“What?” Eli demanded. “The balcony?”
“Yes, she relied on that silly AI thing on her phone and?—”
“She shouldn’t go out there,” Eli said. “There was a lot of wind pressure along the tunnel between the houses where that balcony is. I want to check the bolts before anybody leans on anything. It’s probably fine, but stay off the railing.”
The railing that Jo Ellen leaned against every time she was out there, always as far out as she could go to catch a glimpse of the Gulf?
Maggie tried to form the words “Someone go stop her!” but nothing came out.
Instead, she just brushed by everyone, moving faster than her old legs wanted to go, and darted toward the door that led to their stairs.
“Jo!” she called, already winded. “Jo Ellen!”
Her feet found each stair, miraculously.
“Mom! Mom, wait?—”
Not me, she wanted to yell, but didn’t have the lung capacity.Someone stop Jo!
She hit the top of the stairs, fumbled the door, and threw it open. “Jo!”
The slider to the balcony stood open behind the kitchen table.
The afternoon light came through the door and made a long gold rectangle on the kitchen tile. The balcony, beyond, was empty—no pots, no chairs, no…railing.
Not all of it. Just a section, where the railing had pulled away from the house at the post and was hanging out into open air at a tilted angle.
Maggie put her hand on the doorframe, frozen in horror.
Please be in the bathroom. Please, God, let Jo be in the bathroom.
“Jo Ellen!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, a long, vocal demand that her best friend and life partner and most important person pop out of the bathroom they shared, dressed in her ridiculous flamingo robe with some dumb, happy comment.
Eli swooped past her, a word she didn’t think she’d ever heard him say rumbling from his chest as he forced her to stay back.
“Don’t!”
He went to the balcony and stopped, looking over.
Every ounce of blood in Maggie’s body pooled to a hot, bubbling center of fear. No. No. No.
Eli turned around, abject horror on his face. “Call 911. Now!”
No. No. Nooooo.
The rest of the hour,the day, the night, passed in a sickening blur of fear and pain and sirens and the agony of it all. Maggie would never forget the sight when she finally made her way downstairs and dared to look. Jo Ellen, on her back, one arm bent, the pale floral fabric of her blouse spread on the green of the yard. Her silver-haired head was turned slightly toward the house, and her eyes were closed. She was perfectly, terribly still.
Maggie made a sound, startling herself from the memory as she sat in the icy cold hospital waiting room, vaguely aware of people around her, some talking, most crying, all checking on her.
She didn’t speak.
Instead, she replayed the blur of time over and over again.
From the moment she managed to get to the side yard, looking over shoulders and around bodies, needing to see only one thing—that chest rise and fall with the breath of life.
She didn’t, but she heard Eli say loudly, “She’s alive!”
Maggie sobbed then, or maybe it was Kate. Or Tessa. Someone sobbed.
