Turn My World Upside Down: Jo's Story Read online

  Even as he heard the sirens approaching, though, Cash turned his back on the burning cottage. Holding the boy close, he stalked off to get help.

  Jo raced into the hospital lobby with Sam just a step or two behind her. Their boots sounded overly loud in such a quiet place. They made a sharp right turn into the narrow waiting room that smelled of antiseptic and fear, the two of them slid to a stop, and the silence was suddenly deafening.

  The TV, mounted high in the corner, flashed with some soap opera, peopled by fabulously dressed and impossibly pretty actors, but the sound was muted. Two rows of scoop-shaped green plastic chairs dotted the green-flecked linoleum and the mint-green walls finished off the slightly nauseating color scheme.

  Jo hardly noticed.

  The Marconis were gathered.

  Sam’s husband, Jeff, and her daughter, Emma, were already rushing toward her, Nana paced slowly in her black orthopedic grandma shoes, and Lucas Gallagher was standing beside the ugly chair where a very pregnant Mike was perched uncomfortably.

  “Mike?” Jo crossed to her youngest sister. “What’re you doing here? You shouldn’t be up.”

  She frowned. “Like I could just sit at home?”

  True. No Marconi would be able to stay away when one of them was threatened.

  “Have we heard anything?” Sam asked, sweeping Emma up close for a quick, tight hug, as if reassuring herself of at least one child’s safety.

  “Nothing yet,” Lucas said, dropping one hand onto his wife’s shoulder. “The doctor’s still with him.”

  Mike reached up and covered his hand with hers, their fingers interlocking. “Nobody’s talking to us.” She waved a hand at the receptionist in the far corner. “She won’t even look at me anymore.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have threatened to kick her ass,” Jeff said quietly.

  Mike jutted her chin at Sam’s husband. “Don’t start with me, Weasel Dog,” she warned. “I’m way too pregnant to put up with much more.”

  “Down, tiger,” Lucas murmured, tightening his grip on his wife.

  “For God’s sake, Mike—” Exasperated, Sam blew out a breath.

  “Is Jack gonna be okay?” Emma asked no one in particular.

  “Sure he is,” her dad reassured her.

  “Is there anybody we can talk to?” Jo demanded, looking from one face to another.

  “The doctor will come,” Nana said, holding up one hand like a traffic cop.

  “While we’re young?” Jo demanded.

  “Dial it down,” Sam told her, wincing as Jo’s voice hit a pitch that was better suited for a football game.

  “We pray now,” Nana said softly, and fingered the shining, blue crystal beads of the rosary dangling from between her gnarled fingers. A stray beam of sunlight shot through the window, hit the rosary just right, and briefly lit up Nana’s black dress in a rainbow of color before just as quickly winking out again.

  Pray.

  Yeah. That’ll help.

  Jo hadn’t done a lot of praying lately. Well, not since last year, when she’d stopped by St. Joseph’s church just long enough to tell God to kiss off. Nice move, she told herself now, as she rubbed at her forehead, trying to ease the headache crashing against the inside of her skull. Piss off the Big Man and see how screwed things get.

  “You might as well sit down, Jo,” Sam’s husband Jeff said as he stroked his wife’s shoulder in a slow, gentle caress. “We can’t do anything until somebody comes out to tell us what’s going on.”

  She nodded, but knew she wouldn’t sit. How could she sit when she didn’t know? Didn’t— “What was he doing at Cash’s house anyway?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.

  “Is that really important right now?” Mike snapped, then eased back as Lucas stroked his fingers through her long blond hair.

  Jo noticed the gestures passing between her sisters and their husbands. Maybe they were all so used to those tiny signs of affection that they didn’t pay attention anymore, but suddenly she was. Idle touches, gentle pats, a look, a smile, a whispered word. All tiny signs of the connection they shared.

  And for the first time, Jo was envious of it.

  Not just the affection part, but the bond. The thread that tied them so closely together that one of them wasn’t complete without the other. For so long, she’d told herself that she didn’t need a man in her life. That she was fine on her own. And she’d believed it—or at least she’d convinced herself she believed it, which was pretty much the same thing.

  Yet now . . .

  Now she was thinking about Cash. About the night before. About how she’d almost . . . God.

  So not the time.

  “Is Jack gonna die?” Emma’s voice came thin, worried.

  “No.” Jo said it before Sam could answer her daughter. Dropping to one knee, she looked into Emma’s tear-streaked face and reached out to swipe those tears away with careful fingers. “Jack’s not going to die.” She said it firmly, as if by being confident, she could make it so. “He’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”

  Sam stroked one hand over her daughter’s pigtails and chewed at her bottom lip.

  “Rocket Man,” Mike said into the following silence, “why don’t you go find us all some coffee?”

  Lucas nodded, then looked sternly at the woman he adored. “You’re not getting out of that chair, right?”

  She swept her fingers across her heart, then lifted them into a perfect imitation of a Girl Scout salute. “Swear to God. I’ll be right here when you get back.”

  “All right.” He bent down and kissed her forehead, then turned to Jeff. “Give me a hand?” Not waiting for an answer, he hurried out of the waiting room.

  Jeff gave Sam a quick pat on the rear, then followed Lucas out.

  Alone but for Emma and Nana, the sisters huddled together. Sam took a seat beside Mike and pulled her daughter up onto her lap. “What’d the hospital say when they called?” she asked.

  Mike shrugged and looked at her grandmother. “The hospital called the house, Nana called me. All I know is, Cash brought Jack in.”

  Nana nodded. “The hospital say Jack issa hurt. I call Michaela.”

  “And I called you guys,” Mike said.

  “Where the hell’d Cash go?” Jo wanted to know, looking around the room as if half expecting him to morph right out of the wall or something. “Why isn’t he still here? What? Did he just dump the kid and keep on going? What’s that about?”

  “Issa no importante where is Cash,” Nana said softly, sneaking up on Jo from behind like some tiny, Italian ghost. “Now issa time for worry about Jack. We pray.”

  “You go ahead, Nana,” Jo said, and took a step back, shaking her head. She wouldn’t go running to God in time of crisis when she hadn’t bothered talking to Him in months. She would at least not be a hypocrite.

  Mike eased back in her chair, winced and rubbed both hands over her truly impressive belly.

  “You okay?” Sam asked, drawing Emma closer as she slumped tiredly in the chair.

  “Are the babies okay?” Emma wanted to know.

  “We’re all fine,” Mike answered, and found a smile for her niece. “We’re just a little crowded.”

  “Josefina,” Nana said, poking at her arm, apparently unwilling to let this whole praying thing go. “Why you no want to pray with me?”

  Jo gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. “I’m too worried to pray,” she said, hoping her grandmother would leave it alone.

  A foolish hope at best.

  “When you are worried, issa best time to pray. God knows.” She lifted her hand and pointed her index finger skyward. “He listens.”

  “If He already knows, then I don’t have to pray,” Jo said, wondering how in the hell she’d been sucked into this conversation while her little brother was back in the bowels of this damn hospital going through God knew what.

  She scrubbed her hands over her face, then stuffed both hands into her jeans pockets. Nerves jumped inside her
and her mouth was dry as dust. She needed to do something, damn it.

  “Nana,” Sam was saying quietly, “maybe now’s not a good time to—”

  The middle child. Always looking to make peace. Even though she was rarely thanked for it.

  “Say a rosary for me, too, Nana,” Mike threw in, hoping to take the heat off Jo.

  “I say a rosary for all my grandchildren,” Nana muttered, shooting a meaningful glance at Jo. “And especially for Josefina, I think.”

  Guilt pooled in the pit of her stomach, but she was used to that. You couldn’t grow up Italian and Catholic without learning how to live with guilt. “Thanks, but I’m fine, Nana. Jack’s the one in trouble.”

  “I’m not so sure,” the old woman whispered.

  Jo checked her watch, threw a quick glance at the reception desk where a bored blonde sat filing her nails, then looked back at her sisters. “I gotta get out of here for a while. Need some air. I’ll be back.”

  She turned and crossed the green-flecked lobby tile in a few long strides and heard Mike explain to Nana, “It’s okay. Jo just needs to go kick something. She’ll be back.”

  Kick something.

  Sounded good, but it wouldn’t help, she knew. Reaching up, she grabbed the bill of her baseball cap and pulled it down snug on her forehead. She hit the glass doors with both hands and gratefully left the scent and silence of the hospital behind.

  Sunlight hit her tired, gritty eyes like a sledgehammer and she winced and sucked in a breath. Didn’t help. She still felt as if she’d been run over and kicked to the curb. Stomping to the side of the hospital, she stepped into the shade of the building and leaned back against the cold stucco. The rough texture poked at her through the fabric of her Marconi Construction T-shirt and she welcomed the distraction. Propping one foot behind her on the wall, she stared down the slope of the hill toward the meadow that stretched along the outskirts of town.

  In that meadow, the local growers were setting up their stalls and lining up the flowers they’d be selling beginning this weekend. The Flower Fantasy was about to kick off, and soon busloads of tourists would be flooding Chandler. The whole town would be filled with the commingled scents of hundreds of different blooms, and growers from all over central California would be happily counting up profits.

  In other words, the world marched on while she stood here wondering what the hell was going on with her little brother.

  “He’ll be all right.”

  She jerked away from the wall and spun around when Cash walked up. His black shirt was torn and filthy. Soot streaked his forehead and his black hair looked a little singed around the edges.

  In short, he looked great.

  Damn it.

  “What happened?” Her voice sounded choked, strained.

  “There was a fire. At the guest cottage.”

  “How’d it start?”

  “I’m not sure.” Cash pushed one hand through his hair, shifted his gaze from hers, then let his hand drop listlessly to his side. He’d been sitting in his truck for the last half hour. Waiting. He couldn’t leave the hospital without finding out about Jack, but he hadn’t wanted to wait inside with the Marconis, either. When he saw Jo stomp outside alone, though, he’d had to follow her.

  “I was at the workshop. Smelled smoke.” He shook his head and squinted into the distance, staring down the hill at the workers setting up booths. He wasn’t really seeing them, though. Instead, he was watching the flames, feeling that rush of gut-wrenching fear again.

  “Heard Jack scream,” he said tightly. “Found him on the deck, trying to get away from the fire.”

  “Jack started the fire?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged and blew out a breath. “Whatever happened, it was an accident. And my fault.”

  “You weren’t even there,” she pointed out.

  “My place. My fault.” His chest hurt and he slapped one hand against it, rubbing absently. “Think he tried to use the propane torch like I showed him last week.”

  Last week. Felt longer ago than that. He remembered the flash of excitement on the boy’s face, and in his mind, that expression faded now into the pain he’d seen only an hour ago. Shaking his head as if to wipe away the unwanted images, he said, “I saw the torch. In the fire—casing exploded.”

  “Oh God.”

  “He could’ve been killed.” Each word was squeezed out of his throat, as painful as if they’d been jagged shards of glass.

  “He wasn’t.”

  Cash looked at her, saw the fear shining in her pale blue eyes, and fought down his urge to comfort her. He couldn’t take that step. Not now. He was way too close to the edge.

  “Why the hell aren’t you pissed off?”

  “At you?”

  “Yes.” He scraped one hand over his jaw, then across the back of his neck. “He was hurt at my place. It was my fault.”

  “Jesus, Cash,” Jo said, “how is it your fault that my brother went to your place and burned down a building?”

  “I shouldn’t have left the torch there.”

  “And he shouldn’t have touched it.”

  “He’s a kid.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Don’t you get it?” he snapped, grabbing her shoulders and yanking her close enough that she had to tip her head back to meet his gaze. “He could have died in that fire.”

  “ ‘Could have’ doesn’t mean a damn thing. Jack’s alive. You found him. You saved him.”

  He let her go and swallowed hard past the knot of tension lodged in his throat. “You still don’t get it.”

  Before she could speak, the door behind her flew open and Sam stuck her head out. “Jo—Hey, Cash.” She grinned at him. “The doc was just in. Said we can see him. Jack’s okay.”

  Relief washed through him and left him nearly as weak-kneed as the fear had an hour ago. When Sam ducked back inside, Jo turned her gaze on him. “You want to come in?”

  God, yes.

  And no.

  He backed up, instinctively pulling back from any kind of emotional attachment. He was connected here, but it wasn’t too late to sever that link.

  “It’s not your fault,” Jo said.

  Cash laughed shortly. “When it comes right down to it, Josefina, all of this is my fault.”

  Then he turned and left her watching after him as he walked across the parking lot, alone.

  “Am I in trouble?”

  Jack looked pitiful. A small boy with a still-dirty face, his left arm was in a cast and Band-Aids dotted his face and right arm. He moved his feet under the sheet, as if trying to find a way to make a run for it.

  For the moment, Emma, Lucas, Jeff, and Nana remained in the waiting room, giving the sisters time with their brother. But who knew how long that would last?

  “What do you think?” Sam asked, reaching down to stroke his hair back from his face. Glancing at the grime clinging to her palm, she wiped her hand on her jeans and shrugged.

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” he said, then looked past them at the empty doorway. “Where’s Cash?”

  “Good question,” Sam muttered, shooting Jo a quizzical look.

  Jo ignored her and focused on their brother. “What happened?” she asked, gripping the metal rail at the edge of his bed. Around them, people in the emergency room came and went, machines hummed and clicked, and somewhere down the hall a baby wailed.

  Jack started talking, pulling at the sheet with his fingertips and shooting uncertain glances around the room. The Marconi sisters gathered around their little brother as he told them all about the fire, how it had happened and how Cash had jumped practically into the flames to carry him out.

  “And then he brought me here in his truck, and he drove really fast and said that he’d call you guys and I told him I didn’t want you to know, but he said you had to know and I told him I’m sorry and stuff, and he said it was okay, so—” Jack took a deep breath and blew it out again. “Is it okay?”

  “It will be,”
Sam said, and held out one hand. “You’ll have to talk to Cash about this. And we’ll have to find a way to pay for the damage . . .”

  “Hey,” Mike told him, as she laid her hand on top of Sam’s, “we’ll work it out. Besides, you’re not a true Marconi until you do something really stupid.”

  “Trust Mike on that,” Jo told the little boy staring up at them with a tremulous smile on his face. “She knows all about stupid.”

  “Funny,” Mike whispered.

  Jo laid her hand atop her sisters’.

  “So,” Sam asked with a wink. “You gonna join in on the Marconi shake?”

  “Really?” Jack looked from one to the other of his sisters in disbelief. For nearly a year, he’d watched them link hands like this and he knew just how special it was to them. And now, for the first time, he was being included.

  “You’re a Marconi, aren’t you?” Jo asked, smiling at him as if she weren’t really mad at all.

  “Yeah,” Jack said, and winced as he reached out to lay his small right hand on top of his sisters’. “I guess I am.”

  “Jack he will be fine, the doctor tells me,” Nana said as Jo pulled into the driveway.

  “Yeah, I know. I just felt bad leaving him at the hospital overnight.”

  “Is better he issa there, with the bump onna head.” True.

  The doctors just wanted to be sure he wasn’t concussed or something, and hey, Jo was all for being careful. But leaving a little boy all alone in a hospital just didn’t feel right. Still, she couldn’t leave Nana alone, either, could she?

  Man.

  She bent over and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. Every inch of her body ached and pounded. Her brain kept racing with “what might have beens,” and to top the whole mess off, she couldn’t stop thinking about Cash.

  Hell, he wasn’t even Italian and he’d picked up the guilt banner and was running with it. Key word there being “running.” He hadn’t been able to get away from her fast enough. So much for their little “moment” the night before. So much for her thinking that all of his flirting over the last year had meant diddly.