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Remmi had leaned a jean-clad hip on the bathroom counter near the sink. “But if I had a phone, you could always reach me and—”
“You?” she’d said, surprised, glancing up at her daughter, her eyes narrowing as if she’d just realized that Remmi might have a mind of her own, one with separate opinions from her mother’s. “You think you need a phone?” She’d been shaking her head as she’d plucked a tissue from a box on the counter. “No way. I know where you are.” She wiped foundation from her fingertips. “At least I’d better.” Tossing the dirtied tissue into an overflowing wastebasket beneath the table, she turned back to the mirror and frowned at her reflection. Her gaze had met her daughter’s in the mirror, and as if reading the stubborn set of Remmi’s jaw as rebellion, she added, “No mobile phone. Not in this house. A computer’s bad enough.” A pause. “Got it?”
“Got it,” Remmi repeated, but inwardly she decided that her mother was just being stubborn, set in her ways, and a bitch to boot. She didn’t understand the coming technology and didn’t want to. Didi loved to glorify the past, to wear nostalgic clothes to pretend to be some has-been beauty queen from the fifties and sixties. She lived in a dream world. Also, probably because of Remmi’s quiet obedience in school and at home, Didi thought she had complete control over her daughter’s life. But she was wrong. Remmi was sick of doing whatever Didi wanted, tired of being the “good girl” who was always so responsible, did what she was told, a stellar student destined for a scholarship to, at the very least, a nearby college.
On the very night of the cell phone conversation, Remmi had turned a corner—maybe, more correctly a U-turn—in her life. No more doing what Mom told her, and it all had started with Remmi slipping onto the Internet, using her mother’s credit card to “surf” on the aging computer she’d begged her mother to buy despite Didi’s worries about being hooked up electronically to “God knew what.” Remmi had also started sneaking out with the Toyota at 2:00 AM, once Didi got home from work and had crashed for the night. From that point on, Remmi had taken the car when she could, always filled it with gas, and defiantly wondered if Didi would ever wise up.
If Didi had noticed the change in her daughter’s attitude, she’d never mentioned it, and Remmi had been careful to keep her grades up because she truly believed that her school record was her ticket out of Las Vegas and away from her mother, despite Didi’s own wishes.
Because they were at odds with her own.
Didi had insisted no daughter of hers was going to move out at eighteen and make the same mistakes she had, but Remmi thought it was more that Didi would have herself a built-in babysitter; she’d found out she was carrying twins on the night of their last discussion about Remmi’s life after she graduated from high school.
“You’ll stay here with me and the babies. Live in the house, so there’s no rent or utilities to pay, and save money in the process. There are good schools here in Las Vegas,” she’d said, as if her decision were final, not understanding that in the past few months, Remmi had ached to get out from under her mother’s thumb. Once the babies had arrived, it had only gotten worse. As much as Remmi loved her tiny brother and sister, she wasn’t ready to be a mother or even a handy free babysitter.
Now, she glanced into the back seat.
She would get a cell phone, so that she could call the home number and leave a message or keep trying Seneca.
And Noah? Are you going to try to get in touch with him, too?
“No,” she said aloud and surprised herself, the car lurching as she’d been so vehement she’d inadvertently hit the gas instead of cruising steadily at fifty-five miles an hour. She brought the speedometer down. But she was certain she’d never try to contact Noah Scott again.
Everything had chang
ed. Her own life had blown up in the desert two nights ago, as surely as that fireball had consumed the other car. Now she was mother, father, nursemaid, whatever, as well as half sister, to the little boy strapped into his infant carrier in the back seat of this rattletrap car.
Tightening her grip on the wheel, she stared straight ahead to the spot where the twin beams of her headlights illuminated the pavement. There was a steady stream of taillights as she, along with all these other strangers in their vehicles, moved in a red river through the mountains and the dark night. The others, those in pickups, sedans, vans, and SUVs, all had destinations, she supposed, while she was driving blind through the night and heading to a future that was murky and dark.
CHAPTER 9
OH2 stared down at the man lying in the hospital bed. Not even sixty years old, but looking ancient with tubes running in and out of his body, his skin milky pale, his pajamas rumpled. A motorized wheelchair with a headrest was positioned near the bed, proof that Oliver Hedges was still able to move around a bit, if only with the help of aides and, of course, the chair, an electric marvel, the best money could buy. Still, he was a pathetic figure, a far cry from the robust, helicopter-skiing, deep sea diving, mountain climbing, rugged adventurer he’d been so recently, a mere shadow of the athlete who forty years earlier had thought he might become an Olympian, a bi-athlete due to his strength in cross-country skiing and his deadeye aim with a rifle. He’d been edged out of the competition, losing his anticipated spot to the nineteen-year-old son of Norwegian immigrants, who was an inch taller, a bit faster on skis, and a slightly better shot. Losing his chance at competing as an Olympian had been one of Oliver Hedges’s few failures in life. And a stinging lesson he’d never forgotten.
And look at him now.
A carcass of his former self.
Wasn’t that just too damned bad?
In his firstborn’s opinion, the old man lying in room 124 of Fair Haven Retirement Center deserved every moment of pain and mental anguish he experienced—the greater the agony, the better.
Blue eyes glared up at him. Silent eyes. Accusing eyes. His father never spoke a word to his firstborn, but OH2 had heard that he could talk, make his wants known to the staff. Good enough.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked, knowing there would be no answer. The old man had been in this facility for over a year, ever since the accident had left him without use of his arms and legs because of a “bruised” spinal cord; the doctors hoped that it would heal.
Not a chance, OH2 knew. Though the cord hadn’t been severed, it had been damaged in the unfortunate skiing accident. There were new treatments on the horizon, of course, but they were experimental or, as OH2 thought, iffy at best. The man in the bed was far too compromised. No, this expansive room, with its own gym and private physical therapist, separate nutritionist and personal trainer, wasn’t enough to get him to walk again. So he was stuck here in what was essentially a studio apartment, complete with small kitchen, living area, recliner, and small leather sofa. It wasn’t so bad, with its view of an interior garden filled with blooming cacti and hardy grasses, succulents, and even a Joshua tree. But it was a gilded cage and one he would never leave.
It was too bad the old coot hadn’t died during that unfortunate fall, because his life was probably a torture to him. Well, what goes around, comes around, Old Man.
His father’s very own advice echoed through his mind: As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
Well reap away, you pathetic excuse of a man.
He even smiled to himself at the thought while the man in the bed lay still. Who would’ve thought he’d be reduced to this? Oliver Hedges had once been a titan of industry, the tech industry. But not from any knowledge nor skills of his own, really; he was just an engineer who had gotten lucky enough to pick winners when it came to investing and who had eventually owned 51 percent of a start-up company, supplying the much-needed initial capital for a venture now worth hundreds of millions.
Once awarded Entrepreneur of the Year, he’d been the man who had played rounds of golf with pros and movie stars and politicians, even once getting in eighteen with the Vice President. Heralded as a humanitarian, to boot, because of his donations to a variety of charities, Oliver Hedges was also a lying bastard who had planned to make certain his eldest was disinherited.
So, now, dear old dad was just getting his due. God had found a way to punish the old miser.
