the rest of her wine. Her eyes avoided Susan’s. “I—I’m really sorry….”
“I’m sorry, too,” Susan said quietly. “And I’m sorry you’re going through a difficult time right now. I hope you figure out some other way to cope with it.”
Susan patted her arm and headed toward the deck to join Walt, Michael, and several others who were waving around sparklers. Walt eyed her nervously. To take the edge off, he’d consumed at least three India Pale Ales. She wasn’t sure of the exact count, but he was feeling no pain. “Is everything all right, my love?” he asked. He’d just started to slip into his fake British accent, which he took on whenever he got tipsy. That was how Susan knew he was too drunk to drive. He didn’t stagger, or slur his words, or get loud; he just got
British
. And it was the worst imitation of Brit she’d ever heard. His old college friends were used to it, and like Susan they knew, when Walt started referring to other guys as
blokes
, it was time to cut him off. He hadn’t gotten that far along just yet.
“Everything’s peachy,” she said, sliding an arm around him. “Don’t look now, but I believe Melissa is making her excuses.”
The redhead was indeed talking to their hostess and moving toward the door with an empty Tupperware cake container under her arm. She glanced over her shoulder at the two of them. Susan just smiled and nodded.
“So all is forgiven?” he whispered.
Susan just nodded.
“Any chance for a bit of makeup sex tonight?” he asked in his awful British accent.
“Don’t push your luck,
Nigel
,” she whispered. “And by the way, I’m driving us home tonight. I don’t want any arguments.”
“Anything you say, old girl.” He kissed her on the cheek.
Susan glanced over at Michael, with a sparkler in his hand and the darkening cityscape behind him. From across the balcony, he smiled at her and Walt. Her sweet son looked so beautiful.
That was when she heard the loud crack. Susan thought it was a firework’s pop, but it was too close. The noise seemed to come directly underneath them. Everyone was looking around for something in the sky.
Then it happened again. Susan realized the sound was wood splintering. The deck floor shook and creaked.
“Oh, my God,” she murmured, a panic sweeping through her.
People started screaming, and they tried to scramble off the faltering deck, but it was too late. Another thunderous crack rang out.
Susan saw Michael on the other side of the deck. “Mom! Dad!” he cried, reaching for them.
She broke away from Walt and tried to get to her son. He was just outside her grasp. Then all at once, the deck’s wood floor opened up beneath her feet.
Suddenly, she was falling. As she plunged toward the ground, Susan heard all these horrible screams around her. Her arms and legs flailing, she felt so helpless—and doomed.
Someone from a neighboring condominium later said that the bodies, wood beams, and broken concrete all toppled down in unison. Some of the people—along with chunks of debris—bounced off the balcony below the O’Maras’ condo. Others careened straight down to the ground.
Susan had no idea of this. She remembered slamming against something hard. Then she must have blacked out from the pain and shock. It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two.
She was still disoriented as she regained consciousness. Her vision was blurred, but she realized she was lying in a pile of debris. She tried to sit up. But a heavy wood beam pressed against her arm and pinned her to the ground.
All of the casualties had landed in an unfinished garden area on the side of the hill—amid piles of dirt and newly planted trees and bushes. The O’Maras had turned off the outside lights to better view the fireworks, and it was dark at the bottom of the building. A cloud of dust and dirt loomed over the scene. It got in Susan’s eyes, and she tasted grit every time she took a breath. She could hear the agonizing screams and moans all around her. A child cried out for his mother. But it wasn’t Michael.
Susan tried to sit up again, but her whole body ached—and as much as she tried, she couldn’t free her left arm. Her hand was ensnared on something. She was pretty certain the arm was broken. Helplessly, she called out for Walt and Michael.
As the dust cleared, she saw the others, mangled in a mess of broken concrete, wooden planks, and dirt. Some of them were moving; others were perfectly still. She couldn’t see Walt or Michael among them. Part of her kept hoping they were okay. She continued to call out for them. But hers was just one of many voices crying out for help.
Finally, she spotted the silhouette of someone climbing over some rubble toward her. She never got a good look at the kind man’s face, but he lifted a few splintered, heavy wood beams—and at last, Susan could move her arm. Blood oozed from a six-inch gash along her forearm. The pain was excruciating. Still, she kept thanking the man. “Have you—have you seen Walt or Michael Blanchette?” she asked anxiously as he helped her to her feet. “Are they okay?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t at the party. I’m a neighbor….”
Susan staggered through the wreckage, desperately searching for her husband and son. She could hardly walk. Every time she found someone, she tried to help them—as much as she could with her left arm out of commission. Everything she’d learned from her days as a nurse back in Harborview’s ER was coming back to her. She tried to identify people’s injuries or, at least, figure out whether or not they could be moved. She asked someone to get some sheets to make bandages and ice for the fractures and breaks. She remembered there had been two coolers full of ice at the party. So many people from the party and from neighboring buildings had rallied together to help. Susan kept looking for Michael—and Walt, hoping against hope he was among those good Samaritans.
The ambulances, cop cars, and two fire trucks finally showed up. But they had to park half a block away from the site. A stone path was the only access to the back of the condominium. Still, the nearby strobe lights from all the emergency vehicles bathed the area in an eerie red glow. The paramedics and firemen were just starting down the slope toward the casualties when Susan heard someone call her name.
She saw a man waving at her from farther down the hill. He stood over a heap of split boards and rubbish. Susan couldn’t see any bodies, but she knew they were there. She hobbled through the twisted ruins on the hillside. Tears streamed down her dirt-smudged face. As she got closer, she recognized Jim O’Mara, standing over Michael’s battered, broken body. Jim was shaking his head. There were tears in his eyes.
Susan plopped down on the ground, and she pulled Michael into her lap with her one good arm. She didn’t want to believe he was dead. She held on to his wrist and kept rocking him. But there was no pulse.
A rocket shot across the sky above them and then burst with a dazzling display of color. Susan glanced up for a moment.
“Walt’s just over here,” she heard Jim O’Mara say. “He’s unconscious. He—he’s still breathing….”
Walt never regained consciousness.
He had an epidural hematoma due to massive head trauma. They took him to Harborview Medical Center, where he died twenty hours later. Susan was at his bedside.
Later, when the lawsuits were filed against the condominium’s designers and builders, Susan remembered one of the arbitration hearings. She sat at a varnished walnut table in the conference room on the twenty-sixth floor of a downtown-Seattle office building. She listened to some hotshot attorney in a three-piece dark blue suit go on and on about how the materials used to build the decks on those condos had been up to code specifications. He kept talking about the odds of such a catastrophic accident ever happening. He said the odds were something like a million and a half to one.
And yet against all the odds, it had happened.
Michael was one of three people who had been killed on the scene. Walt was the fourth casualty. Nine more party-goers were seriously hurt and hospitalized, including Susan. She hadn’t realized the extent of her injuries from the fall until later. She’d been walking around the wreckage with two cracked ribs, a sprained ankle, and several cuts and bruises. Her left arm had been fractured in three places—and bled so profusely that she’d passed out in the ambulance with Walt.
When she came to in the hospital’s ER, it was like waking up from a dream. For a moment, she was reaching out for Michael again.
She’d known back in the ambulance that Walt would never recover—and that Michael was dead. She’d asked about Matthew. They’d told her that her younger son was fine. When the deck had collapsed, he’d been safely in bed with three other toddlers in the O’Maras’ guest room.
Yet when she’d regained consciousness in the emergency room, Susan had convinced herself that Mattie was dead, too. She thought they were lying to her when they said her friends, Jim and Barbara Church, had taken Mattie for the night. She didn’t calm down again until they called the Churches, and Barbara put a tired, confused Mattie on the phone with her.
If it wasn’t for Mattie, she would have completely fallen apart. She had to be brave and carry on for him. But that didn’t stop her from having moments when she’d think about Walt and Michael and start sobbing uncontrollably. Thank God most of these crying jags hit her when she was alone—driving in her car, or in bed at night. But occasionally they snuck up on her—in the checkout line at the supermarket or during her lunch break at the sandwich place near Dr. Chang’s office. All it took sometimes was a song on the radio or the sight of a young dad and his son, and then the damn water-works would start.
It was silly of her to think these awful, empty, heartbreaking episodes would suddenly stop now that Allen was in her life. He didn’t know that she still had those moments. He didn’t ask about Walt much—and for that, she was grateful.
The accident had been almost two years ago, and yet she still couldn’t help worrying that she’d lose Mattie, too. So if she was a bit overprotective of him at times, that was why.
At the kitchen sink, Susan blew her nose and wiped her tears away with a paper towel. Then she splashed some cold water on her face.
With a sigh, she took the Tater Tots and French bread out of the oven and set them out on the warm stove. Then she went back to the sunroom, sat down beside Mattie, and mussed his hair. “We’ll have to put
WALL-E
on hold for dinner, honey,” she said. “Let’s get your hands washed, okay?”
Gazing wide-eyed at the TV with the Woody doll at his side, Matthew didn’t respond.
“C’mon, Mattie,” Susan said, reaching for the remote. “You can…”
A hammering noise outside silenced her. Susan got to her feet and wandered toward the sliding screen door. She looked out at the porch. On the table by the gas grill was the platter of barbecued chicken breasts with a sheet of tinfoil over it—fluttering slightly in the night breeze.
She saw Allen by the corner of the porch, bent over the faulty balustrade with a hammer in his hand. In his mouth, he had an extra nail. He was repairing the loose railing.
Obviously, he had no idea she was watching him. Every once in a while, Allen stopped his hammering and looked out at the woods surrounding their rental house. Susan figured he was on the lookout for that man who had followed her here from the Arby’s in Mount Vernon. Maybe he was being a bit overprotective himself. But Susan didn’t mind, not at all.
She told herself that Allen was only doing his best to keep them safe—against all the odds.
“You guys just want to see me naked,” Moira Dancey said.
Jordan Prewitt and Leo Forester stood by the kitchen door, each with a rolled-up bath towel under his arm. Jordan had a flashlight. It was already dark outside, starting to get chilly; they both wore fall jackets over their street clothes. Yet they were ready to hike through the woods so they could sit naked in some secluded hot spring.
Leo rolled his eyes at her and shook his head. “Jeez, full of yourself much?” he said. “I don’t want to see you naked. I want to see Jordan naked. We just need you for a chaperone—so things don’t get too
Brokeback Mountain
.”
“You wish,” Jordan said, bumping his shoulder against Leo’s.
The buffed, handsome lacrosse player and his lean, gangly best buddy made an odd-looking duo. But they’d been best friends for six years. “It’s weird to think,” Leo had mentioned in the car on the way up from Seattle. “Jordan and I have known each other B.P.H. That’s before pubic hair.”
“And we’re all still waiting for Leo to grow some,” Jordan had chimed in from the driver’s seat, never taking his eyes off the road.
“Stop, stop, please,” Leo had rejoined in a deadpan tone. “My sides are aching. You’re so hysterical. I think I just ruptured my spleen from laughing.”
Riding alone in the backseat of the Honda Civic, Moira had felt a bit like an outsider with the two of them. She was Leo’s friend. He and Jordan went to Garfield High School, and she attended Holy Names Academy, an all-girls Catholic school. A year ago, her mother and Leo’s mother had fixed them up at a Sadie Hawkins dance—or the
Sadie Hawkins Disaster
, as they now referred to it. Mrs. Dancey had been really pushing for the date, because most of the guys Moira hung out with were a bit dangerous. Mrs. Dancey described them as “hoody.” Her mother needn’t have worried too much. Moira was still a virgin—technically. She never let it get too far with any of those guys, but sometimes, she felt like she was pushing the envelope—and her luck. One of her friends said she was a “virgin on the verge.” Moira wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about that label, but it didn’t make her happy.
Unlike the guys who usually turned her head, Leo was safe—and nice. His dad had been killed in Iraq, and Leo worked nights, busing tables at Broadmoor Estates Country Club to help his mom with the finances. He also had a kid sister he helped care for. How much nicer could a guy get?
Moira and Leo had a horrible time at the dance, probably because she was—admittedly—a jerk to him for the first two hours. She’d made up her mind not to like this guy her mother was forcing her to go out with. But afterward he’d taken her to the Deluxe Restaurant, and during their one-on-one time together over burgers, she realized he was funny and sweet and genuine. He even had an offbeat kind of cuteness. But she just wasn’t that attracted to him.
Leo later said he’d caught on to her lack of passion when he’d tried to kiss her good night on that first date. Moira had let him kiss her on the lips, but she’d kept her mouth closed and punctuated the kiss with a
mwah
afterward. “You gave me the
mwah.
That’s the way my aunt Sonja kisses,” Leo had later told her.
Moira liked him—just not
that way
. So they were good friends—with a little something extra, that
something extra
being his slight crush on her. He was always there for her. As long as Leo was around, Moira had a date for every dance or social occasion that came up. She still had an occasional date with some other guy, but never anything serious.
She’d met Jordan four times—always with Leo, of course. She thought he was very handsome and sexy, but the less Leo knew about that, the better. So she did her damnedest to conceal her attraction to this brooding, sensitive jock.
She wasn’t sure how Jordan felt about her. Earlier, when they’d stopped at that ma-and-pa grocery store down the road, he’d shown a lot more interest in that pretty brunette woman with the little boy than he had in her throughout the entire drive up from Seattle.
The Prewitts’ Cullen retreat was a brown-shingle, two-story cabin—quaint and rustic looking on the outside. But inside she found a gracious living room with a big stone fireplace. The kitchen was wallpapered with a tacky design that must have been called
Spice Rack,
because it had olive and brown-tone renderings of spices and jars—sage, oregano, rosemary, pepper, and thyme. The matching avocado oven and refrigerator were kind of ugly, but she liked the lime-colored dinette set from the fifties.
There was a basement. Moira had peeked at it from the top of the cellar steps of the kitchen when Jordan had given her a tour. It was cluttered with junk—and creepy. Throughout the tour, Jordan had occasionally touched her arm, and Moira had liked that.
Right now he was standing by the back door, giving her a guileless smile. “If you want, while you get undressed, we’ll close our eyes until you’re in the hot spring. Plus—it’s pretty dark out there anyway, Moira. You shouldn’t miss this experience. Some people drive half a day to get to a hot springs, and this is a ten-minute walk for us.”
“C’mon, where’s your sense of adventure?” Leo asked.
One hand on the kitchen counter, the other on her hip, Moira frowned at her friend. “I’m sorry, but this reminds me too much of that Friday night last month when we were alone and you kept challenging me to a game of strip poker.” She turned to Jordan. “Did he tell you about that?”
Nodding, Jordan laughed. “You can’t blame the guy for trying.”
“Hey, I just wanted to hone my card-playing skills for a possible appearance on
Celebrity Poker
,” Leo said. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Moira sighed. “Yeah, well, you guys go have fun. I can’t get too excited over the prospect of traipsing through those creepy woods so I can sit bare-assed in some muddy water. I don’t care how warm the water is.”
“Okay,” Jordan said. “Make yourself at home. We should be back in about an hour, and then I’ll fire up the barbecue.”
“Yeah, let’s get
traipsing
,” Leo said, opening the screen door. “I didn’t want to see her naked anyway. Did you want to see her naked?”
“Hmmm, maybe,” Jordan allowed, and then he winked at her.
Moira felt herself blushing. “Oh, I know who you wouldn’t mind taking to the hot spring and seeing naked, Jordan,” she said, teasingly. “That pretty lady at the grocery store you were talking to earlier. I think you were flirting with her. You must have a thing for older women. Maybe it’s some kind of mother complex or some—” Moira stopped herself when she realized what she’d just said.
The smile seemed to freeze on Jordan’s face. He let out an uncomfortable chuckle.
“C’mon, let’s get cracking,” Leo announced, pushing his friend out the door. “You can analyze Jordan later, Moira.”
“See ya!” Moira called. “Have fun!” She jumped a bit when Leo let the screen door slam shut behind them. She felt like an utter moron, bringing up the subject of mothers to Jordan—and in such an idiotic way, too. Leo had told her ages ago that Jordan’s mother died in a car accident when he was eight.
“Nice going, Moira,” she muttered to herself. “That was real charming.” Rubbing her forehead, she turned toward the refrigerator.
She heard the screen door yawn open behind her, and she turned around.
Leo stepped into the kitchen. “Why did you bring up
his mother
?” he whispered. “Jordan’s crying. You made him cry.”
“Oh, no,” Moira murmured, a hand on her heart. “I’m so sorry—”
Leo broke into a grin. “Relax, I’m screwing around with you. He’s fine.”
She slapped him on the shoulder. “You shit.”
“I told him I wanted to come back for some water.” Leo opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Smartwater. He stopped and looked her in the eye. “You like him, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You always get tongue-tied or say something stupid in front of guys you’re interested in,” Leo explained. “And what you said to him just now was pretty stupid. Don’t worry, he’s cool. He didn’t notice. But I did. That’s why I came back. I knew you were in here, kicking yourself.” He hesitated at the kitchen door. “So—do you like Jordan? I mean, I want you to
like
him, but are you
interested
in him?”
She shrugged uneasily. “I think he’s nice, that’s all.” Moira knew it would kill Leo if she said yes.
He gave her a wary sidelong glance. “Are you sorry you came?”
“Of course not, this is fun.” She worked up a smile and patted Leo’s arm. “You guys do your hot-spring thing. I’m going to finish unpacking and maybe have a
civilized
bath.”
Leo threw her a crooked smile. “See ya in a bit, Moira.” Then he let the screen door slam shut behind him as he headed back outside.
Moira wandered over to the door and gazed out past the screen. Off to the side in the small backyard was a flagstone patio with a barbecue pit, a picnic table, and two deck chairs. The woods lay beyond that. She watched Leo and Jordan head for a break in the trees—obviously the trail to the hot spring.
They disappeared in the darkness past that first row of trees.
From behind some bushes alongside the cabin, he watched the two young men forge into the woods with bath towels tucked under their arms. Then he peered through the kitchen window at the girl. She was a tall, willowy thing with a short pixie-style haircut. She looked very fetching in those tight jeans and the long-sleeved white T-shirt. She seemed like the type who came from money, read books, and got straight A’s at school.
He imagined the public outcry when a girl of her pedigree suddenly vanished. With her slim figure, she would be a radical change from the pleasantly plump Wendy and the mannish Monica. She was younger and prettier than them, too. Maybe he’d even keep her alive for a while—something to amuse him after he finished off Susan.
Watching her in profile at the kitchen door, he wondered if she knew what she was doing. The girl seemed unconscious of it. As if in a trance, she ran a hand down her neck, then her T-shirt, and over her breasts.
Budding teenage sexuality
, he thought, licking his lips.
He only had to wait a little longer—until the boys were farther along in the woods. Then he’d make his move. They just had to be a bit farther away.
He didn’t want them to hear her screams.
With a sigh, Moira stepped away from the screen door. She grabbed a Smartwater out of the refrigerator and retreated upstairs. The guys had her staying in the master bedroom—very cozy with a slanted ceiling, a four-poster queen bed, and a potbellied stove. The large window looked out at the forest and a long, private driveway to the cabin. Jordan and Leo would share a cramped loft space with a futon down the hall. They had a window, too—a little porthole, like something in the steerage section of a ship. Moira felt a bit guilty scoring the better accommodations, but Jordan and Leo had insisted.
She bypassed her bedroom and checked out their sleeping quarters off the hallway. Jordan had changed out of the black T-shirt he’d been wearing earlier. Now it was draped over the loft-space railing—just off the hallway. Moira couldn’t resist pulling it down from the banister. His scent was on it—a musky smell mixed with a subtle, spicy cologne fragrance. She put the shirt to her face and breathed it in.
“Oh, what the hell,” she murmured. Moira pulled her long-sleeved top over her head, took off her bra, and then donned Jordan’s shirt. His bare skin had been against this same, thin, soft material. Her whole body tingled. She started to unzip her jeans. She wanted to be naked—except for his T-shirt.
That was when she heard a noise outside. It sounded like something had bumped against the side of the cabin.
Alarmed, Moira quickly fastened up the front of her jeans, then headed up the hallway to her bedroom. She gazed out the big window, but it was so dark outside, she couldn’t see anything except her own reflection.
Moving close to the window, her breath fogged the glass. She cupped her hands around her eyes and peered outside. Directly below, she noticed a patch of light and her own shadow on the dirt ground in front of the house. It was so dark out there she couldn’t see much else beyond the first row of trees on the other side of the driveway. “Probably just a raccoon or something,” she muttered to herself.
Backing away from the window, she caught her reflection again. She looked like an idiot in Jordan’s oversized T-shirt. What the hell was wrong with her?
Moira shuffled back down the hall toward the loft area. Pulling off Jordan’s T-shirt, she carefully draped it on the railing—exactly where it had been. Then she put her bra and top back on. Returning to the master bedroom, she started to unpack her overnight bag.
She wished she hadn’t come here. This weekend getaway had been Leo’s brainchild. His eighteenth birthday was tomorrow. She and Jordan had asked him—separately—what he wanted to do to celebrate the occasion. He’d proposed a mini vacation with his two best friends at Jordan’s family cabin. Apparently, the Prewitts sometimes rented out the place, and Jordan had to get the okay from some local leasing company so they could use the cabin this weekend. Leo had been here only twice before.
Moira didn’t know if either of those previous visits had included a skinny-dip in the hot spring, but maybe that was one reason Leo had wanted her along on this trip. In addition to his lame-o strip poker proposition a few weeks ago, earlier this summer on a particularly sultry evening, he’d suggested they go skinny-dipping in Lake Washington—at a spot near Madison Park Beach. “Do you know the meaning of
fat chance
?” she’d replied.
Yet a part of her had wanted to go along with them to the hot spring tonight. She imagined being naked in that warm spring with Jordan right now—after a scary, exciting trek through those dark woods. She imagined his muscular leg accidentally brushing against hers under the water.
Of course, Leo would be there, too—so that would have put a damper on things. Still, as much as Leo’s clumsy overtures annoyed her, she was flattered, too. She cherished Leo and didn’t want to lose that friendship.