One side of his mouth twisted up. “That’s the way I want it.” He helped her into the cab, then climbed behind the wheel. With a flick of his wrist and a double pump on the gas pedal, the old engine sparked to life.
“You like being the outlaw.”
“Love it.”
“Why?”
He eased to a post supporting a keypad, pressed a series of numbers and the electronic gates hummed as they opened. “I never was one to follow the beaten path.”
“The black sheep. Rogue. Maverick.”
He shrugged. “Whatever. Never thought about it much. Just did my own thing.” He sliced her a look. “It seems to piss people off.”
“I imagine.” The truck’s cab seemed suddenly too close. Intimate. The glass fogging to block out the rest of the night, the rest of the world.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Like hell and don’t tell me I look worse. I know.” Aching all over, Marla cast a glance over her shoulder and through the back window to the house. A golden patch of light streamed from the sitting room windows and Eugenia’s dark silhouette was visible. Two floors above, in Cissy’s room, another light burned but the window remained empty. Marla’s daughter didn’t bother to watch them leave and Marla wasn’t surprised. Their relationship was tenuous at best. What kind of mother was she? Why couldn’t she remember a child who had been a part of her life for nearly fourteen years?
God help me.
Resting her head against the passenger-side window, Marla sighed. Her jaw ached, her head pounded and she was alone with Nick. Again. He shifted the gears, his thigh, so close to hers, flexing as he pushed in the clutch, the fingers of his right hand gripping the gearshift and nearly brushing her leg.
He was near enough to touch. But she didn’t. Would never. Or so she told herself as Nick maneuvered the truck, changing lanes on the shimmering wet streets. Raindrops splashed the windshield, the wipers slapped them away, and some kind of country music wafted through the speakers.
“So what was it that made you get sick?” Nick asked as he shifted down and braked on the steep grade that cut between skyscrapers and smaller buildings, the lig
hts of the city blazing bright. Pedestrians hurried in the rain, traffic rushed through puddles and a deep mist seemed to creep through the alleys.
“I don’t know. Bad soup? Nerves?” She lifted a shoulder.
“You didn’t feel it coming on?”
“A little. I thought it would go away.”
He sent her a look that called her a dozen kinds of fool. “So you just woke up and—”
“No.” She stared at the taillights of a minivan as it rounded a sharp corner. She decided to tell him the truth. “I didn’t wake up because I felt ill. There was more to it.” She slid a glance in his direction, saw his fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “I woke up because I thought I heard something.”
“What?”
In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought fatalistically. “I know this sounds completely wacko—paranoid—but I woke up because I felt, I mean, I thought someone was in the room with me. A man. He was hovering over the bed and he said something like ‘Die, bitch!’ ”
“What? Jesus Christ, Marla, are you serious?” His head jerked and he stared at her hard. He took a corner too fast. The back tires slid before catching. “There was someone in your room?”
“It’s crazy, I know, I know,” she said quickly. “Of course no one was there when I turned on the light and I walked, well, ran around upstairs, checked on the kids—that’s what Cissy was talking about. But I didn’t see anyone, so I told myself it was all part of a bad dream and went back to bed.” Goose bumps rose on her skin as she remembered the terror she’d felt, the conviction that someone had actually gained access to her bedroom. She cleared her throat and stared through the windshield. “I told you it sounds paranoid.”
“You should have called down to me.” The lines around his mouth and eyes grooved deep.
“I said I thought I was dreaming. Anyway, when I was in the nursery, I had a breakthrough. I remembered having the baby.”
“You did? Anything else?”
“No . . . not yet, but I felt like it was going to happen, that I was going to regain my memory, so I held the baby for a while, then went back to bed, still feeling pretty awful. The next thing I knew I was throwing up.”
“Jesus,” Nick whispered.
“I think everything will come back. Soon. That’s one reason I didn’t want to go back to the hospital. I didn’t want to backslide. I don’t want any drugs that might slow this down.” She reached for his arm then. “I have to remember and soon. Or I will lose it.”