"Yeah." The chair creaked. "Yeah, I can do that. But I'm calling the doctor."
He went quiet. And I lay in the dark and let the truth settle over me like sediment falling to the bottom of a glass, each piece drifting down through the murky water of what I thought I knew and landing somewhere new.
I was alive.
And I was dead.
I was in South Dakota in a safe house, and the man I loved—because I did still love him—had beaten me on camera and faked my death and driven me through the night and was now sittingin a chair beside my bed, coming apart at the seams, waiting for me to decide whether to hate him or hold him.
I wasn't ready to decide. Not yet.
So I lay there. And I breathed. And I let the silence do what silence always did for me—speak louder than words.
A doctor came and went. A nice woman with cool hands who assured both of us that nothing was broken and there were no internal injuries that she could tell. She tried to talk Milo into taking me to a hospital, but he absolutely refused. I don't know what he told her happened to me or how he kept her from calling the police, but eventually she told him what to watch for and to call her immediately if I needed anything.
I don't know when I fell back asleep. The drugs were still metabolizing, pulling me under in waves that came without warning. When I surfaced again, the warmth from the sun was cooler now. Evening, maybe. Or a cloudy afternoon.
Milo was still there. I could hear him moving around in what I assumed was the kitchen, maybe fifteen feet from the bed. There was the sound of a cabinet opening. Water running. Something being poured.
Carefully, I sat up.
The pain was still there, but it was duller now, more like a sustained chord than a series of staccato strikes. My ribs protested. My face throbbed. But I could move. I could sit. I could swing my legs over the edge of the bed and plant my bare feet on a wooden floor that was cold and slightly uneven. My dress was gone, and I was wearing some kind of long T-shirt.
I reached for my cane automatically. My hand closed on nothing.
Right. My cane was at The Silver Table. On the stage beside the piano bench where he'd told me to leave it.
I stood anyway.
The room tilted, and I grabbed the edge of what felt like a nightstand and steadied myself. My body screamed at me to lie back down. But I ignored it.
I was done lying down.
My feet learned the floor as I moved toward the sounds of the kitchen, my hands out in front of me. Twelve steps from the bed to the doorframe. Then a small, narrow hallway. My fingertips brushed both walls simultaneously. Four more steps and the space opened up. I must be in the kitchen. I could feel the wood change to linoleum under my feet, and the smell of coffee was stronger.
His footsteps stopped. He'd been pacing. I hadn't realized it until he stopped.
"You should be in bed."
"I should be a lot of things." I kept moving. Slowly. Mapping. Counting. Rebuilding a world the way I always did—one surface, one step, one sound at a time. "How big is this place?"
He paused. "Three rooms. Kitchen and bedroom. There's a little sitting area in there on the far side of the bed. Just a couple of chairs and a T.V. Bathroom off the hall. Maybe eight hundred square feet."
"Windows?"
"Three. Two in here, one in the bedroom."
"Exits?"
"Back door off the kitchen. It's locked."
I filed it all away. Within an hour, I'd know this space the way I knew my apartment in Austin. Down to the millimeter. Down to the creak in the third floorboard and the draft under the kitchen window and the exact number of steps from the bed to the bathroom door.
I made my way to the kitchen counter and found it with my hands. Ran my fingers along the surface. It felt like formica, cool, slightly sticky near the edge where something had been spilled and wiped but not well enough. A mug sat near the sink. I picked it up. It was empty, but still warm.
"Can I have some coffee?"
"You should probably eat something first. You haven't?—"
