January 10: Where are you? Seeing great stuff?
January 24: Hi, Ellis. Could you just send one word so I know you’re okay?
February 2: One word. Or maybe just randomly type letters.
February 2, a minute later: Give the pony my regards.
She hovered her finger over the buttons. The only personal call she’d ever made from the phone was to him. She pressed her finger down. The ringing in her ear felt more like a fever hallucination than a real sound.
He picked up on the third ring. “Ellis?”
“You remember me?”
“Of course I do.”
She started crying.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “Tell me. Please stop crying and talk to me. What’s going on? Do you need help?”
“Yes. Yes,” she sobbed.
“Where are you?”
“Sweet Dreams Motel. Room 133.”
“Where is that? What town?”
“I don’t know.”
“What state?”
“I’m near you. I think I was trying to get to you after it happened . . . but I was afraid, and I stopped here and now I can’t leave.”
“I don’t understand. What happened? Why are you afraid?”
“I need antibiotics. Will you bring me some?”
“Are you sick?”
“Yes.” She started crying again.
“You’ll be okay. I’m coming. If I can find the motel, I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Wait a second. Let me look it up on my computer.”
She waited. She was afraid it was all a fevered delusion. Had he said he was coming?
“I found it,” he said. “On Long Lake Road?”
“I don’t know. Yes, I think so. Are you really coming?”
“Of course I am.”
“Will you bring antibiotics?”
After a pause he said, “Yes, I will.”
“Keith?”
“What?”
“Promise me you won’t call the police.”
“What happened? Why would you say that?”
The alarm in his voice scared her. “Promise or you can’t come!”
“Okay, I promise. Hold on tight. Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m already walking out the door. I’m on my way.”
The phone went silent. Ellis stared at it until the screen went black.
She held Gep against her chest and tried to sleep. A few minutes later, she threw up in the trash can, then fell back asleep.
Brown leaves madly spinning. She ran and ran through a forest. Someone was screaming. Screaming in her ears.
Pounding. Pounding. It stopped for a while. Then started again.
“We’re coming in,” someone said.
Ellis opened her eyes.
The ceiling light flashed on, and Keith rushed over. Everything was too bright. Glowing light shined off him, and she had to squint to look at him. There was another man who stayed by the door.
“Ellis!” Keith said when he saw her face. “This man says you were in a car accident. Is that true?”
She had lied to the desk clerk when she checked into the motel. She was afraid he might call the police when he saw how battered she was.
“You’re burning up!” he said.
“I . . . know.” It was so hard to talk. “Do you have medicine?”
“This isn’t from a car accident! Who did this?”
Keith pulled off the covers to examine her. He saw Gep clutched in her hand and stared at the pony for a few seconds.
“Who hurt you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you have tape on your stomach?”
She tried to pull her T-shirt over the bandage.
“Let me see. Please.” He gently lifted her shirt and peeled back the duct tape and gauze. “Oh my god,” he whispered. “That’s a knife wound. It’s infected. You have to get to a hospital fast.”
“No!” she said with a sudden surge of vigor. “You promised!”
“I never promised not to save your life!”
“No police!”
She had stabbed someone. The police would ask a hundred questions. She could already see their judgmental looks when they found out she’d gone alone to an isolated campground. She couldn’t bear more of what she’d been through when she left Viola.
Keith scooped her into his arms. “Where’s your wallet?” he asked. “Ellis, where is your wallet?”
“Backpack,” she said.
“Would you please bring that backpack?” he said to the motel clerk. “And don’t remove anything from this room. Keep her checked in.”
“Got it,” the young man said.
Keith sat her on the back seat of his car and wrapped his coat around her. When he pulled her hand in the sleeve, she had to let go of Gep. “Will you put him in my backpack?”
“Him?” he said, smiling. “I can’t believe you still have it.”
“He’s good luck.”
His expression said the pony’s luck didn’t appear to be working.
“This has nothing to do with him.”
“Who does it have to do with? Tell me who did this to you.”
“Why? How will that change it?”
“This person deserves to be brought to justice!”
“I did that.”
“What do you mean?”
She sank into the seat, curled up tight and shivering.
3
She had a broken wrist and cracked nose. The knife wound was infected but required no surgical repair. The doctor said it was a deep slice that had just missed her ovary and bowel. He said Ellis was very lucky.
Almost everything Ellis hadn’t wanted happened. She had expensive treatments with no health insurance to pay for them. She was given an IV and pain medication that made her loopy.
But she prevented them from contacting next of kin. She told them she had no family, and they let that stand. Jonah, the boys, and the senator and his wife would never know about her latest screwup.
An hour after she’d been admitted to the emergency room, two police officers arrived.
“So you’re saying you don’t remember anything about getting stabbed?” one of the men asked. “Where you were, what the attacker looked like—nothing at all?”
Ellis felt the burning pain of the knife in her side. Saw the man with red-blond hair standing over her. The fierce arousal in his blue eyes as he unzipped his jeans.
She tried to hold back the stinging tears.
“You know him, don’t you?” the other officer said. “Is he your boyfriend, a family member?”
“No!” she said.
“If you know he’s not an acquaintance, you must remember the attack,” the officer said.
She shouldn’t have answered. But she was so tired. So sick.
She felt Keith’s
