Heaven Should Fall - By Rebecca Coleman Page 0,109
tried to accept her reassurance, but all I could think about was the moment I’d come across the plastic hospital-issue bag with my clothes in it from the night TJ was born, the fabric dark and stiffened with blood. One slip of Lucia’s foot could end in a calamity I couldn’t bear. “No way,” I repeated. “If you have a phone, we should call an ambulance.”
“No time for that. Go get Scooter.” I raised an eyebrow, and she said, “Well, he lives right over there. He’ll help, Jill. This isn’t the time for petty loyalties. He’ll know that.”
“All right. Can you handle Candy if she comes in?”
“Of course I can handle Candy. Candy isn’t anything.”
I passed TJ over to her. As she shifted him to her hip with her capable hands, I ran down the stairs and out the door toward the Vogels’ farm. Scooter lived in the walk-out basement, one with a door that was never locked because this was Frasier. My pulse pounded in my ears as I raced across the gray asphalt road and through the overgrown grass, past Sara Vogel’s neat vegetable patch with its pie tins rattling on stakes and strings, to Scooter’s rain-beaten basement door.
Without a knock, I pushed it open and shouted his name. He looked up from where he lay on a battered sofa, playing Atari games on a television three times his age. A few words about Eddy’s state were all I said, and in an instant he had shoved his feet into his boots and was rushing past me out the door, flying across the lawn in his untied boots and unbelted jeans. By the time I arrived back on our property I could hear Candy shouting from inside, and Scooter was shuffling out the front door with Dad over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. Lucia followed close behind, TJ on her hip.
“Sorry,” said Scooter, edging toward the porch stairs. “Tried to wait for you, but Candy was making a scene. Which car?”
Lucia opened the rear door of her truck, and I helped ease Eddy onto the seat. “I hope he’s all right,” said Scooter. “Poor old dude.”
“Say a prayer,” said Lucia. She passed me TJ and climbed into the cab of her truck, gunning the engine.
“Wait,” I said. “I need the diaper bag. It’s just inside the front door.”
Scooter shook his head. “Stay here and I’ll go with her. I know all his information. You call Cade, get him to come to the hospital.”
His idea made more sense than mine. I couldn’t give proper attention to Eddy’s needs with a baby in my arms, and there was no chance I would leave TJ with an unstable Candy. I stepped back and Scooter climbed into the passenger seat, barely pulling the door closed before Lucia backed out of the driveway.
From inside I heard Candy yelling at one of her boys. I took a deep, shaky breath, then loaded my son back into the Jeep. I could call Cade from the U-Store-It office and give him the news about his dad, then stay there for a while until Candy had a chance to calm down. No way was I about to go back inside. She frightened me now.
Chapter 29
Leela
When the Vogel girl first started coming around, I didn’t pay her too much mind. She knew Candy from church, and I wasn’t all that keen on that church of theirs. I go with her now, but mainly to get out of this house for a bit, since I never did learn how to drive, and being inside all the time gives me cabin fever something fierce. And I like to sing. I keep the songs going in my head while the pastor is talking, so that way I can get through the whole service.
That Vogel girl—her name was Lindsay—she was younger than Candy by a couple of years, and unmarried. Despite that they were friends, and I felt torn about that situation. On the one hand I remembered what it felt like to be a childless woman in a room full of mothers, how they elbowed me out without even knowing they were doing it, and so it was kind of Candy to reach out to her in friendship. But on the other hand this was Candy, and something in me hated for that vulnerable, sheltered Vogel girl to get wrapped up in my daughter. Sometimes they’d be talking at the table, the way Lucia and I used to, and I’d