Overnight Wife(43)

My heart skips a little, touching those pieces again. Remembering the way John’s hands cupped the clay around mine, the way he shaped them alongside me… And the way he pushed them aside to run his hands over me afterward, until it felt like he was sculpting me too, tracing my body until it became real, as molded as the clay we’d been working with.

I’m lost in memories of that, of his hands over mine, guiding mine, or letting me guide him, both in equal measure, when I hear raised voices. I finish attaching the set of antlers I’d been working on to its place on the back wall of the “cabin,” and then turn to spot Bianca passing out the usual round of afternoon coffees to the crew. I hadn’t seen her do this in a while. It makes me pause, uncertain.

Maybe I was being too harsh on her earlier, ignoring her olive branch of an apology. But I just don’t trust her. Not after everything she did.

I’m about to turn away, back to my work, when I hear a shout, from the opposite side of the stage this time. I whip around and spot Daniel barking angry orders at one of the guys he was supervising. The guy is swearing, grabbing at a rope… My eyes trace the rope up, widening with every foot they travel into the rafters.

Oh, shit.

They hoisted the chariot already. Even though I told them to be sure to only test it a few feet off the ground first. To judge by Daniel’s cursing, he didn’t order this either. But there’s no time to worry about whose fault it is, because when my eyes trace the trajectory of the chariot, I realize what’s about to happen.

The ropes it’s tied to are fraying. The wooden construction is heavier than we wagered. And standing right beneath it, in the path of the thing that’s about to collapse onto her oblivious head, is Bianca, a stack of coffee in hand.

I don’t pause to think about it. I react on sheer instinct. I sprint across the stage. Somewhere behind me, I hear more shouts, even a scream. That’s enough to finally catch Bianca’s attention and make her whip around to look at me, eyes widening. Then she looks up, and now she has the sense to scream too, just before I collide with her.

The force of my body crashing into her sends the coffees flying out of her hands and splashing across the stage. It also sends both of us toppling to the ground, just as, with a deafening snap, the chariot’s rope finally gives way.

We hit the ground, Bianca beneath me. My head flies past hers though, cracks against the wood of the stage. I have just enough consciousness left to hear a deafening splinter as the chariot lands on the stage too, inches from us. Then the world spins and swirls into star bursts, before it fades to black.





14





John





I’m on my way back from lunch break when my phone starts to ring. It’s the office, though a line I don’t recognize. Not any of my usual secretaries. I pick up, only to hear a harried, familiar male voice on the other end. Daniel.

“Get in here, right now,” he says. “It’s your wife.”

If I’d been holding anything, I would have dropped it. As it is, I barely manage to hang onto my phone. I’d just parked my car, and I fly out of it now, not bothering to lock it behind me as I sprint toward Pitfire. Belatedly, I register the vehicle parked out front, lights flashing.

An ambulance.

Fuck.

Not Mara. Please, let her be safe.

I take the steps two at a time, and once I’m inside the building, I break into a flat out run toward the main stage. It’s where Mara was supposed to be all day today, starting to put together the set she’s been painstakingly preparing in pieces up until now. I know how excited she was about today. How much she enjoys putting a set together like this.

What’s happened to ruin it?

I reach the theater and yank open the double doors at the back, only to nearly collide with a stretcher rolling out of the main entrance. My stomach sinks straight through my shoes and down into the floor. Lying across that stretcher, her eyes shut, an IV stuck into her arm… “Mara!” My voice breaks on that one word.

A paramedic grabs my arm, pulls me back. “Sir, we need to get through.”

“That’s my wife,” I bark.

His grip on my arm relaxes a little, and his expression shifts to one of understanding. “She’s all right, Mr. Walloway. It looks like just a concussion, but we’re going to need to run some tests.”

My gaze darts from her unconscious form to the stretcher, and then follows the thought out to the stage behind her. “What happened?” I bark, and my question isn’t so much directed at the paramedic anymore as it is at the cluster of my employees scattered around the stage. I spot Bianca, pacing back and forth, her head in her hands, her whole body shaking. Near her, but not quite touching her, Daniel is holding something—a frayed piece of rope. There’s wood in splinters all across the stage.

My stomach sinks. The wreckage looks bad. Was Mara in the middle of that?

The paramedic is handing me something. A card, with an address. “Follow us with her things,” he says, and only when he says that do I register other things scattered across the stage. Mara’s purse, a recognizable lump near the side of the stage, almost as if she dropped it in a panic and bolted. “Your wife is going to be fine, I promise.”

It’s an empty promise, I know. Nobody can promise that for anyone else. But still, it does relax me, just a little, to glance past this competent man toward my wife prone on her stretcher, with those words in my ears. She’s going to be fine, I repeat to myself, before I finally relax my hold on the paramedic and let him go to do his job. Let him take care of my Mara.