Page 5 of Nothing Less than Magic
“No can do. My sister and her kids are coming up.” The closest my sister ever came to sleeping in a rustic cabin in the woods was a five-star ski resort in Aspen.
Austin lets out a sigh. He knows my sister. He knows she and I rarely speak. “Whatever you want, Chelsea.”
His breezy acquiescence puts me over the edge. Can he really be this insensitive? This oblivious? This cruel? But more important, how did I not see it? This is what I do, what I’ve gained a national reputation for. I am the forgone expert on marriage. And yet, I was wrong about everything. The man I married, the marriage itself, even my nonexistent reconciliation. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I make a show of looking at my watch, because I can’t take sitting here one second longer. “I’ve got to go.” I scoop my purse off the floor and rise.
“Ah, come on, Chelsea. Let’s talk this out.”
That’s what I’d tell one of my clients. To talk it out. Instead, I do the exact opposite. “Fuck off, Austin.”
I rush out of the restaurant so fast, I forget to shield my eyes as I pass by the restaurant’s wall of windows. Now, I feel like retching. By the time I reach the ground floor of the hotel, my heart is racing so fast I can feel it bouncing out of my chest.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
I take the doors out to California Street and start to walk home, hoping the brisk evening air settles me. And clears my head. I’m replaying Austin’s and my conversation, thinking about all the mean things I could’ve said and didn’t, as I start to cross to the other side of the street.
It happens so fast that I don’t have time to step away. All I hear is the squeal of brakes and people screaming. The crunch of metal. More yelling, horns blasting, and in the distance, a siren rents the air. It’s so loud that my head is exploding from all the noise.
Next thing I know, I’m flat on the pavement in excruciating pain. The ground is wet and sticky. And black. Or is it red? The sharp smell of metallic fills my nose, and everything around me seems to have erupted in chaos.
They say you see your entire life flash before your eyes before you die. I see my sister Lolly and me, playing hopscotch on the sidewalk in front of our parents’ house just before the shots ring out. The police are there to clear the scene. My uncle, tall, handsome, and sad—so, so sad—comes to whisk us away. Forever.
Next, I see Austin and me on our wedding day, my white veil fluttering in the breeze, as we recite our vows on a sandy beach in Puerto Vallarta. It’s there, deep in my chest. Security at long last.
The last thing I see is the man in the restaurant, the one with the orange and black plaid tie, staring down at me before everything disappears.
And then there is nothing.
Chapter 2
“Hey, you’ll get eaten alive out here.”
I feel warm hands on my shoulders, shaking me. “What? Get off of me.” I’m startled awake and my hammock sways, then pitches to one side before I right it without falling out.
“Whoa, whoa.” The man holds his hands up in the air and backs away. “I come in peace.”
It takes me a few seconds to get my bearings. Then it all rushes back to me in Technicolor. I’ve come to the cabin to recuperate and regroup. Two weeks of blissful nothingness, where I can pretend that the events of the last week were just a bad dream. That no, my ex-husband isn’t getting married to someone other than me.
And no, I wasn’t run down by a cable car.
I pull myself up into a sitting position and stare at the man standing in front of me. He looks vaguely familiar, but in my hazy state, I can’t quite recall who he is. And we’re here . . . alone. The nearest neighbor is a good half mile away.
“Do I know you?”
He tilts his head to the side and looks at me like I’m a little off my rocker before saying, “You hired me to fix your roof.” He glances up at the sky, which is clear and blue. “Winter is coming.” A slight smile plays on his lips when he says it, and I suspect it’s because he’s quoting that famous line fromGame of Thrones, which has sort of become a cliché now, but whatever.
There’s also the small issue that I have zero recollection of hiring anyone to fix the roof. Maybe Austin did. Or maybe I’ve lost some of my short-term memory from the impact of the cable car. I did hit my head, after all.
Regardless of who hired him, fixing the roof is a good idea, because in the last rain, we had two leaks. One over the sink in the kitchen, the other in the middle of the primary bedroom. The latter warped and discolored a few of the floorboards. Now, I have to cover the area with a rug to hide the unsightly damage.
“Um, okay,” I say, noting for the first time that he’s a rather large man, tall and broad, which alone should be menacing. But for whatever reason, it’s not, though a person can never be too careful.
I look around for his car, wondering how he drove up without me hearing anything; then I remember I’m in the back of the cabin, away from the driveway.
The hammock is no easy thing to get out of gracefully, but I manage to do it without falling on my ass. He just stands there as if he’s waiting for his marching orders. I walk around the side of the house to find a pickup in the driveway. There’s no roofing company insignia on the vehicle, just a few dings and a ladder strapped to the top of the truck’s utility rack.
I turn around to find that the guy is a few feet behind me.
