41 Gemma
Gemma
Grant walked back into the room with the first aid kit in one hand and a bottle of Shizzy’s in the other. Gemma gave him a quizzical look.
“Drinking this early?” she joked half-heartedly. Not that she could really blame him. It had been quite the morning. Confrontations, confessions, a shooting. For their next vacation, Gemma really wanted to just lie on a beach somewhere and read.
“What?” He looked down at his hand as if surprised he was carrying anything. “Oh. No. This is garbage.”
He brought the kit over to Hazel and then went to the kitchen to throw out the bottle. When he came back, Marshall tilted his head back to look at him, then flinched and lay flat again.
“Where’s Marley?”
“Oh, she was getting some more towels, just in case,” Grant said and lifted a thumb in the direction of the storage room. “She’ll be right back.”
Marshall looked like he was going to say something else, but then Hazel touched some gauze covered in antiseptic to his leg, and he cried out in pain instead. Grant went over to Gemma and leaned toward her ear.
“Get the girls. We’re getting out of here.”
“Now?” Gemma said at full voice.
Grant looked furtively toward the others. Her exclamation had caught their attention. But she didn’t understand why he was whispering at all. They were all in this dung heap together. She wasn’t sure why he would want to sneak out, and she was even less sure they’d be able to if they tried.
“The girls are down at the guesthouse,” she told Grant. “They wanted to get away from the drama, if you can believe it.”
“Good. And the car is packed.” He clapped his hands together in an incongruously casual and jolly gesture. “Well, everyone, it’s been real, but we’re going to hit the road.”
“You can’t leave,” Hazel said, standing. Her hands were covered in blood. “The police are on their way. Daisy called, and they said they were sending someone right out.”
“Great. Then Marshall will be taken care of. Not that you haven’t done a great job already,” Grant said to Hazel. “I don’t really see why you need us here.”
Hazel looked at him like he was cracked, for which Gemma didn’t blame her.
“They’re going to want to talk to all of us. About Lincoln. And Trevor and Juliet, even though we can show them what happened to her.” Hazel’s eyes trailed over to Suzy, who was now sitting on one of the couches with Sean, both of them looking shell shocked. “You can’t go.”
“You know what, Hazel?” Grant said. “I’m kind of sick of you thinking that you can tell any of us what we can and can’t do.”
Gemma’s pulse thrummed with embarrassment as her husband raised his voice. Before now they’d all taken on the hushed reverence of people in a hospital waiting room expecting news of a loved one. His behavior was so out of place it was off putting.
“Grant, don’t—”
“No, this is BS,” he continued. “We barely know you people. I don’t owe you anything. So I’m going to take my family and go.” He reached for Gemma’s hand and held it so tightly she winced. “Tell the cops they can call me.”