“Oh, stop it, you are not a burden. You’re my friend. Besides, I still haven’t gotten the skinny on how the sexy accountant is in the sack.”
“And you won’t tonight, either,” Karen said, wiping her nose. Truth was, she and Marty still hadn’t gotten to that point. They’d shared the New Year’s kiss, but then the nonsense with Kendall had come up and Karen had been too preoccupied to pay much attention to her relationship with Marty Squire. She wasn’t even sure, in fact, if there still was a relationship. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he didn’t want one with her. He’d come over a few times, but all she’d been up for was watching TV and waiting for the phone to ring. They’d kissed, because once you start, you can’t very well go back, but even those kisses were lukewarm.
He still called her daily. He was such a nice guy.
“Well, I’m not going to just listen to you cry about breaking into your savings for some criminal whore. I’m giving you the good wine. I’m willing to wash sheets for you, woman.”
Karen laughed. “I’ll come by. For one glass of wine. I won’t stay. Leave the sheets dirty.”
“Good enough.”
Antoinette’s house was technically one town over—a fifteen-minute drive through stoplights and traffic.
It was at one of those stoplights—the one at the corner where the Tea Rose Diner sat—that Karen saw a familiar figure walking along the side of the road. She nearly rear-ended the car in front of her, which had stopped for the red light.
Instead of going straight toward Antoinette’s house, she made a quick veer into the turning lane next to her and steered into the Tea Rose parking lot. She jumped out, keys jingling in her hand, and jogged across the lawn toward the figure.
“Maddie!” she called. “Maddie Routh!”
The figure had reached the corner and turned and walked back the way it had come, now moving toward Karen. It was twilight, and her face had sunk into shadows, but Karen recognized the bony arms, the blond hair, the pregnant belly, which hung low and obvious on the thin frame. Karen kept moving toward her, every so often looking over her shoulder to make sure no car was about to swerve into the gravel and flatten her.
“Stop,” she said breathlessly when she finally reached Maddie. She put her hands on Maddie’s shoulders. The girl stopped. “Are you okay?” And when the girl didn’t answer, she gave her a little shake. “Maddie? Can you hear me?” She gulped in air, her heart racing more than it should have been from such a short jog. “Oh, God, you’re not trying to kill yourself again.”
Maddie still didn’t speak, didn’t even lift her head. “I’m taking a walk,” she said in a flat voice. She took a few more steps, pausing to scrape her feet along the area where the bus had gone off the road, and then moved on. “It’s a free country,” she said over her shoulder. “Anyone who wants to walk here can.”
At first Karen thought she was being chastised for questioning Maddie’s state of mind. But then she realized this was an invitation of sorts. It was a free country; if she wanted to join Maddie in her walk, she was welcome to.
She fell in alongside Maddie, on the grass side, so close their shoulders occasionally bumped. A couple of times she opened her mouth to ask Maddie what exactly she was doing, but she already knew. The girl was tracing the area where her husband had last been alive. She’d been hoping to catch a glimpse of the past there. Walking along the street was comforting to her somehow.
Karen reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She sent a text to Antoinette:
No wine tonight. Something’s come up. Will explain when I see you Monday.
She and Maddie paced the stretch of highway in front of the Tea Rose Diner together, in total silence, until frost made the grass crunchy under Karen’s feet and the headlights blinded them.
TWENTY
Melinda was in no mood for her partner Jason’s bullshit. It was March, which meant spring break, which meant the numskulls who lived catty-corner from her house had gone to Key West, leaving their numskull teenagers at home alone. During spring break. Numskulls. Melinda had gotten barely any sleep, between the thumping music, the squeals and screams of what sounded like ninety billion teen girls, and the endlessly screeching tires. Paul had slept like a rock next to her—or at least she guessed he had. He’d gotten up soundlessly and left for work before her alarm had even gone off.
That was how their lives were now. Sure, he was back, and they were speaking again, but it was cordial speaking. Sex was cordial sex, like two business partners living up to their end of an agreement. Communication was cordial. Did you see the news about the blizzard in Colorado? Oh, yes, I saw that. How horrible to get so much snow this late in the season. Speaking of weather, do you know what the temperature’s supposed to be today? I can look on my phone. No, no, I can do that—don’t trouble yourself.
It was as if they were two strangers who didn’t particularly want to get to know each other.
It broke Melinda’s heart.
A thousand times she planned to sit him down and talk to him. Really talk to him. About what had happened. About her fears. About babies and children and the future, which they desperately needed to talk about if they were ever going to get past this.
About her plans to quit her job.
That was what it had come down to, she decided. Either she was going to lose the love of her life or she was going to lose the career she’d worked so hard for. It was no contest. She could work anywhere, but she could never find another Paul. Even as angry as she was at his reaction to what she’d done, she still knew he was her soul mate.
She hadn’t definitely made up her mind yet about the job, of course. There was the small matter of paychecks and needing to find another job before she left this one. Joanna had promised to ask her boss about waitressing at the restaurant where she worked, and Karen said she’d look into openings at the law firm. But Melinda had applied for a few others as well. A hair salon needed someone to run the front desk and answer the phones. A psychology office needed a receptionist. A bank needed customer service agents.
None of these jobs felt right. The only job that would ever feel right to Melinda would be the one where she rolled up into the middle of a dire scene with rubber gloves in place and training in mind. But as long as she did any job that potentially involved watching people die, she would never work past this . . . this whatever-it-was that was keeping Paul and her apart.
Yet no matter how many times she intended to sit Paul down for a chat, she could never quite make herself do it. It was scary, what was happening to them. She felt intimidated and embarrassed and angry. She felt closed down.
So the cordiality continued.
And to make things worse, she’d had a more difficult time keeping tabs on Maddie Routh lately. Where she’d occasionally been able to follow her to the grocery store or shopping before, lately Maddie seemed to never leave the house. The white car remained in the driveway twenty-four hours a day now, and the only person Melinda ever saw step outside the front door was Maddie’s mother, who seemed to look older and less put together every day. Occasionally, an aging man would pull up in an ancient blue and white pickup truck and go inside. Melinda guessed that man was Maddie’s father, but he never stayed for long.
Seven months. It had been seven months since the accident, and from the looks of things, Maddie Routh had only gotten worse. She would be having a baby soon, and how would she care for it? She couldn’t even care for herself without her mother there to help her.
Karen had said she’d caught her walking in front of the diner a month ago. Joanna had found her inside the diner writing names in a notebook before that. She was a ghost, floating around the most important place in her life, unable to rest in peace.
It was weird to think of a living person as a ghost, but some people were so on the fringes of their own lives, there was no other way of describing them.
So Melinda had been veering toward the edge for some time now, but after the all-night spring break rager and Paul’s silent disappearing act, she was definitely not in the mood for Jason’s bullshit.
“Whoa, someone hide your makeup today?” he asked the minute he saw her.
“Shut up, Jason,” she said, without even looking up from the packet of sugar she was emptying into her coffee.
“Ouch, so it’s PMS, huh?” He snickered, pouring coffee into his mug.
She tossed the empty packet into the trash and picked up her mug. “If I were you, I’d stop talking.” She took a sip, grimaced. “Unless you want to wear that coffee.”
“What the hell’s your problem?”
She wheeled on him. “You know what? You are. Your attitude is terrible, and working with you is hell. You’re nasty and rude and your wife is whiny, and I won’t miss you when I’m gone.”
He blinked at her. “Gone? You quitting?”
She flushed. She hadn’t even made the decision yet. She shouldn’t be spouting off things like that. She could end up being invited to leave before she was ready.
“Whatever,” she said quietly, then blew across the top of her coffee and took another sip. “I don’t have time to deal with your crap. And I’m not eating with you at any point today. I don’t care how hungry you get. I can’t do it anymore.”
She watched as Jason’s face filled up and twisted with red anger, his forefinger so tightly wrapped through the handle of his coffee mug it was white at the knuckle. She took some amount of satisfaction in seeing him that way, in being the one to elicit disgust for a change. “I don’t know who flipped your bitch switch—,” he started, but was interrupted by a call coming in over the radio.
An attempted suicide.
At 503 East Ninety-second Terrace.
An address Melinda recognized.
She heard nothing else Jason might have said. Only ditched her coffee mug on the counter, a splash of coffee sloshing over its side, and rushed to the ambulance.
• • •
The man whom Melinda had guessed to be Maddie Routh’s dad was standing at the door when they arrived, frantically waving for them to come in. He was holding a bloody dish towel in one hand, and his face was etched deep with worry.
“She’s in the bathtub,” he said. “We’ve drained the water, but she refused to come out. Her mother’s in there with her, trying to keep the bleeding to a minimum.”
Melinda pushed past him, leading Jason through the house toward Maddie’s mom’s voice, which was equal parts frantic and anguished. She’d forgotten all about Jason, about the man at the door, about the time Maddie had kicked her out of this very house. She feared she’d even forgotten her job.
This was it, she realized. This was what it felt like when the emergency was yours. This was what she’d been avoiding all this time. This was what she’d trashed her marriage to escape.
How could she feel so deeply for Maddie Routh? Even she didn’t understand the connection that had been constructed between the two of them. All she knew was that she couldn’t screw this up. She couldn’t let Maddie die, not the way she’d let Michael do it.
They rounded the corner into the hall bathroom, and at first all Melinda could see was the backside of Helen, who was kneeling next to the tub, her top half pressed inside of it as she talked, yelled, cried at Maddie. Another step inside and Melinda could see Maddie Routh, her eyes closed, tears streaming toward her ears. She wasn’t responding to Helen’s pleas, but Melinda wasn’t sure if that was because she couldn’t, or just because she wasn’t.
Helen felt them come in and stood up. Her arms were covered with blood, and her mint green tunic was soaked with pink water. “Thank God,” she said. “We thought she was just taking a long bath. There was so much blood in the water. It’s her wrists. She’s not dead, okay? Tell me she’s not dead.”
For a moment, Melinda was unsure she’d be able to tell Helen anything. She was completely focused on Maddie Routh’s body, which had been covered with a towel, soaked through with blood and bathwater. There were red streaks up one side of her face, taking Melinda back to the day of the crash.
Help him! Save him—he’s dying! Michael, don’t die! Michael, do you hear me?
The kids. The kids had been crying. Some of them inconsolably. Hitching, shrieking cries. Some of them with broken bones, bloody noses. Their white T-shirts and pink backpacks sprinkled with blood. Their lunch bags burst open. Their bus driver dead and staring lifelessly through eyes glittered with shattered glass.
They were left. Even if only for a few seconds, until other adults could park their cars and run across the lawn of the Tea Rose Diner, they were alone in their horror. Their parents would be summoned to get them—at the bus barn, at the hospital—and they would be limp little sandbags in their parents’ arms, their nightmare over, but their innocence blotted by its memory.
He had been dying. She’d had to leave the children. She’d had to help Maddie Routh. Pregnant and alone Maddie Routh, inconsolable as her own nightmare unfolded before her.
“You should wait outside, ma’am,” Jason said, ripping Melinda out of her memory. She was jostled as Helen stepped around her toward the bathroom door. “We’ll take care of her,” Jason said, employing a sensitivity that Melinda would never have guessed he had.
It was enough to jar her into movement. She couldn’t lose it now. She couldn’t fall apart. She couldn’t let both Maddie and Michael down.
She dropped to her knees next to the tub, placing two fingers against Maddie Routh’s neck. There was a pulse, though the girl’s face was extremely pale. Helen had wrapped two towels tight around Maddie’s wrists. Red blooms patched through here and there, but not much, which led Melinda to believe that the bleeding had at least slowed down.
“Okay, honey, we’re going to need to get you to a hospital,” she said, smoothing Maddie’s hair behind one ear. “But you’re going to be fine.”
At the sound of Melinda’s voice, Maddie’s eyes fluttered open. They landed on Melinda’s face, at first looking startled, but quickly melting into a flood of emotions that Melinda couldn’t quite pinpoint.
“Help me,” Maddie said, and the look in her eyes told Melinda that she didn’t just mean at that moment. It was what Melinda had been hoping to hear from Maddie Routh for months now. Help me get through this. Help me live. “Please help me.”
“Okay,” Melinda said, nodding. She felt a tear drip past one cheek—something that had never happened before on the job. “Okay, we’re going to help you.”
Maddie lifted her arms, stared at her wrists as if she had no idea what had happened to them. “Oh, God,” she croaked, and then fell into sobs so deep they took her breath away. When she finally breathed again, it came as a rusty gasp. She turned to Melinda again, sitting up, spilling the towel into her lap, exposing her swollen belly. “I need you.”
Melinda had to force herself to tear her eyes away from Maddie’s belly—it was fine. Maddie was not fine, but the baby was fine. But when she did finally tear herself away, she clicked into professional mode. Not all the babies on their calls made it.
But, by God, this one would.
TWENTY-ONE
Joanna supposed she couldn’t blame Stephen for thinking she’d pulled another one of her disappearing acts. She couldn’t even blame him for being angry about it, even though he was wrong. She hadn’t disappeared. Not on purpose, at least. She’d been gone only a few hours.
It just happened that she’d gotten Melinda’s call about Maddie Routh moments after she’d climbed in the car to go meet Stephen to check out some reception halls.
There’d been no time to call. And she’d been too busy hurrying to the hospital to answer his call. And then she’d been too worried to be bothered with her phone after she arrived, and had turned it off for some peace and time to think.
Or . . . maybe this was just another way of saying she was disappearing again.
Maddie had been admitted. They would keep her for at least the requisite seventy-two hours, but that didn’t stop Melinda, Karen, and Joanna from sitting in the waiting room for hours after they’d declared Maddie stable. Hours after Helen and the aged man who’d introduced himself as Cleve had gone, they were still there. It was as if none of them wanted to get too far away from her, just in case something else should happen.
“She cut fairly deep,” Melinda said. “She caught a couple veins pretty good. I don’t know if she would have died, but she might have, if her mom hadn’t been there. She needs more than seventy-two hours in psych care. She needs real help.”
“How’s the baby?” Karen asked.
“So far, so good,” Melinda said. “But she’s like thirty-two weeks along. I can’t help wondering what that baby’s about to be born into, you know?”
“We’ll help,” Joanna said. “We can all help her. We’ve been doing it this long. Why would we stop?”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t stop,” Melinda said. “I need to make sure this baby is born safe and alive. I can’t explain it—it’s such a long story—but it’s like everything in my life rides on this. If this baby comes out fine, I’m fine. If it doesn’t . . . I think I’ll lose so much.”
Joanna shook her head as if trying to clear it. “I don’t follow.”
“Paul wants kids. I . . . can’t get there. All I can think about are the dying kids and the scared kids and the hurt kids.”
“And the troubled kids,” Karen added. “Don’t forget those. They’ll kill you slowly.”
“Yeah, those, too,” Melinda said. “I’m sorry, Karen,” she mumbled, and Karen waved her off. “Anyway, I don’t see how anyone can do it. I would be such a nervous wreck all the time, I don’t understand how it is even a little bit worth the time and energy.”
Second Chance Friends Page 20