His Wife for One Night. Molly O'Keefe

the front seat ready to reverse down the long driveway.

      “I’m staying,” Jack said, his voice a thin wheeze. The doctors had told him not to talk to keep from irritating his damaged throat. But Devon liked conversation. Another reason not to go home with him.

      “But you’re pretty far away from a hospital, and with—”

      Jack opened the door, and Devon shut up, putting the car in Park and hurtling out the driver-side door to help Jack out of the car.

      It was hard with his knee and the broken hand.

      “What about physical therapy?” Devon asked. “For your hand?”

      Jack ignored him, swinging his duffel bag up over his good shoulder with his good hand.

      “Jack! You need to talk to someone about Oliver, about what happened. You can’t just—”

      “Thanks for the ride, Devon.”

      Devon sighed, wiped a hand over his eyes. “Christ, you’re stubborn.”

      Jack would have laughed if it hadn’t felt like swallowing glass.

      “Fine. Is there anyone here who will take care of you?” Devon asked.

      Jack looked at the brown house with the dark windows. It blended into the forest, the granite outcrop—a shadow in twilight.

      No one had ever taken care of him here before.

      Except Mia.

      Anger burned through him like a gasoline fire, hot and quick and greasy. She’d left him on that hotel rooftop, run away like a child, didn’t return a single email or phone call for four damn weeks and then, after the bombings, after…Oliver, still nothing.

      Where the hell were you, Mia? he thought.

      The only things he could count on were the pills in his pocket, the nightmares and that no one would find him here.

      “You better go,” he told Devon. “The pass gets dangerous in the dark.”

      Devon looked sufficiently nervous at the idea and Jack bit back a smile. He’d watched the man’s fingers get whiter and whiter on the steering wheel on the way over the mountains.

      “If you’re sure?”

      Jack nodded. He wanted a get this over with—walk through those doors, face down the demons and then sleep. For two months, until he was forced back to San Luis Obispo to answer the dean’s questions.

      He barely heard Devon drive away as he took the gravel pathway up to the house. Why were the lights off but the fireplace going? It was getting close to seven o’clock and at least the lights in the kitchen should be glowing, with some traffic coming from the bunkhouse to the dining room.

      The barn to his left was silent. One brown gelding was in the nearby corral.

      It was spring and the place looked like a ghost town.

      The front door creaked open under his fist and he helped his left knee up the front stoop and entered the house.

      He found a weak fire, mostly glowing embers, in the living room fireplace, but the house was cool. The furnace was off. It was eerie.

      A vicious snapshot, a horrific memory of the pump site, the compound, blackened to cinder. Nothing but craters and smoke where people and equipment used to be.