“Emma . . .” Amanda muttered, shock ringing in her tone. She flung herself off the couch and stood. She wore shorts, her long, lustrous dark blond hair falling down her back like a cloak. The skin of her bare legs and arms gleamed in the flashing light from the television, the only source of illumination in the cozy scenario except for occasional flashes of lightning from the storm.
You’re the stupidest woman on the face of the earth. What kind of female left her boyfriend alone night after night with a stunning woman like Amanda? It’d never even occurred to Emma to be jealous.
Colin stood slowly.
“I thought you wanted to get to bed early tonight,” Emma said to him, distantly surprised by how calm she sounded.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Colin said hollowly. He glanced uneasily from Emma to Amanda, and then back to Emma again. “We . . . I didn’t hear you come in.”
Emma nodded. “Yeah. Obviously. I came in the back door. The rain must have muffled the sound.” She started toward the hallway, moving like a robot set on automatic. “Well personally, all I can think about is sleep. Good night.”
“Emma,” Colin called sharply at the same time Amanda cried out, “Emma, wait!” Her sister’s voice rang with a mixture of anxiety, anguish, and disbelief. Emma didn’t turn around or stop walking.
“Forget it,” Colin said sharply when Amanda started to call out again, sounding panicked. “She’s not going to listen to us. Not now. Let’s go.”
That made Emma whip around. She flew across the floor toward them so fast, Colin’s eyes widened in alarm. He took a step back.
“You go,” she grated out, her teeth clenched. “This is my sister’s home. It’s mine. She doesn’t have to leave right now. You do.”
Colin’s mo
uth fell open in shock. She glared at him fiercely.
“You’re right. I’ll go. We can talk about this tomorrow,” he said after a moment, glancing worriedly at both of them. Amanda just stood there, looking shattered.
Emma turned to resume her exit when Colin started for the front door.
“Emma, stop. We have to talk,” Amanda entreated.
“I don’t want to talk to you. You’re the last person on earth I want to look at right now.”
She didn’t know what she was feeling aside from blindsided. Her brain and body vibrated with shock. Maybe she shouldn’t have acted so holier-than-thou just now. Hadn’t she just been lusting after another man? Hadn’t she been having intensely erotic dreams, dreams she’d never associate with Colin and their sex life in a million years?
In her room, she locked the door and mechanically stripped, changed into some shorts and a tank top, turned out the light, and plunged into bed. When the knock came at the door a few seconds later, along with Amanda’s pleas for her to open up and let her in, Emma reached for her headphones. She curled on her side and let the harsh, loud music crash into her, blocking everything out. Even though she clenched her eyelids shut, Emma knew for a fact she’d never sleep that night.
It’d been her secure relationship with Amanda she lost tonight, she realized numbly. The loss of a lackluster romance with Colin Atwater was nothing in comparison to that wound.
* * *
Death rarely followed a smooth downward decline. Emma was reminded of that the next day at work when Cristina joked with her tiredly when she woke up at around six in the evening, telling Emma she looked like something the cat had dragged in.
“Out partying last night with that boyfriend of yours, were you?” Cristina asked as Emma poured out her pain medication.
“No. I just couldn’t sleep,” Emma replied honestly. How could she rest with all the disturbing images she had swirling around her head? Colin’s hand moving along the side of her sister’s body, skimming her breast; the message in Montand’s stare as he’d stood in the headlights of her car; the silent, somehow miserable climax of that man—Vanni.
Yes. Her voyeuristic incident was still bothering her deeply, and she was doing everything in her power to repress it. It felt like her whole world had been toppled over.
“I understand from Margie that you had a good appetite today,” she said, changing the subject.
“A yogurt and half a supplement shake. Good if you’re an anorexic or a dying woman, maybe,” Cristina replied dryly. Neither of them spoke as Emma administered the medication and held up a glass with a straw while her patient laboriously drank a few mouthfuls of water.
“That was some storm last night,” Cristina gasped as she resettled on her pillows. “Maybe that’s what kept you awake?”
“Maybe it was the storm,” Emma said dubiously, setting the water glass on the table. What did she know about what she was feeling, after all? She’d briefly told an equally bewildered, tearful Amanda that this morning when her sister finally confronted her in the kitchen.
“It only happened that one time, Emma. I want you to know that.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better, that it happened once?”