Letters to Molly (Maysen Jar, #2)(52)

They’d been there for the accident. I hated that.

One of the regular crew members had called in sick, so Finn had asked them to stay inside while he went out to the yard to help load up materials for a job site.

Max and Kali had been in the office while Finn was loading up a bucketful of large landscaping rocks in a skid steer. They heard the shouts when a rock toppled out of the raised bucket and landed in the path of the machine’s wheels. They heard the screams when the loader hit the rock, lurched forward and threw Finn to the ground when the seat belt latch malfunctioned.

Even though everyone hurried to get Finn free of the equipment, his body had been crushed under its front wheels. And Max and Kali watched as the ambulance sped away, their father loaded into the back.

When I arrived, Alcott was in chaos. All of the crew members were in the yard. Five of the men had blood staining their pants.

I took one glance at them and nearly retched, but I pushed it aside to focus on finding my kids.

Most of the people were rushing around, putting things away, but a few were grouped together with shocked and stunned looks on their faces.

Bridget was there, talking with two police officers. Gerry, Finn’s favorite foreman, who’d worked at Alcott since the early years, was on the phone, pacing near the skid steer that was still in the yard.

I didn’t spare any of them more than a glance. I parked, hopped out of the Jeep and ran.

Max and Kali were standing outside, holding one another. Only one man was bothering to help with the kids. I didn’t know him, but apparently he’d been standing by Max and Kali, watching over them until I arrived.

The second they saw me, Kali and Max sprinted my way, tears running down their precious faces.

After a tight hug, I loaded them up and raced across town to the hospital to join Finn’s parents, Poppy, and Cole. He took Kali and Max to the cafeteria while the doctor explained the severity of Finn’s accident.

Then we all sat in the waiting room and . . . waited.

Finn had been stabilized and taken immediately into surgery to repair the damage done to his internal organs. They’d been at it for over five hours.

He had injuries trailing down the right side of his body. Broken arm. Broken ribs. Broken pelvis. Broken leg. From the initial intake assessment, the doctors suspected one, if not both of his lungs had been punctured and his liver lacerated. Half of his body was broken. Had he been tossed one foot in the other direction, the skid steer would have crushed his skull and he would have died instantly.

The chances he still wouldn’t survive this accident were staggering.

After that first hour in the waiting room, time slowed to a near stop. Every second was torture as we sat in a crowded room full of people I didn’t know. Full of people I didn’t want to see.

My hair felt heavy on my neck and shoulders, so I slipped my arms free of the kids and plucked a hair tie from my wrist. It was black. I piled my hair on top of my head, ready to wind it up, but when I stretched the hair tie wide, it broke.

I nearly fell off my chair. No. No, this wasn’t happening. We’d had the worst today. Hadn’t we? This could not get worse. We couldn’t lose Finn.

I took a deep breath, then another. I threw the broken band away and let my hair fall. I wouldn’t tempt fate by trying to put it up again. Then I distracted my thoughts from the worst by studying the people in the room.

Gerry and each of the other foremen from Alcott had come to the hospital, a slew of crew members filtering in after them. Bridget was here too, sitting across from the kids and me, drinking her coffee and grimacing after each sip.

“You don’t need to stay.” It was the nicest way I’d come up with in the last five hours to tell her to leave.

She met my gaze, her own narrowing. “Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

She wasn’t family. She wasn’t a friend here. She was Finn’s employee and I hated her. I hated her blond pixie cut. I hated how she wore tank tops that fit her toned body perfectly. I hated that she made a men’s style of work pant look cute. I was woman enough to admit there’d been jealousy there at one point. She was this tiny ball of muscle with a cute face and a bright smile, and she was at Finn’s side every single day.

But that wasn’t why I hated her. I hated her because she thought it was her duty to judge me. Bridget thought she was above me, better. That despite being on the outside, she knew more about my marriage than me. I hated that Finn had told her about my one-night stand. I hated that he’d trusted her with that information, and she’d used it against me.

The last time I’d been to Alcott, right before the divorce, she’d called me a whore to my face.

I hadn’t seen Bridget since then. She looked exactly the same, though with a few more fine lines on her face. Working in the sun all the time was taking its toll.

“I’m staying. Finn is important to me,” she snapped. “So are his kids.”

My kids.

I clamped my mouth shut and went back to staring at the wall. Nothing good would come from me fighting with Bridget today. Not when I had more important things to worry about.

Like how I was going to survive if Finn didn’t. Or how I was going to keep our children afloat if their father died.

My stomach rolled, saliva filled my mouth, and I swallowed hard, forcing myself not to puke. I had to be strong. For Kali and Max, I couldn’t give in to the dread and doubt that was slowly taking over.