Ridley was quiet, but I felt her eyes on me from the passenger seat, like she was running what I said through her internal polygraph. After a beat she said, “Nope. You’re still lying.”
“Ridley!”
“Who called you? I saw your face when you listened to the message—you went pale. Who was it?”
Damn. She was good. I thought it over quickly and decided, What did it matter if I told Ridley who called?
“It was Lauren McCarty. Her mother was a patient of Dr. Davenport’s and her family owns a tobacco farm in the area. She said something that made me wonder about the relationship between Bennett Nichols, that creepy Brandon Laytner, and her brother, this John Krisanski—who I don’t know anything about, but whose name keeps coming up. Something about this seems odd to me and I just want to do a little research, that’s all. Plus, a wedding really isn’t the best place to be when you’ve just been broken up with.”
Ridley was quiet as she typed something into her phone, apparently already disinterested in what I was talking about. But the more I thought about it, the more interested I became. All three of those men had ties to Dr. Davenport, and more significantly they all had reasons to dislike him. Why hadn’t their connections come up earlier? Was someone trying to hide something? My mind was busy tossing around theories when Ridley held up her phone. “Look.”
I snuck a sideways glance at the screen. “Why are you showing me a picture of the custodian from Tuttle General?”
“According to Google, this is John Krisanski.”
Shocked, I pulled the car over to the side of the road to process this. John Krisanski was Jack the custodian? How was that possible? I ticked back through the few conversations I’d had with Jack over the past few days. We’d talked about Arthur’s obituary—but he hadn’t mentioned that Arthur had taken care of his mother. And now I learn that this guy was Bennett Nichols’s best friend from high school, and he was leasing his family’s farmland to Brandon Laytner’s Invigor8? There were a lot of coincidences starting to rack up here. I stared out of the windshield into the dark night, my eyes unfocused as I thought through what all this could all mean.
“Riley?” Ridley’s voice brought me back to the moment.
“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking it off. “I’m just shocked, that’s all—” I put my turn signal on and started to pull back onto the road. “I know you’re exhausted, I’ll get you home.”
“It’s not that—” Ridley said as she looked from the floorboard to me and back again. “I think my water just broke.”
CHAPTER 46
I had never driven so fast in all my life. All of a sudden every bump in the road seemed like a threat, every stoplight an obstacle. As I flew down back county roads toward Tuttle Gen, I had visions of being forced to deliver Ridley’s baby on the side of the road. I was in a near panic. I wasn’t proud of it, but at one point Ridley looked over and said between contractions, “It’s going to be fine, Riley. Just breathe.”
I flew into the circle drive of the hospital, put on my hazards, and led (an infuriatingly calm) Ridley inside. She had called Ryan on the way over but we’d made it there first. The woman at the reception desk called for a wheelchair and told me they’d be taking Ridley straight to Labor & Delivery.
I ran back outside, legally parked my car, and went back to wait with her until Ryan got there.
When I got to her room, she was already hooked up to what they called a fetal heart-rate monitor. The nurse in the room explained that Ridley was in “active labor,” which meant the baby was ready to be born.
“You look scared silly, hon,” the nurse said. “Are you Ridley’s partner?”
I’ll admit my first reaction was to be flattered—I mean, the thought that I could be with someone like Ridley . . . and then I mentally slapped myself for falling under the Ridley-spell like everyone else. “No,” I said quickly. “I used to date her partner. I mean, her baby daddy. I mean, the baby’s father.”
The nurse looked at me like I was insane, since I was now clearly irrelevant, not to mention full of TMI. Then she turned back to Ridley. “Hon, do you have a partner who’s going to be involved in this birth? I don’t think it’s gonna be too long now.”
“Yes,” Ridley said between deep breaths. “He’s on his . . . warggggh!” She let out an anguished cry. I have to say: watching Ridley in active labor put off any ideas I had about having kids for a good long while. Not that I felt it had been in my immediate future or anything. But still. It did not look fun.
“I’m going to get the doctor and then we’ll get some more information on where you are. Okay, sugar?”
Ridley was sitting propped up by two pillows behind her, a death grip on the railing of her bed with each hand. Incredibly, she didn’t seem scared or nervous, just hyper-focused. It was almost like she was in a trance; she was staring at a point directly across the room, puffing out short, forceful breaths every couple of seconds. I felt like I should be doing something, so I took a few delicate steps toward her bedside. Should I breathe with her? Should I help her count—was that a thing? I had no idea.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked tentatively.
“No,” she said, and her voice had a definitive edge I hadn’t heard before. Not exactly harsh; more like firm.
“Ice chips? Another blanket?”
“No.”
“Do you want a magazine?”
“Riley,” she sighed, finally breaking her gaze at the point across the room. “I’m trying to meditate. It’s supposed to
