“What do you mean, you left?”
Ouch. That one singed the phone line between Emma’s house and Maggie’s for sure. Emma had spent the last five minutes riffing on that same theme.
And Maggie’s eardrum was aching from the tirade. She’d explained what Ruth had said, and Emma was disagreeing entirely on how to interpret it.
Maggie flopped onto her couch. Not even a dog would fill the cavern forming in her belly. It wasn’t her house that was empty—it was her heart. And it was entirely her fault. “Well, I—”
“What happened to talking to him like Garnet and I suggested?” Emma spat out.
“I did. We talked a lot. It was a disaster.” An hour and a half later, and Maggie hadn’t heard from him. He must have gotten Ruth to unlock the door from the inside and then locked up the building using the exterior key Lachlan had lent him. “And he obviously mended his rift with Ruth, so me leaving helped.”
At least something good came out of that tire fire of an argument.
“What, exactly, did you tell her?” Emma probed.
“That I loved spending time with her.”
Emma’s snort burst through the phone. “Which you proved by taking off?”
“It’s... It’s better that way. If I’m not around, they won’t get hurt.” Her heart cracked. She’d get hurt. She already was hurting. Leaving stank.
“Sounds like the opposite to me, but what do I know?”
“You know a lot.” Her friend might be single, but she knew loyalty. She’d grown up in a functional family. Knew how healthy parenting looked.
So maybe you should listen to Emma’s gut instead of your own.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Emma said. “But you’re not avoiding them getting hurt right now. You’re avoiding you getting hurt. It’s easier not to take the risk, so you’re running. And that’s crap, Maggie. That’s not fair to them or you. You deserve to be happy. Don’t walk away from Asher and Ruth. Trust that Jeff was an anomaly, and walk away from the pain your parents caused. Lachlan did. So can you.”
A fist formed in Maggie’s throat. “You say that as if it would be easy.”
But when was easy ever worth it? It sure as heck wasn’t right being alone in her empty house.
“Your childhood sucked, but your adulthood doesn’t have to. You’re caring and loving and generous. I’m tired of you being afraid,” Emma said.
She swallowed, resisting the tension around her vocal cords. Emma was right. She wasn’t trying to protect them. She was trying to protect herself. Which wasn’t working. “I’m tired of it, too.”
“So go do something about it.”
She mentally peeled away the cold fingers gripping her throat. “I’m scared of screwing things up for Ruth like my parents did for me. But maybe I won’t do that. When have they ever taken my feelings into consideration? I would never purposefully treat her like they did me.”
“And you won’t do it by accident, either. You’re too aware.” Emma cleared her throat. “You could call your parents, you know. If you need to start fresh. Tell them how they’ve impacted your life.”
“I could.” But what was the point? Talking to them wouldn’t bring healing or closure. She wasn’t going to change their behavior, nor would she believe them if they pretended to be sorry. But she could change her own patterns. She could finally believe that she deserved love beyond what they were capable of giving her. She needed to focus on the relationships she did have—Asher and Ruth, Lachlan and his family, Emma, Garnet and Caleb—rather than on the people who’d failed her by manipulating her or walking away. “I don’t want to talk to them. But I do need to choose to act differently going forward. Find healing with the people I actually love.”
And maybe Asher was still over at the barn working. She could apologize to him and Ruth in person. Thanking Emma and hanging up, she scrambled into ballet flats and a hoodie and dashed out into the sleet.
The kink in Asher’s neck was legend. Happened when you fell asleep propped against a door. Crap. How long had he been asleep? Long enough for the dog to be whining and scratching at the door. And what the hell was smelling like burning plastic? His eyes watered.
Burning plastic.
“Ruth? What’s going on in there?”
He glanced at the ceiling. A thin wisp of smoke escaped between the closed door and the jamb. Pulse skyrocketing, he got to his knees and pounded on the door with a fist. Goddamn it, why hadn’t he gotten those keys from Maggie right away? “Ruth!”
A thin shriek layered over the whining dog. “Daddy!”
“You need to unlock the door,” he yelled, trying to keep his voice calm while he projected, but there was a damned fire in there with his kid and—
Head in the game, Ash. You got this. Alex’s voice.
“Watch over our baby, sweetheart,” he muttered, testing the door handle for heat—none, thank God—before frantically jiggling the lever. “Ruth! Where are you? Can you get to the door?”
She screamed, a petrified noise that had him two seconds from pissing himself.
The dog barked, and a steady stream of smoke leaked out over Asher’s head. He yanked his phone from his pocket and pressed the emergency dial button. It was impossible to hold the phone to his ear properly. His hands were shaking hard enough to register on the Richter scale.
“Can you get to the door?” he shouted. “If you can, crawl as fast as you can!”
Another shriek, then a loud thunk as what he prayed was a ten-year-old body collided with the door. The handle jiggled from the other side.
“Nine-one-one, state your emergency. Police, fire, or ambulance.”
“Fire! Sutter Creek Veterinary Clinic. My daughter’s locked in an office,” he said into the phone. “Ruth, you’re going to need to unlock the door from your side, baby—”
The door opened with a click and a whoosh, and she and the dog barreled out in a billow of acrid smoke.
He coughed, then pushed Ruth and Jackson ahead of him in the direction of the front exit with one hand, still holding his phone to his ear. How was there an effing fire in a brand-new building? And why weren’t the sprinklers coming on? “Keep your head low, Ruth,” he said, ducking under the smoke and rushing out of the building behind his daughter and the dog.
“Sir?” the operator said. “Your daughter is locked in with the fire?”
“No,” he said. The fresh air burned his lungs. “We got out. But the building’s on fire.”
“Asher!” Maggie tore around the side of the clinic, eyes wild with panic. “The office window—are those flames? Oh, my God, what happened? Are you okay?”
“We’re fine, but yeah, something caught fire in the office somehow—Ruth got out in time, and Jackson seems okay.” Reiterating the location to the 911 operator, he shuttled everyone farther from the barn. Icy rain spattered them, and they huddled under the branches of a towering pine tree beside the clinic, watching orange and white flicker in the window.
The window shattered, a sharp report. Flames licked out, climbing the edges of the frame.
Ruth whimpered and burrowed into Maggie’s arms. Asher clutched them both to his chest, and even though his daughter smelled like smoke and his throat stung and Maggie and Lachlan’s business was literally going up in flames, he had everything he needed.
Ruth coughed, then startled. She grabbed his arm. “Do you have my backpack?”
“No, honey. It was on the floor next to me in the hall.” Oh, man. All of Alex’s paraphernalia she’d collected was in that bag. No way could they retrieve it, though. Damn. “It’s—it’s gone. I’m so sorry. But what matters is that we got out—”
“Papa’s letters,” she shrieked, sagging against him. Tears smeared the hint of soot on her cheeks. “I need them!”
“We’ll have to wait for the fire department,” he said, squeezing her tighter. “We can’t safely go back in.”
Maggie broke out of his embrace, eyes wild with panic. “Do you have copies?”
He shook his head, regret burrowing deep in his core. “Stupidly, no.”
“Was the hallway on fire?” She backed up a few steps.
“No,” he said. “Just the office, but who knows how far it’s spread.”
She scanned the front of the building. “It’s worth checking.”
“No, it’s not,” he snapped. Ruth let out a sob, and he squeezed her tighter. “I know they’re irreplaceable, honey, but no inanimate object is worth risking a life for.”
She buried her face against him, shoulders shaking.
Lips set in a grim line, Maggie lifted her chin and took off toward the barn.
“Maggie!” he called, swearing a blue streak. The dog barked, and Asher grabbed him by the collar to stop him from bolting after Maggie. With Jackson straining in his grip on one side and holding up Ruth on the other, he almost lost his balance. Or maybe that was his leg muscles weakening from sheer terror as Maggie neared the barn. ”What are you doing?”
“She can’t lose her father again!” she shouted back, swinging open the front door and disappearing into the smoke.
Ruth screamed. The dog howled. Asher wanted to do both things, but Alex’s reminder to keep his head in the game echoed in his mind.
“Think, think,” he muttered to himself. Sirens sounded from down the street, but Asher could barely hear them from the roar of blood in his ears. Holy God. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t run in after Maggie. But he couldn’t just stand here and watch her risk her life over a few sheets of paper, either. His heart threatened to explode from beating so hard.
“You did this,” he whispered, wishing Alex could actually hear him. “Now fix it.”
Ruth raised her chin, face a mask of guilt and horror. “I did this?”
“No, honey, I was talking to myself,” he lied, his voice cracking. Tears spilled hot on his cheeks. “It’s my fault.” He raised his voice as loud as he could. “Maggie! It’s not worth it. Come out!”
“I love you, Daddy. And I love Maggie and she’s in there and she’s going to die like Papa—” Ruth collapsed against him again, an incomprehensible wail keening from her little body.
“She won’t die, Ruth.” He couldn’t survive it, not again—
“Asher!” A commanding male voice came from behind him. “Get into the parking lot! You need to be farther from the building.”
Keeping his grip on Ruth and the dog, he turned to face the person. Sheriff Rafferty jogged toward them, wearing street clothes and a grim expression. The fire truck pulled into the parking lot and the crew piled out and flew into action, stretching hoses and shouting orders.
“Maggie went back in,” he said, gasping through tears. He jerked his head in the direction of the burning building. Burning... Goddamn it. “About a minute and a half ago. Through the front door.”
Rafferty’s face went ashen. “Inside?”
“Yes,” Asher confirmed with a croak.
Swearing loudly, the sheriff jogged toward the barn. He seemed to check himself for a second before plowing ahead. One of the firefighters noticed, shouted at him to stop.
But he didn’t.
And thirty seconds later, he emerged from the door, with Maggie in a firefighter’s hold over his shoulder.
She was limp. Way too limp.
So were Asher’s knees. He locked them to keep from falling over.
“Maggie!” he called. He muttered a desperate prayer, stumbling over the Hebrew that had come easily to him the last time he’d begged for the life of a person he loved.
Sheriff Rafferty jogged a safe distance from the building before shifting Maggie in his arms, stripping the backpack from her shoulder and laying her on the lawn.
Of course she’d gotten the backpack.
“Is sh-she o-ok-k-kay, Daddy?” Ruth shuddered in his arms.
“I don’t know.” He wanted to fall to the ground, but he couldn’t. He had to stay standing for Ruth, and they both needed to stay out of the way while the first responders worked—
“She’s breathing,” the sheriff said, the relief in his voice a fraction of what flooded through Asher.
He hugged his daughter. “You know what, I do know. She will be okay.” They all would. He’d make sure of it.
Why the heck was her back wet? And the world was so danged blurry. Something was dripping on her face, so Maggie kept her eyes closed. Her head throbbed, and her throat burned like she’d swallowed a hot coal. And almighty Cheetos, her hands felt like she’d touched a lit barbecue—oh, wait. The fire. Maggie coughed, gasping for breath.
Someone settled an oxygen mask around her face, and the cool stream of air forced its way into her lungs.
“Maggie Reid, you are a stupid woman.”
The sharp voice came from her left. She knew that voice.
“No, Ryan, you’re stupid. You deserted my sister.” The mask muffled her words.
“Oh my God, Maggie.” Someone knelt on the ground by her head. A big hand stroked her hair. Lips landed on her forehead. “Stupid is right.”
“She is not stupid—she’s brave!” a small, tear-rent voice insisted. “She got my letters.”
Shoes—and paws, maybe?—scuffed the ground to her right. She cracked open one eye.
Ruth stood a couple feet away, gripping Jackson’s collar in one hand and the singed backpack in the other. Asher’s face, shattered with worry, swam in Maggie’s vision. Had she ever seen anything so beautiful as this man and his daughter? She tried to smile at him, but the mask got in the way.
She went to take it off but a hand stopped her.
“Christ, keep your oxygen on,” Ryan snapped. “I thought you watched This Is Us. You don’t run into a goddamn fire.”
Not normally, no, but when a young girl was about to lose her most precious memory from her dead father, and all you could think about was how you would do anything to hear one sentence from your own father as loving as the thousands of sentences in that stack of letters? Then you did.
Because of love. She couldn’t feel anything except love right now. For Asher and Ruth and the goofy dog straining to lick Maggie’s face, and even her sister’s jerk of an ex-boyfriend, who’d risked his life to chase her into a burning building because she had rejection issues and—
“Maggie. Breathe,” Asher murmured calmly, his hand on her shoulder. “You’re going to hyperventilate.”
She locked gazes with him. His glasses did nothing to hide the tears clinging to his lashes.
“I love you,” she said. She turned her head a little, facing Ruth. “And I love you, too, sweetheart. Promise.”
A stretcher rolled up beside her. “Hey there, Dr. Reid. Let’s get you off the ground and under a roof. You have a couple of burns that need attention.”
Ah, that explained the barbecue hands. Crud.
“I saw her go down,” Ryan said. “She was crawling on her knees. No C-spine issue. Burns on her palms and wrists, though.”
Asher hissed in sympathy as she showed the EMT her wounds.
“That’s a whole lot of ouch, Dr. Reid. Want me to treat you in your exam room, or do you figure we should head for the human hospital?” the EMT teased. He supported her as she sat up and shifted onto the lowered gurney, then promptly rolled her toward the parking lot. She lifted her head to keep Asher and Ruth in her sight.
“Stay with me, please.” Even if her words sounded like she was speaking underwater because of the oxygen, she figured her pleading look got the message across.
Asher bent his head, handed Ruth his keys, and said something to her that Maggie couldn’t hear over the noise of the firefighters and other emergency personnel. Ruth nodded and took Jackson out of view. To the car? Maggie’s head swam as she tried to track the duo.
“Relax, Maggie. Put your head down and enjoy the comfy bed.”
The EMT’s dry suggestion made her chuckle, which made her hack and wheeze. He and his partner lifted her into the ambulance and started treating her burns.
A strong hand settled on her shoulder and Asher’s face came into view. He settled on the bench opposite the stretcher and cupped both her cheeks. “Hey. I—I can’t ride with you. I want to. Really. But I have Ruth and the dog. And the EMTs want to check us out, too.”
“It’s okay,” she rasped.
“No, it’s not. I’ll drop Jackson off at home and meet you at the hospital, okay?”
“It’s just smoke inhalation.”
“Maggie. You almost—” His voice cracked, and he took off his glasses and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “You almost died. Don’t pretend this is nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You and me and Ruth—it’s everything.” She wanted to reach out to him, but the EMT was busy cleaning and dressing the hand nearest to Asher.
Fatigue creased the corners of his mouth. “Let’s shelve that, okay?”
“I want to talk now,” she croaked.
He looked up at the ceiling as if desperate for patience. “You sound like someone took sandpaper to your vocal cords.” He sighed, and stroked her cheek with gentle fingers. “I’ll see you at the hospital as soon as I can.”