Chapter 23
The grey-haired doctor, with glasses sitting on top of his head, and a stethoscope draped over his shoulders, gave JD a perplexed look. She stared back at him determined, her arms crossed, and her mind made up.
“I’m leaving today,” she repeated. Never mind the fact that she had to lean against something to keep her balance, or that her head was screaming, and she was wincing in pain.
Dr. Hinckley sighed. “Fine. I won’t argue with you, but you have to sign papers stating that you left against Doctor’s orders.” He handed the clipboard over to an older nurse, who gave JD a disapproving look.
For just a moment, JD was apprehensive about her decision. No, the project manager in her stated firmly, I’m not staying here. I have a job to do.
“Let’s get them signed then,” JD demanded.
“Maria will get your papers. In the meantime, at least take my advice?” Dr. Hinckley appealed.
She lifted her chin. “Sure”
The doctor raised his fingers and ticked off the items of concern one by one. “Take it slow, get lots of bed rest, keep hydrated, and take pain meds as needed. At the first sign of severe pain, come in right away. Will you do that?”
She could see that Dr. Hinckley was very concerned. JD nodded, feeling slightly ashamed at being so difficult for him, but she couldn’t fall behind schedule, or give Mr. Blackwell any reason to have her replaced.
Maria clucked her tongue disapprovingly as JD signed the papers. JD handed them back to the woman who then shuffled out of the room, shutting the door behind her so JD could have privacy to change into the clothes she had worn to the hospital.
Upon dressing, she noticed a blood stain on the front of her blouse and several strands of long, black, wavy hair caught on a button. She pulled the hair out and looked at it closely. It looked like Matthew’s hair. Was it Matthew who had attacked her? Something inside, a tiny feeling of dread, confirmed it. A knock on her door startled her out of her thoughts.
“Come in,” she called as she tucked the hair into her blouse pocket. Nathan strode inside.
“Hi,” he said. His hat was in his hands and his light brown hair was tussled.
“Hi. What are you doing here?” she asked guardedly.
“Came to give you a lift back to Torrey,” he said politely.
“Thanks, but I can manage,” she responded and began looking around for the rest of her things.
“You didn’t drive yourself here,” Nathan said coming closer. “Lose something?”
She straitened slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. “My shoes,” she muttered, then resumed her search of the room.
“You didn’t have any on when we found you,” he replied. JD sat down in the chair next to the bed and looked at him curiously, but Nathan did not offer any further explanation. She gave him a look of disbelief, trying to remember what she had on her feet that day. She sighed and knelt on the floor, searching for her purse under the bed and chair since she didn’t see it on top of anything.
“Lose something else?”
“My purse.”
“You didn’t have one on you when we brought you in,” Nathan said.
JD stood carefully, using the bed rails to pull herself to her feet. Nathan offered her a hand, but she ignored it and sank into the chair again. Heart pounding from the exertion, and her hair messy above the wrappings of her bandages, she glared at Nathan, as if somehow this was entirely his fault.
The next thing she knew, she was sniffling, which rapidly progressed to tears. She buried her face in her hands, and was ashamed to be so emotional in front of Nathan, which made her cry even harder. Nathan squatted before her and took her hands in his.
“Julia,” he said in a calming voice. She lifted her eyes and met his. The feel of his hands around hers felt so right, so familiar. “Shh,” he whispered and stroked the backs of her hands. She felt warmth and peace pour into her. Her lungs filled with air, her head ceased its jackhammer attack, and her shoulders relaxed.
They held each other’s gaze for a long time before Maria came in backward pulling a wheelchair through the door. Nathan took the handles of the wheelchair, and the nurse moved to help JD into it. She waved Maria off and stood on her own. She didn’t feel dizzy and she didn’t need the wheelchair, but hospital policy stated she had to ride out the front doors in one, and Maria insisted. She felt more dazed from Nathan’s touch than she did from her injury.
Nathan wheeled her out with the nurse close behind. Once JD was inside Nathan’s truck, Maria took the wheelchair, and without a backward glance, returned to the hospital.
Nathan’s truck smelled of fresh summer rain and pine. It was meticulously clean and appeared to be brand new. When Nathan had gained the highway back to Torrey, JD caught his glance. He seemed to be struggling with something he wanted to say.
“What?” she blurted. Nathan looked surprised, then after a moment he said, “I need to ask you something.”
“Okay?” she prompted.
“Where is the box?” he asked bluntly.
JD’s face remained neutral as she quickly considered her response. Her mind raced to try and figure out why Nathan would have any interest in it at all. Matthew obviously had it, but what would Nathan do if she told him that? There were too many questions of her own that could not be answered without putting her in a precarious position. If Mr. Blackwell found out about the box and knew that JD hadn’t informed anyone, it wouldn’t go over well for her. Gramps would be so angry. She turned away from Nathan and kept her mouth shut.
Nathan read her clearly. “All right, if you don’t want to answer that question, then maybe you could tell me where Matthew is.”
JD shot him a quick glance. “I haven’t the slightest idea. Why do you want to know?”
Nathan kept his eyes fixed on the road. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“Are you a cop or something?”
“Not a cop,” Nathan said softly. Glancing at her with an apologetic expression, he said, “I’m not the enemy here. Matthew is mixed up in some bad business and I just want to help. Could you just tell me when and where you last saw him?”
“He was with me the night before my accident,” she said. Nathan gave her a startled look, then quickly returned his attention to the road, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, and his jaw line taut.
“Do you know where he went?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
Whether it was the way he clenched his jaw or the tightness around his eyes, she knew that her revelation of being with Matthew upset him somehow. Nothing more was said until they reached Torrey. Despite her protests, Nathan escorted her up to her apartment, steadying her with a firm grip on her elbow. Liu had just come out of the store to dump a bag of trash in the dumpsters and watched them with a bemused smile. JD ignored her as Nathan politely nodded in her direction.
“Hi there, Liu,” he called.
“Hi yourself,” Liu grinned and shuffled back inside.
“I’m fine,” JD said brusquely when Nathan offered to help her inside.
“All right,” Nathan replied awkwardly. “Just call me if you need anything,” he checked himself, “I mean call me if you see Matthew again.” JD refused to look at him or acknowledge his request. It’s not like she owed Matthew any favors, but since he had the box, it was probably best he just stayed lost instead of having it discovered that she had let go a possible priceless artifact of some kind.
When Nathan left, JD groaned and held her head. It was like he had taken his magic calm with him. Perhaps she should have listened to the doctor and remained at the hospital for at least another day. She swallowed a pain pill and laid down to sleep.
Chapter 24
“Project Status,” JD said, speaking aloud as her fingers flew over the keyboard. “Demolition complete. Trailer suffered damage from storm. Basement excavation scheduled to begin on…” The phone rang, interrupting her flow of thought. JD considered ign
oring it, but the caller ID showed Gramps’ cell phone number. Great, she thought. If he was using his cell phone, that meant he was on the road and not in his office in California. Was he on his way here? JD didn’t want to talk to him, but she couldn’t delay the inevitable. She plucked up the receiver.
“Hi Gramps,” she said with forced enthusiasm, as if everything was going smoothly, and she was still enjoying the thrill of her first project.
“Julia,” he exclaimed. “You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said sweetly, grimacing through a headache radiating beautifully from the epicenter of her traumatized skull.
“Blackwell called and said no one was at the site Monday. Just got word that you had an accident last Friday. In the hospital? What happened?” Gramps was gruff and deadly which meant he was stressed out.
“Everything is fine, Gramps,” she tried to sound disinterested and relaxed. “I was chasing some kids out of the building. I slipped and hit my head is all. Went to the hospital to check it out. The doctor said to take it easy. I’ve been working from my apartment. Everything is fine.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.
“Gramps?” she asked.
“Julia, do you need me to send Rick down there?” Gramps asked. She bristled.
“I’m fine Gramps. As soon as my trailer is replaced, I’ll be back at the site, and Mr. Blackwell can come over and visit me whenever he wants,” she said with a bite.
“What happened to your trailer?”
“A storm hit Thursday. It suffered the brunt of it. I should have a new one by the end of the week.”
“You had me worried. I couldn’t get a hold of you,” Gramps’ tone softened.
“I’m sorry, but everything is fine. I’m good, the project is good−we’re good,” JD said brightly.
“Well, if you’ve got everything under control,” Gramps continued, “then I’ll let you go. Be careful, okay? I’m worried about you.”
“Everything is under control,” she assured him. There was silence and then he hung up. She had to smile. He never said goodbye at the end of phone conversations. She never wondered about it until now. Perhaps goodbyes were just too painful for him. A memory surfaced suddenly, one that she hadn’t thought of since she was a little girl and saw a picture of grandma tucked away in the glove box of Gramps’ beat up old pickup truck. Grandma had said goodbye and he never saw her again. JD tucked her chin. She didn’t like goodbyes either, she decided. It hurt too much.
“See ya, Gramps,” she said at last into the emptiness of the line, coming out of her reverie. She hung up, relief washing over her that he hadn’t insisted she come back to California and let one of the guys take over the project.
The Sunday morning after Nathan had dropped her off at her apartment, Liu had brought up breakfast, explaining that Nathan had ordered it delivered. JD thanked her and felt overly self-conscience as the older woman fussed over her, helping her to sit at the small table near the kitchen. Liu clucked at her bandage and urged her to eat more when she’d had her fill. JD didn’t want to be rude, but she really wanted to be left alone. She wanted to wallow in self-pity. She figured there was a lot to be pitiful about and she wanted her privacy. Liu eventually left, and JD collapsed on her bed and cried some more. She ached all over. She ached inside. She ached for Matthew, but then hated him at the same time. She wondered where he was and if he had really attacked her. The hair she had found wrapped around her blouse button was now tucked inside a tissue in her purse.
JD had dialed his number, but the number had been disconnected. She called Missy, but she was out, and her cell phone was off. She felt unreservedly alone. Hurting emotionally and physically, she cried and slept Sunday away, interrupted only by Liu who brought up lunch and then dinner. JD politely accepted the meals at the door, refusing to let Liu in. She left the meals untouched on the coffee table and went back to her room, curling into herself, and feeling the agony of a broken heart.
By Monday morning, she pulled herself together enough to face another work day. Her aching heart would have to wait until after work. She put on her Project Manager face and her business suit. She combed her hair back into a tight bun, applied pale red lipstick, and pulled on her work boots. To get some fresh air and exercise, she decided to walk to the site.
The trailer looked worse than she remembered. The sides were dinged with hundreds of dimples from the hailstones. The entire end of it was bashed in, as if a semi-truck had backed into it. The door itself was shredded, like a huge cat had sharpened its claws on it. JD gaped at it in shock and wonder. She made her way around it to the school house and stood before the open front door. Looking over the expanse of the room, she saw that the rainwater had dried away and left dark rings where puddles had collected in the compacted dirt. Stepping inside, she felt her skin shiver into tiny bumps. It was eerily quiet and she could hear water dripping somewhere.
It felt like it had been years since she had been inside the schoolhouse−not just a few days. JD felt her palms get sweaty and her heart begin knocking against her ribs. Her eyes darted around the room, expecting to see dark shadows flit pass, or hear giggling again. She forced herself to proceed into the darkness of the schoolhouse. She needed to see if the box really was gone.
The box was indeed gone, as well as all the interior walls, the decrepit floorboards, the overhead beams, and floor above. Gone. Nothing but wide open space. She walked quickly across the packed earth to where the box had stood. The dirt was disturbed with many boot prints, but there was no evidence of how Matthew’s crew had gotten it out of the building, unless it had been carried out. She stood there a long time, bewildered. Where would Matthew have taken it? And when was it taken? It hadn’t been there the day she was attacked, but it had been there just the evening before, when she closed the building and went home with Matthew. Had he taken it during the night?
Suddenly she was seized by a memory; more impressions than anything solid. Darkness had pressed in all around her. She had the notion that there were hundreds of things−creatures around her, suffocating her, pulling her down. Suddenly, Matthew’s face flashed before her, and the look in his eyes was hideous. They were not Matthew’s.
Shaking her head, she turned and headed for the door, but stumbled on something. Looking down, she noticed something poking up through the dirt. She squatted to examine it. It was cream-colored and made of leather. Unearthing it, she discovered it was her shoe. She spotted a bit of the other shoe in the depression left by the first. She dug deeper, heedless of the damage she was causing to her fingernails. Cradling her shoes, she returned to the ruin of her office.
What had been in that box? Her thoughts were in a whirl, searching for answers. Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. She swiped furiously at them, and then threw her shoes as hard as she could against the office wall. They made a solid thud, sending a spray of dirt everywhere. She had a job to do, and the sooner it was accomplished, the sooner she could leave Torrey.
Chapter 25
Excavation of the basement began in earnest the last week of July. By the end of the first week in August, the excavation crew had finished with the basement, which measured fifteen feet wide by twenty feet long by twelve feet deep. They still needed to dig nine, long trenches from the basement out under the building. They would be filled with concrete and used to help stabilize the structure of the old building. There would be three trenches that measured three feet wide by two feet deep, and they would extend fifteen feet away from the building on three sides of the basement. The basement was only a third of the square footage of the main floor, so trenches on the edge of the basement under the middle part of the building were unnecessary.
The trenches were going to act as a foundation to stabilize the building and to help it meet seismic codes, as well as reinforce the third floor.
It would take another two weeks to accomplish this difficult phase of digging. Some of the red earth was moved by a mini backhoe and co
nveyor belt, but most of it was moved by hand, or rather, by sweaty, deeply-tanned and muscular men with shovels and hardhats. This was the part of the whole project Mr. Blackwell fretted over most, and JD expected him to show up any day now and start hovering. She was surprised she hadn’t seen him already.
JD stood just outside her recently replaced trailer, in the shade, sipping iced tea, watching the men work. There was something fascinating about watching men work alongside machines, she realized. There was a rhythm to the movement of man and machine, a sort of jerky dance. The steady dig and scoop of the back hoe, the clacking of the conveyor belt, and the rumble of the generator powering the conveyor belt were mesmerizing.
Men went in with shovels and wheelbarrows, where the backhoe couldn’t reach. Muscles rippled along their backs, and arms bulged with each lift and toss. Some of the men wore sweat-stained shirts, others were without shirts altogether, shouting and grunting as muscles strained to move the rust-red soil.
The smell of dirt, sweaty bodies, diesel fuel, and exhaust filled the hot, stale air. The mini-backhoe dug into the hard, red dirt, swiveled, and dumped its load on the conveyor belt which shuttled the load into the back of a large dump truck as it rumbled like a napping behemoth waiting to be woke up to haul away its heavy burden.
August in Torrey was hot and too dry for comfort. JD had resorted to wearing short-sleeved cotton blouses and linen slacks, which were more suitable for informal garden parties than construction sites. She refused to wear jeans and t-shirts. In her opinion, jeans were not feminine. Missy teased her about trying to start an anti-jean campaign. JD’s response was that jeans looked great on guys, but a woman should wear something that celebrates her femininity, and denim just didn’t do it for her. She loved the feeling of silk or linen against her skin−it was almost like being naked. Silk and cotton was freeing, breathable, and natural. Anything heavier felt too constricting, and constrictions she disliked.
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