“That’s okay,” the nurse said kindly. “Can you tell me the last thing you do remember?”
The other nurse flicked off the beam of light and entered something into her tablet.
Maddie closed her eyes again, trying to remember . . . anything. Then . . . slowly . . . a vision formed.
“Brandon,” she said. “I was with Brandon. My attorney. We were having brunch. Blue-corn . . .” Her words trailed off. She was so tired. Then a thought jarred her back to life. “Is he okay? Please, tell me!”
“Brandon’s fine. You lost your footing, fell over the fence onto the cliffs, and rolled partway down. A clump of shrubbery stopped you. You sustained a head injury. Brandon rescued you. He didn’t wait for the medics; he climbed over the fence and carried you to his car. I’m told he drove like a bat out of hell to the EMTs in Chilmark, which saved time. Your doctor—Brenda Wilson—will be in to see you soon.” She squeezed Maddie’s hand. “Welcome back.”
Maddie blinked again, in disbelief.
The nurses left.
“Mom,” Rafe said as he went back to her bedside and stooped to kiss her cheek. “I was so scared.” Tears welled in his eyes.
“Oh, honey,” she said, “I’m sorry. But see? I’m fine now. At least, I think I’m fine.” She forced the widest grin that she could force. “I don’t think anything hurts.”
Rafe sat down again. “So the guy who saved you was your attorney. Geez, Mom, first I meet this guy named Rex. Now there’s Brandon. What the heck have you been doing on this island?” He tried hard to laugh again.
“Brandon is going to settle the estate,” she managed to remember. “Am I really okay? I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“You really are okay. Or you will be. When I got here, Brandon and his mother were still here. She said you almost got airlifted to Boston, but your CT scans came back better than they expected. While you were asleep the ortho doctor gave you a new cast. But you avoided surgery.”
Again, she thought.
“When did they put the new cast on?” she asked.
“Not until the guy sawed off the first one,” Rafe said.
“How thoughtful of him. Now, can you please tell me what time it is?”
“Almost one o’clock. In the afternoon. Sunday afternoon.”
“I’ve been asleep two whole days?”
Rafe bit his lip the way she often did. “You’ve been in a coma, Mom. They called it ‘medically asleep.’ Sedated.”
Wow. If she’d ever wondered how it felt to lose two days from her life, she now knew: it felt like nothing. As if she’d passed over a skewed international date line—twice—where the calendar insisted time was fluid. Oddly, she did not recall having a single dream.
“How long will I be in the hospital?”
“It’s up to Dr. Wilson. She’s been the lead on your medical team.” His face was pale, as if he hadn’t slept.
“Okay. I expect you haven’t slept.”
“They’ve been letting me use a recliner,” he said. “I haven’t slept much, but they’re really nice here, Mom. They brought me a sandwich and a muffin during the night.”
“Good. But right now I want you to get out of here. Have a decent meal at the café down the hall. Then go to the cottage and go to bed. I don’t want to see you until later. Or, better yet, tomorrow. If they spring me out of here, I’m sure Brandon or Evelyn can give me a ride home.” The word “home” had unconsciously slipped out too late to change it to “cottage.”
* * *
Maddie had no idea how someone could be medically “asleep” for forty-eight hours and then wake up tired. And as grateful as she was to see Rafe, she was happier to see him leave. Because she needed to try to stay awake long enough to piece together what had happened after her last bite of the pancakes. In order to do that, she had to go back to the beginning, starting with why she’d been at the cliffs with Brandon in the first place. Especially since Rafe was on the island—at least she remembered he was there.
But why hadn’t he been at brunch with them?
Then two words she’d been searching for surfaced in her mind:Joe.Thurston.
Slowly, methodically, her mind backtracked to when she was sitting on the deck at the restaurant, her mind sifting through possible suspects of who might have killed her grandmother: Lisa, CiCi, even Owen, though she might have ruled him out. Then there was Joe. And the parcels of land that once belonged to his people. And hers.
