Crumbling Walls (Jack and Emily #1)

by Laura Strandt

“No. The thought never even occurred to me until the ride home today. When I mentioned it, Em said she just finished, so it should be fine but …”

  “Dumbass. What were you thinking?”

  “Apparently not the right thing.”

  Tim reached down and rummaged through his backpack for a second, then tossed something across the way. “Here moron, don’t leave home without ‘em. Ever again.”

  Jack fingered the two condoms that had landed on his pillow, “What kind of odds are we playing?”

  “The odds of you ending up a father? I have no idea, but the odds that Dad's gonna kill you are pretty damn good.”

  Groaning into his pillow, “How could I have been so stupid?”

  Suddenly realizing he didn’t need to continue his lecture, “Hey, we’re all stupid at times. But hopefully God’ll see that Mom and Dad are a little too young to be grandparents at the moment.”

  “I’ve been pleading with him about that for the last seven hours.”

  Tim almost felt sorry for his brother and he switched subjects, kind of, “So, um, how do I look at her tomorrow?”

  “Like you always have.”

  “But I now know that you’ve seen her naked and … oh god … you were naked with her.”

  “Tim!”

  “What? You have and you were. And I now know this. And now, when I see her tomorrow, all I’m going to think about is her naked and you, as disgusting of an individual as you are, naked with her and I’m gonna have to throw up somewhere and ten to one, it’s gonna tip her off.”

  Jack finally laughed for the first time, “Good night, Tim.”

  “Hey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You do love her, don’t you?”

  Without hesitating, “More than life itself.”

  Another few minutes passed, then Tim, his voice barely making it over to Jack’s bed, “Were you scared?”

  “To death … then … just … I mean, then everything was fine.” Finally able to think about what had happened as a whole rather than a jumble of moments in his mind, “It was like it was supposed to happen that way and any other time or place would have been completely wrong. Like the whole universe conspired to get us to just that moment and then … let us go.”

  Even across the dark room, Tim could clearly hear the debate going on in Jack’s mind, “And I’d stop thinking about sneaking over there, little brother. The universe might not be so generous tonight.”

  Jack smiled, “Neither would Mom or Dad if they caught me.” Relaxing under his thick comforter, even his feet warm by now, “G’night, Tim.”

  “’Night.”

  ▪▪▪

  After Jack had dropped her off, Emily made her way upstairs. Walking into the living room, she headed immediately for the kitchen. After digging up something to calm the growling in her stomach, she stood there, munching her apple and looked around.

  Jack had said he’d be lonely without her and, in reality, her heart was already aching to see him again. Her sleepiness gone, she saw the room for what seemed to be the first time. It was quiet and small and sparse and hers … and empty.

  Confusion set in next … and she did the only thing she could ever do when there was suddenly too much on her mind. She pulled out her paper and her pencils.

  Chapter 22

  It was just after six the next morning when her mind quieted and she made the final finishing touches on her assignment. She had just been doodling, but around midnight she switched to the family project for class and, letting herself go, she watched her hand draw what she truly felt inside.

  It was the strangest thing. Once she’d decided to draw exactly what she was feeling, the project came easy to her.

  She also managed to forget what had happened the previous night with Jack. She knew that if that entered into things, she would forever doubt the decision she fought so hard to make.

  And it was done.

  Startled, she looked up as she heard a knock on the downstairs door. With a sudden grin, she figured it had to be Jack and ran down the steps. Pulling the door open, she could barely get out a gasp before she received a solid punch to the face.

  ▪▪▪

  Jack had woken up and, after tossing and turning for awhile, finally decided he’d had enough waiting. Getting up, he dressed silently, crept downstairs, greeted his dad at the kitchen table and immediately began pulling on his coat and boots.

  “Going over to Emily’s?”

  “Yeah.” With a sheepish grin, “I’m awake so I figured, why not?”

  Will stared at him for a moment, then, “Please be careful, Jack. Very careful. You’re too young and too much has happened to her for you to treat this as a flippant thing.”

  Jack nodded, “I just,” looking down at the floor and shuffling his still untied boots, “I just need to see her.” Meeting his dad’s eyes, “I just want to tell her I love her. That’s all.”

  A quick smile spread across his dad’s face, “Then why are you standing here with me? You’ve got a girl waiting on you.”

  With his own grin, he hurried out the door, walking swiftly down the street. Will went back to his paper, worrying as every father does.

  ▪▪▪

  The first thing Jack noticed was the set of footprints leading to the door. They weren’t his or hers from last night and Dex would have come from the other direction. Beads of cold sweat broke out on his forehead as he knocked on the door.

  When no one answered, he tried the handle and the door opened easily. Now in sheer, full-on panic mode, he hauled up the stairs and skidded to a halt in the living room. Some guy was straddling Emily on the floor, swinging his fists at her.

  It took hearing the thud of her head hitting the floor in reaction to the man’s fist to get him moving.

  And move he did. Yanking his coat off, he flew across the room, tackling as Tim had taught him, knocking the man completely off Emily and together, they landed in a heap. Jack took advantage of his surprise attack by hitting hard and hitting fast.

  Being a strong, solidly built 16-year-old, Jack held his own, but the man he fought had three years of pent-up rage and nothing to lose. As Emily watched from across the room, somewhere in the back of her sluggish mind, she knew this couldn't possibly end well.

  It didn’t take too long before they’d worked their way back towards the door and with one final, desperate, no-holds barred blow to the man’s face, Jack then raised his leg and shoved the man cleanly through the door.

  He watched from the top of the stairs, in what seemed like slow motion, as the man stumbled and pitched down them. In his statement later, he would also describe the gunshot-like sounds he heard when several of the man's bones cracked on the sharp-edged wooden steps.

  Hesitating and breathing long, jagged breaths, Jack watched, then cautiously made his way downstairs. He couldn’t see the man breathing and, tentatively putting his fingers to the man’s neck, he felt around for a pulse, but couldn’t find one.

  Backing up the steps, never taking his eyes off the crumpled figure lying on the landing, he sat on the top stair and pulled out his phone, ignoring the blood pouring from his nose and the gaping split in his lower lip and chin.

  ▪▪▪

  Once he hung up from his fairly calm conversation with 911, he turned to see Emily attempting to sit up across the room. Not willing to leave his spot, wanting to be able to see if the man made any kind of move, he called over to her, “You okay?”

  She groaned and put her head back down on the floor, her face already swollen to a nearly unrecognizable state. Then he saw her nod slightly as she curled into a ball, clutching her sides.

  He let out a sigh of relief and dialed his own house, “Hello?”

  “Dad, I need you to come over right now.”

  “Jack?”

  “Now, Dad.” Hanging up, he sat equidistant from the person he loved with all his heart and the one he hated most of all, the one he could only assume was her father, and waited.


  ▪▪▪

  The police, ambulance and Will and Elizabeth all showed up at the same time. For the next hour, everything was in chaos: Will sitting by his son, listening to the story as he told it to the police, Steven Ward being loaded into an ambulance, Emily being wheeled out to a second truck and Jack, desperate to go with her, demanding that Elizabeth go instead.

  She did and Jack managed to calm himself down again in order to re-tell the story for the third time to someone else. “The only thing I knew is that I had to get him away from her. The rest is a blur. I hit him, he hit me, we worked our way to the door and I shoved him out. I was just hoping to be able to lock the door. It never occurred to me he’d fall down, much less,” waving his blood-covered and trembling hands around, “this.”

  The officer watched as Jack began shaking more and turn an almost gray color. Deciding to wrap things up for now, “Okay. First, I think you need to be going to the hospital yourself. I’ll follow behind and we can continue this there and then I’ll need to wait for Emily’s side of things.” Helping Jack to his extremely unsteady feet, “Second, I’ll have my guys finish things here and they’ll lock up when they leave. Do you have a key?”

  Jack swung his head slowly around, the fog closing in, “Um, yeah. Her keys should be by the door.”

  The officer pocketed them as they moved to leave, “All right. Now, third, do you think you can make it down the stairs and to the car or do you want me to get another truck out here for you?”

  Will took a look at his son and shook his head, “I can get him down.” And with that, the policeman watched Will, who was slightly shorter and smaller than the boy, put an arm around his waist and practically carry him down the stairs, past the cluster of officers and out to the waiting squad car.

  ▪▪▪

  Tim had been awake when Jack called and, suddenly, finding himself in charge, he now had the job of getting everyone fed, cleaned, dressed and to school without raising suspicions of where his parents were and why the hell he was actually in charge in the first place. He found it easiest to go with the vague and boring, “They went somewhere and told me to get you guys to school on time.” When Dave opened his mouth to ask more, Tim just glared at him, “Dude, just go get ready, all right?”

  Dave wasn't buying it, but didn't really need Tim pissed at him, so he shrugged and did as asked. The other boys didn't even question, each carrying on with their normal routines.

  Tim's route luckily didn't take them past Emily's house, so Tim still had absolutely no idea what was happening when he arrived at school ten minutes after the first bell. Taking his tardy notice without a word, he spent the next two hours not hearing a damn thing said in his classes, using class exchange to dial and re-dial his dad's phone, the ringing going unanswered. Finally, after his third useless class, as he was pulling his coat back on to go outside to his car to continue calling until someone finally decided to answer, he got a text message from his dad, “J and E at Oak Grove Hosp. R okay. Call later.”

  Ducking into the art room, he found Ms. Tassleman getting ready for class, “Tim? You’re about an hour early.”

  “Do you know where Oak Grove Hospital is?”

  Her smile immediately faded, “Yeah. Why?”

  “My dad just sent me a message that my brother and Emily are there, but I have no idea where it is.”

  She quickly gave him directions and also demanded that he call when he knew anything. Nodding to the teacher, he high-tailed it out of the school and started across town.

  ▪▪▪

  Elizabeth watched them take care of Emily, standing quietly in the corner out of the way trying not to bother them, lest they throw her back into the hall. She answered what questions she could and hated herself every time she could only shake her head with an, “I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

  Eventually they wheeled Emily out of the room and one of the nurses stayed behind to fill Elizabeth in, “First she’s going to get a head CT to make sure there’s no brain swelling, then they’ll be x-raying her ribs and chest, her face and her arm. After that, she’ll be back down here.”

  Visibly paling at the thought of everything, she nodded, “Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment but if you’d like to wait down the hall, I’ll find you when she comes back.”

  “Would it be possible for you find out if my son was brought in? Jack Callaghan. He stopped the man who did this to her, but I left him talking to the police at her house. He wanted me here with her.”

  The nurse nodded, “I’ll find out right now for you.”

  Elizabeth went into the hall and ran smack into Will. Telling the nurse to never mind, “Is Jack here?”

  “Yeah. We just got in. I told him I was going to find you.” Taking her hand, he walked her to the other end of the hall, “We’re down here.”

  ▪▪▪

  Jack woke up slowly, blinking his eyes several times before he focused in on his parents, “Where’s Emily?”

  Elizabeth ran her fingers lightly through his hair, “She’s still getting her cast on.”

  He struggled to sit up but Will held his shoulders, “Slow down. We’ve got a few things to tell you before you go storming down the hall, tearing the place apart looking for her.”

  Letting his head fall back on the pillow, he felt jolts of pain through his face, “Uugghh.”

  “Yeah. Don’t do that. You’ve got a broken nose, you cracked your cheekbone and two of your teeth are gone.”

  His tongue involuntarily began running around the inside of his mouth and he quickly found the gaping hole on the lower left side. More pain and he decided not to do that again. He also realized why his voice sounded muffled when he went to lick his lips and found stitches running down his chin. He couldn’t feel anything there, so he figured he must still be numbed up from the sewing. “I had all my teeth when I got here.”

  “They had to pull them out. They were mostly in pieces anyway. The only thing holding them in was the swelling of your jaw.”

  He groaned again, “What happened to him?”

  Elizabeth and Will exchanged a look, then, “He didn’t make it. They worked on him but I guess it was hopeless from the start.”

  “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I swear.”

  Elizabeth bent and hugged him, “I know, honey. No one blames you.”

  He would have said more but the nurse came in and after asking a few questions about how he was feeling, she smiled, “If you're feeling good enough, you can go whenever you’re ready. And your friend should be in her own room in a little while. You can go see her then, if you’d like.”

  Jack smiled back as best he could, considering it felt as if he was tearing his face in two, “Thanks.”

  ▪▪▪

  About an hour later, he was finally discharged and Will walked him out to the waiting room, where Tim jumped from his seat the minute he saw them coming. Going up to his brother, he nearly hugged him, but Jack just backed away quickly, “Pain. Severe pain.”

  Tim opted then for leaning in to examine the injuries before locking eyes with him, “What the hell happened?”

  Jack shook his head, “Ask Dad. I just need to sit down.”

  Will filled him in quickly and Tim let out a low whistle, “Damn, will she ever get a break?”

  “About that. I have a question or two for you. ” Turning to include Jack as well, “Both of you actually.”

  Tim looked at his dad, quizzically, “All right. What is it?”

  Chapter 23

  Elizabeth was sitting next to the bed when Emily began waking up. She’d had better drugs than Jack and it took her longer to realize where she was. Without even opening her eyes, “Jack?”

  “No honey, it’s me, Elizabeth.”

  Forcing her eyes to open, she rolled them in the direction of the sound and she slurred her words, both from the swelling and from the medication, “Where’s Jack? Is he all right?”

  “Yeah. He’s waiting to be disch
arged so he can come see you. He ordered me to sit here and stay with you until he got here himself.”

  Already more lucid, “Why can’t I move my arm?”

  “You’ve got a cast up to almost your shoulder because you broke both your hand and your elbow along with your cheekbone, nose and four ribs. And you have stitches in the back of your head so I wouldn't move that any time soon either.”

  “I should have looked to see who it was.”