Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters #1)(2)

When they finally reached the ambulance, she sat down carefully because it wouldn’t do to collapse. If she did, the paramedic would start asking questions. Then he might want to check her over. Then she’d have to tell him about all her little irregularities, and why they were nothing to worry about, and they’d both be here all day. Adopting her firmest I-am-very-healthy-and-in-control tone, she asked briskly, “Will the lady be all right?”

“The driver? She’ll be fine, love. Don’t you worry about that.”

Muscles she hadn’t realized were tense suddenly relaxed.

In the end, after two cups of tea and some questions from the police, Chloe was permitted to finish her Tuesday-afternoon walk. No further near-death experiences occurred, which was excellent, because if they had, she’d probably have done something embarrassing, like cry.

She entered her family home via the north wing and skulked to the kitchen in search of fortifying snacks. Instead, she found her grandmother Gigi clearly waiting for her. Gigi whirled around with a swish of her floor-length, violet robe—the one Chloe had given her a few months ago on Gigi’s fourth (or was it fifth?) seventieth birthday.

“Darling,” she gasped, her sparkling, kitten-heeled mules clacking against the tiles. “You look so … peaky.” From Gigi, who was both a concerned grandparent and a painfully beautiful ragtime legend, this was a grave statement indeed. “Where were you? You’ve been ages, and you wouldn’t answer your phone. I was quite worried.”

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry.” Chloe had left hours ago for the latest of her irregularly scheduled walks—scheduled because her physiotherapist insisted she take them, irregular because her chronically ill body often vetoed things. She was usually back within thirty minutes, so it was no wonder Gigi had panicked. “You didn’t call my parents, did you?”

“Of course not. I presumed, if you’d had a wobble, that you’d collect yourself shortly and command a passing stranger to find you a taxi home.”

A wobble was the delicate phrase Gigi used for the times when Chloe’s body simply gave up on life. “I didn’t have a wobble. I’m feeling quite well, actually.” Now, anyway. “But there was … a car accident.”

Gigi managed to stiffen and gracefully take a seat at the marble kitchen island simultaneously. “You weren’t hurt?”

“No. A lady crashed her car right in front of me. It was all very dramatic. I’ve been drinking tea from Styrofoam cups.”

Gigi peered at Chloe with the feline eyes that lesser mortals tended to fall into. “Would you like some Xanax, darling?”

“Oh, I couldn’t. I don’t know how it would react with my medication.”

“Of course, of course. Ah! I know. I’ll call Jeremy and tell him it’s an emergency.” Jeremy was Gigi’s therapist. Gigi didn’t strictly need therapy, but she was fond of Jeremy and believed in preventive measures.

Chloe blinked. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“I quite disagree,” Gigi said. “Therapy is always necessary.” She pulled out her phone and made the call, sashaying to the other side of the kitchen. Her mules clicked against the tiles again as she purred, “Jeremy, darling! How are you? How is Cassandra?”

These were all perfectly ordinary noises. And yet, without warning, they triggered something catastrophic in Chloe’s head.

Gigi’s click, click, click merged with the tick, tick, tick of the vast clock on the kitchen wall. The sounds grew impossibly loud, oddly chaotic, until it seemed like a tumble of boulders had fallen inside Chloe’s head. She squeezed her eyes shut—wait, what did her eyes have to do with her hearing?—and, in the darkness she’d created, a memory arose: that crisp, blond bob swinging. The way it remained so smooth and glossy against the black leather of the gurney.

Drunk, the nice paramedic had said, sotto voce. That’s what they suspected. The lady had been drunk in the middle of the afternoon, had mounted a pavement and plowed into a building, and Chloe …

Chloe had been standing right there. Because she walked at the same time of day, so as not to interrupt her work routine. Because she always took the same route, for efficiency’s sake. Chloe had been standing right there.

She was too hot, sweating. Dizzy. Had to sit down, right now, so she wouldn’t fall and crack her head like an egg against the marble tiles. From out of nowhere she remembered her mother saying, We should change the floors. These fainting spells are getting out of hand. She’ll hurt herself.

But Chloe had insisted there was no need. She’d promised to be careful, and by God, she’d kept her promise. Slowly, slowly, she sank to the ground. Put her clammy palms against the cool tiles. Breathed in. Breathed out. Breathed in.

Breathed out, her whisper like cracking glass, “If I had died today, what would my eulogy say?”

This mind-blowing bore had zero friends, hadn’t traveled in a decade despite plenty of opportunity, liked to code on the weekends, and never did anything that wasn’t scheduled in her planner. Don’t cry for her; she’s in a better place now. Even Heaven can’t be that dull.



That’s what the eulogy would say. Perhaps someone especially cutting and awful, like Piers Morgan, would read it out on the radio.

“Chloe?” Gigi called. “Where have you—? Oh, there you are. Is everything all right?”