Chapter Nine
It’s nearly three in the morning by the time I get back from the hospital.
Edie was still alive when the paramedics showed up, but barely. One of them told me that if I’d been just a few minutes later, it would’ve been too late, but looking at her—pale and motionless as they loaded her into the ambulance—I wasn’t sure I had found her in time after all.
Skull fracture, they said. It looked like she’d slipped on the side porch and cracked her head on one of the old stone planters out there, the heavy square base denting a spot just behind her ear before the fall sent her sprawling onto the porch steps, a sharp corner gouging a trench from her temple to the crown of her head.
That was where most of the blood came from, the doctor said, but the wound to the back of her head was the serious one.
They’d had to cut a chunk of her skull away to relieve the pressure, and she was in a medically induced coma in the hopes that it would help with the swelling.
They hadn’t let me go back to see her since we aren’t family, but the doctor, an older man with sad eyes, had told me that he’d call if anything changed, that the next forty-eight hours were critical, and that even if she did pull through, this was a very serious injury, especially for someone her age.
I absorbed all of it numbly, standing there in the St. Medard’s Bay emergency room, Edie’s blood drying in dark streaks down my legs, on my hands.
For a small town, we have a surprisingly big hospital, and I was relieved Edie would get to stay close by instead of being sent to Mobile or Pensacola, but all I could think about was the blood—so much blood—and how could anyone lose that much of it and still be okay?
As I drive home from the hospital, my mind settles on something else, something less urgent but just as troubling: Why the fuck had Edie been out on that porch anyway?
There was nothing over there—no furniture that needed moving, no repairs that had to be done.
Even if there had been, Edie had more sense than to go out in the rain, in the dark, to do them.
The weather cleared sometime around midnight, and the air is back to being thick and muggy as I make my way to my trailer. I’m so exhausted, so overwhelmed, that I almost don’t see August at first.
He’s sitting on the steps leading up to the Airstream, and as soon as he sees me, he jumps up, shoving his hands into his back pockets.
“Is she all right?” he asks nervously.
I have a vague memory of August and Lo waiting in the lobby as the ambulance arrived, of pale faces and wide eyes, but all my focus had been on Edie.
“They don’t know,” I tell him, my voice dull. “It’s … it’s bad. Really bad. But she’s alive, for now, so that’s … that’s something.”
My voice breaks on that last word, and August makes a soft sound low in his throat before coming closer, his arms wrapping around me.
He smells like laundry detergent and sunscreen and sweat, and his chest is warm and hard against mine, and I let him hold me, feeling like I can barely stay upright.
“God, that had to be awful,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
I can only nod, then I pull away, gesturing down at myself. “I’m going to get blood on you,” I tell him, but he only shrugs.
“Wouldn’t be the first time while on the job. I once did an assignment on extreme piercings. I also followed this crazy tattoo artist for a week. A little mess doesn’t scare me.”
That makes me smile, or at least attempt it. Not so much the anecdote, just the fact that he offered it, that he’s trying to make this night seem a little less horrific. And despite my exhaustion, despite my appearance, I find myself asking, “Do you wanna come in for a drink?”
I POUR US each a couple of fingers of bourbon, then take mine into the tiny bathroom so that I can shower.
The blood on my legs and hands is dry now, and it flakes off as I scrub, the water turning pink as it sluices down the drain.
My skin is also pink as I towel off, from both the heat of the water and the brutal scouring I gave myself, but I feel a little more human by the time I emerge from the bathroom in a tank top and pajama shorts, my wet hair dripping over my shoulders.
August is sitting at the little dining area, his glass in one hand, a folder in the other.
Mom’s articles. I forgot I left the box sitting right there on the table, and maybe I should be pissed off at him for looking through my things without asking, but I’m too tired for that right now.
Besides, he’s the one writing a book about Lo.
Seems only fair he should have access to this makeshift archive, come to think of it.
“Where did all this come from?” he asks, and I prop my chin on one hand as I reach for the bourbon bottle with the other.
“My mom,” I tell him, sloshing more liquor into my glass. “And before you ask, no, I don’t know why she had all of it. She never even told me she and Lo were friends.”
“Huh” is all August says, and for a little while, I drink, and he reads in silence.
And maybe it’s the bourbon, maybe it’s the shock, but the one question that has been growing louder and louder in my head for the last few hours finally slips out. “Do you think it was Lo?”
August’s dark eyes flick up from the tabloid clipping blaring out HOW “LO” CAN YOU GO?, and he takes a sip of his drink before answering.
“You mean Edie. Tonight.”
“God, that makes me feel crazy to say,” I groan, scrubbing at my face with both hands before pulling my feet up onto the banquette and wrapping my arms around my knees.
“But”—I nod at the box—“I’ve read those articles.
I know what happened to Landon, how his head was all caved in, like someone had hit him with something, and …
the way the doctor was describing her most serious wound to me tonight, it sounded exactly the same.
Besides, Edie never goes out to the side porch.
There was literally no reason for her to be out there.
And yes, it was raining, and yes, that painted wood can be slippery, but how could one little fall do that much damage? ”
It feels simultaneously good and horrible, getting that off my chest. Like when you finally throw up after being nauseated. I feel lighter somehow, but also exhausted and shaky, and I throw back the rest of the bourbon in my glass.
I don’t know what I want August to say. No, scratch that—I want him to tell me I’m being crazy, but to do so kindly. To tell me he understands why my mind might go there, but here are all the reasons that it couldn’t possibly be true.
Instead, he nods. “Things did get pretty nasty between them today.”
That exchange in the lobby had been bothering me, too. Not just what Lo had said, but how she’d said it. The way she’d pretended everything was fine with her and Edie, that there were no grudges held, no scores to settle—only to unleash that vitriol, seemingly with a flick of an internal switch.
But it hadn’t just been anger fueling her outburst. It had been deep hurt. A sense of betrayal, nurtured over the decades.
Could they have argued again after I left? Had Edie followed Lo out to that porch in the rain, and had Lo finally seen her chance to get revenge?
“Did Lo say anything to you?” I ask him. “After they took Edie away?”
August lifts one shoulder, taps his fingers against the side of his glass. “Just that she wondered what had happened, she hoped Edie would be all right, and that falls are so tricky when you’re as old as Edie.”
I frowned. “They’re the same age.”
“Not in her mind.”
We’re quiet again, each of us lost in our own thoughts until August says, “I didn’t see her tonight.
Lo, I mean. We were working in her room for a bit around four, probably until five, but then she said she was going to make a phone call, maybe take the car and grab a quick bite to eat.
I didn’t see her again until we heard the sirens. ”
I take that in, my brain feeling slow, sluggish. I shouldn’t have had that second glass of bourbon, not when I’m this tired and probably still in shock. My mouth is dry, my head fuzzy, and I stand up to get a bottle of water from the mini fridge.
“Edie definitely believes Lo killed Landon,” I tell August, pressing the cold bottle to my warm face.
“And she says my mom had always thought the same thing.” I briefly fill him in on my mom—her condition, Hope House, all of it.
“And both times I’ve mentioned Lo around my mom, she’s had a reaction,” I continue.
“Not a big one, but it’s more than I’ve gotten out of her in the last year or two.
And she had all these clippings hidden away, but she never once mentioned Lo’s name to me, ever.
I feel like there’s some piece of this I’m just not seeing, and if Mom were still herself… ”
August rises to his feet, coming to stand in front of me, his hands landing on my bare arms. “Hey,” he says softly. “You’ve had a fucking terrible night, you’re probably dead on your feet. Whatever is going on here, we don’t have to figure it out right now.”
That we is a balm, sliding over me, clearing some of the panicked static buzzing in my brain. God, I’ve missed being part of a we. I’ve been doing so much hard shit alone, and it’s nice to think that this might be one hard thing I don’t have to face by myself.
August’s hands are still wrapped around my biceps, the bottle of water icy cold as it presses against my chest, leaving a damp spot on his T-shirt because we’re standing so close together.
So it feels natural—inevitable, even—when he lowers his head to kiss me.
His lips are soft and a little dry, and he tastes like bourbon when his tongue finds mine.
The bottle of water tumbles to the floor as I instinctively wrap my arms around him and kiss him back, every touch-starved cell in my body suddenly singing with life again, and his hair is soft against my fingers when I link them at the back of his neck.
It feels so good just to have another body close to mine that I’m able to ignore the distant alarm bell ringing in my head, reminding me of Lo’s face when she saw me and August on the beach that day, the way her arm snaked protectively through August’s as she stood between us.
God help anyone who gets in her way.
Some clarity breaks through the fog in my head, and I pull away. Things are complicated enough here at the Rosalie without adding whatever this is to the mix.
But August keeps his grip firm on my waist and searches my face. “What is it?”
Gently, I step as far back as I can in this tiny space. “I’m tired and maybe a little drunk, and possibly neither of us are making great decisions right now.”
August sighs and ruffles his hair. “You’re right. This is … yeah, this is not the time, and given the size of that bed, probably not the place.”
Turning, he picks up his glass from the table, throwing back the little bit of whiskey left, then sets the glass back down with a thump. “Listen,” he says. “If Edie didn’t just fall, if Lo was involved somehow, I promise you, we’ll get to the bottom of it, okay?”
“Okay,” I reply, my voice barely above a whisper.
He nods, then looks back at the table and gestures to the box. “Would it be all right with you if I borrowed these for a while? I promise I’ll return them, I just want to see if there’s anything in here that might be good for the book.”
“Sure,” I say. I’m almost tempted to tell him not to bother bringing them back, that I don’t want to look at them anymore.
It’s too painful to wonder why my mom kept something like this from me.
To remind myself over and over again that I can wonder all I want, but she’ll never be able to explain herself to me.
He hefts the box into one arm and is turning to go when something occurs to me.
“What makes you think any of that stuff would help with the book?” I ask. “I mean, aren’t you just helping Lo write her memoir? Her version of what happened? Why would the stuff that was written about her be relevant?”
A grimace takes over his face. “That’s the book she thinks we’re writing, yeah,” he says finally, and I see him pull the box a little tighter. “But I don’t know if that’s the book I’m writing anymore.”