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Though she’d tried to sound meek, Ronnie heard the knowing tone in her voice and figured she was counting on him not to do that. He debated surprising her by making the call, but he doubted Dana Sue would be happy about the news or about his being the messenger. Maybe he could settle this himself and save them both a lot of grief.
“You have them out of there in the next five minutes and it’ll be our secret,” he told Annie. “Deal?”
“But, Dad—”
“That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
“How will you even know if they’re still here?”
“I suppose I won’t know for sure. But I’m trusting you to keep your word. You going to give it to me, or do I call your mom?”
“I should go ahead and let you call her,” Annie said. “At least it would get the two of you talking again.”
“Okay with me,” he said. “What’s it going to be, kiddo?”
Again, he let the silence build, knowing she was struggling with herself over doing the right thing.
“I’ll tell the boys they have to leave,” she finally said grudgingly. “But we weren’t doing anything wrong, Dad. I swear it. You know Ty always looks out for me. He would never let things get out of control.”
“You had them over without your mom’s permission,” Ronnie said. “You were doing something wrong the second you let them in the door.”
“When did you get so strict?” she grumbled.
“Last five minutes,” he replied, chuckling. “Up till now, you never gave me any reason to think I needed to be strict.”
“If you came home, you’d know what I was up to all the time,” she said.
“I imagine you’d see that as a mixed blessing in no time at all,” he responded.
“Probably,” she admitted, then added, “But it would be worth it, Daddy. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, angel. Now, go send those boys packing. Then you and your girlfriends can talk about them all night long, the way you did when you were a few years younger.”
“Did you and Mom actually listen to us?” Annie asked indignantly.
“Never,” he said piously. “We just interpreted the giggles coming from your room. Those were a dead giveaway, at least to your mom. Don’t forget, she was your age once. There’s not much you could do or think that she didn’t do before you, including breaking the rules.”
“That’s what you think,” Annie muttered.
“What?” he said sharply, not liking her tone.
“I love you, Daddy.”
He sighed and let it go. Long-distance parenting pretty much sucked. “Love you, too, baby. Take care of yourself and give your mom a hug. Just don’t tell her it’s from me.”
“I wish things were different,” Annie said wistfully. “I wish they could go back to the way they were.”
“Me, too. Now, go shoo those boys out before your mom catches them there and we both end up in hot water.”
“’Night, Daddy.”
“’Night, angel.”
Ronnie clung to the phone for a long time after Annie had hung up. She was growing up so fast and he was missing it. Maybe it was his own fault. Maybe he even deserved to be shut out of Annie’s life. According to Helen, Dana Sue had wanted him gone completely from both their lives, but he’d balked at that. He’d demanded visitation rights. What he hadn’t guessed was how hard it would be to get Annie to go along with them. His teenage daughter was every bit as stubborn as her mom, but she, at least, was mellowing.
He realized now what he should have seen two years ago. He didn’t have to let things be that way forever. Dana Sue might not be happy about him moving back to town, but she’d just have to get over it if he and Annie wanted to reestablish their relationship. And while he might not know that much about teenage girls, he knew a whole lot about teenage boys. Annie could use a dad around to keep her from making the kind of mistakes that could ruin her life.
Once again, he resolved to figure out some way to go back to Serenity before he missed out on even more memories.
Dana Sue was ninety percent certain that the car pulling away from her house as she drove up was filled with teenage boys. Cursing under her breath, she turned into the driveway. It was a good thing she’d decided to leave the restaurant half an hour earlier than usual. She was sure Annie must have calculated the boys’ departure based on her usual time for getting home.
When she walked into the kitchen, Sarah regarded her with a startled expression that bore a trace of guilt. With her basic honesty and pale, freckled complexion, she lied poorly and blushed easily. Her cheeks were a telltale rosy pink right now.
“Hi, Mrs. Sullivan,” she said with obviously forced cheer. “Great party. Thanks for letting us stay over.”
“Anytime,” Dana Sue said. “I’m glad Annie decided to make it a big party, instead of just asking you and Raylene. Everyone having fun?”
“Absolutely. We all brought over some CDs and we’ve been dancing. We’ll probably watch a DVD after a while. Annie says you guys have a whole bunch of chick flicks.”
“Our favorites,” Dana Sue confirmed. “Is there enough food?”
“Plenty,” Sarah confirmed. “I can’t remember the last time I stuffed myself with pizza, and those brownies you brought home from the restaurant are fabulous. I’ve had two.”
Dana Sue fought the urge to ask whether Annie had indulged in either the pizza or the brownies. Sarah took it out of her hands.
“You want to know if Annie’s had any, don’t you?” she asked.
Dana Sue nodded. “You know why it matters, don’t you, Sarah? If it weren’t so important, I would never ask you to rat on her. I’m afraid she’s in real trouble.”
“I know. I worry about her, too,” Sarah admitted in a low voice. “I think she’s—”
“Sarah, what’s taking so long?” Annie called out, walking into the kitchen. When she spotted the two of them together, her eyes immediately narrowed in suspicion. “Hi, Mom. You’re early. How come?”
“Erik said he could handle things, so I decided to make an early night of it,” Dana Sue said, disappointed that Annie’s untimely interruption had kept Sarah from answering her question. She forced a smile. “Having fun, baby?”
“We’re having a great time, aren’t we, Sarah?”
“The best,” she confirmed, avoiding Dana Sue’s eyes.
“You’re not going to hang out with us, are you?” Annie demanded.
“Of course not,” Dana Sue said, noting her daughter’s flushed cheeks and wondering if that was due to excitement or guilt about the boys who’d been there. “I’m heading upstairs to bed.”
Annie nodded. “Okay, then. Sarah, I’ll help you grab those sodas. Everybody’s hot from dancing.”
Dana Sue waited while the girls took half a dozen cans of diet soda and bottled water from the refrigerator. As they left the room, Sarah glanced back and gave a subtle shake of her head to say that Annie hadn’t been eating along with everyone else. Dana Sue felt like sitting down at the kitchen table and crying.
She’d wanted so badly to believe that all her instincts were wrong, that Annie wasn’t anorexic, after all. She’d watched her so closely for the past year, redoubling her efforts after that fainting spell at Maddie’s reception. But obviously Annie was more clever at hiding her eating disorder than Dana Sue was at detecting it. She could blame it on her schedule, being away from home for too many meals, but she’d tried to supervise Annie’s diet, she really had. She’d insisted she come by the restaurant for dinner. She’d packed nutritious lunches. But the honest-to-God truth was she hadn’t been there to see that every bite went into her daughter’s mouth. As for the obvious signs that Annie was in crisis, she’d obviously been in deep denial.
No more, though. They were going to have to confront this head-on. It was time. Past time. Add in the fact that Annie had apparently had boys over in direct defiance of Dana Sue’s instructions, and tomorrow was going to be a tough day. She and her daughter were going to have a heart-to-heart, and Annie wasn’t going to like the outcome—a visit to Doc Marshall’s office and then being grounded for a month—one bit.
With the music downstairs playing at a deafening volume, Dana Sue finally managed to fall into a restless, troubled sleep around two in the morning. She’d barely closed her eyes, it seemed, when someone started frantically shaking her.
“Mrs. Sullivan, wake up!” Sarah commanded, sounding panicked.
Dana Sue’s eyes snapped open. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Annie,” the girl said, tears streaking down her face. “She’s passed out and we can’t wake her up. Hurry, please.”
Dana Sue tore down the stairs with the sobbing Sarah on her heels. The other girls were kneeling around a prostrate Annie.
“I don’t think she’s breathing,” Raylene said, looking up at Dana Sue with wide eyes. “I’ve been giving her CPR, just the way we learned to in health class.”
“Move,” Dana Sue said, drawing on some inner reserve of calm, even though she was terrified. “Someone call 911, okay?”
“I already have,” one of the girls said, sounding scared.
“Thanks. Keep an eye out for them, please?” Dana Sue said, focusing on Annie’s pale face. Her lips were turning blue and she was still. So damn still. Kneeling beside her, Dana Sue began doing chest compressions as she’d been taught in her own CPR classes, then trying to force breath into her lungs. The girls stood around in stricken silence, holding hands, their faces damp with tears.
Time seemed to stand still as Dana Sue tried desperately to breathe life back into her daughter. She was only dimly aware of the sirens when the ambulance arrived. Then the EMTs were there, forcing her aside, taking over, talking in a code she didn’t understand as they barked information about resting heart rate and other vital signs into a cell phone that apparently linked them to the emergency room. Sarah slipped up beside Dana Sue and clung to her hand.
“She’s going to be okay,” Sarah whispered. “She’s going to be okay.”
Dana Sue squeezed her hand. “Of course she is,” she agreed, though she was certain of no such thing.
Raylene approached. “I called Mrs. Maddox,” she said. “Is that okay? She said she’d phone Ms. Decatur and have her come by and pick us up. Mrs. Maddox is coming straight here to go with you to the hospital.”
Dana Sue gave Raylene a grateful look. “You did exactly the right thing,” she told her, impressed by the girl’s ability to act so quickly in a crisis. She had a cool head and good instincts. “Thank you.”
“We want to go to the hospital with you,” Sarah said. “Can we do that? Our folks aren’t expecting us home, anyway. Please, Mrs. Sullivan. Ms. Decatur can take us there just as easily as she can take us home.”
Dana Sue knew what it was like to wait for information when someone was seriously ill. She’d waited all alone in a hospital emergency room when her mother had been taken in that last time. She’d been only a few years older than these girls were now. Annie had been little more than a toddler, and Ronnie had stayed home with her. Maddie and Helen had rushed over the second Dana Sue had called them, but the wait for them and for news had seemed interminable. Maybe it would be easier for Annie’s friends to wait together at the hospital, where they would have news as soon as it was available.
“Okay,” she said at last. “But as soon as it’s morning, I want you to call your folks and tell them where you are, okay? Then it will be up to them whether you go home or stay.”
“I’m sure Annie will be fine by then,” Sarah said staunchly.
“Of course she will be,” Raylene agreed.
The next half hour was a blur as the EMTs loaded Annie, who was breathing now, but still unconscious, into the ambulance. Helen briskly piled the girls into her car, and Maddie saw to it that Dana Sue pulled herself together, then wrapped an arm around her waist and guided her into her car. She still wore Ronnie’s shirt, but had at least added a respectable pair of jeans.
“Annie’s going to be fine,” Maddie said, giving Dana Sue’s hand one last squeeze before she started the engine and pulled out of the driveway.
“She wasn’t breathing,” Dana Sue said, shivering despite the warm night. “It was as if her heart had just stopped. It’s this damned eating disorder, I know it. God, Maddie, what if she…?” She couldn’t even voice the question.
“She’s breathing now,” her friend reminded her. “Focus on that. You heard the EMTs. She was breathing okay on her own when they left the house.”
Dana Sue frowned at her. “Don’t make it sound as if this was nothing. It’s not like when she fainted at your wedding. People don’t lose consciousness and stop breathing unless it’s serious. She could have had a cardiac arrest or a stroke or something. What kind of mother am I to let things get this bad?”
“Stop thinking the worst,” Maddie commanded. “You’re a wonderful mother, and whatever happened, she’s in good hands now. There are specialists on call at the hospital and I’m sure they’ll be there by the time the ambulance arrives.”
Dana Sue nodded, but she wasn’t consoled. What if the damage was already done? What if whatever had happened was so terrible her beautiful girl never fully recovered?
Dana Sue wanted to pray, wanted to bargain with God to save her baby, but she couldn’t find the words, couldn’t think at all. It was as if she’d awakened from a deep sleep to find herself living a nightmare.
“Dana Sue?” Maddie repeated, finally getting her attention.
“What? Did you say something?”
“I asked if you’d given any thought to calling Ronnie,” her friend said quietly. “He deserves to know what’s going on. Annie is his daughter, too, and whatever you think of him, he always adored her.”
“I know,” Dana Sue whispered, tears stinging her eyes as she remembered the way Ronnie had doted on Annie from the moment she was born. In the early days he’d been as eager as she was to get up for the middle-of-the-night feedings. More than once, she’d found him rocking Annie back to sleep with a look of such profound awe on his face it had made her cry. There was an entire album filled with pictures of the two of them. Dana Sue had shoved it to the back of a closet and buried it under blankets after he’d gone.
“I know I should call him,” she conceded, “but I don’t know if I can cope with this and seeing him, too.”
“I don’t think you have a choice,” Maddie said. “Besides, you’re stronger than you think. You can cope with whatever you have to as long as you keep reminding yourself that getting Annie well is the only thing that matters.”
“Knowing her dad was here would mean the world to her,” Dana Sue admitted. Before the divorce, the bond between father and daughter had been one of the things she’d loved most about Ronnie. That bond had deepened as Annie had gotten older and gone from pleading for piggyback rides to learning to ride a bike or to hit a baseball in an attempt to impress Ty. It was Dana Sue’s fault that bond had been broken. She was the one who’d dragged Annie into the middle of her pain and resentment. And when she should have been relieved to discover that those two were talking again, she’d been jealous, just as Maddie had said.
“Call him,” Maddie urged. “Do you know how to reach him?”
“I know he’s somewhere around Beaufort. I can probably reach him on his cell phone. I doubt he’s had the number changed. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll bet Annie has his number tucked away somewhere.”
“Try his cell,” Maddie instructed. “If you don’t get him, I’ll go back to the house and look through Annie’s address book.”
“I’ll wait till we get to the hospital and find out how she’s doing,” Dana Sue said, wanting to put off making the call as long as possible. She didn’t want to hear Ronnie’s voice, didn’t want to hear even the slightest accusation that she’d somehow failed as a mother, or else how could this have happened? It was one thing to blame herself, but to see the blame in his eyes would destroy her.
Maddie regarded her with a disappointed expression, but said nothing.
Dana Sue sighed at her unspoken disapproval. “Okay, I’ll try him now.”
But how on earth was she supposed to tell Ronnie that his precious girl had nearly died tonight, could still die tonight? In all the scenarios she’d ever imagined for speaking to her ex again, this was one she’d never thought of. Maybe because it was so awful she’d never dared to contemplate it…or maybe because it was the one guaranteed to bring him roaring back into her life.
5
The ringing of Ronnie’s cell phone jarred him out of a deep sleep and a dream about Dana Sue. When he heard her voice on the other end of the line, he thought he must still be dreaming. Only dimly aware that he clutched the cell phone in his hand, he closed his eyes and hugged the pillow a little more tightly, hoping to sink back into the dream. The phone fell from his hand.
“Dammit, Ronnie Sullivan, don’t you dare go back to sleep!” Dana Sue shouted in his ear. “Ronnie, wake up! I wouldn’t be calling if this weren’t important. It’s about Annie.”
Even though her shouts seemed to be coming from a great distance, they were enough to snap him awake. “What about Annie?” he muttered groggily, digging around in the covers until he found the phone. “Talk to me. What about Annie?”
His heart was pounding in his chest as he considered all the terrible possibilities. An accident? Had those boys come back to the house and stirred up trouble? It had to be bad, for Dana Sue to break two years of silence to call him.
Dana Sue, who could talk as slow as molasses when she wanted to sweet-talk him into something wicked, could also manage to squeeze a ten-minute conversation into ten seconds when she was worked up. She was clearly very worked up. She was talking so fast he could barely pick up every fifth word.
“Hey, slow down, sugar,” he said. “You’re waking me out of a sound sleep. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“It’s Annie!” she said, sounding hysterical. “I don’t care where the hell you are, Ronnie, or who you’re with, or what your priorities are these days. Your daughter needs you.”
