She didn’t stop, but spoke over her shoulder. “Jackson’s sick. He’s got a fever and…” Her voice was lost when she disappeared into the other room.
He ran, getting into the room to find her putting on her jeans. “Sick?” he asked, his heart hurting from the shock and fear of thinking that one of the babies was sick, that he’d forced this outing on Maggie and this had happened. “What’s wrong?”
She pushed her legs into her jeans, zipped the zipper and started looking frantically around the room. “My shoes, where are they?” she asked, and dropped to her knees to look under the huge poster bed.
“Maggie, stop and tell me what’s going on.”
“I told you, Jackson’s sick. I have to get back there.”
She stood with her boots in her hands, then sat on the edge of the bed to put them on. Adam grabbed his jeans and put them on, then turned to a frantic Maggie who could barely push her feet into her boots. He crossed to her and dropped to his haunches in front of her. “Stop and explain this to me. How sick is he? What is it? What did the doctor say?”
She kept lacing her boots, not looking at him at all. “Sick. He’s got a fever and he’s flushed and he’s crying.” She stopped and looked at him. “I could hear him crying,” she whispered. “I need to get back to him.”
She tried to stand, but Adam stopped her by pressing his hands on her shoulders, holding her down. “What did the doctor say?” he said, trying to keep calm.
“Grace put in a call for him.” She tried to get free of his hold. “We can’t waste any time. We’ll talk in the car.”
“No, you sit still and take a deep breath. I’ll call Grace and then we’ll figure out what to do.”
She twisted to free herself. “Adam, what’s to figure out? Jackson’s sick, and we can’t waste any time.”
She slipped past him so quickly that he barely had time to move out of her way to keep from being pushed backward. He got to his feet and followed her into the great room, almost running into her back when she stopped abruptly and turned to him. “Where’s my purse?”
“In the car,” he muttered, before saying, “Let me call Grace,” as he picked up the phone.
“Call anyone you want to call,” she said, her face slightly flushed. “But do it while we drive, okay?”
He motioned to the windows and the rain. “It’s pouring out there. If we don’t need to go, let’s not do it.”
“What?” she gasped, looking as shocked as if he’d said that he was an alien. “Not do it? Just not go?”
He held up one hand, palm out. “I didn’t say that, but give me one minute before we go running out into that storm. Just give me one minute?”
“He’s sick, Adam, and he’s so tiny, and I’m not there. I don’t know why you’re arguing with me.”
“You think I’m not scared about this? God, after everything we went through to have the babies. I’m scared spitless, but I want to figure it out. I want to—”
“Do whatever you want, but I’m going,” she said and turned from him, half running toward the entry.
He went after her, catching up as she opened the front door and a blast of cold, damp air burst into the cabin. She headed for the car, stopped by the passenger door and turned to him. “Are you going to come?”
“Maggie, look around you,” he said, pointing to the stormy night. “It would take hours to get back to the house, if we could even get through. The roads are going to be a mess, and you know how the roads get in heavy rain this time of year.”
He might just as well have been talking to the wall for all the good his logic did. Maggie pulled the door open, climbed in the passenger seat, then turned to him. “Are you coming?”
He held up the phone. “One call.”
She closed her eyes, scrunching them tightly, the way a child would who was angry or upset. “Okay, okay,” she muttered. “Just do it, then you’ll see, and we can get going.”
He quickly dialed home. The phone rang once, then Grace answered and he heard the sound of crying in the background.
“Grace? It’s Adam. What’s going on?”
“Adam. Thank goodness you called. I didn’t mean to upset Maggie, but she asked, and I told her that Jackson’s fussy and got a bit of a fever. Nothing big. The doctor thinks it’s probably just teething, told me what to do, and he’ll be on call if things get worse.”
He felt a partial easing in his chest. “You think that’s it, just teething?”
“I’d bet it is. The doctor seemed pretty certain.” The crying was almost drowning her out. “He’s not a happy camper, but he’s got great lungs.”
“Maggie’s pretty upset,” he said, a real understatement. He watched her in the car. Hands clenched in her lap, her eyes shut, her head and shoulders shaking slightly from tension. “I just wanted to check and make sure we didn’t need to head back.”
“Oh, honey, no, don’t do that. Babies get sick. It’s part of the growing process. And you and Maggie need to be there. You need time. Your dad’s worried, and so am I. Just stay put, and I promise I’ll call if anything changes.”
“Okay,” he said, feeling a huge weight lifting off him as Grace spoke. “Call if there’s any change, otherwise, we’ll be back around noon tomorrow. Okay?”
“You got it,” Grace said, then hung up.
Adam looked at Maggie in the car. “Get out and come inside. Grace says that things are okay.”
She turned to him. “What?”
“Jackson’s got a fever, and he’s probably teething, and that’s not life and death.”
She didn’t move. “How does she know that?”
“That’s what the doctor said.”
“The doctor saw him?”
“No, but he called and they discussed it, and that’s what he thinks is going on.”
“A phone conference? That doesn’t mean anything. It’s a guess.”
“An educated guess.”
She leaned toward him earnestly. “It’s a guess, and if I were there, I could tell. I know my babies. I really know them. A mother’s supposed to, and I do.”
“Maggie, stop it.”
“Adam, it could be serious. You know how careful we had to be when they first came home. How…how delicate they were, and they still are. We can’t just let it go.”
“Of course we can’t. But Grace will be with him, and if things change, she’ll call.” He held out his hand to her. “Come back inside with me, please?”
She looked at his hand, almost recoiling from it. “We have to go home.”
“No, we don’t. We’ve got our time here, and Grace is—”
“She’s not his mother, Adam,” she almost yelled at him. “We have to go back.” She gulped in air. “I have to go back.”
He had thought getting her here would be a turning point, that time together would make her realize what they had was precious and fleeting and that they could balance their life with the kids. But in that moment he knew that was all a dream, his dream. He loved her and always would, but he didn’t have her. Not even after being so close to her physically. He didn’t have her, and he desperately wanted to have her and hold her forever. He drew back his hand and felt as if he’d lost the biggest gamble of his life.
“No, we don’t,” he murmured.
Thunder and lightning cracked around them, and the light was colorless and dead as she said, “I’m going to our child. Are you coming with me?”
He stood very still, looking at her and aching for what wasn’t there anymore, blotted out by her obsession. “No. And I want you to stay here with me.”
“Adam, don’t, please, don’t.”
“Don’t what? I want you with me. I want you here, and there’s no real emergency, and it’s storming out here.”
She bit her lip hard. “I can’t be that selfish.”
“Selfish? Selfish? What in the hell are you talking about?” He was almost yelling. “You think I’m being selfish, being reasonable?”
“I d
on’t know, but I know that I can’t think of myself…or of you. Not when Jackson is so sick. That’s not what a mother does. That isn’t what a mother should do.”
He understood. He didn’t doubt her great love for her children. She’d almost died to get them into the world. But this went way beyond that and in an entirely different direction. “That’s it, isn’t it? It’s always the same. She walked out and left you. She turned her back and was never there for you, not when you were sick or well. So you’re going to be there, even if it’s just for sniffles? Even if Grace can do anything you can do? Even if we’ve spent most of the last year never taking any time for ourselves?”
“We came here,” she murmured shakily. “We’ve had time together. And it was terrific, but now we can’t just say, ‘forget everything,’ and do whatever we want and damn the cost.”
“We aren’t. We…” He went closer and touched her cheek, barely making contact with the tip of his forefinger on her cold skin, not trusting himself to make the touch any more substantial. “We are the core of this family, you and me, and if we don’t make this work, there is no core.” He drew back. “There is no family.”
“Oh, Adam, that’s not so. We’ve got time. The babies aren’t going to be like this forever. They’ll grow up and be wonderful people, but we have to be there for them.”
“We are, and we have been and we always will be, but what about their mother and father?”
She shrugged, an oddly fluttery movement of her shoulders. “We’re here. And we’re okay.”
“Are we?”
“Adam, please, this is a waste of time, we need—”
“Maggie, we aren’t okay, and we haven’t been for a long time. Dad knew, and Grace and Douglas.”
“You’ve been talking to them about us?”
“No, they talked to me.”
She took a harsh breath, then moved into the shadows of the car. “Are you coming with me?”
He stood back. “No, I’m not.”
She hesitated, then shifted to the driver’s seat and fumbled to get her key out of her purse and into the ignition. “I’m sorry about tonight,” she said as the car roared to life. “We’ll have time later, when the babies are okay.”
“Don’t count on it,” he said, grabbing the open door and leaning in toward her. “All we’ve got is right now.”
“That’s ridiculous, and I don’t have time to argue with you now. I’m going home to Jackson. Are you coming?”
“Dammit, Maggie, be reasonable.”
“I’m not being unreasonable,” she muttered, then said, “you are.”
“That’s it?”
“What more is there?”
He stared at her hard, etching her image into his mind. “Nothing, I guess,” he said and swung the door shut.
Whatever emptiness he’d felt lately was nothing compared to what he felt at that moment. The void in his soul threatened to consume him. The tires of the Jeep squealed as Maggie drove off into the storm and the night, and all he could do was watch her go. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to hurt to love her. It wasn’t supposed to be so damn hard to talk to her. And it wasn’t supposed to end.
He watched the glow of the taillights heading down the dirt drive, the rain smearing the dark hulk of the car as it went farther and farther away. “Dammit, dammit, dammit,” he muttered. He was a man who was used to being able to make anything work, and he felt useless and empty. “Dammit!” he screamed into the night, and at the same moment, the lights of the car veered to the left, but the driveway went right at that point. It curved right under the trees, then out to the highway. But the lights went left, left where the bank dropped in a ravine, a twenty-foot drop. Then the lights disappeared, and all there was was darkness.
“Maggie!” he screamed as he took off running into the rain.
MAGGIE DROVE AWAY from Adam, the ache in her deep and piercing. But she couldn’t turn back. She had to be there for Jackson, and for the others. Adam couldn’t ask her to turn her back on the babies. He couldn’t. And she wouldn’t.
She drove as quickly as she could onto the dirt drive that was mud, and she felt the Jeep slip slightly to the right, then it was on course and heading for the main road. The rain beat all around her, blurring the windshield and making the glow from the headlights a watery smear in front of her.
She saw the trees at the curve and jerked the wheel too hard to the right. Perversely, the car didn’t go to the right. She felt it lose traction and slide slightly to the left, almost of its own will, and she yanked the steering wheel to the right while she almost stood on the brakes. But that only made it worse, and she knew, in that second, that she wasn’t in control. She wasn’t in control of anything, not where the Jeep was going or her life.
The car swung hard to the right, toward the trees, then the trees disappeared and she saw nothing but blackness coming for her. She couldn’t be flying, that was impossible, but there was the oddest feeling of floating, then a hard, jarring impact that drove the air out of her lungs, then another and another.
She tried to hold on to the steering wheel, but it was yanked out of her hands, and all she could think about was Adam and the children, of him saying that all they had was now. And she had nothing. The world tipped to one side, and she braced herself for a full flip, but it didn’t come. She was slammed against the door despite the seat belt, then back again.
She braced herself for a horrendous impact, for the end of this and maybe everything. And grief filled her soul. Regret and horror in equal measure. She wouldn’t be there for the babies, the one thing she’d feared most for them. And she wouldn’t be there for Adam. The thing she feared most for herself.
Then, miraculously, everything stopped for a long moment, then there was a groan, a shudder, and the car went nose first, straight down, and with a hard thud, it stopped, almost vertical.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she breathed over and over again as she gripped the steering wheel, pressing her head against the cold plastic. She tried to feel her body beyond the hammer of her heart and the gulping of air into her lungs. She waited for pain, but there was no real pain. A dull ache in the side of her head, tightness in her chest and side, and pressure on her legs. But no agony, except in her heart.
Chapter Five
The car wasn’t moving. Maggie knew the ravine was at least twenty feet deep. She had no idea how far she’d gone down, but the angle of the car was ominous. As ominous as the motor stalling and the dash lights flickering and rain soaking her from the back. She couldn’t see outside, not with mud, leaves and rain streaking the windows, but she knew one thing for certain. She was alive, and she had to get out of the car before it plunged and flipped.
In the dim green glow from the dash lights she could see the air bag laying on her like a deflated silver balloon, hanging to where the leather covering in the center of the steering wheel had ripped in four directions. She hadn’t heard or seen it inflate, but it was there. She pushed it off her chest, then with fingers that barely cooperated, she managed to loosen the seat belt, and the pressure on her chest and side eased.
There was a chemical smell in the air mingling with the rain and earth. Then she caught a hint of gasoline and panicked all over again. Frantically she tugged the belt off and reached for the door handle, pulling on it with all her might, but nothing happened. It felt almost loose, and the door wasn’t giving at all. She twisted to pull the lock button up, but it was jammed at a funny angle in the leather panel, and the button for the window made a whining sound but didn’t move the window down.
She twisted, trying to pull her legs away from the pressure against them, and saw where the rain came from, and realized it was her way out. The back window had shattered, letting in the driving rain but giving her an escape hatch. She tried to tug her legs up and across the console, and that was when she felt some pain. Something ran across her shins, and she twisted, pulling, felt a scraping on them, then her feet were
free. Twisting, she grabbed at the back of the seat, pulled on the wet leather and managed to ease herself into the gap between the two front seats. She tumbled onto the soaked back seat, then grabbed and finally got a hold on the lower edge of the broken window.
Rain streamed in, running cold over her everywhere, and the edge of the window scraped her skin. She tugged the sleeve of her sweatshirt over her right hand and used the fabric as a barrier, then pulled on the window ledge to get out.
“Maggie!” Adam’s voice was there, coming out of the darkness, through the wind and rain that was invading the car. Echoing through her. Then it came again, closer and more real. “Maggie! Maggie!”
“Adam?” she called hoarsely, pushing with her feet, scrambling into the window frame, trying to avoid the broken glass that was everywhere. She levered herself with her elbow against the side and pushed with all her strength, breaking into the night and the storm. She was partway out and pushed with her feet on the back seat, then almost tumbled onto the back door of the Jeep. She barely got her legs free, then she felt her whole body sliding on the slick metal. Flailing for something to stop her fall, she found nothing until someone found her.
Strong hands grabbed her right arm, stopping her slide, twisting her to the edge of the door. Then she was being gathered. She was safe. Even with the storm beating around her, the rain drenching her, she was with Adam, and everything was right. She held him, her face pressed to his bare chest soaked by the rain, and he was speaking, his voice rumbling through her. “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie,” he whispered over and over again, and she could feel him shaking. Maybe it was her shaking, too, but she couldn’t tell. She just held him for dear life.
He was here. Here and now. And she was alive. That’s all that mattered. “Oh, Adam,” she breathed, the shaking in her body growing at an alarming rate.
“Are you okay?” he asked, trying to hold her to look at her, but she held on tightly, fighting any gap in their contact.
“I…I…thought…” She gasped against his bare chest. “I thought…I really thought…” She bit her lip hard and tasted the metallic sharpness of blood. “I’m okay,” she finished on a shudder.
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