RaeAnne Thayne - Raeanne Thayne Hope's Crossings Series Volume One - Blackberry Summer

Claire felt that absurd urge to cry again. In that moment, she wanted to be cuddled up in her comfortable family room with her children eating popcorn and watching a dumb kids’ show more than she remembered wanting anything in her life.

“You don’t need to worry about them,” Jeff said in that stern, listen-to-me-I’m-a-doctor voice of his. “You should be focusing on yourself.”

She didn’t know how to do that very well and probably never had.

“That car. The one that drove us off the road. Did the police ever find them?”

Ruth and Jeff exchanged looks and Claire thought she saw her mother give a slight shake of her head. “Don’t worry about that now,” Ruth said quickly.

“What does that mean?”

They were definitely keeping something from her, but she didn’t have the energy to push. Claire really wished she could remember more than those few moments just before the crash and then that terrible moment of flying toward the water.

And Riley McKnight. Good grief. Why would she remember Riley?

Fragments of memory teased at her mind. A quiet voice soothing her, a cold hand smoothing her hair away from her face. Had Riley really been there or was she just mixing things up after seeing him first at her store and then later at the Spring Fling?

“How long will I have to stay here?” she asked Jeff.

“That’s for Dr. Murray to decide. If you were my patient, I would probably keep you two or three more days post-op to get you through the worst of the pain and to make sure we don’t see any complications from that head trauma.”

“I can’t stay here four days! The store!”

“You’re going to be away from String Fever for more than four days, Claire.” Her mother’s tone was brisk. “At least three or four weeks. But don’t worry, Evaline is taking care of things for you.”

“Dr. Murray will go over this all with you, but you’re going to have a difficult recovery,” Jeff warned. “One ankle is broken, the other is sprained and you’ve got a broken ulna to boot. Mobility’s going to be your biggest issue because you won’t be able to use crutches very well at first due to your arm, or at least until the right sprained ankle heals a little. You’re going to need help, Claire.”

“Don’t you worry,” her mother said, squeezing her arm. “I’ll move into the house with you and take care of everything. We can move you into that guest room you’ve got downstairs and I’ll take your room.”

She looked between the two of them and didn’t know how to respond. The pain medication Brooke had given in her IV was beginning to take effect. Blessed oblivion lurked just on the edge of her consciousness, enticing her to just close her eyes.

“You rest now, poor thing,” Ruth said. “That’s the very best thing for you. Am I right, Jeff?”

“Absolutely.” Her ex-husband brushed his streaky blond hair from his face, his face twisted into that unnatural botulism-toxin placidity.

Normally she would fight sleep with every ounce of strength she possessed, but right now even battling mystical water creatures in her medication-twisted nightmares was more appealing than contemplating the idea of having her mother living with her for the next few weeks.

She would worry about that later. As long as her children were safe, she could cope with anything.

HOSPITAL SLEEP WAS THE WORST. As she expected, her dreams were tortured and disjointed. Every time she seemed to drift off, the nurses would come in to make her move her arms and legs, to give her more meds, to check her vital signs.

When she awoke to pale morning sunlight streaming through the gap in the blinds that hadn’t been fully closed, she was blessedly alone and only in moderate pain.

She gazed at that beam of sunlight and even though she wanted to stay there in the quiet peace of morning, she made herself revisit the accident. Something teased at her, some discordant note she couldn’t quite place. Her mother wasn’t telling her something and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what.

With the subtle whir and beep of monitors in the background, she remembered that terrifying soar into the water again, her pain and overwhelming fear for the children, then Riley’s quiet voice, offering strength and comfort.

She wasn’t imagining. Somehow during the night, full recollection had returned. Riley had been there, out in that cold water with them. He had saved them. She considered it nothing short of a miracle that he’d seen them at all. That stretch of canyon could be sparsely populated at night. If they had gone off the road when no other cars had been in sight, they might have frozen out in that lake before someone else sighted them there below the roadway, trapped and helpless as the car filled with icy water.

She certainly wouldn’t have had the strength to extract the children on her own, not with her injuries. If not for Riley, she didn’t want to think what might have happened to them.

Riley. The most unexpected rescuer she could imagine. Teasing, tormenting, hell-raising Riley. Somehow he had been there right when she needed him and had risked his own safety to make sure she and the children were okay.

She hoped he hadn’t suffered any ill effects from being out in the water so long. She should call Alex. Alex would know. Probably once the doctors allowed visitors today, one of the McKnights—Alex, Angie, Maura or even Mary Ella—would stop by to check on her.

When she heard a quiet rap on her closed door a moment later, she called out “Come in,” expecting a nurse to bustle in with more antibiotics or a breakfast tray or something.

Instead, a tall, dark-haired figure appeared in the doorway as if she had conjured him with her thoughts. He wore a dress shirt and tie and a pair of slacks and had obviously dropped in on his way to the police station.

“Riley. Hi!”

In an instant, she was aware of how terrible she must look. Her hair was probably matted and tangled, she was wearing an oh-so-attractive hospital gown and she hadn’t seen the inside of her makeup bag in thirty-six hours. She was mortified for just a moment, then gave herself a mental eye roll. She was alive. That was the important thing. She couldn’t do anything about the rest of it anyway.

She must be feeling better if she could worry about her vanity, she thought, as Riley moved into the small hospital room, taking up more space than he should given the laws of physics and particle displacement.

“Hi. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

She worked the button on the bed that raised her head to more of a sitting position. “I’ve been up for a while. I was just thinking about you, actually.”

Surprise flickered in the green of his eyes. “Oh?”

“I was hoping you didn’t suffer any hypothermia or anything from the accident. You were in that water with us a long time.”

“Nothing some hot coffee and a couple of blankets didn’t take care of. I’m fine.”

He didn’t smile when he spoke and she again had that strange, instinctive sense that something was terribly wrong. Like her mother, he looked haggard and tired. A few more lines fanned from his eyes, a new tightness around his mouth.

“What about you?” he asked. “You’re looking good.”

She made a face. “And you used to be such a good liar.”

Now he did smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes as he pulled a chair over closer to her bedside.

“So what does the doc say? What are the damages?”

She thought of her conversation with Jeff and then later in the evening with Dr. Murray, who had indeed been kindly and avuncular. “My arm is broken in two places and my left ankle now has more hardware than the robot Owen built for his science fair project last fall. The right ankle is sprained. The head is okay. Mild concussion and only four stitches. Dr. Murray tells me to expect to feel like I was hit by a truck for at least a month.”