Page 26 of Safe in Shadow (Pine Ridge Universe #22)

Chapter Two:

Never, ever unblock creeps

I’M GREEDY.

Not like, obscenely greedy, but I just graduated from college with my nursing degree, which means I’m older and broker than a lot of other people just entering the full-time workforce. It also means I’m fast-tracked to get any job I want, but...

Yeah. May and June were a whirl of applications, interviews, and getting gift cards and checks in the mail as graduation presents.

My mom, bless her Chardonnay-soaked brain, got plastered one weekend and insisted I unblock my dad and my step-dad, Loser One and Loser Two, because she had sent them graduation announcements and Loser One and Loser Two both promised they would send money to my QuikCash app.

I have a feeling Mom badgered them into that.

The point is, I should have said no, I don’t need the money. I should have said, “Mom, you’re two bottles deep, and you’re not thinking right. You told me to avoid both of those deadbeats like the plague.”

But I’m greedy. I thought about how Dad caused me a fortune in therapy bills and how Gary was just a general lecherous cretin who owed me way more than fifteen bucks and a “Congrats!” text for making my teenage years awkward and uncomfortable.

So, I let her unblock their numbers and... lo and behold!

A big fat nothing.

That’s probably because neither man would ever try to contact me, even if I were elected President of the United States.

I take that back. They both would. They’d want to cash in on my success and see if I could erase their parking tickets or something.

But, since I didn’t hear from Loser One or Loser Two, I never thought to remove their numbers from my phone or block them again. Mom went off on a cruise with Aunt Gail and Aunt Sherry, and June rolled into July.

And Loser Two, Gary, called me.

“Molly! Molly, my sweet baby girl, how are you?”

His sweet baby girl? He’d been in my life from ages thirteen to seventeen, and there was something decidedly unfatherly about the way Gary used to look at me.

My nose wrinkled in disgust, but the nurse in me was struck by something.

Gary’s voice, which I hadn’t heard in six years, was different.

It wasn’t just older with age or slurred with drink.

His breathing was labored, and there was a peculiar whistling noise after every breath. “Hi... Uh. How are you?”

“Well, honestly, Molly, not too good. I was in a nasty car accident. Broken ribs. Broken nose. Smashed up my hand real good. Did you get the money I sent you?”

“No.” I arched my eyebrows.

“Huh. Stupid app. My phone got smashed up, too. I bet it didn’t send with my cracked screen.”

Sure. Like you couldn’t tell if money left your account, shattered screen or not? “Well, I didn’t get it. You don’t need to worry about it. Sounds like you should take care of yourself instead, Gary.”

“Heh, that’d be good. So.”

Oh, boy. Here it comes .

“Your mom says you’re gonna be a nurse.”

“I am a nurse. I just graduated with my nursing degree.” I didn’t bother to tell him that I did the five-year program or that I got my masters in nursing and a minor in public health policy.

“Oh! You’re over eighteen now, right?”

“What does— Yes. Yes, I’m well over eighteen.”

“You drive?”

“What??”

“Come see me. I need to see you. You’re practically a stranger to me!”

“Not practically a stranger, I’m an actual stranger! I haven’t seen you since I was seventeen! We don’t know anything about each other. You didn’t even know how old I was.”

“The accident. Concussion.”

Empathy and bedside manner tried to push to the front.

The Nightingale Pledge. The Hippocratic Oath—I know that’s just for doctors, but I know it, and nurses do as much as doctors to help people heal if you ask me!

I had pledged to take care of the vilest diseases, the dregs of humanity, the burned, the disfigured, the criminals, the young, the old. Everyone deserves compassion and care.

But he tried to walk in on me while I was in the shower one too many times for it to be an accident.

He’s not my patient. Patients deserve my compassion. He deserves a boot in his ass.

“Molly, Molly... You’re the only child I’ll ever have—”

“I’m not your kid! You were a creepy-ass stepdad!”

“I’m not proud of how I acted, Molly, but I’ve changed so much in the last ten years.”

“Six.”

“Whatever. That accident cleared my head!”

“You just said it made you fuzzy!”

“Well... Some things are fuzzy, but not my regrets about how I ruined the only chance I’ll ever have to be a father. I know I messed up, big time. But I almost died, and I can see that it’s not too late to change! Swear to God, I almost died. The guy with me on the pier—he died.”

Trauma. Survivor guilt. Many people who have near-death experiences have these big “Come to Jesus” and “Turning over a new leaf” moments.

Nursing gets in your bloodstream like an IV.

I was wavering. “I appreciate that. I’m just not—”

“I did well for myself, Molly. Got a big beach house out on Lake Erie now. I want to leave it to you. I want you to have it, now, so I can see you enjoy it. Maybe I can even come visit you sometime?”

“M-me? You want me to have your big beach house?”

How did Gary end up with a big beach house? When he was married to my mom, he was in and out of work so often we had the unemployment office on our speed dial.

He was charming, though. Mom always believed it wasn’t his fault that he got fired or laid off. Maybe he finally charmed some old rich widow, or he found a job where they need someone to spin bullshit and flattery for eight hours a day.

“You deserve it. I’m so proud of you. You’re a good girl. A girl only good things should happen to and... and I’m really sorry. I’m so sorry, Molly. Moll, I’m sorry, I wish I... I wish everything were different. Wish this had never happened.” He was crying.

There was true grief in his voice.

Something was still off, but...

Well, fuck it, I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t admit that his tearful words and labored breathing did something to me, as a nurse and as the naive teenager who had once begged Gary to take me to the Father Daughter Dance at my junior high.

“I’d love to, but I can’t. It doesn’t feel right.”

A pause. A frantic breath. “Molly. I’m not going to make it. Please. Please, will you come see the house? Come see an old man before it’s too late?”

I frowned. How old was Gary? “How bad was the accident? You said you have broken ribs, and I know they hurt a lot, but they’re not fatal.”

“I didn’t tell you. They don’t think I’m going to make it to tomorrow. Maybe not even until midnight. I told them I didn’t want to croak in a hospital. I’m at my beautiful beach house, the beach house I’m going to leave to my daughter. My Molly. My only hope. Please. Please .”

My gut tingled in a bad way, and my brain, my stupid, stupid brain suddenly whispered, Hey, if you sell that beach house, you could pay off your student loans in a heartbeat.

Or, you could live there. You can get a nursing job anywhere.

Living rent-free in a big beach house—you could rent out the rooms, too.

I’m greedy. Did I mention that?

“What’s the address?”

“34 Silverlake Way, Erie, PA.”

“I’ll be there soon.” I was already looking at the GPS app on my phone. “About three hours.”

“You gotta leave now, then,” he whispered, that whistling, huffing noise growing worse. “Before midnight!”

“Okay, okay. Shh, the more you upset yourself, the harder it is for your body to heal. I know you said they’re not giving much hope, but you sound like you’re holding your own. I’m going to talk to your doctor. There might be another hospital that has—”

“Fine, fine, but please come see me first! Promise you’ll go straight to that—to my beach house.”

“I promise.”

“Your mom—your mom would hate to see me like this. Maybe she shouldn’t come,” Gary suddenly said, voice increasingly frantic.

“Mom can’t come even if she wanted to, Gary. She’s on the second week of a three-week cruise. Her fiftieth birthday present from her sisters.”

“Oh, good. Good. That’s good. She deserves nice things, too.”

Yeah, something was off, but—

Reminder, your Federal Student Loan payment is due in three days. Pay now?

An email notification briefly obscured my screen.

What the heck? Money is money.

I COULDN’T FIND 34 Silverlake Way. I could find 32, 33, and 35. I wondered if Gary had been more out of it than I thought or if my GPS was being stupid. Maybe it took the address of an intersecting road? Whatever. If I could find 32 and 33, I could find 34 or ask the neighbors.

The digital clock on my dashboard says 9:30. That’s not too late to knock on someone’s door. Is it?

“Geez...” I rub my neck, squeezing the knots of tension that have grown along my spine and shoulders for the last three years—endless clinicals, exams, part-time nursing-home work, studying, studying, studying, stress, stress, stress. “Call Mom.”

My phone does its thing, but Mom is probably sprawled out under a limbo pole on the Lido Deck. I just hope to God she’s not sprawled under Loser Number Three. She met Gary on a pub crawl for Aunt Gail’s fortieth birthday, after all.

“Mom, you’ll never believe what happened.

Gary called. He’s giving me one hell of a graduation gift—a beach house.

I’m sure it’s full of black mold and directly in the path of lake effect blizzards or something, but—” My mouth dries out as I turn onto Silverlake Way.

Two normal Cape Cod houses flank a fucking mansion.

That can’t be mine. That can’t be his!