Page 34 of Fire Fight
TWO WEEKS LATER
Gingerly,I slipped my linen pants on, mindful of the bandages that covered much of my left side. Then I slipped on my top, the same color and material as my pants. After several exhausting minutes of trying to shrug it on without pulling at the wounds on my back, my phone rang.
“Hi, Mom,” I said when I answered, already exhausted by the call.
“Hi, honey,” she said brightly.
Mom was all about cheerfulness these days, ever since she read some health magazine article about how optimism would help me heal faster.
Mostly, it grated on my last nerve.
I appreciated her and Dad, and the week they’d spent here in Dusk Valley with me, reading to me or telling me stories about home while I was suffering through the worst of the healing.
The itching had gotten so bad at one point, I wished I’d died in that fire.
Okay, that was a lie. I was grateful to still be breathing. Especially since I was all Mom and Dad had left.
Hell, my life was allIhad left.
Before this ordeal, my life had been dictated by two traumatic events: the loss of my sister, and the story that nearly cost me my own life. After Lola died, I threw myself into activities, trying to use my friends and a packed schedule to hold myself together. For a long time, it worked. I survived the rest of high school and college unscathed. There’d be no filling the hole my big sister left in my heart, but distance from her death made it a little easier to breathe every day. Then there was the Bullough story, and the beating I’d taken for looking into it, that had the opposite effect. I withdrew from everyone and everything, quit my job at theSun Times, and moved across the country. Desperate for a fresh start where no one knew me, where I could fly under the radar and live my life in relative peace and silence.
And here I was again, facing down the aftermath of yet another trauma I’d have to carry for the rest of my life.
Maybe this time, I’d find a happy medium.
That started with humoring my mother when she smothered me. Them spending last week here had given Mom the opportunity to dote on me in the way she’d been trying since I’d moved out of their house fifteen years ago. She made it her personal mission to replace my credit, insurance, and ID cards, and had a field day on a trip up to the mall in Boise where she bought me an entirely new wardrobe, even though the only clothes I’d lost were the ones I’d been wearing in the fire.
I’d had to draw the line at her buying me a new phone and adding it to her and Dad’s plan. Once I had a new credit card and access to my money —I didn’t ask how she managed to send everything here to Dusk Valley when my permanent address was in Denver; I wasn’t lookingthatgift horse in the mouth—I ordered a replacement iPhone myself.
Additionally, she’d taken it upon herself to call in a cosmetologistto fix my hair. Before, it had extended halfway down my back, but the fire had taken random odd chunks of it, forcing the woman to cut it to my shoulders. The new length took some getting used to.
At first, I’d cried. I loved my long hair, and losing it felt like another thing my attacker had robbed me of in addition to unblemished skin. But I quickly realized those were material things, and I still had my life.
The real kicker had been the loss of my sense of safety. Honestly, anxiety had set in the closer I got to walking out of the hospital, knowing I’d no longer be protected by the security system, guards, staff, and well-lit corridors.
“Was there a reason you called?” I asked, wincing at my tone.Be nice, I silently admonished myself.
“I wanted to check in,” she said. “Wanted to know if the hospital had given you a discharge date yet. We’ve got your room all set up and ready for you to come home.”
Internally, I groaned.
I’d like the record to reflect that I hadn’t bothered to stop her helping me for two reasons. First, I knew she needed to feel useful. Second, while I’d been healing, I hadn’t really been in a position to stop her.
Unfortunately, that was proving to be an error on my part. Now, she was acting like everything she said was gospel and the fact that I was a grown woman with my own free will didn’t matter.
“I’m getting out today, but I’m not coming back to Chicago,” I reminded her as gently as I could.
“Aspen,” my mother sighed, sounding as exasperated as I felt. “We’ve talked about this.”
“No,youtalked. I didn’t argue because I didn’t have the energy. I still don’t. But I’ve made my stance on the matter clear on numerous occasions. You refuse to listen.”
“Sweetheart, you need to be surrounded by family right now.You al-almost—” Her sentence was cut off by a sob, and after some background shuffling, my dad came on the line.
“Sorry, honey,” he said. “You know she means well. And truthfully, I’d feel better if you came home too.”
I understood where they were coming from. I really, truly did. We all dealt with the effects of losing my sister daily. But I didn’t know how to explain it to them in a way that would make sense given all I’d been through. Ineededto be here. Needed to stay in Dusk Valley and finish what I started.
“I know you worry about me after what happened to Lola—” A lump formed in my throat at the mention of my sister, but I pressed on. “I need you guys to trust me when I tell you I can take care of myself. I’m thirty-three, Dad. You have to let me live.”
