Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
He drives me to the top of my lane before kissing me long and deep. My face is flushed when I pull away and he gives the smuggest grin, to which I give him the rudest finger and let myself out, waiting for him to round the bend before I head up the driveway.
Susan’s car isn’t here, which is a relief.
She’s a nice woman but a huge busybody, and I know showing up in a dress from the night before will fuel her for weeks.
Though I suppose it wouldn’t be the worst gossip in the world.
I always thought my reputation around here could use a little spicing up. And maybe…
I pause in front of the door, frowning as the noise from inside reaches me.
Plankton is barking. Plankton never barks. I mean, he does . If he’s startled or cornered or something. He gives an alerting woof to a fox or a bird he doesn’t like the look of. But not this constant racket. Not like he’s…
I fit the key into the lock, feeling strangely calm as I let myself in. The barking gets louder as soon I do, but he doesn’t come running to see who it is.
There have always been moments when I know something’s wrong.
A beat of time when I’m aware that my life might be about to change and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
I remember as a child seeing the shadow of my grandmother’s footsteps in the crack between my bedroom door and the floor.
Knowing she was about to come in. Knowing it wasn’t good.
“Granny?”
I almost expect her to call out sarcastically like she usually does, but there’s no answer, only barking, and so I follow the noise down the hallway to the kitchen where I’ve found her so many times and where, for one brief hopeful second, I imagine her sitting in her usual spot with a crossword in front of her.
But she’s not at the table. She’s not at the sink or the stove or rummaging through the cabinets.
She’s lying on the floor.
She’s still dressed for bed, her nightdress bunched around her legs, her slippers still on her feet.
There’s an empty waterglass nearby, the spilled liquid wetting her sleeve where she dropped it.
She must have gotten up this morning to get it.
She must have been lying there for hours. She must have—
“Plankton,” I snap, as my dog continues barking, frantic now I’m here.
He’s hiding under the table, his panic only making me panic as I try and keep my wits about me.
I kneel beside her, trying to look for any obvious injuries and seeing none.
Did she have a stroke? I hold on to her hand as I reach for my phone, calling everyone I can think of, but no one picks up.
Either their electricity hasn’t come back, or they just haven’t charged their phones, but no one answers, and I know there’s no point in calling for an ambulance. We’re too far away and they won’t be quick enough.
“Katie…”
My eyes snap back to Granny as she takes a ragged breath.
“You’re okay,” I say. “It’s going to be okay. Do you know what happened?”
“Fell…”
“What?”
“Wasn’t…looking…fell.”
Fell. No stroke then.
“Did you hit anything?”
She doesn’t answer, but she’s breathing louder and seems to be aware of her surroundings. I pat gently around her head in case she hit it, but I feel no blood or abrasions, not that that means anything.
“Alright,” I say, more to myself than to her. “We’re going to get you to the hospital.”
“Katie…”
“I’m going to get the car. I’ll be right back.”
I grab the keys from the bowl in the kitchen, praying the thing has enough petrol in it.
Neither of us use the car that much. Granny used to all the time, but she lost confidence a few years ago and stopped leaving the house so much.
We considered selling it altogether before eventually deciding to keep it for emergencies.
An emergency like this.
It seems to be working okay and I rush back inside to get her, pleading with Plankton to stay where he is because it’s not like I can bring him with us. For once, he does as he’s told, still cowering under the table.
It takes a very long time to get her to the car. I make her as comfortable as possible in the back seat and then slide behind the steering wheel.
I wasn’t scared of being in cars after my parents died.
It wasn’t until I learned how to drive that I started getting nervous about it, the unease creeping up on me with each lesson.
I don’t know what triggered it. Maybe it was learning about all the things that could go wrong.
Maybe it was because I knew that no matter how safely I went or how much care I took, it didn’t matter if the other driver didn’t do so as well.
All I know is it didn’t get better. And while I could just about manage being in the passenger seat, being the one driving is a whole different experience, one that makes my fingers tremble now as I turn the key in the ignition, and pull off down the lane.
I try not to think about it, even though my anxiety demands that I do. I try instead to keep my mind focused on my goal. On Granny. On getting her to people who can help her and make sure she’s alright. And I do okay. For more than five minutes, I do okay, and then it all goes to shit.
I hear the engine before I see it, the exaggerated revving of it like my worst nightmare come through.
And then the car speeds around the bend so fast I nearly don’t see it in time.
In a split second, my heart rate soars and the panic I’d been trying so hard to keep at bay crashes through me.
I freak out, hitting the brakes as I swerve to avoid it.
The boy racer or whoever it is behind the other wheel zooms straight past, dodging me easily as he vanishes down the road, while I screech to a halt in a small ditch at the side, my seatbelt cutting into my chest as I strain against it.
“Katie?”
“It’s okay,” I call, as Granny stirs behind me. “I’m sorry. It’s okay.”
It is not okay. I am not okay.
My heart slams against my rib cage, the blood moving around my body too fast, making my vision blur and my chest tighten. I can’t do this. Why did I think I could do this?
“Just give me one second,” I say to Granny, even though I’m not sure I’m speaking out loud. I can’t even take my hands off the steering wheel. I can’t even move. And if Granny responds, I don’t hear it, I don’t hear anything but a faint banging sound that pulls at the corners of my panic.
Eventually, I realize it’s someone knocking on my window, and my head feels like it’s rusted to my neck as I force myself to turn only to see Jack Doyle scowling at me.
At least, I think it’s Jack.
He doesn’t really look like Jack. He looks like a before photo of Jack. Clothes rumpled, hair uncombed. There are patches of stubble on his jaw and bags under his eyes.
He knocks again, his expression impatient as he gestures for me to open the door.
“Are you okay?” he asks. Behind him, I can see his sleek black Jeep parked on the other side of the road. It’s not the one that came at me, but it wasn’t here before either, meaning he drove up without me even realizing, which only terrifies me further. How long have I been sitting here? “Katie.”
My name snaps me back to the present. “Granny fell,” I say, and, for the first time, he glances into the back, his eyes widening when he sees her. “I’m taking her to the hospital, but I’m not…I’m not good at driving and they were speeding and…”
He stares at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable, before he turns and goes back to his own car. He returns in a matter of seconds, locking the Jeep behind him and throwing a smart leather bag into my passenger seat.
I can only sit there as he slams the door shut and moves around the front to my side.
“Move over.”
“What?”
“Move.” He flaps a hand at me, almost hitting my arm as he forces me to scramble over the gearshift. “Mrs. Collins? You alright back there?”
Granny doesn’t answer, but when I twist around, she’s breathing normally. I tell myself she’s just resting.
“I’ll drive you to the hospital,” he says, and I just nod because I figured that was happening.
“Thank you,” I say woodenly, and he adjusts the seat and the mirrors, frowning when the engine makes the noise it usually makes (probably not a healthy one).
“You should call ahead,” he says. “Let them know we’re coming.”
I do. They’re not happy that I moved her and that makes me feel more guilty, but I know waiting for an ambulance might have taken hours, especially if there were more accidents with the electricity down.
We talk through what I need to do before I arrive, and I’ve barely hung up the call when Nush rings me back.
It’s only then I realize a lot of people will have had a lot of missed calls from me and be thinking the worst, but Nush sounds incredibly calm when I tell her what happened, as though knowing any other reaction would just set me off.
I decide to leave out the part about Jack, who keeps his gaze studiously to the front while pretending not to listen, and Nush agrees to let everyone else know, so I won’t have to.
There is one person I should tell about Jack, though. One person who might not be too happy about the turn of events, but when I go to call Callum, my fingers freeze over the screen. I don’t even know where to begin.
“There’s a charger in the console,” Jack tells me, mistaking my hesitation.
“Thanks,” I say, plugging it in.
He grunts in response. “This happen a lot?”
“No. I don’t…” I clear my throat. “My parents—”
“You don’t have to explain yourself.” I can’t tell if he means you don’t have to talk about it or I don’t care , but I’m grateful not to have to do so anyway. So grateful that my throat gets tight with it.
“I feel useless,” I admit.
“You’re not.” His tone is dismissive, even if his words are not. “If I hadn’t stopped, you would have gotten over it. You would have kept going.”
But he did stop. And though I want to ask why, I’m too exhausted for that kind of conversation now, so instead twist in my seat and hold Granny’s hand, trusting this man not as Jack Doyle but as Callum’s brother to get us safely where we need to go.