Eyes still closed, she deeply inhaled several times. The laundry room came to mind again, the one she’d pictured before. “I want to go to your house again,” she said.
“I had the locksmith change all the locks after…when he came to do your doors. I’ll leave a key and a note for Bill. He needs to call me so I can walk him through the alarm.”
She opened her eyes. In the dim light, his brown eyes looked dark, deep…
Sad.
“Thank you,” she said.
His brow furrowed. “For what, sweetheart?”
“For not giving up on me.”
He looked like he was on the verge of tears. He knelt next to the bed and gently cupped her hand in both of his and pressed his lips to it. “I love you. The only thing that can make me stop taking care of you is me dying, or you flat-out telling me you don’t want me anymore.”
With her free hand she caressed his cheek. Despite it hurting, she leaned in and kissed him on the lips, lingering, savoring it. “Thank you for being patient with me.”
“Forever, sweetheart. I promise.”
“I want you.”
His jaw worked, as if he had to swallow. “I want you, too. More than anything.”
“I don’t know how long…until…I can…”
He kissed her hand again. “It doesn’t matter. You’re in no condition to even think about that, anyway. And if it takes weeks or months or even years for you to get to that point, then that’s how long it takes.”
“Did we…on our first date?”
He actually laughed. “No. For starters, I’m not like that, and neither are you. Secondly…” He let out another laugh and shook his head. “If I had time, I’d tell you the story. Let’s say our first date was a true disaster. Fortunately, we kept trying until we got it right.”
After one more kiss, he stood and carefully freed his hands from hers. “Do you need Bill to show you how to work your phone?”
She felt her face heat. “Yeah. I think so.” She’d barely looked at it, overwhelmed. Frustrated that she knew she’d easily worked it before…
Before.
Everything before.
“I’ll put that in the note, too. I walked Doogie already.” The dog was curled up on the bed on her other side, in the space Rob had occupied. The Lab looked from him to her and back again.
“Love you,” he told her.
She let out a deep breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “I love you, too.” That much she knew. She’d take it on faith despite whatever rumbles tried to traipse through her mind.
Deep in her heart, she knew she loved him.
She closed her eyes and let the pain pill kick in.
Her stomach was growling when she pulled herself out of bed close to ten o’clock that morning. Bill was sitting in the living room and working on his laptop.
“There she is. How you feeling?”
She made her way over to the couch and eased herself down onto it before leaning over to rest her head against his shoulder.
“That bad, huh?” he asked.
“Yeah. Please don’t ask me to take another pain pill. I want to go to the shop today.”
“Your presence there is not requested. Steve and Carol said they’d both help load you back in the truck so I could haul you home.”
She didn’t want to cry. She’d done enough of that. She also didn’t want to stay cooped up at the condo. Frustration set in.
“When do I get to decide what I do with my life? Or is this who I was before, just letting everyone tell me what to do?” Despite the pain it caused her, she stood and headed for the kitchen. “I’m sick and tired of everyone else telling me what to do. And worse, I’ve got a psycho who wanted me dead keeping me in fear for a life I can’t even fucking remember!”
He followed her to the kitchen but she turned and pushed him out. “Go. Just…go sit down and leave me alone. I’ll make my own breakfast. I’m not helpless.”
She couldn’t exactly storm, but she plodded over to the fridge and yanked it open, ignoring the pain in her side as she did.
Then she…stood there, staring at what was eye level.
Bill, who hadn’t moved from the kitchen doorway, watched her without speaking.
She let the refrigerator door swing shut and rested her head against the cool surface as tears rolled down her cheeks. On the upper freezer door, there were several magnets. One from Yellowstone.
A magnet she’d bought on her trip out there after their parents died.
She remembered stopping in the visitor center by Old Faithful and buying it, one just like it for the fridge at the house, and several others for Shayla and…people she couldn’t even remember. Maybe Sully and Clarisse had one on their fridge, too.
But she knew the one on Rob’s fridge sat just a little lower than eye level, toward the right. The door handle, opposite of this one, was on the left, and it opened to the right. This one swung open to the left.
His fridge was stainless steel, and matched the stove and dishwasher. He’d taken her with him to pick them out when he bought them several months earlier.
“Laur?” Bill softly asked.
His voice shook her out of her thoughts and the remaining pieces swirled out of reach, once again, into the abyss.
“Take me to Rob’s,” she said.
“I can’t. The alarm company will be here any minute. We have to wait until they leave.”
She nodded as her eyes once again settled on the magnet. “I’m sorry.”
He took a step into the kitchen. “It’s okay,” he said, his voice still low and gentle. “No one blames you for feeling out of whack. I’m surprised you’re handling it as well as you are.”
She reached up and touched the surface of the magnet, tracing its embossed image. “You took the time off then, too.”
“Yeah.” He edged closer, so he could drape his arm around her shoulders.
“Do you still have the horses?”
“You remember that?”
“I remember something about riding.”
He smiled. “Yep. Those two big mooches are still hanging around.”
She looked up into his eyes. “Will this get any easier?”
“I wish I could tell you that.”
Chapter
Seventeen
The alarm company was able to work fast and get everything installed in less than two hours. Her condo was much smaller and easier to equip than the house.
They went over everything with her, showed her how to program it, how to add additional users, and how to check trouble codes.
She stared at the keypad as she and Bill prepared to leave.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Do you need help with it?”
She slowly shook her head. “I never needed one of these before, did I?”
“Well, you’ve had one at the shop for years.”
“I mean here.” Rob had arranged for the system and apparently paid for it out of his own pocket. He’d also instructed them to install a panic button in the master bedroom, and included not one, but two key fobs that also had panic button switches on them.
“No, you didn’t. But this is different.”
She picked up her purse, which she really hadn’t looked through other than to study the contents of her wallet, and trailed a finger over the keypad. “I guess everything’s different now.”
Bill went first out of caution, leaving Laura and Doogie in the truck while he got the front door unlocked and disarmed the alarm.
He had to help her out, the ibuprofen she’d taken not helping to kill the pain so much as strangle it a little.
Kind of like me.