Hail Mary

by Lani Lynn Vale

  I clicked on the very first article—a news article from Jackson, Mississippi—and waited for it to load.

  It didn’t take long.

  The headline read: Baby perishes in triple degree temperatures, locked in a car.

  Drake Jackson Garwood, thirty-two, a prominent businessman for Corporate Crossroads, leaves infant son in car. The child, Raymond Jackson Garwood, succumbed to heat stroke due to the extreme temperatures in car.

  I frowned.

  Marianne Garwood, thirty, claims husband intentionally left their son in the car. We have not been able to reach her or Mr. Garwood for comment, but we did reach Mr. Garwood’s attorney, who confirmed his client’s assertions, cited a pending investigation and advised that all media inquiries would be handled by his office.

  At press time, Drake Jackson Garwood has not been charged.

  A chill passed over me as I back clicked and went to the next article. This one was dated six months later.

  Drake Jackson Garwood acquitted for the involuntary manslaughter of his fourteen-week-old son. Mr. Garwood returns back to work but continues to work with other foundations to make sure that this doesn’t happen to any other father.

  Something about that soured my stomach and made it summersault.

  I back clicked and went to the next hit.

  Marianne Garwood missing.

  Marianne Garwood kidnapped.

  Marianne Garwood’s car found in lake, husband inconsolable.

  The more I read, the angrier I became.

  I knew I didn’t have the whole story.

  Knew it. Felt it in my bones.

  My fucking heart hurt for Mary.

  I closed my eyes and dropped my head to the back of the couch.

  The baby in my arms cried.

  Chapter 4

  The closest I get to a spa day is when the steam from the dishwasher hits me in the face.

  -Cobie’s secret thoughts

  Cobie

  Six months later

  “I want you to help me die.”

  I looked over at my friend.

  “What?”

  “I want you to help me die,” she repeated.

  I was stunned.

  “Marianne…”

  “Please,” she whispered. “It hurts.”

  “But your husband…”

  “Wants me to suffer.”

  That sounded like her pain talking.

  “Honey,” I said softly. “You have to fight this.”

  “I’m dead already. It’s only a matter of time.” She took in a deep breath. “It hurts.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “You haven’t even seen this week’s scans!” I whispered.

  She looked away.

  “Cobie.” She closed her eyes for long moments. “I got them back yesterday.”

  “But you just told your husband that you—”

  She interrupted me. “I lied. I got them back yesterday. The cancer… it’s spread.”

  “But this experimental treatment…”

  She laughed harshly. “It’s not experimental. It’s bullshit. Drake found this quack doctor to talk out of his ass. I keep going to my real doctor because I know that whatever bullshit this quack is shooting me up with isn’t working. I… Cobie… I think it’s just a show. They’re acting like they’re helping me when in reality they’re not doing anything. He hasn’t even looked at my scans, not even once. He just keeps saying he’s going to make me all better.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Hearing her say this about Drake of all people was alarming.

  Drake was everything any woman would want in a husband… wasn’t he?

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Okay, honey,” I said. “I believe you… but what you’re asking of me… I can’t do that.”

  She looked down at her hands.

  “It hurts,” she whispered. “And the cancer has metastasized. It’s now in my lungs, heart tissue, my liver, and it’s spreading into my reproductive system.”

  Hearing this news was devastating.

  I thought that she was going to be the one to beat it all.

  It wasn’t supposed to be me. Never, not in a million years, would I have thought that I would come back from stage four cancer. But I had. I’d done it, and I thought that she could, too.

  But still, what she was asking me to do… that just wasn’t me. I couldn’t kill my best friend, no matter what the circumstances were.

  Especially not with all the secrets she’d been keeping from me lately. Hell, I barely even knew who she was at this point. It was downright scary.

  “I can’t.” A tear slipped free. “Please, don’t ask that of me. Please.”

  Marianne looked away, her bald head shining brightly in the harsh glow of the hospital lights.

  “Marianne…”

  Marianne looked back at me. “It was a selfish thing to ask.”

  It wasn’t.

  I knew the kind of pain she was in. I had been there at one point myself.

  If what she was feeling was anything like what I felt… I could even totally sympathize.

  Before I could say anything else to her, the alarm on my phone rang, reminding me that I had my own doctor’s appointment today.

  Check-up day.

  “I love you, Mare.”

  Marianne held her hands out to me, and I went to them willingly.

  Pressing my forehead against hers, I tried to instill some of my strength into her through our hug.

  “I love you, too, Cobie.”

  Giggling through my tears, I walked out of her room.

  When she’d called me today from the hospital, I had a minor freak out.

  She’d told me that the doctor had admitted her for dangerous dehydration levels, and I came as soon as I’d heard.

  I just wished I didn’t have my own appointment today. I didn’t want to leave her there, especially not with those thoughts that I knew were swirling around her head.

  I want you to help me die.

  I shivered from head to toe.

  I never thought I’d hear her say that. Not Marianne, my best friend. The only person I could really rely on in this world.

  I swiped at my tears and cleared my throat.

  I passed a man in the hall. He was carrying a little girl in his arms.

  Our eyes met, and instantly I saw him take in my tears.

  He stopped.

  “You okay?”

  I smiled tremulously. “I’ll be okay.”

  Then I walked away, hoping that guy wasn’t going into that cancer unit to visit someone sick like my best friend.

  He looked like a man that had seen enough pain.

  How I knew that, I didn’t know. But I did.

  I had no idea that the man that I’d spoken with that day would help like he did.

  No idea.

  But I’d find out.

  And it wasn’t going to be good.

  Chapter 5

  I’m proud to say that my house doesn’t have any unhealthy snacks… because I ate them all.

  -Cobie’s secret thoughts

  Cobie

  6 months later

  Marianne was dead.

  I looked over at the coffin, wondering if I’d ever get over her loss.

  She was my best friend and confidant.

  Why did I get to live and Marianne didn’t?

  What made me so special?

  She had a husband—sure, she’d told me he wasn’t the greatest man in the world, but that wasn’t abnormal—and a child.

  Though the child she’d told me about wasn’t with her husband. It was with some man that she met while she and her husband were separated.

  “Hello, Cobie.”

  I shivered at the words coming out of that mouth.

  It wasn’t a good shiver, either.

  I turned to see Drake standin
g there, looking at me with concern.

  Drake was incredibly good-looking. Tall, about six feet, and in good shape. His hair was salt and pepper, graying more to silver along his temples. I always felt that he and Marianne seemed to be that golden couple. The one that you couldn’t help but look at when you walked into the room because they were just that beautiful.

  “Hi, Drake.” I tried to smile.

  “Are you okay?”

  I shrugged. “I guess maybe that should be me asking that of you.”

  His grin was small.

  “I’m fine.” He smiled then. “Would you like to come over?”

  I frowned. “I’m sorry, Drake. Were you having a memorial after the services? I didn’t know. I have to babysit tonight.”

  That was a lie. I didn’t have to babysit anyone. I just didn’t want to do anything with him.

  Drake winked. “No, no memorial. Marianne didn’t want one. She never wanted me to dwell on her death. I felt that a memorial was dwelling.”

  Dwelling. Was remembering a person for what she used to be dwelling? I didn’t think so.

  “Okay,” I smiled. “I’ll be seeing you around, Drake.”

  And I did. Much more than I would have wanted to.

  But, I couldn’t help but feel bad for my dead best friend’s husband.

  It was all innocent, right?

  Still contemplating that, I walked away without looking back.

  My eyes looked up at just the right moment, and I frowned when I saw someone that looked vaguely familiar.

  He was tall with close-cropped, dirty blond hair, and he was well-built but incredibly scary looking. For some reason, I could picture his eyes as being bright blue.

  How would I know the color of his eyes?

  As I got closer, I saw him get on a bike and start it up.

  Once I got to my car, I halted beside it with my hand on the door handle and stared.

  Why was he so familiar?

  But before my mind could make the connection, he rode off, leaving me watching him go.

  My belly already in knots, I got into my car and started her up.

  But instead of thinking about Drake or Marianne, I thought about that man.

  Why did it feel like he’d just stolen something from me?

  Chapter 6

  I don’t understand why gyms have mirrors. I know I need some work, that’s why I’m here.

  -Cobie’s secret thoughts

  Cobie

  Six months later

  “Let me help,” Drake Garwood, my best friend’s widower, pleaded.

  I shook my head.

  “You can’t make me do this, Drake,” I apologized. “I don’t want treatment.”

  Drake had been there for me, just like I’d been there for him, for six months now since Marianne’s death.

  Those six months hadn’t always been great.

  In fact, after a certain time period—about four months after his wife’s death—Drake had started to court me. Or at least he tried to, anyway.

  I didn’t want anything to do with that—or him.

  I still wasn’t over Marianne’s death, and it bothered me that Drake would think that I would want anything to do with him like that.

  It felt like a slap in the face to Marianne.

  So, I’d done my level best to keep him at arm’s length, but he did everything he could to push against the boundaries I’d set.

  And now, with the news that I’d gotten just yesterday, he was already pushing to help me.

  I didn’t want his help.

  In fact, I wanted nothing to do with his help because having his help meant that I’d have to face cancer again, and I didn’t want to face it.

  I just wanted to breathe easy.

  Something I hadn’t been able to do since I was informed that I had cancer when I’d gone to the ER for shortness of breath.

  Ever since, I hadn’t known what breathing easy was.

  I just wanted to breathe.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “I’ll see you later, Drake,” I apologized as I backed away. “Thank you for the ride home from the hospital.”

  Drake watched me go up the front steps of my walk, and the moment I reached the door, I hurriedly pushed it open and locked it behind me.

  If there had been anybody else in the world that I could have contacted right then, I would have.

  However, I had nobody.

  My co-workers, although nice, didn’t really know much about me.

  I’d been a nurse for six years, and four of those years I’d been in the same labor and delivery unit, yet I was no closer to my co-workers then I had been when I started.

  Though, I had a feeling that a lot of that had to do with me.

  Women just never seemed to like me.

  Never.

  That’s why, when I met Marianne after she’d given birth to her son, I’d been happy for her extension of friendship.

  We’d hit it off well, and during the time that she battled postpartum depression followed shortly after by her battle with cancer—which coincided with mine—I was happy to call her friend.

  Now, I had nobody.

  Not a single person.

  No one.

  I looked around at my house, wondering who I would donate it all to once I was gone.

  Maybe the historical district.

  They’d been hounding me about this house, and all of my grandfather’s things, for a very long time now.

  They wanted me to restore the house, while I, on the other hand, wanted to remember the house how it was when my grandfather had lived in it.

  I missed my grandfather.

  He’d been the one who raised me, and not a day went by that I did not miss seeing him.

  He’d died six years ago, now.

  My eyes lit on the picture of him and my grandmother on their wedding day sixty-five years ago that was hanging above the fireplace.

  He looked so happy.

  So, so happy.

  I couldn’t see much of my grandmother’s face due to my grandfather’s massive hand covering most of it as he held her mouth to his, but I could imagine that she was practically beaming just like he was.

  I wiped the single tear that fell from my eye and went to step away from my door when a knock sounded at the back of my house.

  Frowning, I moved through the hallway, around through the dining room, and stopped in the kitchen.

  There was a man standing at my back door.

  A blond man.

  A familiar looking blond man.

  I scowled.

  Where did I know him from?

  Before I could so much as ask him why he was at my back door and where I knew him from, he reared forward. His arms went around my waist, and suddenly I was no longer alone in my house.

  I opened my mouth to scream, but he was there, his hand over my face, shushing me. “Stop.”

  I froze.

  Terror was filling my veins, but a shiver of something else rushed through me, too.

  This man, he was hot.

  Let’s just get that out in the open.

  However, hot or not, he was in my house, uninvited. I didn’t know him, and I wasn’t fucking stupid.

  There wasn’t going to be any misconstrued feelings from me. No, sir. I was well and truly freakin’ the fuck out.

  “Don’t scream.”

  I nodded because who the hell wouldn’t agree when a big man, one who was over six-foot tall—and I say that number because my grandfather had been that size and I didn’t have to strain my neck to look up at him like I had to do with this man—and he was staring me straight in the eye. He didn’t have to say what he would do if I did scream, which I wouldn’t.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he rasped, letting go of my face, as well as me entirely.

  I blinked, unsure what to do.

  Did I ask him what he was doing there?
Did I tell him that I wanted him to leave? Though, that one would be stupid to ask, because I damn well knew he wouldn’t leave. He wouldn’t be there if he didn’t have some sort of agenda.

  “Call Drake and tell him you won’t be meeting him for lunch like you’d planned. You’re not feeling well.”

  I blinked, opened my mouth to reply and tell him that there wouldn’t be lunch with him ever, but he shook his head. “Trust me.”

  I laughed harshly at that. “I have much more reason to trust Drake than I do you. You’ve forced yourself into my home. There is no trusting you, moron.”

  The man’s eye twitched.

  “You got a computer?”

  I blinked, then nodded, “If I show you where it’s at, you’ll take it and leave?”

  He rolled his eyes as if I’d just asked him the stupidest question on earth.

  “No, I’m gonna show you what your boyfriend Drake does.”

  Brows furrowing, I watched as he walked to it, flipped it open, and glared at the background photo.

  Yeah, I wasn’t really all that great looking in that one. It was the day that Marianne had come home. Marianne, who’d been kidnapped straight out of her home.

  Her long hair was wispy, flying around her face like a freakin’ hair commercial. Her eyes were wide and smiling, and her lips were plump and pink.

  She was beautiful…and then there was me.

  Me? Well, I wasn’t much to look at. I was average, not tall but not short, either. Around five-foot-five or so. I had long brown hair—well, at one point in time I did. Now it fell to just barely below my chin now that it’d started growing back after my chemo and radiation treatments. I had muddy brown eyes the color of dirt, freckles all over my face that weren’t the kind that were considered ‘cute’ but were instead what I’d call ‘too much.’ I used to have a healthy-looking, somewhat muscular figure. Not fat, but not skinny, either. Then I got cancer, went through chemo, hadn’t able to keep a damn thing down for months and lost way too much weight.

  I’d just started putting that weight back on when I got sick again and started having shortness of breath—which had prompted my visit to the emergency room. The ER had run some tests, and I now had a mammogram scheduled in two days thanks to my left breast being swollen and red.

  I’d thought it was just the flu.

  I should’ve known it wasn’t.

  My life wasn’t all that great.