Third Time's the Charm

by Talley, Liz

  “Katie Clare,” she whispered, afraid to move the child but more afraid not to roll her over. Carefully, she turned the girl over and the slow movement jarred the child’s broken arm.

  Katie Clare awoke screaming.

  “Oh God, Oh God,” Marie said, dropping next to Sunny. Fancy tried to jump on Sunny and Katie Clare, but she pushed the dog back. “Ben’s calling 911. What do we do?”

  “Sunny!” Katie Clare screamed, her brown eyes wide with panic. “Help me. Sunny!”

  “Shhh, shhh, baby,” Sunny said, smoothing back her hair and trying to recall her first aid training. Katie’s leg was wrenched beneath her but didn’t look broken. A huge purply-red lump sat in the middle of the child’s forehead. “Don’t move.”

  “My arm!” Katie Clare shrieked, trying to do exactly what Sunny warned her not to do—move. Then her eyes rolled back into her head and she passed out again.

  Henry couldn’t find a parking place near the ER.

  “Of all the damn times to not be able to find…” He grumbled under his breath, trying like hell not to panic at the thought of his daughter lying unconscious in the ER. He steered crazily down one row and then slung his truck around the end and roared down the next. Finally, finding no spot, he pulled through the ambulance bay and parked.

  An orderly stood smoking a cigarette and yelled, “Hey, you can’t park there.”

  “So tow me.” What the hell did he care if they towed his truck? His daughter was injured, perhaps gravely. He wasn’t sure exactly the extent of his daughter’s injuries other than she’d broken her arm and hit her head, because Sunny had been nearly hysterical when she’d gotten through to him. He’d left her mother’s house with an open can of paint on the porch and not much information on the child they were transporting to Jackson.

  He plunged through the emergency room doors and nearly mowed down a nurse carrying a cup of coffee. “Sorry.”

  “Slow down, honey, and tell me who you’re lookin’ for.”

  Skidding to a halt, he turned to the older nurse and managed to huff. “Katie Clare Delmar. Brought her in an ambulance from Morning Glory. She’s eight.”

  The nurse set her coffee down and stuck her head in the swinging double doors. “Mandy, you got an eight-year-old little girl back there? Someone just came in.”

  “I’m her father.”

  With his heart beating in his ears, he heard the nurse say, “Thank you, sugar” to whomever she spoke to in the back.

  She turned to him. “Okay, they just brought her in and they’re getting her stabilized. I’m sure Rhonda will want to get some paperwork started, so if you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to her office.”

  “Wait. Stabilized? I need to know what’s going on with my daughter,” Henry said, feeling panic grab him by the throat and slam him to the floor. “What does stabilized mean exactly?”

  “Calm down,” the nurse said.

  At that moment Jillian ran in through the same door he’d just blown open. She wore sweatpants and a blousy shirt that barely covered her protruding stomach. Her wild gaze landed on him. “Oh my God, Henry, where is she? Someone called and said she fell out of a tree. How did this happen?”

  “I don’t know,” Henry said, shaking his head, trying to beat down the fear and anger twisting into a tornadic column of guilt. He’d let her go with Sunny and had no clue what had gone wrong.

  Jillian’s face went feral. “What do you mean you don’t know? She was with you.”

  “She went with Sunny to take a rescue dog to a farm.” As he said the words, he knew what the reaction would be. Sunny had been the responsible party, and now their daughter was in the ER. When it came to his ex-wife, she didn’t have even one warm fuzzy inside her for his ex-girlfriend, so this would not be good.

  “What? Sunny? You let her go with your girlfriend? Good God, Henry, how irresponsible can you be? That’s our daughter.” Jillian hissed the words.

  “Ma’am, are you two the girl’s parents?” someone asked from the open doorway.

  They both snapped their mouths closed and turned to the woman standing in blue scrubs with a stethoscope slung about her neck. Nodding, they moved toward her.

  “How’s Katie?” Jillian asked, her hand reaching for his arm. Her nails were talons, but he barely registered them.

  “Why don’t you both come on back, and we’ll talk about what’s going on.” The woman, who seemed to be a doctor, pressed the silver square that opened the doors to the back.

  Jillian, fear in her green eyes, looked over at him. He saw the tears sheening them, felt her apprehension.

  Oh God, please don’t let there be anything wrong with his little girl. She was only eight years old. So full of life, with so much left to do.

  When they reached the last room at the end of the hall, he saw Sunny. She stood slumped against the wall, arms crossed and hands tucked beneath her armpits. She’d been crying, and when she saw them, she straightened and lifted her chin, guilt pooling in her expressive blue eyes.

  “I’m Dr. Hargrove.” The doctor stopped and gestured to Sunny. “Mrs. David brought your daughter in and told us what happened. It seems your daughter climbed a tree on the property of some people who were”—the doctor turned toward Sunny—“getting a dog? She said Katie Clare, unbeknownst to her, climbed a tree. On the way down, a limb broke and your daughter fell.”

  “Oh my God.” Jillian covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes. “Those damn trees. She’s always trying to climb them.”

  “I didn’t know she would do something like that,” Sunny said, reaching out a hand.

  Jillian turned on her. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

  Sunny snatched back her hand, and Henry shook his head in warning against commenting any further. The look on Sunny’s face ripped his heart open, and he almost glanced down to see if his blood pooled on the floor. Her hurt was a throbbing, raw thing, but at that moment he could do nothing about the fact that Jillian was overreacting. He couldn’t fault his ex-wife. Fear for his daughter had turned his spit to sand and made his gut roll.

  “Mrs. Delmar, perhaps we need some privacy to discuss your daughter’s condition?” Dr. Hargrove motioned toward a consult room.

  “But my Katie might need me,” Jillian said, her gaze searching frantically up and down the hall. “I need to see her. Please.”

  “Mrs. Delmar, your daughter is stable for now. Let’s talk about her injuries and the tests we need to run.” Dr. Hargrove’s tone brooked no argument.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe this,” Jillian said, swiping her hand over her face and starting toward the small room.

  Henry walked over to Sunny. “Let me talk to the doctor. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  Jillian turned to Sunny and narrowed her eyes. “She needs to go. Hasn’t she already done enough? She let this happen.”

  Sunny sucked in a breath. “Jillian, I’m so sorry. I tried—”

  “You shouldn’t have been with her in the first place. I never gave my permission for her to go anywhere with you.” Jillian jabbed her finger repeatedly at Sunny. Sunny flinched with each punctuating jab. “So why are you still here? You don’t belong here. You don’t belong anywhere near my kids.”

  His ex-wife moved toward Sunny like she might attack her. Henry grabbed Jillian around the waist, a very expanded waist, and pulled her back. Jillian turned and collapsed into his arms, sobbing. “Make her leave, Henry. She doesn’t belong here.”

  Lifting his eyes, he tried to communicate how horrible he felt for the dramatic scene Jillian had put on display. Yeah, he felt sick to his stomach with worry, but they didn’t even know the severity of Katie Clare’s injuries. He patted Jillian’s back. “It’s going to be okay, Jillian. Let’s just talk to the doctor now, okay?”

  Jillian snuffled against his T-shirt but nodded. He handed her toward the doctor, who looked concerned and possibly shocked at how quickly things had escalated into a full-out scene.

  Sunny stood f
rozen, her blue eyes filling with tears. “Henry, I… I didn’t know… I don’t understand. She just disappeared while I was with the Boltons. I didn’t know she would climb a tree… Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

  “I know you didn’t mean to do anything wrong, Sunny, but I need to talk to the doctor now. I need to deal with this before we can talk, understand?”

  She nodded and looked away, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Mr. Delmar?” the doctor called. “We’re waiting.”

  He walked into the consult room and closed the door. The last thing he saw before the door clicked shut was a look of utter dejection on Sunny’s face. He wanted to hold her and tell her it would be okay, but he didn’t know that it would be. His daughter had fallen from a tree and had arrived at the hospital unconscious. Before he could do anything further, he needed to know how his daughter was and he needed to make sure Jillian didn’t fall completely apart.

  Sunny would have to wait.

  Sunny sank against the cold tile wall of the emergency room and tried like hell not to cry. She’d only been there ten minutes before Henry and Jillian had arrived. The entire ten minutes had been the longest of her entire life.

  They wouldn’t let her ride in the ambulance with Katie Clare, so she’d driven behind it, her hazard lights flashing to let other drivers know she followed. She’d sobbed the entire way, deathly cold on the inside, certain that she’d let Henry’s daughter die on her watch.

  While she and the Boltons had waited on the ambulance, they’d tried to keep Katie Clare still and had used the first aid kit Eden had put in the back of the van, trying to stanch the flow of blood from the jagged tear on her knee. Ben had fetched a cold pack, and the three adults had ignored the toddler twirling around them and the dog sitting with paws crossed, looking as anxious as a dog could look. Finally the ambulance arrived, sirens screaming, EMTs in blurred action. They’d loaded Katie Clare onto the stretcher while trying to revive her. They’d put a blow-up cast on both her arm and leg and taken all her vitals as they placed her in the back of the vehicle.

  They hadn’t been able to be revive the child even with the smelling salts.

  And now the doctor was having a consult, and Henry had disappeared with his ex-wife after consoling her and looking at Sunny with an accusing gaze.

  “Oh God,” Sunny breathed, closing her eyes.

  “Ma’am?” someone said beside her.

  “Yes?” Fear leaped against her ribs, knocking hard.

  “Since you’re not family, we’re going to have to ask you to leave this area.”

  Not family. No, she wasn’t. Jillian’s words came back to her. You don’t belong here.

  “Of course. Um, you know, I’m just going to go. If Henry—Mr. Delmar—asks, will you just tell him that I had to go?” Sunny said those words and realized that the nurse or whoever she was didn’t know her and shouldn’t have to relay messages. “Um, never mind.”

  Sunny walked down the hallway, passing the quiet consult room, her legs leaden and her head throbbing from the crying she’d done earlier. As she pushed through the door, she encountered Henry’s parents.

  “Sunny, where’s Henry? Is Katie Clare okay?” Annaleigh Delmar asked, grabbing her arm.

  “He’s in with the doctor. I’m not sure about her condition. I think that’s what the doctor is talking to them about.”

  “What happened?” Henry’s father asked, peering over her shoulder, trying to see into the inner sanctum.

  “She fell from a tree.”

  “Oh my stars,” Annaleigh said with a dramatic gasp. “How did that happen?”

  “She was with me. We took Fancy to be adopted, and while I was acclimating the dog, Katie climbed the tree. I didn’t know she was up there,” Sunny said. She felt so terrible recounting the events that had led Katie Clare to the ER.

  Annaleigh’s eyes hardened. “Where was Henry in all this?”

  “He was at my mother’s house, I think.”

  “Well, that figures.” Annaleigh rolled her eyes, sniffed, and released Sunny’s arm. “This is what happens when he leaves his children to people who have no experience or business being with them.”

  “Anna,” her husband warned, cutting his eyes at his wife before patting Sunny’s shoulder. “Don’t listen to her, dear. She’s just upset.”

  “No, she’s right. I never should have let Katie Clare come with me,” Sunny said, stunned by the woman’s words but knowing Annaleigh was right. Sunny wasn’t a mother. She didn’t know how to care for a child. It had never crossed her mind that Katie Clare could have been in danger. She knew the child was precocious and needed to have an eye on her, but she’d been so preoccupied with her own feelings and the hurt at losing Fancy that she’d not given a second thought to Katie being unaccounted for.

  She walked away from the Delmars, not even caring she was being rude. She needed to get out of the hospital before she suffocated. The world felt like it was closing in, pushing down on her. If she didn’t get some fresh air, she’d lose her mind. Sunny walked through doors that parted for her. Sunshine and cigarette smoke met her.

  She’d kill for a cigarette.

  Eying a man who wore cowboy boots, a huge buckle centering his Wranglers, and a Fu Manchu mustache, she walked toward him. “Would you mind giving me one of those? I could really, really use one.” She nodded toward the pack of Marlboros peeking out of his plaid shirt.

  The man lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “Not like I’m going to deny a pretty lady a cig.” He took the pack, shook her one loose, and then quirked his eyebrow as he lifted his lighter.

  Sunny nodded and he gave her a light.

  The smoke she sucked into her lungs was an old friend and immediately stopped the trembling in her fingers. “Thank you.”

  He jerked his head in acknowledgment.

  Zombie Sunny walked to her mother’s van, drawing on the cigarette and trying not to let the tears glazing her eyes fall.

  Damn.

  She leaned against the van and took several drags on the cigarette, begging the nicotine to smooth her frayed nerves and give her the energy to get the hell home. After a minute or so, she dropped the cigarette, ground it out beneath her heel, and didn’t even bother to pick it up before climbing into the van and firing the engine.

  Litterbug.

  But who cared? She’d already killed, crippled, or maimed Henry’s daughter, so it wasn’t like a simple act of littering would be her undoing. But she opened her door, slid down, and grabbed the butt anyway. No sense in losing all her morals… or leaving more work to whoever cleaned the parking lot.

  She put the van in Reverse and pulled out, pointing her wheels toward Morning Glory.

  Numb. That’s what she felt. Like what had just happened couldn’t possibly have happened. The image of Katie Clare falling kept replaying in her mind. Pair that with the accusation in Henry’s eyes and the horrible words that had come from his ex-wife’s mouth and she felt like dog crap on the bottom of a shoe. Totally worthless.

  And those words—you don’t belong here—were the worst.

  Because she didn’t.

  For the past month, she’d been fooling herself. Going on dates with Henry, helping chair the pet rescue initiative, drinking coffee in the high school office like she actually belonged in Morning Glory—all that had distorted her vision for her future. Hell, even Betty had started in on her about staying, about belonging here. Sunny had let that little termite of a thought inside, and it had eaten away her determination to leave. Time to exterminate that niggle.

  Her phone buzzed.

  Henry.

  She ignored it but then thought better of it. She needed to know about Katie Clare. “Hey.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  Sunny switched on her blinker and headed toward the on ramp. “I’m heading back to Morning Glory.”

  “Why? Don’t you care about Katie?”

  “Of course I care about her.” Maybe that was the prob
lem too. Sunny had actually grown to have strong feelings about Henry’s kids. She didn’t know why she’d let her heart lean toward them. Hadn’t the good Lord made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t meant to be a parent? Case in fact—Katie Clare could have been killed on her watch. “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s starting to wake up. Seems her body shut down to protect her from the enormous pain. They’ve given her pain meds and set her arm. She broke the humerus bone, sustained a likely concussion, and might have torn a ligament in her knee. They’ve still got to check her for internal injuries. Overall, she’s very lucky it wasn’t more serious.”

  With every word, Sunny felt worse and worse. “I’m glad it’s not, but I’m so sad it happened. I should have made her stay with me. It never… You know, I think you know this wasn’t intentional. She shouldn’t have gone with me in the first place. I was distracted, and I own that she got injured because of me.”

  “Sunny, it’s not your fault. I’ve talked until I’m blue in the face about her climbing trees. She knows she’s not supposed to go high and has to have permission before she climbs. The fault lies with her.”

  “If that’s what you want to believe,” Sunny muttered, wiping away the lone tear that inched down her cheek. “Tell her I’m sorry and I hope she feels better soon. I gotta go.”

  “Sunny, don’t shut down. This was an accident and no reason for you to run away.”

  “I’m not running. Didn’t you hear your ex-wife? I didn’t belong there. I’m not family and my presence wasn’t good for anyone at that moment.” She clicked the phone off before Henry could say anything else. She knew Henry. He was already in Mr. Fix It mode. He hated anyone being upset or feeling bad. His mission in life had always been to smooth things over and make things right. Some things couldn’t be made whole again.

  Like her.

  The phone rang again and she glanced over at it, thinking it was Henry. It wasn’t. It was her aunt Ruby Jean.

  “Hello.”