Chapter 4
Riley half-dragged Nikki out of the clinic and held the door for her while she got into his pickup truck.
She went through the motions of putting the seat belt on.
“Hey,” Riley said.
Nikki glanced at him.
“She’s okay,” he said. “David’s only keeping her as a precaution. Everything is fine. We’ll come back in the morning to pick her up.”
“I know.”
While Nikki stared straight ahead into the darkness, Riley walked around to the driver’s side and got in. His phone rang, and he took the call from his dad, Kevin, who’d apparently heard about the fire at Eastward Look.
“Yes, we’re fine, and Jordan is spending the night at the clinic, but she’s okay. No, the house is fine. From what we heard, there’s a little damage, but nothing we can’t handle. Sorry to freak you out. How’s Summer doing?”
At times like this, Nikki thought while Riley talked to his dad about his new baby sister, it was handy to have a contractor for a fiancé. Riley, his brother and cousins would have the place back to rights in no time.
Riley promised to check in with Kevin in the morning and ended the call.
As they drove home in silence, Nikki relived the last few hours, from the time Riley received the call from his cousin Shane about a fire at Eastward Look, how Jordan had been rescued by Mason and found to be in the midst of a severe asthma attack.
She shuddered remembering the frightening attacks from their childhood that would turn their lives upside down, sometimes for weeks at a time. The utter terror of realizing Jordan couldn’t breathe was something Nikki had never forgotten, and tonight’s incident had brought back the horror.
Nikki’s thoughts were so mired in the past that she’d almost forgotten about the incident that had led to Jordan’s more recent attack.
She was quickly reminded of it when Riley took the turn into the driveway at Eastward Look where fire trucks were still at the scene, serving as a grim reminder of what’d taken place earlier and how close she’d come to losing her sister.
“Wait for me,” Riley said when he parked out of the way of the fire department vehicles.
He came around to help Nikki from the car, which, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t have been necessary.
But since she could barely bring herself to move, she accepted his assistance and welcomed the warm hand he wrapped around hers.
She felt cold all over as they went to talk to one of the firefighters.
“Hey, folks,” the man said. “Is this your house?”
“Yes,” Riley said. “Were you able to determine the source of the fire?”
“It started on the roof and spread to the chimney, but we can’t seem to figure out what sparked it. We’re wrapping up here for tonight. We’ll be back in the morning for a closer look in the daylight.”
“Is it okay for us to stay here tonight?”
“Absolutely. The damage was contained to the roof, chimney and living room, where you’ve got some water and smoke damage.
Luckily, the chief spotted the flames and smoke before the fire moved past the chimney area.
Otherwise, you might be looking at a total loss.
Doesn’t take much for these old houses to burn to the ground. ”
Nikki began to actively tremble as images of the house fully engulfed in flames with her sister inside took up residence in her imagination.
Riley dropped her hand and wrapped his arm around her.
Having him with her made everything far more bearable than it would have been before she’d had his unconditional support.
They waited until the firefighters packed up and left before venturing inside.
“Not sure I can bear to look,” Nikki said as Riley led the way to the front door. They’d spent months working on every square inch of the downstairs and had brought it back to gleaming life.
“Whatever it is, we’ll fix it and make it good as new. We just have to keep reminding ourselves that it could’ve been so much worse.”
“I know. When I think about Jordan stuck in there, knocked out by a sleeping pill.” She clutched her stomach as a wave of nausea overcame her.
At the top step, Riley stopped her from going in. “It’s going to take a while to get those images out of your mind, but just keep thinking about how she looked just now at the clinic. She’s totally fine.”
Nikki nodded. “Thanks for being my rock. Always, but especially the last few hours.”
He laid a gentle kiss on her lips. “Being your rock is my favorite thing ever.”
When Riley opened the door and the pungent stench of smoke greeted them, Nikki’s heart sank.
He flipped on lights and walked ahead of her into the living room.
The rug and sofa were soaked and sooty, the hearth singed and the ceiling black.
“Could be way worse,” Riley said. “This will be nothing to fix. Probably have to get new furniture, but whatever. That’s no biggie. ”
Seeing the discarded blanket that had covered her sister on the sofa and Jordan’s phone on the coffee table brought home just how close Jordan had been to the fire.
Riley noticed she was fixated on the sofa and came to gently redirect her toward the stairs to their room. “You feel like a bath?” He knew how much she loved the claw-foot tub he’d restored the previous winter.
“I don’t think so. Not tonight. But thanks.” Nikki changed into pajama pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt because she still couldn’t seem to get warm.
“Is there anything I can do for you, love?”
“Warm me up in bed?”
Riley sent her the special smile he saved only for her. “Always happy to help with that.” He stripped down to boxers, and after they’d both taken a turn in the bathroom, he crawled into bed next to her and wrapped his big body around hers, making her feel safe, loved and warm. “Better?”
“So much better.”
“I’m sorry this happened to Jordan and to you.”
“I feel so bad for her. She’s had more than enough lately.”
“So have you. It’s okay to feel a little badly for yourself, too.”
“It’s always been this way.”
“What way?” he asked, running his hand over her hair and back.
“Everything is harder for her for some reason. We’re identical twins, so we’re supposed to be similar, but it just seems that everything is hard for her in ways it wasn’t for me.
She had awful asthma when we were kids. She was in and out of the hospital for years.
She had trouble keeping friends, and I could never understand why.
She’s the nicest girl, but for whatever reason, people would turn on her.
And then her husband did the same thing.
I just keep wondering when she’s going to get her break. When will it be her turn to be happy?”
“It’ll happen, honey. When the time is right. Jordan is a great girl. She’s going to meet someone who’ll make what’s-his-name seem like a distant bad memory.”
“Any time now. I want her to be happy. I’m not saying she needs to fall in love to be happy, but she’s always wanted to find someone special.
I think it goes back to the way we were raised and how betrayed we both felt by our dad.
We just wanted to find stability anywhere we could.
She’s done a lot of dumb things trying to achieve that goal, such as marry him. ”
“Did you always hate him?”
“Always. My dislike for him was immediate and visceral. And vice versa.”
“He only disliked you because his oversized ego couldn’t handle the fact that you had him nailed for what he really was from the get-go.”
Nikki raised her head off his chest to look him in the eye. “How do you know that?”
“I know his type. He’s a malignant narcissist. It’s all about him, and everyone around him needs to get on board. You refused to do that, so you were of no use to him, especially since you had significant influence over Jordan.”
“That about sums up the dynamic. Have you known people like him?”
“There was this one guy I knew in college who was like that. His way or the highway, and anyone who questioned him was automatically excommunicated from his life.”
“Did you get excommunicated?”
“Yep. I intervened when he was hassling a girl at a party, and he didn’t like that. Tough shit. I wasn’t going to walk away and pretend I hadn’t seen what he was doing. I knew her from a math class I took freshman year, but I would’ve done the same thing even if I hadn’t known her.”
“My hero.”
“Oh, please. I was just doing what any decent person would do when they see someone in a bad situation.”
“Not everyone would do that, Ri. In fact, I bet most guys would’ve kept on going.”
“Not if they were raised by Kevin, Frank and Big Mac McCarthy, they wouldn’t have.”
“They raised good men.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“It’s not just me who thinks so. Everyone does.”
“I only care what you think.”
Nikki turned Riley’s face toward her so she could kiss him. “I think you’re the best man I’ve ever known. I just wish my sister could find someone like you.”
Mason slept fitfully, the pain from his elbow waking him several times during the night, forcing him to take painkillers at two a.m. He decided to forgo his usual morning workout in deference to the injury, but that would make him doubly cranky.
He relied on exercise to keep him grounded and had made it a habit for years to start each day with a vigorous workout.
Once upon a time, he’d been a competitive weightlifter, and since he quit drinking, exercise had helped him stay sober.
He’d learned not to ask questions about the things that helped.
Whatever it took to keep from going back to who he’d been before he got sober.
Mason went through the motions of showering and shaving with an electric razor, since his left arm was in a sling and he didn’t trust himself to use an actual razor with his right hand.
Of course he’d injured the elbow on his dominant side.
He hoped it healed quickly, because doing things one-handed seriously sucked.
When he was ready, he left the small house he rented on the island’s east side and arrived at the meeting he attended seven days a week at the nondenominational church in town.