Overnight Wife

A paramedic grabs my arm, pulls me back. “Sir, we need to get through.”

“That’s my wife,” I bark.

His grip on my arm relaxes a little, and his expression shifts to one of understanding. “She’s all right, Mr. Walloway. It looks like just a concussion, but we’re going to need to run some tests.”

My gaze darts from her unconscious form to the stretcher, and then follows the thought out to the stage behind her. “What happened?” I bark, and my question isn’t so much directed at the paramedic anymore as it is at the cluster of my employees scattered around the stage. I spot Bianca, pacing back and forth, her head in her hands, her whole body shaking. Near her, but not quite touching her, Daniel is holding something—a frayed piece of rope. There’s wood in splinters all across the stage.

My stomach sinks. The wreckage looks bad. Was Mara in the middle of that?

The paramedic is handing me something. A card, with an address. “Follow us with her things,” he says, and only when he says that do I register other things scattered across the stage. Mara’s purse, a recognizable lump near the side of the stage, almost as if she dropped it in a panic and bolted. “Your wife is going to be fine, I promise.”

It’s an empty promise, I know. Nobody can promise that for anyone else. But still, it does relax me, just a little, to glance past this competent man toward my wife prone on her stretcher, with those words in my ears. She’s going to be fine, I repeat to myself, before I finally relax my hold on the paramedic and let him go to do his job. Let him take care of my Mara.

In the meantime, feeling less than useless, I pace toward the stage, glaring at everyone in my path.

“Explain what happened,” I bark when I reach the stage itself. I grimace, looking at the wreckage. It looks like some wooden contraption fell from a height. It probably even damaged the floorboards of the stage itself. Fuck. This is going to be expensive. But as long as Mara is all right, that’s all I care about.

“I don’t know how it happened,” Daniel is saying, as I cross behind him to scoop up Mara’s things. Her purse. Her wallet. Some other items, including an envelope, that fell out of the purse itself.

I pause mid-gathering to glance at him. He holds up a frayed rope to demonstrate.

“It looks like somebody tampered with this. Cut part of the line to weaken it. But… who would do that?” Daniel’s frown deepens.

But my gaze drifts past him, to where Bianca is sitting on the edge of the stage, rocking back and forth, her head in her hands, moaning a little. Suspicion crystalizes in my gut. I cross toward her, still holding Mara’s things. When I get close enough, I can hear what Bianca’s muttering under her breath.

“I didn’t mean to hurt her; I didn’t. I just wanted to scare her… Just a scare, that’s all…”

With a scowl, I plant myself next to her, arms crossed. “Why,” I say, loud enough to make Bianca jump and spin around, her eyes wide and fixed on me. “Why did you do this,” I repeat, gesturing over my shoulder toward Daniel and the frayed rope he’s holding.

Bianca stares at me, then him, and for a moment, I think she’s going to deny it. Play dumb. It would probably come naturally to her. But then her throat works with a hard swallow, and she bows her head. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she whispers into her lap.

“What did I ever do to you? What did Mara ever do?”

“Nothing,” Bianca blurts. Then her eyes harden, and she sets her jaw. “It wasn’t me you hurt. It was my sister.”

I frown, confused. “What are you—”

“Heather.”

I stare at her. Of course. Heather had an older half-sister, one she talked about often enough. Though she never mentioned her name. Their last names are different, too… But now that I’m looking, I see the resemblance. The hard set of Bianca’s jaw, the flash in her eyes. “You’re fired,” I spit, too furious to say anything else. “You have fifteen minutes to get off my property before I call the police. And that is being generous, I hope you know,” I add, when Bianca’s eyes narrow in response.

At least she listens, though. She shoves off the stage, shoulders tense, and marches toward the exit.

“The rest of you, clean this up,” I bark, starting to tuck Mara’s things back into her purse. But my fingers pause on the last item. The envelope. Because the creamy paper, embossed with gold around the edges, has my name on it. Written in Mara’s elegant, familiar curving handwriting.

What in the world?

Daniel’s asking questions, something about the stage. I wave a hand. I don’t care. “Charge whatever you need to the company account,” I reply. “Make sure this is safe, next time, before you go testing something prematurely.”