44 Gemma
Gemma
Colors swam in front of her eyes. Gray and gold and white and blue. Something soft brushed her cheek. The scents of linen and honey and lavender.
“Lily?”
“Gemma! Oh my God. You’re awake.” Lily turned, the ends of her blond hair again brushing Gemma’s cheek. “She’s awake!”
Gemma tried to sit up. A sharp, brain-bending pain stabbed through her skull and brought her right back down to earth.
Back into Lily’s lap. Rain fell steadily against her face, dripping at a staccato rhythm into puddles all around her.
It was almost relaxing. Like the soundtrack at the spa near her house in Atlanta. Her eyes drifted closed.
“Mom! Mom!?”
Like that, she was awake again. “Girls?”
As the twins fell to their knees in the mud around her, she remembered everything that had happened. Grant and the text about Marley and the shouting and the shattering and the screaming. She reached up for Vienna, who had a bandage across her forehead.
“Oh, God. Are you okay?”
“It’s not bad,” Vienna said through tears. “Some glass from the windshield. They used a butterfly thingy.”
“She blocked it from hitting me,” Florence added and shot Vienna a wry look. “My hero.”
Vienna shoved her. “Are you okay?” she asked Gemma.
“I don’t know.” Gemma consulted Lily’s face. Her oldest, best friend looked relieved, not scared. So being awake was a good thing. She’d have to stay awake.
“Where’s your father?” she asked, her heart flopping over in her chest as she gripped Florence’s hand and tried to sit up again.
This time, Lily was ready, and she propped her up with her knee and one arm.
Enough so that Gemma could take in the scene.
The SUV looked like it had been involved in some stunt at a monster truck rally, the front driver’s side crushed.
She remembered grabbing the wheel. Remembered turning it so that Grant’s side of the car would hit first. Would hit hardest. She wasn’t sure what instinct had made her do that.
Survival? Maternal? Whatever it was, to her it looked as if the spot where her husband would have been when impact occurred was just . . . gone.
“Is he—?”
“There,” Florence said grimly.
A stretcher rolled out from behind the car. Grant was on it, one leg in traction, his face a mess of gashes and bruises. He appeared to be unconscious. His wrists were bound by handcuffs.
Nausea rolled through Gemma’s stomach and up into her throat. She turned and spat into the mud, then laid down again.
“Gross, Mom,” Vienna said. But there was no conviction behind it.
“Mrs. Sutherland. The medics are gonna take a look at you now.” A wiry, bearded police officer stepped in front of her, backlit by the cloudy sky. “And after that, we’re definitely gonna have a few questions.”
“Wait, where’s Wintour?” Gemma asked the girls. She held her breath. If she was being honest, that stupid little dog might have saved all their lives.
The girls looked at one another.
No, Gemma thought. She couldn’t take another death.
“We don’t know,” Florence told her. “She must’ve been thrown from the car or something.”
“Sean was looking for her, but nothing yet,” Lily said.
Then Vienna’s face lit up. “There she is!”
Wintour came running over from the bushes at the side of the road and licked Gemma’s face. Gemma laughed as the dog’s tail wagged manically.
“She was just doing her business, weren’t you, Wintour?” Florence said, lifting the little dog into her arms.
The ambulance doors slammed, and tears leaked from Gemma’s eyes. They were all alive. They were all breathing. Whatever happened next, the girls at least had a future.
“Mom, if Dad goes to jail, can we get a dog?” Vienna asked.
Gemma wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.