Her Heart's Divide Read Online Free PDF Page B

and relief, Jack acted with total normalcy. If it hadn’t been for Ryan telling me about some of their private conversations, I might have been able to write off the weekend’s events as an aberration. Some kind of freak thing to be ignored and forgotten—like, oh, making a pass at your boss at the company Christmas party.
    But Ryan’s descriptions of their chats convinced me that whatever was wrong with Jack hadn’t gone away. Ryan suggested one of our regular cookouts on Friday would be the best thing we could do for our friend, who was by now a mass of tangled nerves.
    Of course, my nerves were getting strung out as I waited for them to get home. When I’d left two hours before, Ryan was helping Jack with another one of the fiddly differences between “his world” and ours.
    “We’ll be home soon, honey,” Ryan had said. “We’ll help you put the meal together.” I chopped the potatoes and onions with a little more force than necessary, wondering what on earth was taking so long.
    An hour after that, I was really worried. They weren’t answering their cell phones. The steaks were back in the fridge, and I would have to start a fresh round of charcoal if I were to cook them, because my first batch of briquettes had long since gone to ash.
    Finally, the sound of crunching gravel came through the evening air. I ran out onto the deck.
    “You dogs!” I hollered. “What’s the point in a cell phone if—”
    But it wasn’t Ryan’s pickup truck, or even Jack’s. The thin bar of reflective blue and red lights on top of the truck’s cab marked it as a police vehicle, even if it was too dark to really see the county logo on the door. I felt my stomach lurch, and my hands went icy. Coincidence, I said to myself. It’s just a funny coincidence, the police stopping by here when my husband is two hours late getting home.
    The officer got out. “Hey, Lila.”
    “Hey, Bill.” As I’ve said on many occasions, this part of Virginia is pretty much one big small town, and I’d known Bill since he was the safety-patrol captain. “What brings you out here so late?”
    “Li, I didn’t want you to get a phone call when I was so close to the house. It came over the radio—there was a nasty accident—”
    “No.”
    “It looks like Jack’s truck hit a ditch and flipped. It happened on the Coller Road sometime in the last two hours. They—”
    “No, Bill, they’re good drivers.” I was shaking with cold.
    “Come on, honey. Sit down a second.” He got me onto one of the deck chairs and held my hands. “We don’t know what happened. Hardly anyone uses that old dirt track. It’s a miracle anyone came along and saw the wreck. There doesn’t seem to have been another vehicle involved. The officer at the scene said that Jack said heard a loud banging noise, and he lost control.”
    “Well, what did Ryan say?”
    Bill swallowed hard. “Lila, I’m here to take you to the hospital if you don’t think you can drive. Ryan’s unconscious, and they’re taking him in now.”
    The hospital wasn’t close by, but I don’t remember any of the ride, except for the sound of the siren. The emergency room was a blur of too-bright lights and Bill saying, “This is the wife of the MVA that just came in. Can she go to him?” And the woman in the bile-green smock looking at me with pity and saying I should wait for the doctor. After that, the room started to spin.
    I didn’t faint, although I wanted to. The nurse got me to a seat and practically forced my head between my knees before she vanished. A few minutes later I felt her slap a cold, wet towel on my neck. I shivered and looked up at her.
    “I have to know. Is my husband…I mean…is he—” I couldn’t get the question out of my mouth.
    “Oh, honey,” she said. “He’s alive. But we don’t really know much right now, and he’s unconscious. If you’ll just wait for the doctor to finish the examination, we might know more. Are you okay now?”
    I nodded