Winners by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online Page A

night. They were hit by a car and skidded on the ice. Your husband’s car hit the stoplight. Your son is fine.” He steeled himself for his next words and hated having to say them to her. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Thomas. Your husband was killed on impact. We went out to the house, but there was no one home.”
    “I was working,” she said in a small voice. “Oh my God …” And where was Chris? Why hadn’t he called? “Where is he?… my husband … where …” She felt completely disoriented as she walked into the ER.
    “He’s at the morgue,” the sergeant answered. Without thinking, she closed her phone. She couldn’t bear what he had just said. It couldn’t be true. Tim was home with the kids. He had to be. What would he be doing at the morgue? And then the resident spotted her and walked toward her. He recognized her immediately, even though she didn’t know him. She was the star neurosurgeon in Squaw. He came to tell her how sorry he was, and she nodded blindly and let him take her upstairs to pediatrics, where Jimmy was dressed and wearing the clothes he’d been wearing the night before, and she could see that he had a bruise along the side of his face where it had hit the car door. She folded him into her arms and held him, grateful that he wasn’t dead or seriously injured, and then she looked at him with devastated eyes.
    “Daddy forgot to come and get me,” he said quietly. “We got hit by a car, and he hurt his ear. It was bleeding, and they took me away in an ambulance.” He tried to tell her everything at once. “The air bag opened, just like you said why you don’t let me sit in the front seat.” She listened and had no idea what to tell him, or that his daddy hadn’t hurt just his ear, and hadn’t forgotten to pick him up. He was at the morgue. The sergeant’s words were still ringing in her ears. “Can we go home now?” She nodded, unable to speak. She helped him put on his coat, and the resident from the ER walked them to her car.
    “Can you drive?” he asked her with a look of concern, and she said yes in a small voice. She could drive. She just couldn’t think. She didn’t understand what had happened, and she knew it couldn’t be true. Tim would be at home, making breakfast for the others. She put Jimmy in the backseat of the car, and tried to pretend everything was normal on the drive home, although she was shaking violently. And as soon as they walked into the house, Chris ran down the stairs with a look of panic.
    “Dad and Jimmy didn’t come home last night,” he said, before he saw Jimmy. “I knew you were operating so I couldn’t call you, and Dad didn’t answer his cell.” And then he saw Jimmy standing behind their mother, with the bruise on his face. “Where’s Dad?” Chris asked both of them, as confused as she was. She didn’t answer, and both boys were staring at her with a look of terror in their eyes.
    “He’s not here,” she said, vaguely. “He’s out. I’ll make breakfast,” she said, with no idea how to do it. And then she asked Chris to pick up Heather and Adam and bring them home.
    “Did something happen to Dad?” he asked her, and Jimmy answered.
    “We got in an accident. A car hit us. Dad hurt his ear, it was bleeding, and I bumped my head.” He showed him the bruise, and Chris didn’t question him further, or his mother. He left the house without a word, and twenty minutes later all four of the children were in the kitchen, looking expectantly at her. Chris had told them what he knew on the way home, which wasn’t much.
    “Is Dad okay?” Heather had asked him with concern, and Adam was annoyed that he had had to leave his friend’s house just as they were about to eat breakfast, but Chris said they had to go home right away, and for once Adam didn’t argue. He could sense that something was wrong, and his older brother looked scared.
    Jessie sat down at the kitchen table with them. She had wanted to tell them all together,