He’d made it thirty meters, maybe thirty-five, when his name broke the tranquil melody.
AJ stopped and turned, squinting into the sun until the silhouette resolved itself. Amanda Jacobs—now Barnes—who inherited the resort from her late father Parker Jacobs, waved at him from the lodge’s wraparound porch, a mug of something steaming in her hand. She was in jeans and an oversized Hope Falls Huskies sweatshirt, her long blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail. She rushed down the steps of the deck to meet him.
“AJ!” she called out as she hurried towards him. “Your family has been trying to reach you.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and saw that he had fifteen missed calls, nine voicemails, and eighteen text messages. His phone was dead when he left Poppy’s, so he’d set it on the charging pad in the SUV. He had no idea when the calls came in.
Before he had a chance to check any of them, Amanda continued, “There was an incident with Dr. Sterling last night. He had a medical emergency and was taken to Pine Ridge Memorial. Your mom, Tristan, Niko, and Yaya are there now. They were looking for Liam and Frankie as well, I don’t know if they found them.”
There was a momentary lag as the information sank through AJ’s skin to the bone. Dr. Sterling. Medical emergency. Hospital. Mom, Niko, Tristan, and Yaya. All of them gathered at the hospital, presumably at the brink of something catastrophic or potentially tragic. He felt the cold slide not just down his throat but straight into his stomach, roiling with the rest of his unfinished breakfast, the caffeine now an accelerant instead of a balm.
He managed two words. “How bad?”
Amanda’s already large blue eyes widened further. “That’s all I know, I’m sorry.”
AJ nodded once, a clipped movement, and snapped into practical mode. “Thank you.”
It seemed he would not be able to get in his workout after all. He headed back up the path to his vehicle and got in.
The engine roared as it came to life. He reversed down the drive as Bluetooth synced to his phone. The screen exploded with missed calls and texts—fifteen calls, eighteen unread texts, and a flood of notifications from the family group chat and individual threads.
The first three voicemails were from Niko. He sounded out of breath in all of them.
Niko’s first voicemail was stressed and a little panicked. “AJ, call me back. Now. Shit, you need to call me back, okay.”
In Niko’s second voicemail, he sounded scared. “AJ, where are you?! I just checked the cabin, and you’re not there. Call me. Fuck. Frankie’s gone too, if you know where she is, tell her to call. Just—call me. As soon as you get this!”
In Niko’s third voicemail, his voice was raw and shaky, his nerves and fear were transformed into anger. “This is an emergency! Mom just left in an ambulance with Dr. Sterling, or, I don’t…what the fuck are we calling him now? It doesn’t matter. Just…where are you?! Mom’s a mess. Tristan’s freaking out. We can’t find Frankie, or Liam, or you. Where the fuck are you guys?!”
The next voicemail was left by his mom, and she used his full name, which she only ever did when it was a very serious situation or she was angry. Never at him, it was typically when he was being lumped in with something either Niko did on his own or Niko and Tristan did.
“Adonis, they just took Eddie to surgery. I know he had a heart attack, and they said some other things, but I don’t knowwhat they mean. Where are you? I tried to google what they told me, but I don’t understand. And now I can’t get ahold of you and Frankie. Where are you? Where is she?” Her voice broke as she began to sob.
“Okay, Mom that’s good. He’ll call.” Niko’s voice sounded in the background before the call abruptly ended.
The fifth message was from Tristan. AJ had known Tristan since they were six, he’d never heard him sound anything but confident and self-assured, so the man he heard in the message was barely recognizable. This man sounded meek and scared, his voice was cracking.
“It’s, um, it’s Tristan. I know Niko and your mom have called, but I just wanted to… I don’t know…try to reach you. Do you know where Liam is? Or Frankie? We can’t reach them. Can you please call when you get this? Please.”
It was strange hearing Tristan’s use of that particular adverb. It wasn’t one he was accustomed to. The youngest Sterling son took most of his life for granted. He’d never been big on pleasantries or politeness. He was born rich, attractive, and fairly intelligent. Life had always been easy for him. Something like this happening did sometimes put things in perspective.
The next two messages were more of the same from his brother. Then there was another from his mom, but the ninth was one he hadn’t expected. It was from Poppy. The second he heard her voice, his pulse increased, which meant that adrenaline was released in his body. A tingling sensation washed over him, the same one that he felt when he listened to a babbling brook or any large body of water.
“Hey AJ, I’m at the hospital, and everyone, or not everyone—” There was a brief pause before she continued, “—um, your mom, your brother Liam, Frankie, and Zion are here because Dr. Sterling had a medical emergency, um, a heart attack last night. He’s in surgery now. They have been trying to get a holdof you and haven’t been able to. I didn’t say anything about…you know…I didn’t know if you’d want people to…or not. Not that it even matters. It doesn’t. I just wanted you to know. Okay, bye.”
The second the message ended, he reached out and pressed to play it again. He hadn’t paid attention to anything she’d said. All he’d been able to focus on was how good it had felt to hear her voice. How amazing the tone, the cadence, the pitch, and the frequency had made his body feel.
Determined to focus on what she’d been trying to communicate to him, he played it once again. “Hey AJ, I’m at the hospital and everyone, or not everyone.” He noted a hesitation, a breath, before she continued. “Um, your mom, brother, Liam, Frankie, and Zion are here because Dr. Sterling had a medical emergency, um, a heart attack last night. He’s in surgery now. They have been trying to get ahold of you and haven’t been able to. I didn’t say anything about…you know…I didn’t know if you’d want people to…or not. Not that it even matters. It doesn’t. I just wanted you to know. Okay, bye.”
The next time, he’d only heard up until the pause in her speech. From that moment on, he’d been wondering what could have caused it. Had she seen someone? Or was it that she was trying to be deliberate with her wording because she knew generalizations could be frustrating for some neurodivergent individuals. If the latter was the case, he wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
AJ was not skilled at identifying his own emotional state, and he imagined that was part of what made him successful, whatever success meant in the context of academia, or interpersonal relationships, or his recursive cycles of overthinking. The problem was never intensity, he felt things often and deeply, but always with a time delay, like a camera shutter that only opened after the subject had already moved. He could only categorize his affective world in retrospect, when thedata had been collected and catalogued, the pinprick of anger, the slow gradient of boredom, and the rare pulse of joy. In the moment, he was a sensor rather than a participant.
But with Poppy, all the usual latency vanished. It was as though she operated on his wavelength or had found some way to tune her own signal to match his. The idea that she had bothered, even unconsciously, to specify who was at the hospital for him made his chest ache, but in a way that was almost pleasant, as if he’d unlocked a storage compartment of his soul that had been welded shut at birth. Maybe that wasn’t why she corrected herself, but something told him it was. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did. Just like he wasn’t sure why he could not only tolerate sleeping in her bed or not having to have her hands bound when they had sex, but he actually enjoyed those things. Everything was different with Poppy.
She was an independent variable he never saw coming.
14
