He didn’t want to talk about it and he was grateful she didn’t ask for specifics.
“Is it better if you sleep all the way through or wake up in the middle?” She hugged her pillow.
“I never wake up in the middle so I’m not sure.” It felt strange having her here when he still had one foot in Lafayette.
But it wasn’t a bad thing. Erin’s warmth and her scent helped chase away the cold, metallic fear that always filled him after the nightmare.
“Would it help to talk about it?” She rubbed his knee through the sheet, her touch pulling him out of the dream more and more.
“No.” He didn’t want to linger in that dream. “I’d rather talk about anything else.”
He covered his face and waited for his heart rate to slow.
“If you’re sure”
“God, yes.”
She was quiet for a minute. “I used to have a recurring nightmare that my family forgot me during a summer vacation.”
Absently, she threaded their fingers together. His and hers. He wondered if she could tell how grateful he was to change the subject. The ceiling fan ticked overhead, drying the cold sweat on his forehead.
The electricity must have come back on. Erin wore an oversize T-shirt and a loose pair of yellow cotton shorts.
“I pictured the Finley family as far too perfect to forget a kid.” He wanted to lighten the dark mood still fogging his brain. “Your dad was mayor for a decade, right? And I know your family owns a hardware store and a construction business.”
“I forgot how thoroughly you did your homework on the store.”
“It pays to know who you’re dealing with.”
“Wish I’d learned that lesson sooner in life.” She glanced at their clasped hands. “Anyway, the dream was based on a real Finley family vacation. We’d rented donkeys to view the Grand Canyon and my mom had a mini-breakdown, which created a big drama and everyone sort of flocked to help her.”
Remy tried to recall what else she’d said about her family. He didn’t know much about her other than the affair with the married guy that still tore at her conscience. How self-absorbed had he been to unload so many of his problems on her while she just listened.
“Your mom is scared of heights?”
“Mom is scared of lots of things. Being confined by a seat belt. Bridges. Avocados. I could list fora while. She’s bipolar, but she has some other issues that she takes better care of these days. Back then, there wasn’t the same awareness or care available so we just walked on eggshells a lot and tried not to upset her.”
“That sounds like an impossible balancing act.” He remembered what she’d said about spending the whole day contemplating which candy to buy at the store. The story took on a darker cast as he imagined her and her siblings trying to stay away from their home. Avoid their mother.
“For her, too. I mean, she tried to keep herself together. I think that vacation was her idea so she could relax. But renting donkeys…” Erin shook her head. “Total disaster. I was trying to distance myself from her and the screaming because the sound rattled around the canyon and amplified a thousand times over. There was no escape.”
She held the pillow tighter and he realized it hurt her to remember this. Remy sat up in bed and put a hand on her knee, rubbing lightly.
“That must have been scary.”
“Yes. But it got twelve times scarier once the screaming ended and I had no idea where any of them went.” She traced the red stitching on the pillowcase with her fingernail. “Logically, I figured they went up, right? But I’d strayed so far off the path, I couldn’t tell whatwasthe path anymore.”
“How long before they found you?”
She forced a dark laugh. “That’s the thing. I foundthemtwo hours later. They never noticed I was gone.”
“How old were you?” He hadn’t met all of her family yet and right now, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“Nine. Heather swears she told Scott I was missing, but he was either too scared to process what she said, or Heather remembers wrong.” She shrugged and shiftedpositions so she sat cross-legged, leaning against the headboard. “So yeah, it was just two hours of scariness, but it’s all nicely preserved in my dreams from seeing the rattlesnake to the pony’s refusal to move for about twenty minutes.”
“You stayed on the pony the whole time?” He pictured Sarah when he’d first met her and how worried he’d been that he’d do something wrong as a parent because he had zero experience.
And he would have never forgotten her. She would have been scared to death.
