Chapter 17 #2
Jenna wedged her way in, falling to her knees beside her mom’s bed, clasping her hand. “Help’s on the way, Mom.” Then she turned her helpless eyes toward the women. Bonnie and Diane closed ranks behind and beside her, arms encircling, supporting.
Rosa was lying on her back, face relaxed. Christine went closer, then bent low and laid her head across her dear friend’s chest, listening, praying.
Please, please, please… Yes!
“I can feel her heartbeat. And she’s breathing, yes, she’s breathing.”
“Rosa, we’re all here with Jenna,” Bonnie said. “We’re gonna take care of her, and everything else is okay, too.”
“I don’t want you to go, Mom,” Jenna said over and over again. And then she looked at her unofficial aunts. “This can’t be the end, right? This can’t be that. It’s too soon.”
“It’s way too soon,” Christine agreed. Even though she didn’t know.
The siren’s wail peaked, then died. Christine went downstairs to let the medics in. “Upstairs,” she said, pointing the way.
Two men and a woman trundled past her with equipment and a folded gurney, but her phone went off, so she paused at the bottom of the stairway and picked it up. It was her unwanted, evil husband. And she hated that it made her heart hurt to see his face on the phone screen.
Jeff: Bring the girls by the lake house at ten. It’s time the five of us had a talk, don’t you think?
Christine’s feet rooted themselves to the floor, her eyes to the screen. He knew. He had to know. No, no, no, it couldn’t be that.
Christine: About what?
Jeff: I think you know what.
Furious, she tapped his handsome face on her screen, then the call button. He
answered on the first ring and before he could utter a word, she launched. “Listen, asshole, I’m in a crisis here with my best friend on earth, so you need to just say what you fucking mean.”
“Dan told me what Bonnie did. Says he saw it himself. Says you have a phone with some damaging information on it.”
“That was a mistake. It was identical to Bonnie’s phone. When we realized, we tried to give it back.”
“Well I need it.”
Christine closed her eyes. “Your friend Dan had someone try to kill Rosa. Did you know about that?”
“That’s a leap, Christine. I want the phone. That’s all I want.”
“What for?”
“Look you can’t do anything with the information you have on me, without me telling them what I know about Bonnie. But we can work this out between us. Peacefully. In a way where everybody wins. I promise. It’s the only sane way for this to end. And you don’t really have a choice.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Christine said. “Just ask your pal Dan.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he blew a sarcastic laugh. “I was just notified about Dan. Are you trying to make me think you had something to do with what happened to him? Four old ladies?” He laughed softly. “I know how Dan died. He let a little wild thing loose and didn’t watch his back.”
Christine blinked in shock that he was admitting so much. He’d known that creep Fitzpatrick had a girl chained up in his penthouse? He’d known that?
“I can’t believe I ever thought I loved you,” she whispered.
“I need to see all four of you. At the lake house. ASAP. You give me that phone, I’ll give you what I have on Bonnie, and we’ll go our separate ways.”
“You’ll have to settle for three of us. Rosa’s…being carried past me on a stretcher.”
They were bringing her down the stairs. Jenna came right behind. Christine moved her phone aside and said, “Ride with your mom, hon. We’ll be right behind you.”
“Okay. Okay, I’ll ride with Mom.” She was shocked and devastated. One of the EMTs was a woman, thank goodness, and she helped Jenna into the back of the ambulance once her mother’s gurney was loaded.
Christine gave her friends the look and they gathered around her as the ambulance pulled away, resuming its Banshee wail. “It’ll have to be later in the day, Jeff. We have to go to the hospital with Rosa now. Don’t…do anything in the meantime.”
“Like turn your asses in, you mean.”
The others gasped.
“And we’ll offer you the same courtesy.” She took a breath, lifted her chin. “Were you there? At the Excelsior that night? For the party in Dan’s penthouse?”
He sucked in a breath, so she knew she was right.
Bonnie clasped her shoulder to get her attention, then she and Diane both shook their heads at her. She was saying too much.
“Did you have something to do with Dan?” Jeff asked suddenly.
“Oh, come on. Four old ladies? Please.”
He was quiet for a moment. Christine held her breath, meeting her friends’ eyes. “What time can you be here with that phone?” he said. “I’m about out of patience.”
“It depends on what happens with Rosa,” Christine told him. “I’ll text you when we’re on our way. It might not be until tonight.”
“Even better,” he said and hung up.
A chill went right down Christine’s spine. She met her friends’ wide eyes.
Diane said, “Christine, do you think he’s planning to kill us?”
“No. He wants to trade what he has on Bonnie for that phone. He’s just trying to scare us with the rest,” she said.
“Listen, think about it. A man who prefers sex with children is not a confident man, not a strong man. He’s a weak pathetic waste of oxygen who’s afraid of real women.
He doesn’t scare me in the least.” She lowered her head, felt her face crumple, and let her tears come.
Her sisters hugged her and held her.
“I’m crying for the Jeff I loved, even though he was never real,” she said. “I feel like the husband I thought I had, died, and some sick, sad worm took his place.”
“I know, baby. I know.” Bonnie pulled tissues from the box in her beach bag and dabbed at Christine’s face.
“Let’s go back to Bru for our cars and get to the hospital,” Diane said, squeezing her shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah, let’s go.” Christine took the tissues from Bonnie and mopped her own face, trying not to smudge her makeup.
When she got back to her car, in its angled spot in front of Bru, their server Wendy came out and said, “Here’s your card and receipt. I saw the ambulance. We’re all praying Rosa’s okay.”
Yeah, it was a small-town city, and they were regular customers. Not to mention Rosa owned a business up the block. The town wouldn’t be the same without her.
“Thanks, Wendy. We owe you.”
She got into her white BMW to find Diane and Bonnie already waiting inside.
“Aren’t you taking the crossover?” she asked.
Diane shook her head. “We need to be together right now,” she said. “Harry’s gonna have a friend bring him to pick up the car, so I don’t have to worry about it. I left the keys with our server.”
“She’s amazing, isn’t she? Wendy?” Christine never trusted names to her own memory.
Bonnie nodded. “Yeah, Wendy. We need to do something for her when this is over.”
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive, Christine?” Diane asked.
Christine was already driving by then. The Guthrie Cortland Medical Center was only minutes away. “I think I can make it that far.”
“She told me she signed a DNR before she got released the last time,” Bonnie said. The words hung in the air like dark clouds. “She doesn’t want to linger on life support, she said.”
Diane closed her eyes. “Can you go a little faster, Christine?”