Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Autumn
As we wind down our basketball game, Isaiah begins filling the water balloons I’d brought for the kids to throw at each other.
We all turn at the sound of sirens coming down the street, and I quickly motion the kids onto the grass so the ambulance and firetruck can pass.
My breath stalls in my lungs when the EMS vehicles come to an abrupt halt in front of Bailey’s house, their lights flashing across everyone’s faces of worry or confusion.
Isaiah’s younger sister, Brianna, lights out through the front door in a red bathing suit cover-up and matching jersey hair wrap. Her flip-flops slap the pavement as she sprints down the walkway, waving her arm to get a first responder’s attention. “He’s in here!” she yells.
“What the—” Isaiah takes off, rushing toward her. “Who?” he barks at Brianna. “What happened?”
“Sherman!” Brianna yells, waving more frantically to the EMTs crossing the lawn. “We think he had a heart attack.”
Tears instantly spring to my eyes, and I jut Sebastian toward Forest before sprinting into the house with Shayla right beside me, Bailey following us as fast as she can.
I’m able to squeeze past the EMTs and follow the sound of Mom’s gut-wrenching sobs, finding her inside the muted teal and gold hall bathroom.
I crash to my knees, the fall broken by the heap of Mom and Dad’s swimsuits on the tiled floor.
Mom is kneeling over Dad’s prone body, clutching a towel tight around her body with white knuckles, tapping his cheek as she begs him to open his eyes.
His face is ashen, his lower half covered by a towel Mom must have laid across his body.
I shake his arm, my insides carved out by fear. “Daddy! Daddy, no! Wake up!”
My sisters aren’t as fast, crowded back down the hallway by an EMT before they can reach us.
Another EMT forces Mom and me to leave Dad’s side so she can crouch and assess him, her voice and demeanor calm as she keeps up a steady stream of questions for Mom to answer.
My sisters and I circle Mom and, together, we hold her up when her knees weaken as she answers the EMT’s questions as best she can, her own breathing choppy.
I’ve never seen her so terrified in all my life.
My sisters and I follow when Dad is placed on a stretcher, wheeled out of the house, and into the back of the ambulance. Isaiah wraps a quilt over Mom’s shoulders, then has to lift her into the ambulance, since she’s too shell-shocked to do so on her own, to ride with Dad to the hospital.
Josephine throws herself against my side, her face red and streaked with tears. “Is he gonna be okay?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, my voice breaking, my whole body starting to shake violently as I cling to her as much as she does to me.
“We’ll watch the kids,” Eden says to my sisters and me while Martin, Brianna, and Brianna’s husband, Carlos, usher the rest of our family inside. “Go.”
James is already jogging out of the house with Shayla’s purse, and he remotely starts her pink Suburban. Brady jumps inside behind Shayla, and they speed off down the street with a squeal of tires.
Isaiah helps Bailey toward their SUV, and he tells me, “You can ride with us.”
I bend to kiss Josephine’s cheek before pushing her toward Forest, whose face is a mask of grief and shock, holding both boys in his arms.
“I’m coming with you,” Forest tells me, leaving me for the briefest moment to guide Josephine toward the house. He passes Benjamin and Sebastian to Mara and Ezra, dashes inside, and returns quickly with his car keys.
My hands are trembling so badly that he has to open the passenger door for me, boosting me up onto my seat.
We catch up quickly with my sisters when we leave the neighborhood.
The passing dark landscape is a blur through my tears as Forest turns onto the farm-to-market road, speeding toward the highway that will take us to the hospital, the ambulance long gone ahead of us.
Forest doesn’t say anything—none of the “he’s going to be okay” or “try to stay positive” platitudes.
He’s been through this before with his own dad and likely knows firsthand that none of that would lessen my pain.
But he does intermittently squeeze my left arm or thigh in between shifting gears, and that is enough.
In the pale blue waiting room at the hospital, Forest finds a green hoodie he’d left in his trunk, helping to pull it on over my head.
It’s tight but thankfully falls to the tops of my thighs.
He’s likely as cold as I am, since he’s shirtless, goosebumps peppering his arms, but he doesn’t say anything as he simply holds me sideways on his lap, sitting on the floor in front of Mom, while Shayla and Brady bracket her in their chairs.
It kills me to see Mom so upset and afraid, waiting for any news, as Dad gets prepped and undergoes surgery, and I circle her legs, laying my head on her knees.
“I don’t understand. What happened?” Shayla asks Mom. “I thought he had his blood pressure under control.”
Mom hiccups, tearing apart a tissue in her hands, her French braid hanging limp and damp against her neck. “It was my fault.”
“How?” I ask, looking up.
Mom shakes her head. “You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, we do,” Bailey says, “so we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Mom drops her face into her hands. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why?” Brady asks loudly, making several other anxious families waiting nearby look our way.
“Leave it alone,” Mom says.
“Why?” Brady asks again, doing his best not to cry, with Bailey’s arm around him.
Mom groans. “Please, Brady, not now.”
“But moooooom,” he whines, “I wanna know why!”
“I can’t,” she says with a pained grimace.
My sisters and I cut our eyes to each other.
“Does this have something to do with ‘pie’?” Bailey asks, making air quotes with her fingers.
“Yes,” Mom says miserably. “Now, will you drop it?”
Shayla mimes zipping her mouth shut.
“I shouldn’t have asked,” Bailey mumbles, pressing her fingertips to her lips, like she’s going to be sick.
“What about pie?” Brady asks, growing more frustrated.
“Come on, kid,” Isaiah says, standing and pulling Brady away. “Let’s find the gift shop. Hopefully they’ll have some T-shirts for sale.”
Brady digs his heels in. “But I wanna know how come eating Mom’s pie gave Dad a heart attack! She didn’t even bring any to the party!”
“Oh god,” Mom wails, her shoulders shaking as she begins crying harder, her fingers turning white as she tightens the quilt around herself.
Isaiah places a hand on Brady’s back with a sigh, pushing him out of the room. “You’ll find out when you’re older, though you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“I don’t get it,” Forest whispers in my ear. “Sherman said Miranda makes all her pies sugar, dairy, and gluten-free, now.”
My stomach churns, wishing I didn’t “get it” either, but the walls are paper-thin at our house. I turn my face into Forest’s, infinitely grateful he’s here, lending me his strength as mine flags. Dropping my voice lower so Mom won’t hear me, I tell him, “It’s a euphemism for eating Mom’s…you know.”
“Her—oh, wow, yeah, okay.” He clears his throat. “Now it makes sense, what Sherman said about how her ‘homemade pies’ hooked him. He wasn’t talking about her baking expertise.”
“Oh, no, that too. They’ve got some freaky food kink.” If anyone would understand and not judge, it’s him.
“Oh god, Autumn, please! I can still hear you!” Mom shouts.
“Sorry!” Forest and I squeak, since this was definitely the wrong time to explain it to him. “Jinx,” I whisper, squirming to get more comfortable, and he tightens his arms wrapped around my waist. It’s how I wish he could have held me at the party, under much different circumstances.
Shayla snorts, then coughs to hide her laugh.
“It’s not funny,” Mom says, shooting Shayla a scathing mom glare. “Your father could have died!”
“I know, I’m sorry,” Shayla says with an apologetic dip of her brows, rubbing Mom’s back.
But then I stupidly say the last thing anyone should at a time like this: “At least you didn’t record it and accidentally send the video to our group chat.”
“I told you I’d cut you if you ever brought that up again!” Bailey reaches down and across, likely intending to snatch my hair out by the roots. I instinctively duck and cover my head.
“What video?” Forest asks, twisting protectively around me. He slips a hand under my hoodie, resting it lightly on my lower belly, and no wonder, his fingers are freezing.
I lift my hoodie so he can place both hands on my stomach quickly, then flatten my hands over his to warm them up with my body heat. “Bailey and Isaiah are real freaks, too, who once sent our family group chat a video of them fucking in the bathtub. She calls him ‘Papi’.”
“Autumn!” Bailey screeches with red splotches blooming on her cheeks and neck.
“Oh my god, you kids are the worst! The absolute worst!” Mom snaps, though a smile breaks out across her face for just a second.
That smile is worth at least half my strands of hair that Bailey will tear out next time she gets me alone.
“Wake up, angel,” Forest says, kissing my temple, trailing his fingertips across my stomach. “Your dad’s out of surgery.”
I snap upright, having fallen asleep, curled in his lap. “He’s okay?” I flick my bleary eyes up to see my sisters and brother hugging each other, my mom gone from the room.
“Yeah. They took your mom to see him first,” Forest says, helping me to stand, keeping an arm around me. He’s much warmer now, dressed in thin pajamas with the hospital’s name and logo branded across them. “Said it’ll be a while before y’all can see him, though.”
I nearly collapse with relief, and Forest takes the brunt of my weight, drawing me against his chest, holding me until a nurse calls us forward.