by Bryn Donovan
Andi whispered his name and wrapped one leg around his, drawing him in again. He surprised her by deftly hooking that leg over his shoulder, giving himself more fully to her than she’d thought possible. Andi raised her hips to meet each deep sweet stroke. Her climax shuddered through her and she cried out, then heard David’s sharp intake of breath.
“Andi—”
God, she loved the way it sounded when he said her name. She loved the feel of him coming inside her, the tightly strung muscles of his body relaxing in pleasure and relief.
He rolled over to lie next to her. She snuggled up against his side. “You’re all right?” he murmured, touching her hair.
“Yeah. You could say that.” When she put her hand on his chest, he reflexively covered it with his own.
After lying there for a minute, she got up to go to the bathroom. Noting the even rise and fall of his chest, she realized he was asleep already.
She disengaged her hand from his and as she got up, he said, “Where is he?”
“What?”
He was talking in his sleep. She watched him a moment longer.
I’m crazy about him, she thought.
She hadn’t even known him for that long. Even if she had, getting too attached would probably be a very bad idea. This guy was not the reliable boyfriend type. He’d done everything he could to explain that to her.
But she was falling hard for him anyway. There was no point in lying about the situation, at least to herself. She just wouldn’t tell anyone else.
Why had he asked, Where is he? He must have been dreaming. It didn’t mean anything. But she still found herself wondering: Where is who?
Chapter Seven
David woke up alone in Andi’s bedroom, where sunlight filtered through the white curtains. He usually went to bed after midnight and got up when it was still dark. Even as a child, he’d never been a good sleeper.
He wondered if she’d gone out, but then he heard the shower turn on in the adjoining bathroom.
Sitting up, he noticed the photos and cards arranged on the memo board on the wall. The biggest one, he figured out, depicted Andi with her sister. Andi was maybe seven years old, he guessed, a winsome little girl with bobbed hair so blond it was almost white. She and her sister wore matching velvet dresses of dark green. A Christmas picture.
David got up to look at the other photos, mostly from family events. He found no old boyfriends, or even guy friends, in the mix, and that gratified him. As if he had any right to care about that.
They’d only just gotten involved. So why did he feel in so deep?
A part of him still wanted to back out. He didn’t see himself as one of those guys who could just have a girlfriend and do normal things—visit with other couples, go to Crate & Barrel, hang out and watch the game, whatever—and have everything be fine. Andi said he wasn’t like his father, but maybe the same evil coursed in David’s veins, like an undetected virus. Just because it was dormant didn’t mean it would stay that way.
From the bathroom, over the sound of the shower stream, he could hear Andi singing a silly pop song in a sweet, imperfect soprano voice. He didn’t know why he found it so touching.
The singing stopped and the shower shut off. He got up and pulled on his jeans. A clatter came from the kitchen, and he went out to say good morning.
The blond woman at the coffee maker jumped and gave a little shriek.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you were Andi.”
“She’s still in the shower.” She gave him a once-over. He wished he’d put on his shirt. “You must be David?”
“Yeah. You’re Andi’s sister—Lisa, right?”
“Lissa. Short for Melissa.”
Damn. He’d almost gotten it right. To prove he at least knew something, he added, “Andi said you’re a teacher. What grade?”
“First. I teach up at St. Margaret Mary,” she said, as though everyone knew where that was. She wore navy pants and a buttoned-up bright pink cardigan, her hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. She struck him as thoroughly all-American and normal.
David remembered how that had been his first impression of Andi, as well. He didn’t think of her that way anymore. It wasn’t simply that they’d been intimate. Andi somehow connected with the deeper and darker part of him, the complicated brew that simmered beneath the surface. It didn’t unnerve her. And sometimes, that unnerved him.
“Looks like you need some coffee,” Lissa said. “You’re staring into space.” She poured him a cup.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the mug, which proclaimed “World’s Best Teacher.”
“And you’re a lawyer?” she asked. “Is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of law do you do?”
“Uh, I take different cases, but personal injury, mostly.”
“Oh, an ambulance chaser,” she joked.
David made an attempt to smile. He wanted to get along with Andi’s family.
“I think Andi really likes you.” Lissa fixed him in her stare. The subtext was not lost on David: If you hurt my sister, I’ll kill you. He never would have expected a fresh-faced schoolteacher to intimidate him. Then again, he supposed teachers had some practice in intimidation.
“It’s mutual,” he said.
Andi came into the kitchen, her hair wet. A white terry cloth bathrobe enveloped her body, but the heat of the shower had turned her skin pink. She smelled of some kind of flowery lotion or shower gel. David wished they were alone.
“Morning,” she beamed at him, and then said to her sister, “I thought you were at Greg’s.”
“I was. I forgot a book.”
“So, I guess you met David.”
“Yeah,” Lissa said, guarded. He hoped Andi wouldn’t tell her about Carlos losing it and assaulting her yesterday. David still blamed himself, and felt somehow that Lissa would blame him too.
But of course Andi would tell her sister about it. It was only natural. And besides, Andi deserved some sympathy after such a frightening encounter.
Lissa poured more coffee into an aluminum travel mug. “I should get going. I’ll see you tonight,” she said to Andi.
“Nice to meet you,” he told her.
She gave him a thin-lipped smile back.
“She seems nice,” David offered once Lissa was out the door.
“She usually is. Though she’s been a little stressed out lately about the wedding.” Andi gave a wistful smile. “She’ll be a beautiful bride, huh?”
David shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”
“You don’t have to say ‘I guess,’” she teased him. “She’s prettier than I am. It’s okay, I’m used to it.”
“Okay, but she isn’t.”
It felt strange and comforting to be in Andi’s cheerful apartment on a sunny morning. This was what some married people did. They didn’t all scream at each other or hide from one another. Some of them got up in the morning and hung around in the kitchen talking. He knew this was probably true, but he found it almost unfathomable.
“Hey,” she said, “you want to go to the wedding with me?”
“What?”
“Lissa’s wedding. Do you want to be my date?”
Oh, God. This was a terrible idea.
No doubt the rest of Andi’s family would be even less thrilled to meet him than her sister was. Her father, especially. And it was a lot of pressure. Didn’t unmarried couples only go to weddings together if they were pretty serious themselves?
“I don’t know,” he said. “When is it?”
“Thanksgiving weekend—that’s when everybody could make it. It’s the Saturday.”
“I’m not sure what I’ll have going on then,” he hedged. “You seriously want me to go with you?”
“Well, yeah. Instead of people going, ‘Poor Andi, she’s an old maid,’ they’ll be thinking, ‘Hey look at Andi. She’s got a hot date.’”
He inclined his head at the compliment. “Nobody says things like ‘old maid
’ anymore.”
“Ha. You haven’t met my great-aunt Marta.”
“I’d love to go,” David lied. “I’ll just have to check my calendar, okay?”
“Sure.” She nodded, looking unperturbed.
This relieved him. After seeing her get physically hurt yesterday, he couldn’t stand to bruise her feelings, even a little bit.
He asked her, “Hey, how are you feeling?”
“Great.” She came over and kissed him. He held onto her.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “You don’t want to go lie down a while longer?”
“And why do I think that I would get any rest?” She smiled up at him. “No. I’m going to dry my hair and get to work. You’ll have to come with me, right? Your car’s still at the house.”
He nodded, letting her go. “I’m going to be there today anyway. I’m meeting another electrician.”
“Right. Hope this one’s better than the last one.” The previous guy had seemed to fix the problem with the lights, but after only a day, they’d started flickering again. “I still think rats chewed through some of the wiring,” Andi added.
“Wouldn’t be surprised.”
“I don’t think there’s much in the house for breakfast,” she told him. “You can have a banana. We always have bananas.”
“I’m okay.”
While Andi blow-dried her hair and got dressed, he sat in her little living room and watched the morning news. The dog, Scruffy, jumped up to sit on the couch next to him.
David had never had dogs. He gave the pup a scratch on the head and the animal sighed and snuggled next to him. “You know what, bud?” David said to him. “You’d make a crap watchdog.” Scruffy did not seem offended.
“Don’t you have to go to your office?” Andi asked when she re-emerged, dressed in her work clothes. “I know you mostly work from home, but it seems like you haven’t had time to work at all.”
He shook his head. “I handed off the biggest case to my friend, Scott. I’ve just got too much going on right now.”
David enjoyed sitting in the passenger seat of Andi’s truck as they drove to Evanston. She slowed down at yellow lights and stopped to wave pedestrians across the street. “Lissa says I drive like a ninety-year-old woman,” she apologized at one point, though he hadn’t said anything.
David, who got speeding tickets regularly and tended to cut people off in traffic, shrugged. “I don’t mind.” He wasn’t in a hurry.
As the truck drew close to the mansion, he sobered. Of course he wasn’t in a hurry. Something about the mansion made him feel as though his insides were being dragged down, drawn by some force like a magnet.
He looked over at Andi’s pretty face, now set in determination. It affected her, too.
She got to work. David stayed on the first floor, making calls and checking his email, until the electrician arrived. He was a young black man with a goatee whom Gloria had recommended.
David took him up to the second floor to point out all of the rooms where the wiring appeared to be shot. They were about to head down to the basement to look at the circuit box when a shriek from above made them both freeze.
“What the hell?” the electrician asked.
David cursed and ran up the stairs. “Andi?” he thundered as he reached the landing.
She cowered at the end of the hall, arms over her head like someone shielding herself from a blast. As he rushed over, she looked up at him, dazed, as though she didn’t recognize him.
“Andi.” He rested his hands on her shoulders. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” Her voice cracked. “I just—nothing.”
“Jesus, Andi, you’re shaking. What the hell happened?”
She looked toward the third-floor bathroom. The door was ajar.
No.
Footsteps at the top of the stairs made them both look up. The electrician said, “Um, everything okay up here?”
“Yeah,” David said. “You can go ahead and get to work, if you want. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“All right,” he said, in an if-you-say-so voice.
David turned back to Andi, who looked ill. He should get her away from that damned bathroom. He knew he wanted to get away from it. “Andi, let’s go outside, okay? We can sit out in front.”
She nodded and followed him down the stairs. When they got to the second floor she excused herself to use the bathroom down there. David went on down and out the heavy double doors to sit on the top step of the stone front porch.
The day was cold for the middle of October, but bright and clear. The leaves on the oak trees at the far corner of the property had mostly turned a leathery tan. When Andi came out to sit next to him, she said, “It’s nice to get outside.”
“I know it wasn’t nothing,” he told her. “So just tell me. Please.”
She took a shaky breath. “There’s something you should know about me.”
“All right. What?”
“I’m not normal.”
“What? What does that even mean?”
“My mind plays tricks on me. I… Sometimes I see things that aren’t there.” She met his eyes. “That’s what happened. That’s all.”
His stomach churned. “What did you see?”
“It doesn’t matter. I should have told you before that I’m like this. But I thought I was getting better. I mean, it hadn’t happened in such a long time—”
“Andi. What did you see?”
She pressed her lips together. “Well. I went in the bathroom.”
“Why’d you go in there?” he demanded before he could help himself.
“Why do you think?” she snapped back.
“I’m just saying, that bathroom is a mess. You should have just used the one on the second floor.”
“You and that guy were close by. I don’t know.”
“All right. So you went in the bathroom.”
“I’d just gone in when I saw—I thought I saw… There was this woman. In the bathtub.” Andi took a deep breath. “She was looking up at me and moving her mouth like she was trying to say something, but no noise would come out. And she…” She shuddered. “The bathwater was red. It was just full of blood. There was a perfume bottle smashed on the floor, and all this yellow perfume spilled out on the tiles…I could smell it. I stepped in it.” She shook her head. “This is the kind of thing I imagine. Because I’m crazy.”
“What did she look like?” he asked, though he already knew.
“What? I don’t know…pretty. About my age. She had brown hair and it was kind of feathered back.”
“Like from the seventies?”
“I guess.” Andi frowned at the question. “Yeah, maybe so.”
Horror washed over David. She’d just had the exact same vision he had as a boy, so many years ago. If she could see his nightmare, was it more than a nightmare? He felt he’d cursed her with it, by getting too close to her.
At the same time, a part of him felt relieved that finally, after so many years, someone else knew about it.
Her vision had been even more detailed than his. Why? Did it have to do with what she’d been saying—that she wasn’t normal?
“I’m trying to understand,” he said. “You used to see things like this?”
“Or sometimes I just heard voices. But it wasn’t anything real.”
“When did it start?”
“The first time, I was seven.”
David remembered the picture he’d seen in her apartment: Andi as a sweet little girl in a velvet dress. Jesus. The poor kid.
“You know, Lissa and I shared a room then, and I would tell her about it. Because I was scared…but she got scared, too. So she told Mom and Dad.”
“What did they do?”
“They switched rooms with us. Then they dragged me to this one doctor. He gave me like this brain scan…they hooked up all these wires to my head? I thought their machine could read my thoughts. It scared the crap out of me.”
“I bet,” David m
uttered. He was familiar with the test from a past case involving a woman improperly medicated for her seizures. An EEG didn’t hurt, but he could imagine what an alarming experience it would be for a child.
“But the doctor said there was nothing wrong. So they took me to a psychologist.” She sighed. “I never wanted to tell you about this.”
“It’s all right.” He reached over and squeezed her hand. God knew he had enough weirdness in his own past. She had no idea. “A psychologist. What happened there?”
“The first one just wanted to talk to me every week, and nothing changed.” Andi shrugged. “So then they tried another one. She put me on some kind of medication, but it made me really tired all the time, and I’d get made fun of for falling asleep in class. So then they put me on Ritalin, too, and it sort of made things better.”
“Sort of?”
She shook her head. “That doctor would talk to me every week, about knowing when things weren’t real and ignoring them. It took a while, though. And Lissa told her best friend about it, so of course it got all around the school. What a freak I was.”
“I guess she was really young,” David said, because he felt pissed off at Andi’s sister just hearing about this.
“Yeah. You know, it took a while, but the medication and the therapy did work. I got better. For a few years, I was even off the drugs. Then in my sophomore year of high school it got worse again. I went back on the same drugs, except then they didn’t do any good.”
“It must have been horrible.”
“And sometimes it was really humiliating,” she said. “The sophomore classes took a field trip to the Addams-Hull House Museum. You know that place?”
“Sure. By the U of I campus.”
“Yeah. And I saw…well, I just saw something really horrible coming after me, and I screamed. And waved my arms around. I mean, I just completely freaked out in front of fifty kids.”
The image stunned him. She managed a wry smile. “I wasn’t very popular.”
“But it stopped again?”
“When I went away to college. I think the change just did me good or something? I don’t know.” A tear glistened on Andi’s bottom lashes. “And now it’s back again.”