“Mrs. Alford is at the house, watching her.”
And now it was his turn to be stunned. “How the hell did that happen?”
I explained my part of the story, how I’d given her my business card along with the pan of blondies I’d brought over, and how she’d called me. “We talked for a while. Do you know that she used to feud with your grandmother?”
“I did know that. They hated each other.”
“She doesn’t hate you anymore, and she owes me,” I said. “She was having a problem with the city about her property taxes and I straightened it out. When I called her tonight, she was happy to come and watch the house until I got back.” Maybe ‘happy’ wasn’t the right word, but she really did owe me. I had saved her thousands. “Her sister is staying at her house right now so Boris isn’t alone, either. She’s going to have a hissy when she sees your face.”
“Is it that bad?” We had come to a red light so I turned to see and spotted him trying to smile at me. “Sweetheart, don’t cry. It must look worse than it feels.”
“I really hope so.”
It looked bad enough that I got Mrs. Alford and walked her across the street before Silas emerged from the car. Then I went to the passenger side to help him, and he hadn’t admitted to feeling any pain but I could tell by how he moved that his face wasn’t the only part of him with bruises. “Lyra’s going to be upset,” he sighed as we slowly made our way up the steps to his bedroom. “You’re already upset.”
I was, very, but I wasn’t helping him by constantly bursting into tears. Per his request, I got him several bags of frozen peas from the freezer. I had wondered why there were so many of those since neither he nor his sister would eat them. Now I knew: the peas were medicinal, for use in the aftermath of violence. Who would have associated such a silly little legume with bloodshed like this? It was like the worst action movie I’d ever seen, where the hero…
Silas was a hero. He was out there just like a guy with a cape, protecting me from my idiot ex-boyfriend and who was to blame? I had an answer for that.
But first, the peas. I brought them up to his bedroom, where I’d tried to prop the pillows to make him more comfortable. I’d already pulled off his giant boots and he’d said he would take care of his jeans himself. Now he was under the sheets and his T-shirt was still on, but I could see livid marks on his arms and neck, and his face…
“Want to sit down for a minute?” He tilted his head to indicate a place on the mattress. “You look like you’re about to fall over.” I sat, gratefully. “Did you stay up waiting for me tonight? I saw that you had called.”
“I was working,” I answered, and then yawned so hugely that it hurt my jaw. “There was a big thing at work with Octavia.”
“Yeah?Tell me.”
“No, you tell me more about what’s been happening with Dax,” I insisted.
“I need to rest. Isn’t that what they said at the hospital? Crawl over here and lie down,” he said, patting the other side of the bed. “Talk to me and I’ll close my eyes. I’ll be soothed.”
“Really? You’ll be soothed by hearing about problems in commercial real estate?” It might have been boring, but I wasn’t sure about soothing. Nevertheless, I did move to the other side of his large mattress, and I did curl up there. It felt like all the energy in my body, which has surged when I’d heard the words “Detroit Saint Raphael,” had been sucked away and left me with a negative supply.
I started to tell him about Octavia, the meeting with our boss, Rashelle’s worry, Munir’s sweat, and the pile of work that remained for me. I yawned a lot more while I talked, and at one point I thought that I might have been dreaming—and I was, because I’d fallen asleep.
Then my alarm went off and I reached for it, but the nightstand wasn’t where I expected it to be. My phone was on my other side because I was sleeping on the wrong side of a bed that wasn’t mine. I sat up, confused until I saw the pair of black jeans hung over the back of a chair and the pile of T-shirts that I had folded with Lyra. This was Silas’s room—
I scrambled out of the bed, because he wasn’t in it anymore and where was he? Bleeding internally in his bathroom? But that was empty and I heard voices, so I stumbled downstairs and into the kitchen where he sat at the table with his sister.
“Hi,” she said, and ate a bite of toast. “Look at Silas! A machine hit him at his job but he’s ok. It looks bad but it doesn’t hurt him.”
“Oh,” I said. “Good.” I was staring at him and he looked awful. The bruises on his face were even worse than the night before and so was the swelling, so I couldn’t see that the legume treatment had any effect at all.
“What time do you have to be at work?” he asked through his cut lips, and I looked at the clock on the old microwave and ran back upstairs to get dressed. I needed to be there now, in fact, and I said a quick goodbye to both of them and hurried to my car. His discharge papers were on the seat and I called to see how he was, and then sent several texts when I parked at my building, and then…the day was crazy. Octavia had emerged from her silence and was now furious at everyone, and she and I had a confrontation in the employee lunchroom in which she accused me of trying to get her fired. She also accused me of somehow violating professional standards by fraternizing with criminal elements, which was stooping to a new low.
But I didn’t rise to the bait and she left early, which resulted in another meeting between me and Beckett about the next steps for our department. And the whole time, I was texting and calling Silas more. He had taken the day off work and he saidthat he was resting like he was supposed to, but I didn’t fully believe him.
“I’m not going to say that I’m fine, since that led to you threatening me,” he said during one call. “But I really am.”
“I threatened you?” I didn’t remember that, but I did remember that people had threatened him and beat him up, and that police were involved. But at that moment, Rashelle walked in completely stressed and almost in tears again, and I had to do my job, too.
It was a terrible day, maybe the worst since I’d had to go back to my office after finding out about the diamond simulants. I was so tired that when I went down to my car, I decided to close my eyes. I fell asleep in only a few seconds, just like Silas always did—
He and Lyra were at home, and who knew what might happen to them there? In the short time that I was conked out, I had a nightmare that felt completely real, about them being kidnapped by aliens and me screaming and trying to get to them. Then another car in the garage honked its horn and I jolted back awake. I groggily took inventory of my surroundings and saw that I wasn’t in some kind of terrible space movie, and then I woke up enough to drive home.
When I got there, Lyra was thrilled—not because of me, but because her brother wasn’t going to work that night. “Silas isn’t leaving!” she announced, and continued to dance around the kitchen. He watched her and when he laughed, I saw him put his hand on his ribs.
But he was concerned about me. “You ok?” he asked.
