Ellie shifted so I could drop my butt on the double next to the already mussed up one. She shut the door and re-locked it. Her eyes traced my outfit and the state of my weariness. “Are you getting enough sleep?”
I shot her a look.
Her mouth curled into a tight, knowing smile.
“I should ask you the same thing. Ringo?”
“Don’t go there. It was stupid. A rebound affair.”
That’s what had me worried. “Did you love Johnny?”
Ellie ignored my question for a moment or two, opting to stare at one of the paintings on the wall. “At first, maybe. He was…dangerous.” Her eye roll didn’t match the words.
Somehow, I had the feeling that Ringo had her ex beat by at least light years, if not whole universes. I kept that thought quiet.
Ellie picked up a thread of my question and turned it on me. “And you? You love…him?”
At least she refrained from using her nickname for my husband. I took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
“You don’t think about love, you just…love.”
Her outburst was illogical.
“I think about it.”
“You would,” she shot back. And that was our biggest difference. I thought about things like love, what it was, how it happens, and she just…fell.
Yet, I’d fallen. I hadn’t really been questioning what was budding with Mario. I’d wanted it. Badly. So much so, that I ignored many things.
“I guess I must love him.”
Ellie flopped onto her bed and propped her chin on her hands to study me. “Why must you?”
“I don’t know.”
Her face twisted up. “You do. Think. That’s what you do best, right?”
“But I can’t think of why.”
Ellie laughed, but her face fell into sadness. “Oh, Allie. Welcome to the dark side. Love just is. You can’t think about it because it isn’t something that happens in your brain. It happens much… lower.”
“Don’t be crude.”
She rolled to her back and studied the ceiling. Her silent laughter stilled, and she sighed. “Okay, you love him. What’s next?”
I mimicked her position, staring at the wooden beams that crossed the ceiling at irregular intervals. The house must be really old because the beams weren’t perfect. And, the house was solid. The outside was a jumble of different-sized stones, while the inside had the cool coziness of a cave. Each window well was at least two feet deep. It resembled a squared-off castle running the length of the wide hillside terraces.
The distracting thoughts helped me to answer her question. “I don’t know what’s next. I feel like I’m losing him.”
Ellie turned toward me to pay attention. “How?”
I shivered. “They’re trying to kill him.”
“Newsflash. Whoever that is? They’re trying to kill you, too, and I’m not having it. Wake up, big sis. You need to get gone from here. Hide out, change things up. You can’t think this one away, you’ve gotta act.”
The plaster between beams was uneven, patched many times over the centuries. “If I do that, I lose him for real.”
“And you don’t want to do that, do you? I hate to tell you this, but you got it bad.”
