Chapter Eleven
When her phone rang late Friday morning, Rachel shut off the water, shampoo lather still covering her head and hands.
With the girls at school and her brother at the center, she didn’t have the luxury of letting a call go to voice mail.
She threw open the curtain, stepped on the towel outside the tub and lunged for her cell on the counter.
An unfamiliar number appeared on the screen.
Since every time Riley had reached out, it came from a different number, she couldn’t ignore solicitation calls, either.
She might have to fend off a replacement windows representative or convince a determined caller that she didn’t need an extended car warranty, but if it was Riley, and she missed him, who knew when he would try to call her again.
“Come on. Come on.” Her heart pounding, she tapped the screen three times with her wet finger before the call connected. “Hello?”
“Hey, little sister.”
“Oh, Riley. I’m so glad you called.” After wiping a circle on the foggy mirror with her towel, she used it to swipe the drips already stinging her eyes as she switched the phone to speaker.
If only she could see his face through her phone.
His amazing smile, though she hadn’t seen much of that in a long time.
The wavy dark-blond hair. And those intense sky-blue eyes that reflected their father’s side of the family while she was all her mother’s.
“If I’d known I’d get this kind of reception, I might have called more often.”
Rachel would have mentioned that he’d also resented her for taking him to rehab, but his chuckle through the line made her feel so hopeful that she kept the comment to herself.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard him laugh.
He sounded like the old Riley. The jokester he’d been before breaking off his engagement to Jillian Lowe.
He’d never been the same, but they never talked about that. Or her.
“How’s my favorite sister?” he said, returning to the regular script of their phone conversations, lines cemented over the more than two decades of their relationship.
Despite that nothing about their lives was close to familiar, she responded with her usual line. “Your only sister is just fine.” That might have been a stretch, but it was all she had.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?”
She wiped at the drips on her forehead again. The back of her neck was starting to itch. “Other than that shampoo is turning into glue in my hair, no.”
“Get back in the shower and rinse it out.”
“That can wait.” She shivered, unable to wrap her body or hair with the towel when she still needed it to wipe chemicals from her eyes. “How are you doing? Are they treating you well? Is the food okay? How was the…uh…detox? Do you know when—”
She forced herself to stop before asking the last question. He probably didn’t know when he would be released, anyway, and she shouldn’t put pressure on him to come home. He would only face more scrutiny when he did.
“The sooner you rinse off, the sooner I can answer some of your questions.”
She didn’t miss that he hadn’t offered to answer all of them and had a guess which one he might skip. As always, he would try to shield her from the tough stuff.
“Fine.” She turned on the sink faucet and doused her head under the tap instead. In a minute flat, she wrapped herself with the towel, her reflection showing a red-faced woman with a mess of dripping hair.
“I’m back,” she called into the speaker.
“Bet you’re glad we weren’t on a video chat.”
He snickered, but this time his voiced sounded tight. She wished again that she could see his face. But this was about his recovery, not about her concerns. Even if he was probably thinner now. Paler. Different.
“I suppose you’ve met the new chief.”
At his casual question, she shifted her feet and re-tucked the towel under her arms. Had one of the crew spoken to him?
Told him about the scene she’d made at the station?
Or, God forbid, had someone seen her and Mick together?
Though she doubted any of that had happened since Riley would have had to call them for that information, instead of the other way around, her legs turned to mush beneath her.
She gripped the counter for stability as guilt seeped into her recently scrubbed pores.
“I’ve met him.”
They’d been introduced, all right. And if one of them hadn’t come to his senses last night, they would have been acquainted in the most complete way possible.
She let the towel drop and yanked her robe from the hook on the back of the door.
Then sliding her damp arms inside it, she cinched the belt.
“Seems like an all-right guy,” she said. “He’ll take care of your crew. Uh, for now.”
Rachel winced. If she didn’t get control of her words, pretty soon she would volunteer that she’d been making out with her brother’s replacement.
Even as she stood there in front of the foggy mirror, several parts of her damp skin under the robe still warmed with the memory of the night she’d been trying to forget.
That had to stop. Not only did she need to steer clear of any wayward thoughts about Mick Prentiss, but she also had to ensure that her brother would never know she’d had them. Or acted on them.
“Good to hear, I guess.”
His voice sounded strange. She pursed her lips as she pictured him, his light-brown brows drawn together, worry in his eyes.
“I thought you were supposed to be answering my questions,” she said, and then coughed as she wrapped her hair in the towel. So much for acting as if everything was normal. That ship had sailed a few oceans ago, and the boat was taking on water.
“Right.” He paused for too long before finally continuing. “Let me see. I’m doing okay now, but sometimes I get antsy since the pace in this place is really slow. I miss the adrenaline rush at the station.”
A knot formed in her throat over all that had been taken from him. Because of her. “Your crew misses you. Us, too.”
“Yeah” was all he said to that. “Now, what else did you ask? Let me see. They’re treating me fine.”
“What about the food?” She was getting closer to the question he wouldn’t want to answer, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Could be worse.”
“And the…”
“The detox? Now, that could have been better.” He laughed at his own joke and then cleared his throat. “It really sucked. Worse this time than the last. My body really protested.”
Her nose burned at the reminder that he’d had a few years of steady sobriety prior to this relapse. “You don’t know how sorry I am.”
“Sis, can we not start that again? You didn’t pour the booze down my throat. I’m back following my program now. I’m attending meetings right here in the center in addition to individual and group counseling. And I’m getting back on track. That’s all that matters.”
It wasn’t, but she wouldn’t argue with him now.
“Oh. Your last question,” he said. “You asked about when I get out. I’m already on borrowed time.
Most Michigan inpatient substance abuse programs are only fourteen days.
My counselor went to bat with the insurance company for me.
Said I wasn’t ready. But at twenty-eight days, they toss me. That’s it.”
She squinted, trying to count the days, so she and the twins could help celebrate his discharge.
“What about you?” he asked. “Are the girls okay? And are you really all right?”
“I already said—”
“Wait. You haven’t been asking around about Dad, have you? Or more questions about that stuff at the station?”
“Not really.”
“Rachel,” he said in a warning tone. “I told you to stay out of it. You don’t know how dangerous it is.”
She’d had a few clues lately, but she didn’t mention them. “I have to find answers. You would never do the stuff you’re accused of. I have to find proof.”
“Rachel, listen to me. Asking questions is what got me into this mess. Well, that and several gallons of tequila.”
“Don’t joke about it.” She couldn’t when she was the one who’d convinced him to dig for information.
“Please let me handle the situation at the station after I get out. As for the other stuff, I’ve learned that there are some things we just don’t need to know.”
“What ‘things’?” She took the phone off speaker and pressed it against her ear. Only a rustling sound, maybe his breathing, filled the line. “Riley? Are you still there?”
“Did Dad ever mention anything about—” He stopped and muffled a cough. “Forget it.”
“Mention what? You can’t stop now.” She gripped the phone tighter.
“The Bilton Foundation.”
“Why are you asking that? We all know about Mount Isabel’s main benefactor.”
“Do we? Really?”
“Of course, we do.” But even as she spoke them, her own words unsettled her. Other than its name, she knew nothing about the foundation that had funded so many local improvements.
“Is that what all of this is about? Bilton Holdings? The fires? The embezzlement questions?”
“Never mind. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“But you did.” Her chest tightened. What wasn’t he telling her? She considered for a few seconds and then asked, “Does this have to do with ‘It is not death, but dying which is terrible’?”
“How do you—” He coughed a few more times before starting again. “What are you talking about?”
“Clearly, you’re not surprised by those words.” She sighed and added, “It’s one of those quotes from your emails.”
“How do you even know about—”
“I figured out your email password.”
“You broke into my email account?” His voice cracked on “broke” like it might have when he was twelve.
“It wasn’t exactly breaking in when you were so uncreative with your password.”
“You had no right to dig into my stuff.”
She shifted against the counter, tying the belt on her robe again. “Like I said, I was looking for information that might help you. And you wouldn’t have given it to me if I asked. All I found were a bunch of strange, threatening quotes.”
“Those were warnings. Don’t you get that? Those and the fires.”
His voice had become a deep growl that made her shiver. He didn’t sound like her mild-mannered brother. Riley was angry. And defiant. And scared.
“I need you to hear me. Stop digging for answers. About anything. Not my stuff at work. Not Dad’s death. It was all a long time ago. Some things are better off buried.”
“I don’t understand,” she squeezed in when her brother paused. What he was saying didn’t make sense. This wasn’t some event far in the past. Their father hadn’t even been buried a year.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” he continued. “I should’ve listened to the warnings. Now my career is destroyed. My reputation. My life. Firefighting is the only job I’ve ever wanted.”
Riley gasped into the phone as though finally taking a breath.
“What worse things will they do to you to make you mind your own business?”
At her brother’s ominous words, Rachel’s heart pounded, and the white SUV appeared in her thoughts. That driver had offered a warning of his own from behind tinted glass. No way she could tell Riley about that now.
“But I have to do something. You’d do the same for me.”
“There you go, justifying everything you do. But sometimes it isn’t about you. I have enough to deal with in here without having to worry if you and the girls are safe. You don’t know—” He stopped himself and didn’t say more. “Just stay out of it. Please? For me?”
“Okay,” she said with a sigh.
Riley let the pause between them stretch too long. He’d always been able to tell when she was lying.
“Hey, I’ve got to go,” he said. “I have to get to group now.”
“Wait.” She didn’t want him to end the call. Not like this. “What about visitors’ day? I know you have to put me on a list so that I’m allowed to come, and you didn’t do it before, but could you this week?”
“Sure. I’ll add you.”
“Hey, Riley, we’re okay, right?”
“Of course. Always.”
“Okay,” she said again, her heart squeezing like it had a band tied around it, tightening by tiny increments.
She could tell when her brother was lying, too.