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When they get back to their villa, Piper spots it first. She stops in her tracks, blinks, not entirely understanding what it is she’s seeing, but knowing it means something is wrong. “Dad?”
He doesn’t seem to hear her. His lips are pressed to her younger brother’s forehead, and Lochlan is curled into him, barely moving.
“Tim?” Her mother is rushing toward them suddenly, Saxon right behind her, nearly knocking Piper over as he goes. Piper catches herself and follows.
Her mother is already running her hands all over Lochlan’s face and chest, questions tumbling out at a hundred miles an hour. Lochlan blinks sluggishly at her, and their father says nothing, just takes a shuddering breath and closes his eyes. There are tear tracks on his face. He hasn’t ceded an inch of his grip on Lochlan to Victoria.
“Dad,” Saxon is saying. “Dad! Come on, snap out of it! What the hell happened?” Tim doesn’t say anything, and Saxon looks up at Piper. “Go call someone!”
Piper opens her mouth to reply. He’s right, she should, but everything feels slow right now, a dream she can’t quite comprehend, water slipping through her fingers. In a moment the decision is made for her, Saxon swearing at her and jumping to his feet to race into the living room for the landline phone there.
Piper sinks to her knees at her brother’s feet. Lochlan watches her, gaze a little empty. He looks exhausted.
He was just… sitting here, when they left for breakfast. Piper replays her own words in her head, her decision to walk away, even when Lochlan failed to reply to any of them. She’d thought he was just spacing out.
“Loch?” she asks tentatively.
He simply looks at her. Maybe she was too quiet under her mother’s rambling. Tears burn at her eyes. She turns away to wipe them clear, and something flashes in the light.
Piper reaches back and picks up the glass. It looks like it contains the dregs of one of Saxon’s protein shakes. Could this be some sort of extreme food poisoning? The remains of whatever Lochlan drank don’t smell like much of anything, maybe just the slightest bit sour.
“Don’t touch that!” The glass is snatched from her hand suddenly, and before Piper can say anything Tim has thrown it at the fence, likely intending for it to go over, but instead it hits the wood with a dull thump and falls to the ground, shattering.
“Dad!”
“Don’t—don’t touch it.” He’s breathing heavily, and gripping Lochlan even more tightly now. Lochlan grimaces.
“Dad, be careful.”
“What? Oh—oh, I’m sorry, Lochy.”
Saxon is back suddenly, kneeling beside them. “They’ll be here soon. You okay, little bro?”
Lochlan’s eyes travel up to him, slowly. “Yeah.”
“But Tim, what happened?” Victoria wails. “What did he drink? What did you drink, Lochy?”
“Just made a protein shake.” Lochlan’s eyes are closed now. “I don’t know.”
Piper glares at Saxon, who raises his hands. “Why are you looking at me?”
“You’ve been pushing those at him all week, and now he’s had some sort of reaction—”
“It’s not my fault if he’s allergic to something! Besides, he’s already had a few this week!”
“Kids, just drop it, drop it!” Tim shifts slightly so he can see both of them. “What matters is Lochy’s going to be all right, aren’t you son?”
“Did you call an ambulance, Saxon?” Victoria asks.
“How would I call an ambulance, Mom? They don’t use 911 here. I called the front desk, they’re sending the paramedics.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
Saxon rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”
Piper looks back at Lochlan. His eyes are closed, and he’s slumped more heavily against their dad. “Is he asleep?”
Tim scrambles to press two fingers to Lochlan’s neck, and the sight causes nausea to rise in Piper’s throat. “Yeah,” he says softly. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Jesus Christ,” Saxon mutters.
Victoria takes Lochlan’s hand in her own. “It’s these exotic places, I’m telling you.”
And isn’t that a punch to the gut. Piper takes a shuddering breath.
Thankfully, the paramedics arrive right then. Piper retreats to the steps leading inside, telling herself it’s just so she’s out of the way. Saxon remains closer, hovering, but he’s quiet. It’s been a long time since Piper couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
The next several hours pass in a haze. Tim goes with Lochlan in the ambulance, while the rest of them are piled into a hotel car to follow it. There seem to be a lot of police cars parked on the drive, and additional ambulances. Piper frowns at it all. That can’t all be for Lochlan.
The hospital waiting room is a hot, humid place, with plastic chairs and cheap drywall. A creaking fan attempts to circulate the air but Piper half-wishes they’d turn it off, if only for some peace and quiet. A mother with a crying toddler sits in the opposite corner. A man gets up to argue with the nurse behind the desk every ten minutes, only to sit back down to continue stewing. Something about the place reminds Piper of the monastery, and she wants to crawl out of her skin. What the hell was she thinking, pretending she could spend an entire year in a place like this?
Her mother doesn’t seem to be doing much better, swatting viciously at the occasional bug and inspecting every square inch of anything before she deigns to touch it. She keeps commenting on how primitive everything is, but none of them respond to her. A part of Piper wants to tell her to just sit still. A bigger part of her wishes they were home.
Saxon has, incredibly, brought a book with him. He’s not really reading it, but he opens it once in a while like he intends to before shaking his head and getting up to pace instead. Piper still hasn’t managed to sneak a glance at the title.
Her father moves least out of all them. Piper would think he was comatose if not for how he’s sitting, elbows on his knees and staring into space. Every once in a while his breath hitches. The sound makes tears swim in Piper’s eyes. She wishes she had her headphones.
It’s their father, strangely enough, who’d been least willing to take Lochlan to the hospital. He kept asking couldn’t Lochlan just sleep it off, couldn’t they just give him some meds to take. It was only when the paramedics told him that Lochlan’s heart rate was still dangerously low that he relented. Even Saxon had been looking at him like he was insane.
Eventually, a doctor comes out. Piper straightens, but he only wants to talk to their parents. Piper exchanges a look with Saxon at that, heart hammering.
Though she can’t hear what he’s saying, the doctor’s face is grim. Piper watches her parents, her father’s look of consternation, her mother’s shock. “He what?” she exclaims loudly, and Saxon stands. Piper pulls him back.
“Hold on,” she says. Surprisingly, Saxon listens.
Lochy isn’t dead. This isn’t the reaction her parents would be having if he was dead.
Finally, the doctor leaves. Victoria stares after him, clearly at a loss. Tim takes her gently by the shoulders and guides her back to their seats.
“What was that all about?” Saxon asks immediately. “What did he say?”
Victoria opens her mouth, but no words come out. She shakes her head.
“We don’t have the full story,” Tim says, mostly to her. “Let’s—let’s see what Lochy has to say when he wakes up, all right?”
“Says about what?” Saxon presses. “Is he going to be okay? What’s going on?”
Tim’s eyes flick to Saxon, then briefly to Piper. “I don’t believe it myself, all right?”
“Believe what?”
“That doctor said Lochlan tried to kill himself!” Victoria finally exclaims, and everything stops.
There’s a buzzing in Piper’s ears. It’s like she’s back at the hotel, staring uncomprehending at the image before her. That can’t be—
“Kill himself?” Saxon repeats. “What—but he—that’s not—”
Piper has never seen Saxon so pale. Lochlan’s face when she’d told him she didn’t want him at the monastery flashes before her eyes. That can’t be why, can it?
If anything, Saxon looks even more guilty than she feels. He gets up and starts to pace. “Why would he—”
“Why do they think that?” Piper demands. “If he just had some expired coconut milk—”
“They found poison in his bloodstream!” Victoria wails. “Remember the lady at the hotel? She told us those fruits were toxic! But he blended them right into his smoothie!”
Victoria collapses into hiccuping sobs. Piper stares. Slowly, her gaze drifts to her father.
Tim is looking toward the ground. His eyes are darting back and forth. He’s chewing his lip. His hand hovers over Victoria’s shoulder for a moment, but he doesn’t touch her.
“Dad?”
Tim startles. He meets her gaze only briefly before looking back down. “It must be some mistake.”
It must be. It must be, because Lochlan wouldn’t kill himself. He just wouldn’t.
“See, if we were in America, they wouldn’t make that mistake!” Victoria cries.
Saxon stops pacing. “When can we see him?”
“Soon,” Tim says, a little more steadily. “The doctor will come back out and show us in.”
Saxon swears and sits back down, head in his hands. Piper watches her father, watches the way his fingers curl and uncurl from around the armrest, the way he flinches periodically at something in his mind’s eye, the way he opens his mouth only to close it again, as if biting back whatever he’d convinced himself to say. Finally, he stands.
“Look,” he begins. Saxon lifts his head. Victoria wipes at her eyes and looks up at him. Piper doesn’t move. “I know I said last night that we’ve had the perfect life. Without any pain or suffering. And I know this is scary right now, but Lochy’s gonna be okay, right? I know he is. And I know no matter what that doctor says he didn’t try to—” A choked-off sob escapes him. “And I know we’re going to be okay as a family, right? Because that’s the most important thing.”
None of them say anything. Tim nods and sits back down.
Piper looks away.
The doctor comes back out a few minutes later. “He’s awake,” he says.
In the doorway to Lochy’s room, Piper hesitates. Her younger brother is hidden from view almost immediately by her parents swarming him. Saxon hovers behind them, watching but not approaching. He’s hiding something, Piper is certain.
Her mother sits down in the chair next to Lochlan’s bed, and Piper can see him now, looking pale and small and fragile. She approaches slowly until she’s level with Saxon, who still hasn’t moved. Lochlan looks away from Victoria, eyes flicking between his siblings.
“Hey,” he says.
“Loch…” Saxon begins.
Lochlan’s eyes snap to him. Saxon shakes his head. “Never mind.”
“How are you feeling?” Piper asks.
Lochlan shrugs, glances at Tim. “Better, I think. Still tired.”
“Oh, honey,” Victoria says. “You didn’t mean to eat those darned fruits, did you?”
Lochlan frowns. “What fruits?”
Victoria looks up at Tim. He doesn’t meet her eyes.
“They found poison in your system, honey,” Victoria says. “From those fruits at our villa, remember?”
“What—poison? I just made a protein shake.”
It’s the same thing he said before, and some part of Piper relaxes. She doesn’t think he’s lying. He looks too confused to be lying.
“How the hell did it get in there, then?” Saxon demands.
Piper sees Lochlan’s flinch. She hits Saxon on the arm. “Dude.”
“What? No, seriously, if Lochy didn’t do it—”
There’s a knock at the door. Piper turns to see a nurse standing there, holding a familiar cloth bag. “Sorry to interrupt,” she says. “I just wanted to let you all know I have your devices here. Someone from the hotel sent them over. I’ll just leave them here.” She sets the bag down on a chair by the door and leaves.
For a long second, no one moves. Saxon is the first to, but Tim catches him by the arm. “Hold—hold on a second.”
He looks seriously anxious now, hands twisting, teeth clenching. Piper glances around at the rest of her family, but they’re all staring at Tim, waiting.
“Things are about to change,” he says finally. “And… it’ll be hard. And I’m sorry for that. But we’ll get through it together. As a family. Because we’re a strong family.”
“Well, what do you mean, Tim?” Victoria asks. “That’s not very specific.”
Tim looks down. Saxon stares at him for a moment before marching over to the bag and digging out his phone. Lochlan tracks his movements quietly, through half-lidded eyes. Tim runs a hand over his face.
“Fuck,” Saxon says. “Dad, what the hell? Is this real?”
“What is it?” Victoria asks.
Tim closes his eyes. “We’ll get through it.”
“Seriously?” Saxon scoffs. “What—I mean—what? Fraud? Embezzlement? What the fuck?”
Piper’s jaw quite literally drops. “What?”
“Tim!”
“It’s gonna be—”
“Let me see that.” Piper snatches the phone from Saxon, skims through the article. It had been sent to him by a contact; she goes back, clicks on another. And another. She searches her family’s name. It’s everywhere. Timothy Ratliff. Financial fraud. Assets frozen. There’s a warrant out for his arrest.
“Dad,” she whispers, “why?”
Tim shakes his head. Piper is at a loss.
Saxon grabs his phone back from her, swearing under his breath. Victoria has melted into the chair, hand on her heart. She’s in shock. Piper should go to her, comfort her. She has no idea what to say. They’re—they’re about to lose everything.
“Is this why you asked?”
The room goes quiet. Everyone turns to Lochlan.
“What?” Tim says.
“Is this why you asked? If I could live with no money?”
For the second time, Piper’s jaw drops.
Tim opens his mouth, closes it again. “Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Well, you didn’t ask the rest of us!” Victoria says shrilly.
Maybe he didn’t need to. Piper remembers breakfast yesterday morning, how she’d broken down about being spoiled, about being unable to live a simple life. Her mother’s answer to that question was straightforward enough, and Saxon… well, if Saxon had anything going for himself outside of work Piper would be hard-pressed to find it.
Lochy, though…
There’s a strange look on Lochlan’s face, something between shock and disgust. His eyes flick to their father and away again, over and over, as if he can’t quite bring himself to look at him. Very subtly, he shifts away from Tim, and as he does so, his eyes meet Piper’s.
She knows, suddenly, exactly what he’s thinking.
“No,” she whispers.
“Am I crazy?” Lochlan says hoarsely.
It’s a horrific thought. An awful, ghastly, utterly horrific thought. She stares at her father. Her father. “It was you.”
The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them. She claps a hand over it anyway, but the damage is done.
“What was him?” Saxon asks.
Piper meets her father’s eyes. There is resignation there, and pain, so much pain. “Piper,” he tries.
“You tried to—to—” She can’t breath suddenly. Nausea rises up in her throat, and she lunges for the small sink in the corner, retching up bile.
“Piper!” Her mother is there in an instant. “Oh, honey, don’t tell me you’re getting sick, too!”
“He—he tried to—” Piper shakes her head. There are tears already streaming down her face, mucus clogging her throat. “He tried…”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Saxon demands.
“He tried to kill us!” Piper shouts. Her voice comes out shrill and strangled. It almost would have been easier to stab everyone in her family than to say it, but now that she’s started it’s hard to stop. “He tried to poison us, all of us, except Lochy, he tried—with the piña coladas, and then—” She stumbles backwards into her mother and sinks to the floor. Victoria goes with her. “Why, dad?”
The room is silent except for her own hiccuping sobs. Her mother is frozen beside her, hand a vice around her own. Saxon is staring at Tim as if he’s never seen him before. Lochlan crosses his arms and sinks deeper into his pillows.
“Tim?”
Piper has never heard her mother sound so unsure.
Something cracks in Tim’s expression. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I didn’t… it was a mistake. A horrible mistake. I’m—I’m so sorry.” He looks at Lochlan. “I’m so sorry.”
Without another word, he walks out of the room.
Piper curls against the wall, breaths coming in shuddering gasps. “What the actual fuck?” Saxon spits.
“Holy shit,” Lochlan mutters. “Holy shit.”
Slowly, Victoria stands. Piper has the sudden thought that she’s going to faint, a thought Saxon clearly shares, because he steps toward her, hands out. “Mom.”
Victoria shakes her head. She looks around at them all. Opens her mouth, says nothing. Shakes her head again.
“Mom,” Piper tries.
Victoria crosses the room unsteadily, back to the chair beside Lochlan’s bed. Lochlan, who still looks pale and exhausted, who according to the doctor needs to stay at least one night for observation, who was almost killed by their own—
Piper squeezes her eyes shut, breathes through her nose. She uses the wall to climb back to her feet, and suddenly there’s a hand on her elbow. Saxon, offering support.
Piper stares. The corner of his mouth quirks, and he offers her the ghost of a sad smile. Apparently he can, in fact, be a person sometimes.
Wordlessly, they drag two more chairs over to Lochy’s bedside. He turns to look at them. Victoria has one of his hands clasped in hers, her forehead resting on the bed just below. For a long moment none of them says anything.
“You should get some rest, Loch,” Saxon says finally. He reaches out to squeeze Lochlan’s arm, lingering for only a second before withdrawing.
Lochlan looks at him for a long moment, then sighs. “Yeah.”
Piper reaches out to squeeze his free hand. “I’m glad you’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“Right.” Lochlan’s expression is distant. Doubtful. “Right.” He pulls his hand out of hers and closes his eyes before she can say anything else.
Piper exchanges a look with Saxon. Neither of them know how to fix this. Maybe it’s impossible. There’s only one thing they can do right now, and that’s to sit here with the imploded remains of their family. The rest will simply have to wait.