by Fiona Zedde
“What?” Renee couldn’t get over the way he was looking at her, like he wanted to come closer but was afraid to.
“I’m just glad you’re all right,” Grant said, his voice low with meaning Renee couldn’t even begin to decipher.
Her head felt cottony and thick. It was hard to think. The sweat saturating her clothes made her shiver.
“Come on, let’s get you out of here. We can wait for the ambulance outside.” Renee couldn’t help but notice that Mayson barely glanced at Kendra’s body before tucking her under her arm, turning her head away from the sight of the dead woman. It was a brilliant and beautiful day, everything outside her prison golden and bright. Inside, it had seemed like one endless night.
“I’m okay, Mayson.” Renee willed her voice to stop shaking. She blinked against the bright sunshine. “I just want to go home in the air conditioning and drink about ten gallons of water.” She shivered in Mayson’s arms.
“Okay, okay.” Mayson turned her head. “Grant, she’s really exhausted. I’ll just take her back to my place. Come over and get her statement when you’re done here. She’s not going anywhere.”
Grant must have nodded, because they began moving toward Mayson’s car. Close by, a siren wailed.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
She clung to Mayson, hands fisted in her friend’s T-shirt. At the car, she reluctantly released her so that Mayson could get in the driver’s seat. Renee huddled against the window as they drove away from Kendra’s house and the little residential neighborhood with picture-perfect yards. She smiled gratefully when Mayson eased the top down, inviting the sun over their faces.
Kendra was dead. The girl had meant business. She meant to do them both harm but in the end…In the end, what? She had killed herself just so Mayson could suffer the loss. Even if she had counted on them not being found until Renee starved or died from lack of water. It didn’t make sense. Despite the warm sun, Renee’s fingers tensed with cold. I almost died.
The car door opened, jerking Renee from her spinning thoughts. Mayson reached for her.
“This is your fault.” She poured all the ice that had taken over her body into those words.
Mayson flinched. Her hands fell to her sides. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“You have no idea what sorry means, Mayson. You weren’t in there with her.” Renee hugged herself, rubbing her arms trying to find some warmth. “She was trying to hurt you.”
“I know that now and I’m sorry. I’m s—”
“Stop saying that. It’s useless to be sorry,” she snapped. Her teeth chattered. She was so cold.
“If I could have been the one in there, don’t you think I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat?” Mayson reached out but stopped before her hand could touch Renee’s. “I would.”
Anything else Renee would have said died on her lips. She didn’t want Mayson to suffer. Kendra might have made it worse for her. Might have even forced Mayson to take the same poison pill that she had. The pulse thudded in her throat.
She reached up to put her arms around Mayson’s neck. “Take me inside.”
Chapter 38
They’d barely made it inside Mayson’s house and closed the door before the doorbell rang.
Mayson looked through the peephole, sighing when she saw Grant’s face. She let him in. Without the distraction of having Renee gone, Mayson noticed how exhausted he looked. Had he even slept the past two days?
“Renee.” He stumbled past Mayson to get to Renee. “Please consider seeing a doctor. You shouldn’t be on your feet.”
She looked at him, puzzled, and then pointed to the stairs. “I was just—” Her feet took her toward them but she swayed. Mayson dashed forward to catch her but Grant got to her first. He caught her against his chest, lifted her. And, as naturally as though she’d done it countless times before, Renee slipped a hand behind his neck. She blinked and moved back to look at Grant as if seeing him for the first time.
I made this happen, Mayson thought. I sent him in my place. She turned away from them.
“Where do you want to be?” he asked, bending his head to look into Renee’s face.
Renee looked stunned.
“The guest room,” Mayson answered for her, forcing her footsteps in the opposite direction. “Upstairs to the left. The second door.”
While Grant took Renee upstairs, she went to the kitchen for water and grapes for Renee. Two days was a long time. She had no idea what Kendra had fed Renee during those heart-stopping forty-eight hours. At the kitchen sink, Mayson stopped. She felt the water running cold over the grapes in her hand but her mind suddenly flashed on that last unwelcome image of Kendra. Her eyes wide open and staring at nothing, foam and spit drying at her mouth.
This is your fault. Renee’s cold voice echoed back at her. She bit her lip hard. It was the truth. It was ugly and bare and painful beyond any measure of pain she’d ever known. Her hands clenched into fists, squeezing the grapes and seeds through her fingers and into the sink.
Chapter 39
She knew this body.
Despite the remnants of shock and fear and disgust thrumming through her, something in Renee was paying strong attention to the arms holding her, to the heart beating strong and fast under her ear. She knew this body.
Her heart began to beat faster. What was going on? Was this part of the shock from seeing Kendra commit suicide nearly on top of her? Was it her relief at being finally safe? She sagged in Grant’s arms. So tired.
Grant laid her against the pillows. “Let me look at you.” His voice came from a very long way off.
In a fog, she felt his hands on her, clinical yet gentle. On her face, her scalp. When his fingers lifted away the delicate straps of her dress, she thought she ought to protest, but she only sighed under his careful fingers. He turned her over and repeated the procedure. And Renee let him. It was so familiar, so easy.
He eased her dress back up and, after giving her bare feet another glance, disappeared into the bathroom. “Wait,” she called out softly to his retreating back. “Tell me why having you here feels like this.”
But he didn’t stop. He returned a few minutes later with a basin of water just as Mayson’s worried face appeared over hers.
“Drink this,” Mayson said just as Grant began to wash her feet.
The water—it had to be water—bathed her throat, slipping in a cool stream through her chest, then settled heavily in her belly.
“Should she be this out of it?” she heard Mayson ask.
“It’s the shock of this whole fucked-up experience.” There was something wrong with Grant’s voice. It echoed.
“I think she needs to go to the hospital,” Mayson said.
“Renee?” Someone called her name. But she couldn’t answer.
Chapter 40
“She’s been poisoned.”
The doctor’s words staggered Mayson on her feet. She swayed but Grant held her up.
“Can you flush it out of her system?” he asked.
He stood firmer than she ever could, though his hands around her shoulders were like ice. His skin had gone a sick shade of gray.
The doctor nodded, her chin-length bob fluttering with the brisk movement. “We’re doing that right now. It’s not a common poison, so it took us awhile to find it.” The name of the poison she rattled off had Mayson and Grant staring at her blankly. “It was designed to work over a period of days, shutting down her systems one after the other.” The coolness of her words couldn’t disguise that the system shutdown would have been a painful process. “It’s a good thing you brought her in when you did, otherwise after another day or two it would have been too late.” She sounded calm, efficient. Her tone was factual, not in the business of giving hope, false or otherwise.
“When can we see her?” Grant asked again.
Mayson had called Mr. and Mrs. Matthews, to tell them that Renee was in the hospital. But she didn’t have the balls to say that this whole thing was her fa
ult. They were already in their car speeding down the highway to Renee’s bedside.
“You can see her right now. She’s lucid but a bit weak.” The doctor inclined her head down the hallway, an indication, Mayson assumed, that Renee’s room lay somewhere in that direction. “Room 517. The third door on the left. If you need anything while you’re with her, just press the call button by her bed. Someone will be there immediately.”
By unspoken agreement, Grant and Mayson started down the hall together. They hadn’t talked about his new relationship with Renee. Mayson doubted that she had the strength for it. In the house, Renee had accepted his presence, although she seemed confused by it too.
“I thought it was all over,” Renee greeted them weakly when they came into the room. She lay propped up in the bed, an IV drip in her arm, monitors flashing her vital signs at the head of the bed. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, her lips were dry and peeling, nearly the same gray pallor as her face. Her eyelids drooped.
Oh my God. Mayson dropped to her knees by the bed. Everything inside her broke and fell at Renee’s feet. “I should have been the one in that room, not you,” she croaked. “Never you.”
“It was what it was.” Renee’s voice was a low whisper that Mayson had to strain closer to hear. “It’s okay now.” She squeezed Mayson’s hand. “Stop beating yourself up over this, please?”
But Renee’s faint voice and her wilting body in the hospital bed were like accusations of her crime, impossible to ignore.
Grant sat down in the chair on the other side of the bed. His face was a blank mask. His cop’s face. But Mayson noticed the hand resting on the bed near Renee’s was tightly clenched.
“The doctors already took care of everything,” he said slowly. “They found the antidote to the poison and you’ll be fine. Just rest and regain your strength. Before you know it, you’ll be back to your normal life like none of this ever happened.”
“My normal life,” Renee echoed faintly, looking at Grant.
She studied him, her eyes taking in every inch of the man. He sat patiently under her stare, not uncomfortable, simply waiting until she had looked her fill. Then she reached out a hand to him. He clutched at it desperately, like a drowning man at a life raft.
Mayson knew the feeling well. Right now her entire world was a turbulent ocean but she had no rescue in sight. She stood up.
“I’m going to wait for your parents at the nurses’ station. I want to explain to them before they see you.”
Renee stretched her cracked lips into a faint smile. “Do I look that bad?”
“Yes.” Mayson didn’t smile back.
Chapter 41
“It’s you, isn’t it?”
Grant didn’t bother to deny her words.
“When you didn’t come I got worried,” he said. “You never stood me up before.”
Her fingers curled around his. “This is strange for me. I hope you know that.”
“I know.” His voice was rough and low, an echo of one of the rare times he had spoken when they were…together. She shivered.
It seemed suddenly foolish that she hadn’t known it was him. That big body. His unfailing tenderness. Even that night she had driven him away. With the hand unhindered by the IV, she reached for his face. He came closer so she wouldn’t have to stretch, and she closed her eyes, her hand moving over contours that were abruptly familiar. The stubble was new but the angled planes of his face, the full mouth under her fingers. His hair. She snaked her fingers into the dense, springy curls. Yes, this was her lover.
She opened her eyes to take him in. All of him. In the dark, this had been what was waiting for her.
“Are you all right?” He stood up to lean over her. “Should I call the doctor?”
“Renee!”
They both looked up at the gasping voice in the doorway. Her parents moved quickly into the hospital room with mingled looks of relief and fear.
She squeezed Grant’s hand and he pulled away. “I’m fine,” she said softly. “Just a little tired.”
“Mama. Daddy.” She opened her arms, tears already welling up at the streaks of wetness on her mother’s face.
“Renee Michelle.” Her father’s voice was thick with emotion. He touched her head tentatively, as if she would break.
She opened her arms to receive them both, pushing the tiredness away. With a soft cry, she buried her face in her mother’s talc-scented neck and closed her eyes to everything else in the room.
Chapter 42
“Where’s Grant?” Mayson sat on the edge of Renee’s bed, taking care not to jostle her.
Renee looked better than she had five hours before, but her color was still off, and there were shadows under her eyes.
“I sent him home,” she said.
Mayson plucked at the sheet, fighting against an unwanted surge of satisfaction. “He cares about you. He loves you.”
Near her hand, Renee’s leg twitched. The movement forced Mayson to look up, tracing the body under the white sheet, the slim hand with the IV rig deforming its natural grace. Renee’s shadowed eyes watched her steadily. “I know.”
The sadness in those words squeezed at Mayson’s chest. “I—” But she couldn’t go on.
“You sent him to me, didn’t you?”
A lie would have been easy. Mayson chose the hard route. “Yes.”
Renee’s cheeks hollowed. From the look on her face, she had already known the truth but the confirmation of it seemed to shrink her even more in the bed. The stiff sheets crinkled from her clenching hand. “I’m—I’m tired. Can you come back tomorrow?”
The vise around Mayson’s chest tightened. She couldn’t speak. I’m sorry. The heaviness of her regret bowed her head. I thought that’s what you wanted. Her fingers reached for and gripped Renee’s leg.
“They’re letting me go home in the afternoon. Can you come back then and take me? Mama and Daddy will be here too.”
Mayson swallowed hard, fighting for her words. She let go of Renee. “If you want, I can stay away. I understand if you don’t want to see me.”
“I just need a little time. Until tomorrow. That’s all I’m asking.”
Mayson’s control was slipping. “Are you mad at me?”
“Yes. I think. I—I’m not really sure what I feel. It’s this thing with Kendra and now this thing with Grant and there’s—there’s you.” Renee’s hands moved restlessly over the sheets. “Everything is so mixed up.” She paused, eyes large and confused in her face. “I wish you hadn’t brought Grant into this.”
Mayson’s head jerked up. “But I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted.”
“And now?”
“Tomorrow. Please.”
“Okay.” Mayson nodded once. “Okay.” Her knees shook as she stood up. “I’ll—”
The room door opened and Renee’s parents walked in. Food overloaded their arms—a basket of fruit and paper bags with what smelled like Chinese.
“Mayson, we’re glad you’re still here.” Mrs. Matthews put the fruit basket on the table. “We brought enough food for all of us to eat.”
“I think we brought enough for the whole hospital,” Mr. Matthews said, setting the bags down.
Mayson smiled weakly. “Sorry, I can’t stay. I have to—” She tried to think of something more important than being at Renee’s side but nothing came to her. “I have to go.”
“Is everything okay?” Mr. Matthews’s eyes latched onto her face.
“Yes. Fine. I just…I—I’ll see you later.” She knew her stammering excuses didn’t make it seem like she was okay but she couldn’t say or do anything else. With a quick glance at three of the most important people in her life, she quickly left the hospital room and closed the door behind her.
Chapter 43
There was pain. And there was Pain. Renee thought she knew what it felt like to hurt but the past month had introduced her to a whole new level of feeling. She’d been released
from the hospital and her doctor gave her a clean bill of health. Everything was back to normal. Her life should have gone back to normal. But it hadn’t.
It had been almost a month since she’d seen Mayson.
The afternoon they released her from the hospital, she and her parents had waited for Mayson to come. Waited and called, then finally left. Her parents took her home and stayed with her, taking care of her completely, feeding her, fluffing her pillows, changing the TV channels. She’d longed for Mayson to be there to complain to, to laugh with. But Mayson hadn’t come and all her calls to her cell phone, her house phone, and the yoga studio went unanswered.
After a week when she was well enough to get out of bed and out of the house on her own, she went to find her. But the condo was empty and Mayson had put someone else in charge of the studio.
One month. No word.
Renee’s parents couldn’t help her.
Their friends had no idea where Mayson had gone.
Grant had tried to reach out but she’d shoved him away. In the dark, he had been a fantasy. A fantasy created for someone who didn’t exist anymore. In the light, he wasn’t what she wanted.
Renee sat on the wooden steps of Dhyana Yoga, stunned. Where is she? In the twenty-four years they’d known each other, this was the longest they’d been apart without at least talking on the phone. She absently shoved up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. Before leaving the house, she’d pulled on thick sweats, anticipating the same brisk temperatures as the day before. But today was an abrupt fast-forward to summer. Scorching hot with only an occasional breeze for relief.
At ten o’clock in the morning, the parking lot of the yoga studio was full. The sun shined brightly over the cars in the paved lot, over the sculpted garden of sand and rocks and the small Japanese maple trees Mayson had planted when the studio opened three years ago. A light wind lifted up to brush against Renee’s damp cheeks. Where is she?
Renee stood up and wiped her face. There was nowhere for her to go but home.
