Saugatuck Summer (Saugatuck, #1)(86)

I was lying. Actually I wasn’t sure at all. But I needed to talk to Robin about the other part of this whole thing. For some reason I didn’t want Jace to know who had ended up buying those paintings. Maybe because I suspected he’d feel almost as violated by it as I did.

“Call me tonight?” he prompted when I’d been silent too long.

“Yeah, I will.”

We murmured our good-byes and I turned off my phone just as Robin came upstairs to the office, where I lay on the sofa.

“Hey, need another ice pack?”

“No.” I sighed and sat up to look at him. “Why did you sell Brendan those paintings? You had to have known I wouldn’t want him to have them.”

“What?” He blinked at me. “Oh shit. He must have used a buyer to get them for him because he knew Ling and I would recognize him. I swear, Topher, I would not have sold those to him, not for any amount of money. Jesus. That’s creepy.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” I shuddered. I didn’t know if Brendan was just obsessed with me, or if he’d managed to fall in some slightly disturbing version of love with me, but either way I felt positively sick every time I thought of him looking at those paintings, not to mention the fixation that must have driven him to pay fifteen thousand dollars for them.



I ended up taking Ben & Jerry and the Gallo brothers home that night, so it was a real orgy, if a very maudlin and self-indulgent one, complete with BFF movies like Beaches and Thelma & Louise. I was definitely feeling sorry for myself this time, no question about it.

I went to bed with the sort of headache only low-to mid-grade red wine can give you, telling myself that I was absolutely, under no circumstances, allowed to text Mo. If she ever contacted me again, we’d talk, but if not, I would respect her wishes and keep away. I wasn’t going to chase after her and try to grovel my way back into her good graces, though I would miss her.

She was under no obligation whatsoever to forgive me or give me another chance to be the sort of friend I should have been to begin with. I’d f*cked up and I needed to accept the consequences.

If it wasn’t for the headache and general grogginess that came from tossing and turning until you mope yourself to sleep, I might have had the presence of mind to send it to voice mail when a call came in from my sister at seven o’clock the next morning. Instead, I answered it without even looking at the caller ID, pain lancing through my temples too strongly to stare at the lit screen.

“Topher?” It took me a moment to place the voice. At first I thought it was my mother calling; she and Colleen had very similar voices, and I couldn’t always tell them apart at only a word or two.

“Yeah? Oh hi. Colleen. What’s goin’ on?”

“Did I wake you up?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Christ, my mouth tasted like the inside of a goat’s stomach. I needed a shower and some coffee, stat. “I gotta be to work in a few hours anyway.”

“Mom had an accident last night. She’s in the hospital.”

“What?” I sat up quickly.

“I’m sure she didn’t know what would happen. She probably thought that if Grandpa had come back well enough after his stroke to drive even with his right-side impairment, why not her? She tried to go to the store by herself and had a wreck. Of course she wasn’t wearing a seat belt, because we all know she refuses unless someone makes her. She’s got a skull fracture and two broken ribs, and she tore the hell out of the ligaments in her knee hitting the dashboard with it.”

“Shit.” I rubbed my aching forehead. I was too hungover right now to think things through and remember all the reasons I didn’t go running when my family called. But just now, reeling from the loss of one of the two most emotionally significant relationships in my life, crawling home to the familiarity of Momma seemed like an appealing notion.

“I’ll be there in a few hours.”





I was there when your lips first said it

Shot me down I cannot forget it

You reduced me to nothing then

You produced a destructive trend

—Casey Stratton, “Shut You Down”

The doctor happened to be in my mom’s room at the Genesys Regional Medical Center when I arrived. I shook his hand and introduced myself, and he gave me a wry smile.

“Ah, hi. They said you’re the pessimistic one.”

I gave Colleen and Tonya a flat look. “I prefer to call it realistic. How’s she doing?”

“Well, as I was just explaining to your sisters, right now we’re monitoring her to make sure her lung doesn’t collapse from the fractured ribs—which are fully broken, not just cracked, so I can’t really overstate the danger there—and to assess any neurological trauma from the impact to her skull. The long-term issue is going to be her knee. It will probably take more than one surgery to repair all the ligament damage. She’ll be on bed rest and crutches for months, and she’ll need at least a year of physical therapy to strengthen the joint after it’s repaired. This is going to impact her ability to function independently for a while. She’s going to need some assistance.”

I closed my eyes, feeling a trap spring closed around me.

Fuck.

The doctor continued describing the treatment my mom would need, and I listened, nodding attentively until he paused.