50
Liv easedherself up into a sitting position. When her stomach stayed anchored in place, she sent out a mental thank-you to the genius who invented anti-nausea meds.
Careful not to jostle her left arm, she slid her legs out from beneath the warming blanket and sat on the edge of the bed.
Even with pain meds, she nursed a dull ache behind her eyes. The attack had been swift and violent. One moment she’d been talking to her son and brother and, in the next, fire exploded in her shoulder while her forehead kissed the rough picnic table. Not once, not twice, but three damn times.
A wave of nausea that had nothing to do with her mild concussion worked its way up her throat. Although she hadn’t been able to see Brodie’s face, she’d heard his screams of terror in her ear before she lost consciousness.
Had he seen the entire attack? Or had the first hit thrown the phone from her hand?
She hoped God wasn’t so cruel as to force a boy to first watch his father die by a baseball, then observe his mother getting stabbed and beaten.
Please, please, please, no.
Two fat drops landed in quick succession on the tiled floor. She blinked, and two more fell.
She’d failed her son in the worst way possible. The fragile security net she’d started weaving from the moment he was born now had a massive hole in its center.
At the moment, she couldn’t be sure the two assaults were linked to the break-in. Was she dealing with one assailant or two? Could both Sam Rogers and Jeremy Jackson be exacting separate revenge schemes? Or had only one come unhinged? Maybe it wasn’t either of them. What if someone from the O’Fallon brood was none too happy about her locking their inheritance away in a warehouse?
“Mama?”
At the sound of her son’s hesitant voice, Liv slid off the ER bed and swallowed back the burn of tears.
He ran forward, then hesitated when he noticed her bandages and IV.
She held out an arm. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”
“Watch her shoulder,” Regina Thornton warned in a gentle voice, following behind her grandson.
Brodie rushed forward and wrapped his thin arms around Liv’s waist. His narrow body shook as his silent tears joined hers on the floor.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, kissing the top of his head. “Just a few scratches.”
She looked up at her mom, shocked to find the other woman’s eyes red-rimmed and her face blotchy. “Thank you for bringing him.”
“I, uh,” Regina swallowed, “I had to see for myself that you were all right.”
Having her mother near somehow soothed the ache in her heart. It didn’t make sense. Regina Thornton had rarely been around for the pivotal moments in Liv’s life. They didn’t have a close mother-daughter relationship.
Not because Regina was a cruel or unfeeling person, because she wasn’t. When present, she hugged and gushed and complimented like the best of mothers. What kept them from sharing pajama nights and wine nights and movie nights was Regina’s busy social calendar.
“Your father, aunt, and brother are in the waiting room. They’re limiting the number of visitors you can have at a time.”
“Daddy’s here?” If her mother’s visit shocked her, her father’s nearly made her heart go into A-fib. Everything Regina did was to help further her husband’s ambitions. Stanley Thornton preferred to leave the messy bits of life to others.
Regina’s smile wobbled as she nodded. “He’s anxious to see you.”
An almost giddy sensation flared in her chest, and she returned her mother’s smile with a guarded one of her own.
Brodie looked up at her. “Mama, who was that man?”
Her son’s question wiped her joy away like an eraser against a whiteboard. She didn’t have to ask what man he spoke of. With a bone-deep grief, she knew her little boy had witnessed the entire horrible act.
The helplessness and fear he must have felt.
Pain splintered her heart.