Great Big Beautiful Life(86)

She had to fight just to stay upright as the crowd jostled her back and forth, and real panic filled her up when she realized how easy it would be to be crushed underfoot.

She blinked away the tears in her left eye. Her right was already swelling. She reached up to her temple, and her hand came away with blood.

Screaming for Laura, again and again, she tried to fight her way back toward where they’d been standing, but she was turned around now, had traveled so far. The band had stopped playing, police were moving in from the outside edges of the room, but the chaos wasn’t dying down.

She saw a flash of pink fabric in between the tightly packed bodies and struggled toward it, still screaming her sister’s name. She pushed. She shoved. Some people pushed back. Her wig was yanked off.

She didn’t care. None of it mattered.

The only thing that mattered was getting to that flash of pink before anything bad happened.

She didn’t yet know that something already had.

Hands clamped down on her arms and she struggled uselessly against the firm grip until she realized it was yanking her toward the side of the room, the man bulky enough to cut a path through the pandemonium.

And then—there she was!

Laura, slumped against the wall, clutching the sides of her nose, her wig crooked and blood dribbled down her collar, cheeks stained with tears. Margaret’s heart plummeted into her stomach. She shook off her attacker and ran toward her sister. “Are you okay?” she asked, clutching her sister’s cheeks.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she croaked, but it was clearly a lie.

“Ms. Ives,” someone shouted behind her, and she whirled back to face the man who’d hauled her over here. A security guard. And beside him, Darrin, the Ives family’s driver.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“We need to get you both outside, Ms. Ives,” he said with a terse politeness, reaching for her arm. She shook him off and went back to fretting over her sister.

“Let me see,” she said, pulling on Laura’s wrists to remove her hands from her face, taking in the swollen bloody mass of her nose, and then, more disconcertingly, the teary blankness of her eyes. Did she have a concussion? Why did she look like that?

“Ms. Ives,” Darrin said, more forcefully this time. “We have to go now.”

She looked between her sister and him desperately. She wanted so badly to say, No, we’re not going, we’re staying here, in this perfect night. But the perfect night had blasted apart in a millisecond, turned into an outright brawl all around them.

She gave Darrin a nod, and he guided Laura from the wall, in against his side, with a grim look as he and the security guard rushed them toward a discreet side door.

But on a night like that, there was no such thing as discreet.

As soon as they stepped out into the night, the flashes of cameras popped all around them, voices shouting over one another, trying to get answers about what was happening inside, why people were fleeing while, simultaneously, police were streaming in.

The security guard, who’d surely been generously compensated for his cooperation, tried to fend them off as Darrin led the sisters to his car, but Laura was in such a daze that she lifted her head and blinked sorrowfully right as a flash went off. In a rage, Margaret stormed toward the man, demanding the film, going so far as to reach for his camera when he refused.

Next thing she knew, there were a dozen more flashes going off in her face, and Darrin’s arms were dragging her back to the car, stuffing her inside with her sister. Her purse had gone flying at some point, but Darrin threw that in after her before slamming the door shut. The flask was gone—she prayed she’d dropped it inside, not during the scrape with the photographer.

Only once they were driving away did it all really hit her.

“How did you find us?” she asked Darrin. He didn’t answer, merely kept his eyes on the dark road ahead of them. “Did Daniel tell you?”

Beside her, Laura, who’d been hanging her head in shame, looked up, that startled blankness still splashed across her face. “Laur? What is it?”

Her eyes shifted from the rearview mirror to Margaret guiltily. She swallowed. “I told Gerald.”

“You told Gerald…?” It didn’t sink in right away. When it did, she didn’t get a chance to chastise Laura.

“He wouldn’t have just sent for us like that unless it was important,” Laura insisted. “I know he wouldn’t.” She looked toward the mirror again as if for backup.

Darrin kept his gaze astutely forward. Something new came over Laura’s face. It went slack, her mouth opening. “Darrin?” she said in a small, strained voice.

He didn’t meet her eyes. Dread gathered in Margaret’s stomach now. “Darrin?” Laura said more sharply.

“Yes, Ms. Ives?” he replied.

“What’s happened?” Margaret asked. Beside her, Laura began to weep, even before the words left Darrin’s mouth.

“I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “Your grandfather doesn’t have long.”

“I shouldn’t have gone,” Laura wheezed jaggedly. “I knew I shouldn’t have gone.” A sob scraped out of her, and Margaret pulled her in close, careful not to bump her bleeding face as she broke down fully in Margaret’s lap.

The world whirred furiously past the car windows, but still, the drive seemed to last forever.