Chapter 24
The next morning, a chattering, excited family the size of a small army comes into the waiting room of the hospital with balloons in the shape of a baby bottle, a pacifier, and a giant pink heart declaring It’s a Girl!
in bubble letters. They look lost—crowding onto the ICU floor like a litter of lost puppies.
Caia watches through sleepy eyes as a nurse redirects them to the elevators, a hand kneading at her neck to soothe the knot formed from sleeping in such an uncomfortable position.
She looks around and takes in the other people in the waiting room—an older man pacing on the phone, his voice gradually growing in volume as he argues with his insurance company; a tired-looking woman and her three young, restless children, who have declared one of the rows of seats their own personal jungle gym.
When she looks over to her own family, her heart squeezes in her chest. Her father has taken to the floor, where he lies with his head resting on a balled-up flannel shirt, one he must’ve taken from Crew, who sleeps in the chair beside her wearing a white undershirt, his legs stretched all the way out and his ankles crossed.
Cooper has his head on Crew’s shoulder, and his mouth is hanging wide open, allowing him to leave a perfect circle of drool on Crew’s shirt.
She’s momentarily overcome with affection for these three men she loves so dearly—and she’s overcome just as suddenly by the terrifying possibility that this may be what their family looks like from now on.
That they’ll be four instead of five—that she’ll be the only Caldwell woman left to take care of them.
Not long after she wakes, a doctor in a rumpled coat and navy scrubs walks through the swinging double doors at the end of the hall and straight toward them. Caia grabs Crew’s arm and shakes it, and he shoots up, knocking Cooper off his shoulder and waking him up in the process.
Crew follows Caia’s gaze, then leans down to shake Clint’s boot. “Dad.”
Clint’s eyes blink open, and Crew nods in the direction of the doctor. He sits up with a grunt, and for what feels like an eternity, they wait for the doctor to reach them and tell them if Renata is okay. To tell them if their lives are about to change forever.
By the time he makes it to them, they’re all standing.
“Doc.” Clint nods, and the doctor—Dr. Hannover, his coat says—returns the nod with a flat, tight-lipped smile.
His face is neutral, giving away not even a shred of evidence one way or another, no matter how hard Caia tries to decipher his every feature.
“I know you’ve been waiting a long time. I apologize that we weren’t able to update you more frequently,” Dr. Hannover says.
“Just tell us,” Cooper pleads, his voice rough with sleep, and with desperation.
Dr. Hannover nods. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you—the road to recovery is going to be long and difficult.
Her body endured catastrophic levels of trauma.
We had an entire team of people working on her in that OR.
If she was any less of a fighter, we’d be having a very different conversation right now.
It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t quick, as you know. But she pulled through.”
A breath of relief punches from Caia’s lungs, bending her over with the weight of it.
Her father falls to his knees, and Crew’s hands go up to cover his crumpling face as he lets out a wrecked, loud sob.
Cooper launches forward and hugs Dr. Hannover, whose eyes bulge slightly before he graciously pats him on the back.
When Cooper pulls away, his eyes are red and his cheeks are splotchy.
“Thank you, Dr. Hannover,” Caia says, her hands trembling and tears sprouting in the corners of her eyes. “Thank you so much.”
“Of course,” he says. “We’ll talk later about what the next few months are going to look like. She’s going to need all of your support.”
“She has it,” Crew says, completely resolute. He’s got a hand on Clint’s shoulder, and he squeezes it reassuringly as their father cries and nods adamantly in agreement. He starts to stand, and Crew grabs his elbow, steadying him once he’s fully upright.
“When can we see her?” Clint asks.
“Two of you can go back now,” Dr. Hannover says. “She’s a little groggy from the anesthesia, but she’s awake.”
Crew and Caia share a look, a silent agreement. He turns to Clint and places a hand on his shoulder. “You and Coop go.”
Clint nods, then looks to Caia. She musters up the bravest smile she can and says, “Tell her we’re here. Tell her we love her. So much.”
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
In the cafeteria, over steaming cups of black coffee, Crew tells Caia everything.
How he’d fallen in love with Grace, how they’d fallen in love with each other—a fact by which Caia is unsurprised; she could’ve guessed that all the way from Manhattan.
The puppy dog eyes he’d given Grace at their dad’s birthday party had been a dead giveaway; her brother was down bad, worse than she’d ever seen him—not that he’d had a ton of girlfriends growing up, but when he had been in relationships, in high school and then post-military, there’d never been that kind of unencumbered yearning from his end.
That was a new look on him, and Caia had enjoyed witnessing it.
What she doesn’t expect to hear is the tangle of lies Grace has found herself caught in, a sticky web of corruption and spite. Not to mention the darkness of her youth—Caia can’t spend much time thinking about that right now—chills her to the bone even trying to imagine it.
When she’s processed it all enough to form follow-up questions, about a hundred pile up in her brain, each warring with the others to be the first to tumble out of her mouth.
Leaning forward, elbows resting on the small table between them, she asks, “What exactly did Forty say when you talked to him?”
Crew is quiet for a beat. There’s a contemplative, pained look on his face, and she watches his hands ball into tight fists.
“He said he saw her walking to the west entrance with her backpack,” he finally says.
He sounds wistful and resigned, like there’s a full-body ache accompanying his every syllable.
“Said he called her name a dozen times but she never turned around, so he got on the Gator and caught up with her.” He drops off into silence, though Caia knows there’s more.
She swivels slightly to peek back at him, chin still resting in her hands. “And?”
Crew’s eyes flit to hers. They’re shiny—barely holding back the cascade of tears threatening to fall. “And she said she wanted to go. Apparently, she said she doesn’t belong at Halcyon, and it would be better for everyone if she left.”
“But you two—”
He cuts her off. “It doesn’t matter, Cai.”
Caia leans forward, grabbing on to his wrists. “Of course it matters.”
“How can it? She’s gone,” he rasps, his jaw tightening.
Caia takes a deep breath, recognizing that her brother is in a highly emotional, highly irrational state right now. She keeps her tone even, pulling back on any incredulity or vehemence in an effort to keep him—and herself—calm.
“Let me get this straight,” she says, releasing him to lean back in her chair and fold her arms over her chest. “Grace came to us from a really bad situation at her uncle’s ranch, where she lived for nearly a decade because she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
And she didn’t have anywhere else to go because—”
Crew’s eyes flick up, and he’s looking her dead in the eye as he braces himself for the hardest, most brutal truth of them all.
Caia takes another deep breath, this one markedly more shuddering than the last. “Because she killed her father after he murdered her mother.”
Crew’s mouth folds into a tight line. His entire body is vibrating with tension. “That’s right,” he says quietly.
Caia nods, tamping down the sadness, the grief, the fury she feels for Grace as she recounts her story.
This girl she doesn’t really know, who has made her brother come back to life, who has brought color into his cheeks and reignited the spark in his eyes.
She loves her without knowing her, and without reservation, for that alone.
“She spent nine years there because she figured that if she left, he’d blacklist her and rat her out to the cops. ”
Crew nods slowly, as if digesting it himself once again. “Yes.”
“But then he—and the group of demented frat boys he calls ranch hands—started to get more and more abusive. They sabotaged her, got her in major trouble, and she was punished for it by her uncle selling her horse.”
His jaw flexes again. “Vesta.”
“And that loss made her finally snap.”
Crew nods, biting the inside of his cheek. When his head turns slightly away from her, the fluorescent ceiling light illuminates the shine of a tear streaking down his face.
“And then a few months went by before someone called Mom to let her know there was a talented horse trainer floating around somewhere in Minetta.”
“Your ability to repeat stories verbatim—stories you’ve only heard once—is so unsettling,” Crew grumbles. He leans back into his chair and scratches his unshaven jaw. “But yeah. And then I picked her up and took her to the ranch.”
Unfazed by his barb, Caia pushes on. “Right. And after that, everything seemed perfectly normal, except you were a bit of an asshole because you were suspicious of where she came from, even though you knew from Mom that she’d had a really hard time and that there were literal scars on her body. But in the end, Mom hired her anyway.”
Something leaks into Crew’s eyes at that statement. A strong cocktail of regret, disappointment, and anger. It twists into something darker, making his irises nearly indistinguishable from the blackness of his pupils.