Page 77 of Jett

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IRIDE THE ELEVATORwith Jett to the top floor. When the doors open and we step out into the hall, I glance up at the ceiling lights. Dread washes over me. I remember them flickering, I remember the pain moments before as they moved me from the floor to the stretcher and wheeled me through here on the gurney. I remember wishing those men had just killed me.

I don’t feel any different now.

I dare a glance at Mrs Robinson’s apartment door as we pass. She came to save me. An elderly woman who was frail and all alone burst into my apartment and accosted my attackers with her broomstick, and she died protecting me. I don’t know what happened to Winston. He’s probably sitting in a shelter somewhere awaiting execution.Lucky him. When we turn the corner, blue and white police tape covers my apartment door.

“Shit. I um ... I-I wasn’t thinking. Come on. I’ll take you to my house.” Jet turns and starts walking back to the bank of elevators. I rip the tape off the doorjamb and try the handle. The stained wood slips open and I push it the rest of the way.

I stare at the blood on the carpet, the outline of a body in tape etched into my floor. It doesn’t seem right that there’s only one—all three of us died in this apartment that day. A violent, animalistic sob tears free of my throat.

“Shit. Raine, come on,” Jett says, tugging me back from the door, and I can hear the torture in his voice. The agony. You’d think he’d be used to chalk lines considering how many lives he’s taken and lost. “I should have had someone clean that up. I’m sorry, darlin’. I’m so sorry.”

“I can’t stay here.”

“I know.”

“Come on. Maybe the mountain air will do us both good.” Jett leads me from the wreckage of my apartment, of my life, back to the elevator and downstairs to the car.

On the way, the man in 36B is coming back from the pool, and he stops dead in his tracks when he sees me. “Hey.”

“Hi.” I can barely get the word out before I’m bawling again.

“You know each other?”

“I’m um ... her neighbour.” He glances at Jett’s patch, and clears his throat. “I ... I was first on the scene. I mean, behind Mrs Robinson.”

“You helped keep me alive?”

He scratches his neck in what appears to be a nervous gesture. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Thank you.”

“How’s the baby?”

“She ...” I take a deep breath, but I can’t finish. I can’t bear to say the words. I just shake my head.

“I’m really sorry. For both of you. I keep thinking if I’d just heard something sooner, I could have helped. I could have stopped them.”

“You did enough,” I say, but even as the words leave my mouth, I know it’s not true, and I think he knows it too. I wish he’d done more. I wish someone had heard, come sooner. I wish Jett had never left that morning. I wish a lot of things. “Was there any word on Winston?

“Winston?”

“Mrs Robinson’s dog.”

“Oh, um ... no idea. I didn’t know she had a dog. Guess I never really paid much attention to my neighbours until it was too late, huh?”

I give a non-committal shrug. “It happens.”

“Take care of yourself, okay?”

I nod. Jett shakes his hand and mutters something that sounds like “thank you for saving her”. All the blood is whooshing through my ears, so I walk away because I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how to deal with Jett thanking my neighbour for saving my life when I wish I’d died on the floor with my baby and my elderly neighbour.

I climb in the passenger’s side and close the door, waiting for Jett to take me home, to the house he shared with Mia. The one that still has all of her clothes, shoes, and handbags in the closet as if at any minute she’s going to come home from a day at the spa. The one he hasn’t stayed in since her death.

***

WHEN WE ARRIVE AT JETT’Shouse, the bikes in the drive make it clear that we’re not alone. I feel every step of the lead up to his front porch in my C-Section, and every step I take feels like another in the wrong direction, another step away from my baby. Indie and Ivy meet us at the door, their men behind them. Does it really take this many people to look after a crazy woman suffering post-partum depression?

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