“I’m sorry, Louis,” Reece said.
“You did a bad thing again, and they’re gonna blame me.” Louis’s voice was shaking.
“No, they won’t,” Reece said.
“Why did you hurt the man?” Louis asked.
Reece shrugged. “He just got in the way. I was after the woman.”
Louis froze. “What woman? Do I know her? Will she know my face?”
Reece shrugged. “You know her, but she’s never seen me, I swear. I’ve just been courting her a little. She wasn’t interested, so I wanted her to pay attention to me. I just went to see her, that’s all.”
“Who is it?”
“Melissa Sherman.”
Louis shrieked, “I work where she works! She’ll see me and know!”
“No! She’s never seen me.”
“But you said you were in her house last night, so how can you say that?”
“Because she jumped out the window and ran when she heard my footsteps.”
Louis picked up a paperweight from the end table and threw it at the mirror. Glass shattered and fell onto the floor at their feet. He kept his eyes down, determined not to look at his brother again as he read him the riot act.
“You weren’t courting her. You were stalking her. You promised Mama and me you’d never stalk another woman. Last time they almost caught you. You swore you wouldn’t do it again,” Louis said.
Reece shrugged and then grinned. “Well, my dick had other ideas.”
Louis flinched, unable to believe he was even related to someone who could do things like this. “I have to go to work now,” he said. He walked out of the house, his steps dragging.
“Sorry!” Reece yelled after him.
Louis kept walking to the truck, then got in and drove away. As he was pulling out of the driveway it occurred to him that he should just withdraw his money from the bank and keep driving. Leave Mama with her favorite son and forget the both of them even existed. But he didn’t. Instead, he drove straight to the elementary school and parked.
Ten
Louis saw the principal pulling into his designated parking spot as he got out and started walking toward the building. His stomach was in knots as he saw his boss turn and wave. He ducked his head and waved back, wondering why the man was here so early because it wasn’t his usual routine. Still, the principal’s job was none of Louis’s concern.
He went straight into the building, turned up the thermostat and then began turning on lights as he went from room to room. The day was chilly and wouldn’t get any warmer. It was that time of year.
He filled a little cart with rolls of toilet paper and paper towels, and started down the hall toward the bathrooms to refill the paper products. He was trying not to think of the mess Reece had put him in—again—as he reached the boys’ bathroom and opened the door. The moment he walked in and realized he was walking in water, he groaned. Something was obviously leaking.
He began moving from toilet stall to toilet stall, trying to find the leak, and then headed to the urinals to check them next. He had just squatted down to check a plumbing joint when he heard a creak, and then something wet fell on his head. He looked up just as the ceiling came crashing down.
* * *
Mr. Wilson was on his way to the cafeteria to get a sausage biscuit to have with his coffee when he heard the noise at the far end of the hall and started running. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but he could already see water coming out from under the door to the boys’ bathroom.
The cooks had also heard the noise and come running from the school cafeteria.
The head cook was a woman they called Miss Eula. When she saw the principal running, she called out, “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Wilson said, pushing the bathroom door inward. The first thing he saw was Louis lying on the floor with part of the ceiling on top of him and a huge hole above. He ran back out into the hall. “Call 911!” he yelled. “Part of the ceiling fell in. Louis is pinned beneath it!”
Miss Eula turned and pointed at one of the cooks. “Rhonda, you make the call and wait to lead them in. The rest of you, come with me.”
They followed the principal back into the bathroom. They immediately began removing the debris from Louis’s body, and Miss Eula got down on her knees and held towels to Louis’s bleeding face, while the other cooks tried to mop up the water to keep it from running into nearby classrooms.
Wilson called his secretary to send out an emergency text to the parents and personnel that there would be no school and that it would resume on Monday. Then he contacted the local school superintendent, Will Porter, requesting an electrician and plumber on-site ASAP. All he could tell them was that there was a water leak somewhere up in the ceiling and no way of knowing how many rooms it would impact before it was found and fixed.
He groaned. Friday just kept getting worse.
Louis regained consciousness as they were removing the debris, but when he tried to get up both Mr. Wilson and Miss Eula insisted he was not to move, so he lay as still as possible in the cold water, watching them work. He still wasn’t sure what had happened and started fretting about picking Mama up at the bus stop later.
“Am I okay?” he kept asking. “I can’t be hurt. Mama is coming to visit me this evening. I have to go get her at the bus stop.”
Wilson was on his knees by Louis, trying to keep him from moving.
“I don’t know how hurt you are, Louis, but you have to go to the hospital and let them check you out first,” he said. “I think your nose might be broken, and there are some cuts on your face.”
Louis was in enough shock that the pain was minimal, but things were beginning to burn and sting on his face, and it was hard to breathe through his nose.
“Yes, okay,” he said, “but I still have to get Mama at five o’clock.”
Rhonda ran back into the bathroom.
“Ambulance is here!” she cried, and moments later the small bathroom got even smaller as a half dozen firemen and two EMTs entered.
As soon as the fire department realized there was a leak somewhere above, a couple of the firemen headed back outside to turn the water off at the meter.
“He can move his arms and legs,” Wilson said, and then he pointed at the debris piled up against the far wall. “All of that was on top of him when we found him.”
“Was he facedown or on his back?” one EMT asked.
“On his back,” Wilson said.
They put a collar on Louis to immobilize his head and neck, and began to assess his vitals. A few minutes later they moved him onto the gurney, fastened the straps to keep him stabilized and wheeled him out to the waiting ambulance.
Louis stared up at the ceiling as they passed beneath it, absently counting the number of burned-out fluorescent lightbulbs that needed to be replaced, and wanted to cry. All kinds of stuff was hurting now, his face most of all.
He guessed he was messed up like Reece now, but at least he had an alibi and witnesses as to how he got hurt. They couldn’t blame him for attacking that guy. That was on Reece, the stupid bastard.
* * *
Lissa’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket, signaling a text. She woke abruptly and quickly glanced at Mack, who was still asleep. He’d had a rough night, and now that he was finally resting, she didn’t want to disturb him.
Then she read the text and frowned. No school due to a massive water leak. Although it no longer impacted her life, it did give Mr. Wilson more time to find a substitute for her class. She dropped the phone back in her pocket and then slipped out of the room long enough to go to the public bathroom up the hall, where she washed her face and finger combed her hair before heading back.
The shifts were changing, and a fresh batch of nurses were making rounds and assessing the patients’ vitals. She grabbed a cup of coffee from the table set up for visitors’ convenience and hurried back.
A nurse was already at Mack’s bedside checking his IV and taking note of his blood pressure readings, and when she saw Lissa she smiled and introduced herself.
“I’m Jewel. I’ll be Mr. Jackson’s nurse today.”
“I’m Lissa. Does he have a fever? He was very restless all night.”
“Just a little. Nothing out of the ordinary for someone just coming out of surgery. I understand he’s something of a hero.”
Lissa’s eyes welled with tears. “He always was.”
The nurse left just as Lissa noticed Mack was waking up, and when he reached out, she clasped his hand.
It was the sound of voices that pulled Mack out of the darkness, and when he heard Lissa’s voice he remembered. There’d been a fight and a man with a knife who’d been there to hurt her.
“Melissa?”
“I’m here. You’re in the hospital. You’ve had surgery, so you need to lie still.”
He exhaled slowly. It hurt to move, but he finally managed to open his eyes. She’d been crying. “You’re...not hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt.”
He curled his fingers around her wrist.
Lissa couldn’t bear to let one more minute go by without making peace between them.
“I need to talk to you, and I don’t want you to interrupt me until I’ve finished, okay?”
Mack was groggy. “Might not remember,” he muttered.