Blackberry Summer Read online

  “I’ve been standing in the middle of the reservoir for the last twenty minutes. I don’t know a damn thing. What are you talking about?”

  The sheriff looked apologetic, his wide, weathered face a little more red than it had been a moment ago. Despite their history together, there was no malice in his eyes now, only sympathy.

  “Thought you knew. The fatality in the other wreck. They’re saying she’s your niece. Your sister’s kid. The one with the bookstore who was married to that rock star. Chris Parker. Sorry to break it to you so hard.”

  Layla? Not Layla. He pictured her the last time he’d seen her at his mother’s house a week ago for dinner: her nose piercing and her battered combat boots and her choppy black hair. She was funny and smart and seemed to think he was among her cooler relatives because he’d lived out of the valley for so long.

  He sagged a little, shaking violently now, and had to reach for the open door of his patrol car to support his weight.

  He couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything but shock.

  “Are you sure it’s her?” he asked, then couldn’t believe he sounded like every other victim’s family he’d ever had to notify. He was aware of it on some level, but he couldn’t help hanging on to whatever fragile, pathetic thread of hope he could find that maybe some terrible, cosmic mistake had occurred.

  “Sorry, man. It’s her. No question. You didn’t hear the chatter on the radio?”

  He remembered that moment he had turned it down out in the water. “No, not a word.”

  “She’s been positively ID’d. A couple of the kids in the accident have only minor injuries and they confirmed the fatality was Layla Parker. The responding paramedics, uh, recognized her, too.”

  Maura. Poor Maura. How would she ever survive? And his mother, losing a granddaughter. His family had already suffered a vast rift. Did they have to endure this unspeakable loss, too?

  “You probably need medical attention,” the sheriff said after a moment, with surprising concern. Maybe he wasn’t a complete asshole after all. “The paramedics said you’ve been in the water basically since the Bradford car went in.”

  Riley scrubbed at his face, unable to focus on anything but the crushing pain. “I’m all right. I just need to change my clothes.”

  “You need something dry to put on? I can probably find something in the back of my unit. Wouldn’t come close to fitting, but I don’t suppose that matters at this point.”

  “No, I should have something. Uh, thank you, Sheriff.”

  The words clogged in his throat, given their track record, but Grover only nodded.

  “You should be with your family right now,” he said. “Someone needs to tell your sister and your mom. Between my people and the state patrol, we should be able to take care of both scenes.”

  He was right. Damn it, he was right. Dread lodged in his chest as he gazed after the sheriff, who returned to his vehicle for crime scene tape and the digital surveying equipment necessary to document the accident scene.

  Riley had made a few notifications in his career. Not many, but a few back when he was a beat cop. Nothing like this, though. Never in his worst nightmare had he envisioned this scenario, having to tell his sister that her daughter was dead, his mother that she had lost a grandchild.

  Numb to the bone, he climbed into the patrol car and turned over the engine. Air blasted him from the heater, prickling over his wet skin, but it did nothing to warm the icy ball in his gut.

  He thought of Claire and her children, frightened and cold and hurt, and then of the incalculable, inconceivable pain he was about to inflict on people he loved. Claire had been hurt—Layla was dead, for God’s sake—because of him, because for a few heedless moments, he had been focused on taking down a suspect at the exclusion of all else.

  The few whispers he’d heard around town since he’d been back seemed to ring in his head. Those who didn’t want him in Hope’s Crossing were right.

  He didn’t belong here. He never should have come home.

  A TERRIFYING SEA CREATURE clutched at her legs, yanking hard, tugging her down, down toward the inky, icy depths of Silver Strike Reservoir.

  Her children. She had to get to her children. She fought the creature with all her might, pitting all the strength of a mama bear protecting her cubs. The creature howled, clamping down hard on an arm and a leg and tangling seaweed in her nose, around her face. He could have her, but damn it, she would not let him have her children. Claire fought harder, struggling against the constriction around her arm, gasping for air, fighting for her children’s lives….

  A sudden clatter and a muttered imprecation pierced the nightmare and Claire blinked awake, her heart still pounding in her chest.

  She was disoriented for a moment and couldn’t figure out why she hurt everywhere. Her mouth felt as if she’d been chewing newsprint and she had the vague sense of something being terribly wrong. For a long moment, she couldn’t quite remember what.

  “Oh, good. You’re awake.”

  Her mother’s face suddenly loomed large in her field of vision and Claire instinctively drew in a sharp breath.

  For a moment, she couldn’t figure out what was so different and then it hit her. For the first time in Claire’s recent memory, her mother wasn’t wearing makeup—not even the lipstick she seemed to put on just for a trip to the bathroom. Ruth looked haggard, her eyes red-rimmed and shadowed.

  “The kids. Where…are they?” Her throat felt scraped raw and that tangle of seaweed tickled her nostrils again. A nasal canula, she realized dimly. She was in a hospital bed, hooked up to monitors and machines, on oxygen.

  “They’re fine,” her mother said calmly. “Owen has a broken arm and Macy needed a couple stitches in her forehead and has general aches and pains, but other than that, they’re just fine. Don’t you worry about them right now. They’ve been staying with Jeff and Holly since the accident.”

  The single word triggered a sharp burst of memory, that snowy night after the Spring Fling, headlights flashing straight toward them in the darkness, her panicked jerk of the wheel to avoid a head-on…

  And then, that terrible moment of sliding out of control, seeing the gap in the guardrail, knowing they were going over.

  “Owen has a cast on his arm but that’s all. Macy cut her forehead just a little, but Jeff doesn’t even think she’ll have a scar.”

  “Jordie?”

  “Wrenched a shoulder, that’s all. Nothing broken.”

  Claire sagged against the pillow. How much time had passed since the accident? A few hours? She glanced down and saw her left leg was in traction, a cast running from her toes to just below her knee. Her left arm sported a cast as well, a vivid purple against the white of the hospital sheets.

  “You definitely had the worst of it,” Ruth said. “Sheriff Grover figures your car landed on the front driver’s side when it hit the water and your body absorbed most of the impact. That’s how you came to be so banged up while the kids are okay, for the most part.”

  Claire closed her eyes, a little prayer of gratitude running through her head. All she remembered thinking in that split second that had seemed to drag on forever was that she’d killed her children.

  “They’ve been begging to come see you,” Ruth said, fussing with the wrinkled edge of the blanket. “But I think Jeff has convinced them to wait until tomorrow, at least until you’re not so disoriented from your surgeries.”

  “Surgeries?”

  “Technically only one, I guess, but they did two things at once. They had to put pins in your arm and your ankle. You really did a number on yourself.”

  Usually Ruth would have made that sort of statement in an accusing sort of voice, as if Claire had given herself a bad perm or pierced her eyebrow, but her mother’s quiet tone tipped Claire that something was off.

  In addition to the hollow look in her mother’s eyes, she was acting far more nurturing than normal. She hadn’t yet made one complaint about how her knees wer
e bothering her or how inconsiderate the nurses had been or about the bad food they served in the cafeteria. What wasn’t Ruth telling her?

  Had she broken her back or something? She tried to wiggle her toes and was almost relieved when that tiny movement—plainly visible at the edge of the cast—sent pain scorching up her leg.

  “Ow.”

  “There, honey. Don’t try to move. Let me call the nurse. You need pain medication. Trust me on this.”

  Before Claire could argue, Ruth had pressed a button on the remote cabled to the bed. Almost instantly, the door opened and a young, fresh-faced nurse with a streaky blond A-line haircut and flowered hospital scrubs pushed open the door.

  I used to babysit Brooke Callahan, Claire thought with some dismay. Could the girl really be old enough to legally operate that stethoscope?

  “Hi, there.” Brooke smiled sweetly and Claire felt about a hundred and sixty years old. “Look at you, sitting up and everything. That’s so awesome! I can’t believe how much better you look tonight than you did this morning when you came out of surgery.”

  Right now she felt like she’d just combat-crawled through heavy artillery fire. How bad must she have looked this morning?

  “You’re a popular person. The phone out at the nurse’s station has been ringing off the hook all day with people who want to know if you can have visitors.”

  She didn’t want visitors. She didn’t want nurses or doctors or even her mother. She just wanted to lie here, close her eyes and go back to that moment when she’d been standing in line at Maura’s place for coffee, when her biggest worry had been whether to use the fire-polished or the cone crystals on Gen Beaumont’s wedding dress.

  “She’s nowhere near ready for visitors,” Ruth said firmly, and Claire knew a tiny moment of ridiculous, obstinate contrariness when she wanted to tell little Brooke Callahan to let in whomever she pleased, especially Macy and Owen.

  “Could I have a drink of water?”

  Brooke was fiddling with the IV pump. She pressed a few buttons, then gave that cheery, toothy smile again. “Why, sure you can.”

  She scooped up a big clear plastic mug from the rolling hospital tray and held the straw to Claire’s mouth.

  “I could have gotten you that,” Ruth said. “You should have asked.”

  Claire didn’t answer, too busy remembering how delicious cold water could taste on a parched, achy throat.

  “You probably feel terrible right now, don’t you?” The soft concern in Brooke’s voice unexpectedly brought tears to Claire’s eyes.

  She blinked them away and managed a shrug. She hated this, being helpless and needy. “I’ve had better days.”

  “You’re due for more pain medicine. I’m going to add it to your IV.”

  “When can I go home?”

  “That’s for Dr. Murray to say. I’m guessing at least a few days, given your head injury and the surgeries.”

  Claire looked at her mother in surprise. “Not Jeff?”

  “You know he can’t operate on you because of your relationship. But he’s been coordinating your care with Jim Murray.”

  “Dr. Bradford was just checking on another patient down the hall,” Brooke offered as she checked Claire’s vitals. “I’m sure he’ll stop here before he leaves for the night.”

  Sure enough, the nurse was typing a few notes into the computer on a swing-arm beside the bed when the wide door opened and Jeff came in. His hair had as many blond streaks as Brooke’s these days and was cut in a shaggy youthful style that seemed incongruous with his traditional green hospital scrubs and white lab coat.

  She was pretty certain he’d had Botox sometime in the past few months, although she was also sure he would rather be tortured with his own scalpel before he would admit it.

  “Hello. Claire. Ruth. Brooke.”

  The nurse gave him her cheery smile, but Claire’s mother just lit up, like she always did around Jeff. Her mother adored the man. Claire sometimes thought Ruth considered her and Jeff’s divorce the biggest tragedy of her life, even worse than the scandalous end to her own marriage.

  Jeff barely looked at her, reaching instead for her chart. As he flipped through it with those familiar blunt fingers she had once loved, Claire sighed, wondering which felt heavier to her right now: the cast on her limbs or the weight of her own failures.

  She was very glad she wasn’t married to him anymore, for just this reason. She had mostly become invisible to him.

  “You didn’t operate on me.”

  He glanced up. “I assisted. Jim Murray was your surgeon. He’s a good man. I’ve just been reading his report.”

  They were in the same practice, she knew, and she tried to summon a picture of Dr. Murray. A hazy picture formed in her head of a man who was slightly shorter than Jeff with a steel-gray mustache and kind eyes.

  The beeper the nurse wore around her neck suddenly went off. She glanced at it, then turned to Jeff. “If you don’t need me, Dr. Bradford, I’ve got another patient to check on.”

  “Thank you,” he said. When she left, he reached for Claire’s broken arm, lifted it and wiggled her fingers. For not being her treating physician, he was doing a fairly good impression of it.

  “How are the children?” she asked when he turned his attention to her ankle.

  “Just fine. I spoke with Holly a few moments ago and she said they had rested most of the afternoon, even Owen. She’s making popcorn and when I get home we’re going to watch a movie.”

  Claire felt that absurd urge to cry again. In that moment, she wanted to be cuddled up in her comfortable family room with her children eating popcorn and watching a dumb kids’ show more than she remembered wanting anything in her life.

  “You don’t need to worry about them,” Jeff said in that stern, listen-to-me-I’m-a-doctor voice of his. “You should be focusing on yourself.”

  She didn’t know how to do that very well and probably never had.

  “That car. The one that drove us off the road. Did the police ever find them?”

  Ruth and Jeff exchanged looks and Claire thought she saw her mother give a slight shake of her head. “Don’t worry about that now,” Ruth said quickly.

  “What does that mean?”

  They were definitely keeping something from her, but she didn’t have the energy to push. Claire really wished she could remember more than those few moments just before the crash and then that terrible moment of flying toward the water.

  And Riley McKnight. Good grief. Why would she remember Riley?

  Fragments of memory teased at her mind. A quiet voice soothing her, a cold hand smoothing her hair away from her face. Had Riley really been there or was she just mixing things up after seeing him first at her store and then later at the Spring Fling?

  “How long will I have to stay here?” she asked Jeff.

  “That’s for Dr. Murray to decide. If you were my patient, I would probably keep you two or three more days post-op to get you through the worst of the pain and to make sure we don’t see any complications from that head trauma.”

  “I can’t stay here four days! The store!”

  “You’re going to be away from String Fever for more than four days, Claire.” Her mother’s tone was brisk. “At least three or four weeks. But don’t worry, Evaline is taking care of things for you.”

  “Dr. Murray will go over this all with you, but you’re going to have a difficult recovery,” Jeff warned. “One ankle is broken, the other is sprained and you’ve got a broken ulna to boot. Mobility’s going to be your biggest issue because you won’t be able to use crutches very well at first due to your arm, or at least until the right sprained ankle heals a little. You’re going to need help, Claire.”

  “Don’t you worry,” her mother said, squeezing her arm. “I’ll move into the house with you and take care of everything. We can move you into that guest room you’ve got downstairs and I’ll take your room.”

  She looked between the two of them and didn’t know
how to respond. The pain medication Brooke had given in her IV was beginning to take effect. Blessed oblivion lurked just on the edge of her consciousness, enticing her to just close her eyes.

  “You rest now, poor thing,” Ruth said. “That’s the very best thing for you. Am I right, Jeff?”

  “Absolutely.” Her ex-husband brushed his streaky blond hair from his face, his face twisted into that unnatural botulism-toxin placidity.

  Normally she would fight sleep with every ounce of strength she possessed, but right now even battling mystical water creatures in her medication-twisted nightmares was more appealing than contemplating the idea of having her mother living with her for the next few weeks.

  She would worry about that later. As long as her children were safe, she could cope with anything.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HOSPITAL SLEEP WAS THE WORST. As she expected, her dreams were tortured and disjointed. Every time she seemed to drift off, the nurses would come in to make her move her arms and legs, to give her more meds, to check her vital signs.

  When she awoke to pale morning sunlight streaming through the gap in the blinds that hadn’t been fully closed, she was blessedly alone and only in moderate pain.

  She gazed at that beam of sunlight and even though she wanted to stay there in the quiet peace of morning, she made herself revisit the accident. Something teased at her, some discordant note she couldn’t quite place. Her mother wasn’t telling her something and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what.

  With the subtle whir and beep of monitors in the background, she remembered that terrifying soar into the water again, her pain and overwhelming fear for the children, then Riley’s quiet voice, offering strength and comfort.

  She wasn’t imagining. Somehow during the night, full recollection had returned. Riley had been there, out in that cold water with them. He had saved them. She considered it nothing short of a miracle that he’d seen them at all. That stretch of canyon could be sparsely populated at night. If they had gone off the road when no other cars had been in sight, they might have frozen out in that lake before someone else sighted them there below the roadway, trapped and helpless as the car filled with icy water.