“I just mean that—”
“She just means that we’re here for you, Em,” Michael said.
The room was quiet for one beat, then two.
“GET OUT!” The words tore through Em’s throat, cutting the air like a million shards of glass.
No one moved. The room stilled like they were frozen in a suspended state of disbelief. Anger flooded Em’s system. A surge of pain and rage and bitterness coursed through her veins. This was their fault. Michael and Zoe’s fault. They had ditched her. They had abandoned her.
Em sprang from the hospital bed, and the IV ripped loose. Medical equipment beeped in a frantic cacophony and churned the charged air.
Em lunged at her friends. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. I NEVER WANT TO SEE EITHER ONE OF YOU AGAIN!”
The nurse grabbed her around the waist. But a switch had flipped. To Em, everyone was a threat, and her only choice was to fight.
“I need some help in here,” the nurse called out. “We’ve got a code green.”
Em’s gaze bounced between her friends’ faces. She liked the fear and shame she saw reflected in Michael and Zoe’s eyes. It was like fuel for her rage.
A nurse ran in with a syringe. A prick and burn spread through her arm as a wave of fuzzy numbness washed over her body. Her heavy eyes met Michael’s gaze. “You never came back. You never came back for me, Michael.”
4
PRESENT DAY — October 30
“Holy cow! I never thought anything like this would ever happen to me!”
Dammit! He was talking again.
Em straddled the mild-mannered computer programmer, and her skirt hiked up around her hips.
She had flown directly from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles seated next to a priest who was more interested in saving her soul than getting into her panties. But her luck changed when she’d transferred planes for the last three-hour leg of the trip from LAX to Kansas City. She sat next to Adam something or other. She hadn’t even tried to remember his name when he’d introduced himself and offered her a stick of gum.
Gum, for Christ’s sake.
She had declined the gum but helped herself to two Jack and Cokes during the flight.
She should have ordered a third.
“The less talking, the better,” she said and shifted her body. She should have asked this guy what kind of car he drove before she decided to fuck him. Screwing in a Prius inside an airport parking garage was no easy feat. But she did like the nerds. They were harmless and easy to control. She was probably a legend on Reddit by now.
“Mary Michelle,” the programmer said. Two words. Four syllables. She stopped going by her nickname, Em, and started going by her real name more than a decade ago after the accident at Sadie’s Hollow. But here, in Kansas, it sounded wrong. In her hometown of Langley Park, she had always been Em because of him. The very person she would never forgive.
She tried not to look annoyed. “What is it, Aaron?”
“It’s Adam.”
“Of course, it is,” she said. She lifted her shirt and revealed a black lace bra. If this didn’t shut him up, nothing would. Nerds loved black lace.
As if on cue, Adam’s hands found her breasts. He pulled the thin lace down and buried his face in her cleavage.
“Condom,” Em said, pulling the Trojan packet out of her pocket.
“Right, right. Do you want me to…”
She pressed her breasts into Adam’s face and lifted her body. She tore the condom wrapper open with her teeth, unzipped the programmer’s fly, and reached for his cock—which felt pretty substantial. That was a pleasant surprise.
“You really know your way around a guy, don’t you?” Adam asked, his voice a mixture of fear and desire.
She sank down on his sheathed cock. “I know a thing or two about a thing or two.”
Em rolled her hips. If she rode this nerd hard, he’d come in thirty-seconds, and she needed him to last. For the most part, sex had become a tool to distance herself from her emotions. In her world, sex meant power, and power meant control. But her mind didn’t always cooperate.
“Aaron, I’m going to ride you like a cowgirl.”
The programmer’s eyes widened, and his fingertips dug into her hips.
She grabbed onto the headrest and rocked her body up and down, building up speed like a freight train. She closed her eyes, and a barrage of images, sounds, and sensations flashed like a strobe light inside her mind.
Paganini. The complex twist of notes flowed through her body.
The wooden bridge. Each thrust mimicked the choppy motion her muscles remembered.
Tall men. This never made sense. But the words were cemented in her brain.
She blinked open her eyes. She needed to stop the flood of memories, not allow them to come rushing back.
“I’m getting close, Mary Michelle. So very…”
It was over, and the wave of memories receded into the hidden depths of her mind.
“Do you want me to call you?”
Poor, Aaron—or was it Adam? She’d forgotten again. Em glanced down at his tousled brown hair and his eyes, dreamy with gratification. “No, you don’t have to call me.”
“Thanks, I guess. Thank you for…”
“For the fuck,” she said, climbing off his lap and onto the passenger seat.
“No, I mean, well, yes.”
“You’re sweet.” She tapped on an interior light, adjusted the rearview mirror, and checked her face. Her blue eyes were lined thick with black eyeliner and smoky with gray eyeshadow. She noticed the faint freckles on her cheeks taunting her. She could hide behind the makeup, hide from herself, but beneath it all would lie her creamy white skin sprinkled with freckle after freckle: the face of Em MacCaslin.
Adam removed the condom and tied it off. He adjusted his boxer shorts. They were adorned with musical notes.
He offered Em a sheepish smile. “They were a gift from my grandmother. I played the piano when I was younger. I haven’t touched one in years, but my grandma still shops for me like I’m a six-year-old.”
A muscle ticked in her jaw.
“Do you play? I mean, did you ever play an instrument?”
Em opened the car door. A tingle of electricity pulsed through her fingers as if they were begging for recognition.
She clenched her fists. “No, I don’t play any instrument.”
“You got any plans for Halloween?”
Em met the cabbie’s gaze in the rearview mirror and shook her head.
“I live over in Lenexa,” he said, resting his arm across the front seat, “but I think my wife and I are going to bring our daughter to Langley Park to trick-or-treat tomorrow night. They do it right, you know—the botanic gardens are all lit up, the shops passing out treats, music in the town square. We went last year, and my little Becky loved it.”
The cabbie turned onto Langley Park Boulevard, and the Midwest Medical and Psychiatric Center came into view. An ambulance with its sirens blaring turned into the emergency room entrance.
“You okay back there, miss?”
She had cradled her left hand like a wounded bird, holding it to her chest and massaging the scar on her ring finger. She dropped her hands. “I’m fine.”
“You from around here or just visiting?”
“My dad lives in Langley Park.”
“That’s nice! Real nice! I bet he’ll be glad to see you.”
“He’s sick.” She took in a sharp breath. The words just flew out.
The cabbie’s brow creased in the mirror. “I’m sorry to hear that, miss. Is he over at Midwest Medical?”
“No, he just moved to the Langley Park Senior Living Campus.”
Why was she unloading on this guy? It wasn’t like her to spill her guts.
“That place is the gold standard for senior care. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. They’ve got a topnotch Alzheimer’s care center. Is that why your father’s there?”
“No, he’s not there for Alzh
eimer’s. He’s got COPD.”
The cabbie tilted his head.
“Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. It’s a breathing disorder,” she added, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.
It was a breathing disorder her father had because of her. Her accident had driven him back to smoking. He had quit when she was a baby, but after her injury, stress and guilt had led him back to a pack-a-day habit.
A few beats of silence passed before the cabbie spoke again. “Someone must be having a wedding or something at the Botanic Gardens Lake Pavilion.”
Em sat up and glanced out the window. The glow of the pavilion’s white lights reflected off the dark water of Lake Boley. How many times had she played there as a child? How many times had she performed there? Her fingers twitched.
“I gotta tell, ya. I love driving into Langley Park,” the cabbie said as they passed the lake and drove into the town center, all traces of their somber conversation gone.
It had been more than a decade since she had been back. During the first few years after her accident, her father would visit her in Australia. Those visits were hard. They never talked about her injury, and the guilt loomed large over every interaction. Their visits went from once a year to every few years, and now, here she was, driving into Langley Park. It had been three years since she had seen her father. On his last visit to Australia, he’d tried to hide the smell of tobacco with mints and gum. He’d blamed a near-constant cough on allergies. Em knew the minute he left her, he was lighting up.
She swallowed back the lump in her throat. “It’s changed quite a bit since I was last here.”
“You must have been gone a long time. Ten, fifteen years ago, it was mostly old people and lots of empty shops. But now, it’s like Beaver Cleaverville around here. Everybody’s buying up the old houses and renovating them. You’d never know Kansas City was only a few miles away. It feels like Smalltown, USA.”
With a population of almost four thousand, the small municipality of Langley Park was a walkable, bicycle-friendly haven for families and young professionals clamoring to live in the charming Tudor, Federal, and bungalow style homes built in the 1930s that encased the town center to its north, south, and west. The Langley Park Botanic Gardens, which sat adjacent to Lake Boley, bordered the town center to the east.
“You want a little tour of the town center before I drop you off? They’ve got it all decorated for the trick-or-treaters.”
Em nodded. She needed a little more time in the safety of the cab. Once she stepped out of that car, it would all become real.
The cabbie passed her street, then turned right at the next block and headed north on Baneberry Drive. Even at nine o’clock on a cool October evening, the town was alive with activity. The Langley Park town center ran four blocks east to west, and three blocks north to south. Packed with professional offices, hip boutiques, and restaurants, locals clad in trench coats and scarves strolled along the streets. The Scoop, the local ice cream parlor, still had families lined up for their homemade milkshakes and double dips. The tiered fountain in the town square was lit by strings of white lights that crisscrossed the space and swayed in the night breeze.
“Want me to keep driving, miss? The yoga studio over on Mulberry Drive has a pretty great skeleton display up in the window.”
“That’s okay. I’ve seen enough.” Langley Park had changed, but echoes of her past life remained. A thousand years could pass, but she would always recognize this place. It was in her bones, a part of her. It didn’t matter that she had moved halfway across the world, this was her hometown. She had been the golden girl here, once upon a time. Now she prayed nobody would recognize her.
Her father’s house was located in the neighborhood a few blocks south of the town center. The cab turned down her street, Foxglove Lane, and her pulse quickened. All the streets in Langley Park were named after plant life native to Kansas, but the Foxglove flower, with its bell-like shape and vibrant petals, used to hold a special meaning to her. Digitalis purpurea, the scientific name for the plant, means “finger-like.”
When she was a girl, she wondered if her ability to play the piano and violin came magically from the Foxglove flowers that grew in lovely bunches all over Langley Park. Only later, after the accident, did she learn the beautiful bud was extremely poisonous. It was ironic how her fingers, the fingers she once foolishly thought were magical, were now responsible for her father’s illness.
“Here we are, miss. 718 Foxglove Lane.”
She stared up at the house.
“Hey, is that one of those American Foursquare houses? You don’t see many of those around here.”
The majority of homes in Langley Park were Tudor style with some Colonial, Federal, and cozy bungalows sprinkled in. While the American Foursquare did share some similarities with the boxier Federal style, the Foursquare sported a large central dormer and a pyramid-like, low hipped roof that left a bit of an overhang. As a child, she used to stand against the side of her house and press her little body into the scratchy bricks to stay dry during summertime thunderstorms. But a jolt of anger crushed the sweet memory when she remembered who was pressed up against the house next door smiling back at her.
“And look! There’s another American Foursquare right next door!” the cabbie exclaimed.
The American Foursquare next door to hers was dark, but a light was on inside the freestanding carriage house situated at the end of its driveway.
“Yep,” she replied. Her tone dripped with venom. “Two American Foursquares, side by side.”
5
“God bless the Irish.”
Em set her suitcase down and eyed the bottle of Teeling Single Grain Irish Whiskey sitting on a sideboard in the living room.
She poured herself a glass and walked through the darkened house, trailing her fingertips along the wall. Hints of tobacco smoke scented the air. Somebody else would be living here soon. Strangers would be cooking in the kitchen and sleeping in the bedrooms. Maybe a family would live here. Maybe they’d have a little girl.
Stop! Get that happy ending, dreamer bullshit out of your head.
A week ago, her father had called. But this call was different from their bland check-ins. He had moved into an assisted living cottage on the Langley Park Senior Living Campus. It happened fast. Two weeks prior, he’d suffered six breathing attacks and spent a combined ten days in the hospital. The doctors told her father that unless he wanted a life that revolved around emergency room visits, living on his own was no longer a viable option. So when a coveted unit on the assisted living campus became available, he took it.
Em sipped the whiskey and surveyed her childhood home. The American Foursquare was, as the name suggested, a big square. A large rectangular living room separated in the center by a small foyer and staircase made up the front of the house while the dining room and kitchen sat side by side in the back of the structure. Four tidy, square bedrooms made up the second floor.
Her Steinway baby grand piano still sat in the corner of the living room. The light from the street lamp glinted off the polished mahogany finish. Em flexed her fingers. The smooth spruce keys whispered like a siren’s song beckoning to be played. She resisted the urge to run her fingers across the keyboard’s long expanse of black and white. She hadn’t turned on any lights, and the house remained shrouded in darkness. She needed it to be dark. The darkness muted the tangle of memories wrapped up in this house.
A high-pitched squeak came from the kitchen. Em furrowed her brow, took another sip of whiskey, and went to investigate. The sound stopped as she surveyed the space. The digital clock on the oven read 10:27. She stood there a beat and listened. There it was again. It was coming from the window. She ran her finger along the ledge, found the latch, and pressed it firmly in place, silencing the rickety hissing sound. The October breeze must have picked up and rattled the latch open. Her American Foursquare was solid brick and mortar, but the original windows from the 1930s, while charming, did litt
le to combat the Kansas wind.
She opened the refrigerator, and the interior light illuminated the snug kitchen. A large bag of Halloween candy sat on the counter next to a wilted, generic-looking houseplant. The butcher block counters looked worn, and the dim light highlighted the scratches and nicks plaguing the old cabinets.
She took out a carton of milk, sniffed it, and grimaced at the sour smell. A hunk of cheddar with mold creeping across the edges sat on a plate next to a takeout box from The Park Tavern Grill. She shut the door and ripped open the bag of candy.
She was stalling.
Em popped a Kit Kat into her mouth and walked over to the stairs. She had to go up to her room. Eyeing the bottle of whiskey, she refilled her glass, then ascended the stairs. Her bedroom door was closed. She touched the doorknob cautiously as if she was trying to ascertain if there was fire on the other side.
It was ice cold.
She turned the knob. The hinges squeaked. She swung the door open, and a stale smell filled the room.
She took two tentative steps inside. The moonlight shined in through her window, and she gasped. “He never touched a thing.”
Broken plaques, bent trophies, and torn up photographs littered the floor. Her room was a time capsule. A shrine to the last day she had spent in this house.
“We can’t say definitively if you’ll regain the same level of function and dexterity.”
Dr. Neil Stein, Zoe’s father and Chief of Surgery at Midwest Medical and Psychiatric Center, sat on the edge of the bed, but Em wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“I didn’t perform the surgery, but I’ve looked at all the notes and pictures from Dr. Medina’s repair. It was a clean tear of the tendon, and she noted that the digital nerve and artery remained intact. That’s a good thing, Em.”
Em cradled her splinted finger. She hadn’t spoken a word since her outburst in the hospital. A week had passed since the surgery. Even with her mother’s arrival, she still hadn’t uttered a word.
The Complete Langley Park Series (Books 1-5) Page 28