“I’ve done it once or twice there.” She winked. Stabbings and shootings were as common in Chicago’s emergency rooms as the sniffles were in Traverse City. “But yeah, it was the highlight of the month for me for sure.”
“I checked on him a few minutes ago. They’ll keep him in CICU a day or two, but it’s looking like a full recovery.”
“Good. Let’s hope he makes better choices in the future. By the look on the cops’ faces, I’m thinking he’s in a little bit of trouble when he gets out of here.”
“Well, nothing like the trouble he was in a few hours ago. Vic? Are you doing okay?”
“Sure. Aside from this crazy shift. Why?”
“Just wondering how you’re feeling about the news.”
“What news?” She was too tired for riddles.
Liv looked around to make sure nobody was listening and dropped her voice. “About Karen and Brooke.”
“Sure, whatever. It’s fine.”
Liv stared at her. It was that look that said she didn’t believe her.
Vic blinked. “All right. What?”
“You’re not having second thoughts about her, are you?”
Exhaustion had a way of obliterating her cognitive abilities. “Second thoughts about what?”
“Reconciling.” Something came to life in Liv’s eyes. “Oh, good God. Don’t tell me she’s come crawling back to you.”
“Liv, I don’t want to talk about this. Not now and certainly not here.”
“Fine, but please don’t do anything rash. Or stupid. Like taking her back.”
“I’m not doing anything. I’ve been talking to her, that’s all.” Vic punched a key to get to the next chart, feigning preoccupation. Explaining things to her best friend was pretty much impossible right now, mainly because she had yet to figure it all out herself. Of course she wasn’t stupid enough to take Karen back, at least not right now. Not without the passing of a lot of time, some joint counseling, a rebuilding of trust, and God knew what else. As far as she was concerned, reconciling was an extremely remote possibility. But in the meantime, she wanted to be sure of where her heart stood before she went any further with Karen or Angie.
Liv’s face clenched; she was in full snark mode. “Well, just be careful with her. Because if she hurts you again, I swear I’ll kick her ass all the way back to Chicago.”
“Don’t worry, I’m a big girl. I promise I can take care of myself. And if I can’t, I know where to find you.”
Later, as Vic crawled between the flannel sheets on her king bed, it was Angie who trickled into her thoughts, not Karen. And it was like a warm blanket around her, the vision of Angie smiling at her, reaching out to place her arms around her, pulling her into her. Safe, that’s what I feel with Angie. Which was something she no longer felt with Karen and hadn’t since that night in late August when Karen had pulled the rug out from under her, had annihilated their marriage. Safe was something she thought she’d never find again.
And yet. And yet…
She’d never failed at anything in her life, never quit either. Not even when her mother threw her out and she had to get bank loans and part-time jobs and couch surf for months to get through medical school. When something was hard or seemed impossible, well, that was fuel to her. It juiced her, propelled her on, appreciating that she was triumphing against the odds. She was the marathon runner who limped her way to the finish line, no matter what had happened to her along the route. Nothing in her life was ever over until she was good and ready to decide it was over.
Dammit. Why can’t I fucking let go?
* * *
Bleary-eyed after a sleepless night, Angie could come up with no better plan than the one she’d thought of well before the sun rose this morning. She needed to know where she stood with Vic, needed to know what the hell was going on, because these sleep-deprived nights were killing her. Grouchy at work, feeling like her decision-making and thought processes were a second or two behind the rest of the world. It had to stop. She’d go get a nice bouquet of flowers, surprise Vic, who wasn’t working today. They could talk in person, away from the chaos of the hospital, put an end to the frustrating texts and phone calls that had been going exactly nowhere.
I want to be her girlfriend, Angie thought as she maneuvered her SUV around a bank of drifting snow that had crept onto the roadway. And she would tell that to Vic. She wanted them to date for real, to be a couple, to commit to the idea that they were truly starting over. With each other. Because the truth of it was, she’d never felt this connected to a love interest before. Not Brooke. Not the handful of women she’d dated before Brooke. No. Vic, with her shared love of books, with her mischievous dimples and her serious eyes, with her impossibly soft lips and the layer of vulnerability she kept carefully hidden behind the competent, controlled exterior, had crept into Angie’s heart. Melted it, more like.
“Girlfriend,” she said out loud, liking the way it rolled off her tongue and filled the interior of her vehicle as she practiced saying it out loud. She rolled down the window a couple of inches, let the cool air invigorate her. She thought of seeing Vic’s face as she opened the door, and her breath caught in a pleasant, revitalizing way.
Noticing a strange car in Vic’s driveway, Angie parked on the street. If Vic had company, she’d hand her the flowers and make plans to see her later. Not the ideal scenario, but she hadn’t called or texted ahead.
Clutching the flowers, she knocked on the heavy wooden door, stamped her feet on the rubber welcome mat to dislodge the snow from them. The door creaked open and Angie raised her eyes. Karen Turner stood looking at her with piercing eyes full of curiosity and judgment. For a moment there was only the sound of a passing car, until finally, Angie, verbally tripping over herself, asked if Vic was home.
Karen’s gaze drifted to the flowers that were now wilting from the cold, then back to Angie, where they seemed to do a quick calculation. “She’s in the shower.”
The shower? The shower? Worse was the way Karen had said it, with cool detachment like there was nothing unusual about Vic taking a shower while Karen was in her house.
Angie backed away, her heart in her throat. Time seemed to thicken, and the meaning of what she was seeing and hearing traveled at a painstaking pace. Vic was in the shower while Karen was answering her door like she belonged there, like everything was as it should be. Had she stayed the night? It sure looked like it. And did it mean she and Vic were back together without Vic having the guts to tell her, for fuck sakes?
She dropped the flowers on the stoop and stumbled back to her car, blinded by her own tears. Behind the wheel she decided to think about something else. The oil change her car needed, the latest movie showing at the local cinema, the new releases on this week’s list of bestselling books.
Shit. It was no use. She and Vic were done. Over before they’d ever really gotten started. The tears continued to stream down her face as it occurred to her that she hadn’t cried like this when Brooke left her. Hadn’t felt this alone, this abandoned.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“What do you mean Angie was here?” Vic could hear the desperation in her own voice.
Karen held the droopy, chilled flowers at a distance, as if they contained some icky disease. “She asked for you and brought these pathetic things.”
Vic grabbed the flowers from Karen’s hand. “What did you tell her?”
“The truth. That you were in the shower.”
Great. Vic painted the scene in her mind, knew the thoughts that must have ripped through Angie’s mind. It wasn’t good.
“I need you to go home, Karen. Now.”
“But I thought I’d hang around and we’d have breakfast or something.”
She handed Karen her coat. Karen had come by to return a couple of books of Vic’s that she’d taken by mistake when she moved out. And then when she’d spied a new dining room light still in its box, she’d offered to install it while Vic showered. Karen was handy at fixing things, a
nd, as it turned out, a little too eager to help out around the house. Vic should have hustled her out before she dove into installing that stupid light. “And thanks for putting in the light, though you shouldn’t have.” That was an understatement.
Karen was halfway out the door when she turned around. “Is it true you and Angie are dating? I mean, I’d heard something, but I thought it was some kind of joke.”
“It’s not a joke. And you’re not helping yourself right now.”
“What’d I do?”
“Nothing. Goodbye, Karen.”
Vic ushered Karen the rest of the way out the door, then jumped into her car, hoping to track Angie down at her family’s farm.
“Is she here?” she said to Claire at the door, her heart pounding a mile a minute as the sinking feeling in her stomach only intensified. Angie would definitely have misread the situation with Karen. And knowing Angie the way she did, she knew Angie would be upset. Hurt. Thinking the worst. What was the worst-case scenario anyway? Claire handed her a pair of snowshoes.
“Sorry, what are these for?”
Claire smiled. “She’s out on her snowshoes in the back vineyard. You can catch her if you’re in shape. Here, I’ll point the way.”
Vic was a city girl. She was in decent shape, but she’d never been on snowshoes before. “Hmm. Going to be a little hard to catch her if I’m on my ass.”
“Nah, it’s easy. If you can walk, you can snowshoe. At least in these modern ones.”
After Claire helped strap her in, Vic set off in Angie’s tracks, having no idea what she was going to say to her when she found her. She stumbled, but recovered before doing a complete face plant. It might not be an issue if she ended up buried in some snowbank, not to be unearthed until spring. She had a feeling that whatever explanation she might try to give, Angie wasn’t going to buy it.
“Hey!” she called out, catching a glimpse of Angie’s dark blue parka partway down a row of vines, which looked like stiff, brown fingers strung up on wire fence lines against the backdrop of snow.
Angie spun around, a look of grim surprise on her face. But she waited for Vic.
“What are you doing here?”
Vic took a moment to collect her breath. Apparently she wasn’t in as good a shape as she hoped. “I heard you were at my house a little while ago.”
“Karen tell you that?”
Angie’s tone spoke volumes. “She did.”
“It seems you were too busy to come to the door.”
Vic closed her eyes, the cold making them sting. And the hurt Angie seemed bent on dishing out as well. When she opened them again, Angie’s eyes remained unforgiving. “Yes. I was in the shower.”
“So she said.”
God, even in her misery Angie looked adorable, the fur trim of her parka’s hood framing her handsome face. Her brown eyes seemed much lighter in the snow and the sunshine, almost gold.
“I was…” Vic swallowed. “She came over to—”
“Are you sleeping with her, Vic?”
“What? No!”
“Then what are you doing with her? Because I’d really like to know.”
“I’m not doing anything with her. We’re just, I don’t know, not enemies anymore.”
“Then why can’t I get you to spend time with me? Why have you gone cold on me? And don’t tell me you’re busy and that I’m overreacting.”
How could she possibly explain things in a way Angie would understand right now? Or at least, in a way that wouldn’t make her so angry? “Look. Karen and I are trying to be friends. Maybe. And I didn’t think you’d understand, so I kind of didn’t tell you.”
“You’re right. I don’t understand.”
“I don’t want to fight with you, Ange. But I do want some kind of closure with Karen. If it’s over for good between her and I and our divorce is to be finalized, then I need to know it’s over on my terms and not hers. Can you understand that? I need to be the one who says it’s over.”
“You know what I think?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I think you want to see if there’s anything salvageable between the two of you while keeping me on a string as your backup plan. Until you figure things out.”
Vic felt her eyes widen at the accusation. It was a horrible thing to say. “That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? Then tell me this. What is it that you want?”
Vic bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. Angie had landed a direct hit. Asked her a question she didn’t—couldn’t—quite answer. “I’m not sure. Time, I guess. Time to get my head together, to know for sure that—”
“Then I’ll save you some trouble.” Angie’s tone was a guillotine poised to sever things. “How about I don’t want to see you. How about I don’t want to talk to you until you’ve figured out exactly what you want. Because I don’t want to be part of a threesome. And I’m not going to expend my emotional energy wondering if you’re with her, if you’re going to get back together with her.”
Angie watched Vic stomp off in her oversized snowshoes, occasionally swiping with the sleeve of her coat at what Angie guessed were tears, which only pierced her already broken heart. What have I done? she thought. And yet she’d been given no choice. If there was room for Karen in Vic’s life, then there was no room for her. And no matter how much Vic tried to excuse and defuse, the sinking feeling in Angie’s stomach only grew heavier. Letting an ex back into the picture was almost never good news.
She waited until she was sure Vic would be gone, taking the long way back to the house. The vines looked like they were wintering rather well. They’d been cut back in the fall, and she saw no sign of any buckling or breaking. There were several animal tracks in the snow. Fox probably. A rabbit for sure. Other ones she guessed belonged to a porcupine.
Claire was waiting for her inside when she disengaged her snowshoes and hung them up in the mudroom.
“Coffee’s on,” she said.
“I think I’ll just—”
“Come and sit with me. I’ve got a fire going.”
“Where is everybody?”
“Nick and your parents went into town for supplies.” Claire thrust a mug of steaming coffee in Angie’s hands and led the way to the great room, where a fire leapt and crackled in the stone fireplace. “How’d your snowshoeing go?”
“Fine.” Angie sat down on the plush sofa and raised her socked feet to the coffee table.
“Liar.” Claire sat beside her and did the same. The family home was comfortable and meant to be lived in. “Vic looked upset when she left.”
“Spying on us?”
“Of course. Who else is going to make sure you don’t screw things up with her?”
Angie bit back a rude retort. “Who says anybody is screwing anything up? And for that matter, who said anything about her and me being a couple?”
“We’d all have to be blind and stupid not to figure that out. And we’re neither of those things.”
Jesus. Was there such as thing as families that didn’t snoop and interfere and bug constantly? Well, Vic’s for one, but that wasn’t a family. That was the absence of family. “It’s fine. We’re having a timeout because, I don’t know, we can’t agree on things.”
“I see. It’s become too hard, so that’s it? Done?”
Claire and her goddamned judgy interference. Her mother was every bit as bad. Her dad too. Only Nick walked around the place like he didn’t much give a shit about her personal life, but that was mostly because he was too busy thinking about those baco vines that weren’t growing as well as they’d expected or the latest shipment of labels that had contained a misspelling and had to be sent back. Pinot spelled without the t. Who does that?
“I…Look. Her ex, Karen, seems to have wormed her way back into the picture.”
“She and Brooke broke up?”
Angie nodded. “You don’t get off the farm much, do you?”
“Apparently not. And so what makes you think Karen
is a threat?”
She explained how she’d showed up unannounced at Vic’s, only to be met at the door by Karen. “Plus Vic told me they’re trying to become friends. That she wants answers from Karen. Closure.”
“Well, they were married, after all.”
“Exactly my point. How the hell can I compete with that?” She couldn’t. She didn’t have shared memories with Vic. Not the way Vic and Karen had. She could easily imagine them reading the newspaper together on lazy weekend mornings, shouting out headlines to one another, talking in a verbal shorthand, finishing one another’s sentences. All married people had those blurred lines, the encroaching of one into the other, possessing those solid suburban bonds of marriage that she’d been stupid to think she could supplant or erase.
“Did Vic say that’s what she wants? To get back together with Karen?”
“Not exactly, but she hasn’t denied it either. She said she wants time to figure things out. So I’m giving it to her.”
“Well, it seems to me like you’re giving up.”
Angie thought about that. She used to disdain giving up, thought very little of people who quit things. But some of that stubborn persistence had left her recently. Something in her—a hardened wisdom maybe?—had decided that fighting, persevering, sometimes came with too great a cost. Yeah. She’d learned a thing or two over the years, and especially over the last few months. She sipped her coffee and stared at the flames in the grate. “It’s not worth fighting when you’re already beat.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
A man waiting for medical clearance to enter a detox facility was picking fights in the waiting room. A code had been called, alerting the nearest doctor as well as hospital security to attend. Vic saw that the patients in the waiting room had moved away from the man while continuing to watch him with their peripheral vision. Like avoiding the dead animal pancaked on the road, not wanting to get near it, but compelled to look. He was short and stocky, his neck tattooed, his hair dirty and stringy.
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