Page 64 of The Summer Guests

Chapter 31

Jo

A wild-eyed Susan Conover came flying into the emergency room followed by her family, her whole damn family, and she barreled straight toward Jo.

“Where is she?Where is she?”

Jo held up both hands, trying to calm an already chaotic situation. The hospital waiting room was crowded with patients, a baby was screaming, and the arrival of the Conovers, all six of them at once, only added to the noise and confusion.

“They just took Zoe to the operating room,” said Jo.

“Why are they operating? What happened to her?”

“You need to talk to the doctors. I really can’t—”

“Justtell me!” Susan cried.

Jo glanced around the waiting room, where all other conversation had suddenly ceased. The only sound was the baby’s relentless screams. Temporarily distracted from their own aches and maladies, everyone was now staring at Jo and Susan and this unfolding drama.

Jo took Susan’s arm and led her away to a corner where they could speak without being overheard.

“A pair of hikers found your daughter at the bottom of a ravine,” Jo said quietly. “We don’t know how Zoe ended up there, but she sustained multiple fractures from the fall. Her skull, her pelvis. Plus a few broken ribs.”

“But she’s alive?” The breath whooshed out of Susan, and she reeled back against the wall, sobbing. “Oh, thank God. She’s alive. She’s alive ...”

For now,thought Jo, but that could change at any moment. It felt almost cruel to raise Susan’s hopes, to subject her to a roller-coaster plunge into despair if the girl didn’t survive, which seemed all too possible. Jo had glimpsed the broken body as rescuers loaded the stretcher into the ambulance, had seen the blood-matted hair and lifeless limbs. Yes, the girl’s heart was still beating, but inside that fractured skull, what remained of the girl known as Zoe Conover?

Ethan wrapped his arms around his wife, and as Susan sagged against him, he said to Jo: “You said a pair of hikers found her?”

“Yes. Zoe was lying a few dozen yards off the trail they were on. They probably wouldn’t have found her at all if their dog hadn’t taken off into the woods. He must have smelled something, heard something. They ran after him and found your daughter lying in a shallow streambed. That may be why she’s survived this long. She had water to drink, while she was still conscious, anyway. And temperatures have been mild these last few nights.”

The rest of the Conover family had moved in to hear the details, and they formed a protective circle against the eyes and ears of everyone else in the waiting room.

“Which hiking trail was this?” asked Colin.

“Stony Creek. The trailhead’s about eight miles west of Maiden Pond. She was found at the bottom of a forty-foot ravine, just below the Indian Head lookout.”

“How the hell did she end up way out there?”

“We don’t know.”

The hospital doors whooshed open. Jo almost groaned when she saw Ingrid and Lloyd Slocum stride into the ER waiting room, looking like a couple on a mission. But of course that’s exactly why they were there. The Slocums were always on a mission.

“Chief Thibodeau,” said Ingrid. “May we have a word?”

“I can’t talk to you right now.”

“We heard the girl was found—”

“Stop.Enough.” Jo herded the pair away from the Conovers and steered them toward the exit.

“And she was wearing only a bathing suit,” said Lloyd.

How the hell do they know that?“Not here.Outside,” Jo ordered.

They stepped through the whooshing ER doors and stood beside the empty ambulance bay. This regional hospital, which served the entire county, was where tourists and locals alike came for their heart attacks, broken bones, and food poisoning. On this busy summer day, the parking lot was almost full, and Jo could hear the wail of an ambulance speeding away.

“How did you know she was wearing a bathing suit?” said Jo.

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