Chapter 27
Emory sat bolt upright, gasping.
Wildly, she looked around, expecting to see the log walls, the lamp with the burlap shade, him.
But he wasn’t there, and this wasn’t the cabin, and the Floyd brothers weren’t about to barge through the door with a loaded shotgun.
She was in her hospital room, safe and secure.
So why was her heart racing? Why was she so oxygen-deprived that her hands and feet were tingling?
She recognized the classic symptoms of a panic attack, but for the life of her, she didn’t know what had brought it on. A bad dream? Deep-seated guilt from having lied to law enforcement officers?
Either would do it.
But she sensed the reason for her acute anxiety was something more imperative. She got out of bed and dragged the IV pole with her over to the door. Opening it only a crack, she stuck her head through and looked in both directions. The corridor was empty. No one lurking outside her room. None of the nursing staff in sight. Nothing threatening.
She backed into the room and closed the door.
She went into the bathroom to use the toilet and bathe her face with a damp cloth. The tile floor was cold against her bare feet. On her way back to the bed, she retrieved the bag containing her belongings from the closet and carried it with her to the bed. As she rummaged through it looking for her socks, she conceded that Jeff was right. Her running clothes did smell rather— Suddenly prompted by intuition, she upended the bag and shook the contents into her lap, convinced that the answer to what had caused her panic attack was something within that bag.
She rifled through the articles rapidly, then more slowly, handling them individually, taking them into account one by one.
When realization struck, the shock was electrifying.
She sat for a moment trying to decide what to do, then, with trembling hands, she punched in a number on her cell phone, and waited anxiously for the call to be answered.
After several rings, a sleepy voice said, “Emory? Is everything okay?”
“Alice! I apologize for waking you.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I mean I’m not, or I wouldn’t be calling you at— What time is it?”
“Doesn’t matter. What’s wrong? You sound frantic.”
She forced herself to calm down and take deep breaths. “I need to ask you something, and I didn’t want to wait until morning.”
“I’m listening.”
“Today, when all of you were in my hospital room and I was describing the fall I took, and hitting my head, all that, did I mention breaking my sunglasses?”
“What?”
“Think back, Alice. Please. It’s important. Did I refer to breaking my sunglasses?”
“I don’t remember. Why?”
She swallowed with effort. “Because Jeff asked me earlier tonight who had repaired them. I told him that one of the nurses must have, when actually it was the man in the cabin.”
“Okay,” Alice said slowly, clearly mystified.
“How did Jeff know my glasses had broken when I fell?”
Alice took time to think it over. “You repeated your story several times throughout the afternoon. You must have mentioned the sunglasses at one time or another.”
She gnawed her lower lip. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you implying… What are you implying?”
“Just hear me out, please. Since our reunion this morning, Jeff has been like a different person. He’s hovered. He’s been protective, loving, even contrite. Not at all like him, as you know.”
“Emory—”
“I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that would be normal penitential behavior for a man who’s been having an affair.”
“That’s exactly what I was going to say. In light of your close call, he feels truly rotten and wants to atone for straying.”
“That makes sense, and I would agree, except that his coddling feels phony and forced. Like he’s putting on an act. I don’t feel comfortable around him. He’s made me very ill at ease. I know it sounds crazy.”
“It doesn’t sound crazy. It does, however, sound like it’s coming from someone who took a hard blow to the head. Did they give you a sedative tonight? It could be affecting—”
“This isn’t medication talking. I’m not delusional. I’m not hysterical.”
Alice’s silence on the other end indicated that perhaps she did sound hysterical. She rolled her lips inward to prevent herself from saying anything that would affirm it.
Alice said, “Let me be sure I understand. You’re suggesting that Jeff was there, that he had a hand in the injury that caused your concussion?”
“If he didn’t, how did he know about my sunglasses?”
Alice took a deep breath. “All right, say he did incapacitate you. Then what? He left you for this mountain man to kidnap? Do you think Jeff and he were in cahoots?”
“No. Impossible.”
“More impossible than what you’re alleging?”
“I’m not alleging anything. I’m just—” What was she doing?
“Have you told the two detectives about this?” Alice asked.
“Not yet.”
“You should.”
“I considered calling Sergeant Knight, but I wanted confirmation about the sunglasses first. I hoped you would tell me yes I definitely referenced them, or no I definitely did not.”
Softly Alice said, “You didn’t. Not in my hearing.”
Emory expelled her breath in a gust. “Thank you.”
“But how many times had you told the story before Neal and I arrived?”
“Several. Fragments of it anyway.”
“Can you absolutely swear that you didn’t at some point mention your sunglasses?”
When she looked back over the day, it was a jumble of incomplete impressions, as though someone had made a jigsaw puzzle of it, then tossed all the pieces into the air and let them fall.
She’d been suffering the impact of her reentry into normal life and concentrating so hard on not trapping herself in a lie, perhaps she had referred to her sunglasses and simply didn’t remember doing so.
“No,” she admitted softly. “I can’t absolutely swear to it.”
Alice waited several moments, then said, “I believe you took something Jeff said in passing and blew it out of proportion.”
“I’d like to think so. Truly I would. But I have such a strong gut feeling that something isn’t right.”
“May I offer a couple of explanations for why you feel that way?”
“Please.”
“You’ve been through an ordeal that packed a wallop, emotionally as well as physically. You suffered a brain injury, a mild one, but a brain injury nonetheless. You slept with a stranger. In terms of Emory Charbonneau’s comfort zone, that’s outside the stratosphere. Naturally, you’re feeling a bit fragile, insecure, even frightened.”
“I hear what you’re saying, Alice. But when have you known me to let my imagination run wild, or to go all aflutter in a crisis situation?”
“Never. But this was no ordinary crisis. This was your crisis.”
She sighed. “All right, that’s one explanation. You said you had a couple.”
“Guilt, perhaps?”
Emory thought about it. “I’m finding fault with Jeff to assuage my own guilt for sleeping with another man?”