I hear a door slam downstairs and sudden heavy footsteps on the stairs. The door whips open, but instead of Holden, it’s Chuck. His longish graying hair is in a ponytail, and his shirt is covered in red splotches.
Puzzled, I ask, “What’re you doing here?”
He fixes me with a peculiar gaze.
“And you’ve got Kool-Aid or something on your shirt.”
“You had an accident.” He leans against the wall with his arms crossed. “This is your blood.”
“An accident?”
“You totaled your car.”
“That’s impossible.” I squint my eyes at him. “What day is it?”
He appears unfazed.
“I was at work,” I say stubbornly.
“Except you weren’t. You were spying on—”
Before he can finish, Holden stalks into the room, and his blue eyes, his best feature, widen as they spot me seated upright against the headboard, multiple pillows behind my back.
“Thank God.” He hurries to my side, his tall frame leaning down as he kisses my cheek gently. “You scared the hell out of me.” His soft beard rubs against my skin, annoying me. It’s a source of contention between us. I keep asking him to shave the damn thing; he keeps resisting.
Groaning at the pain, I admit, “I’m still not sure what happened.”
“You hit a fire hydrant,” Chuck offers from across the room. “Followed by a concrete wall.”
Holden’s relief is short lived after hearing this, his mouth twisting into a frown. He steps back from my side to sag onto the mattress near the foot of the bed.
“Your colleague here”—Holden waves toward Chuck and directs an accusatory glance at me—“whom I’ve never met, brought you home.”
I concentrate on the mirrored dresser behind his head, incapable of returning his silent but deadly stare. He removes his glasses and cleans the lenses on his T-shirt, a habit that buys him time to calm down.
Chuck cuts in. “Your wife and I have done work together for the past five or six years. She hired me for a case, and I was in the neighborhood.”
“You just happened to be in the ‘neighborhood’ where Sib was when she had a car accident?” Replacing his glasses on his face, Holden looks incredulous. “What exactly were you two doing?”
“You can’t accuse me of sleeping with everyone,” I snap.
Holden glowers at me, again removing his glasses for a second cleaning.
“I’m not sure what’s going on, Holden,” I say weakly. “But from your tone, I can tell you’re upset. Is this about my car?”
His voice is laced with contempt. “Do you remember what happened today, Sibley?”
I close my eyes against the pounding in my head that strikes me like a hammer, blow by blow. “I’m in a lot of pain. Can I please have something?”
“With your history,” Holden says briskly, “there’s no way I’m giving you any type of opioid.”
“Then maybe I need to go to the hospital and have a real doctor check me out.”
“A doctor already did that as a favor to me,” Chuck snaps. To Holden, he grunts, “He left something comparable for her to take. I’ll go get it.”
“Who left what?” I screech. “Can I have some water, please?”
Neither one acknowledges my questions, and when I hear Chuck’s footsteps pounding down the stairs, I’m forced to open my eyes.
The bed squeaks underneath Holden’s weight as he shifts to hand me the bottle. A coolness hits my palm when he thrusts it into my hand.
“Thank you,” I murmur. After unscrewing the cap, I tilt my head back and take a couple of long swigs. “I feel like I was in a car accident.”
“Well, you look like it. You gave me quite the scare.” Holden’s warm hand settles on my shoulder. “I heard a knock on the door, and then Chuck was carrying you in the house. I had no idea who he was and thought he had hurt you and was trying to extort us or something.”
“Extort us?” I moan. “For what?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought it through.” He sighs. “You were bruised and bleeding, and it’s the first thing that came to mind. And then I thought about the conversation earlier. Between your pictures and the dating profile, it became an amalgam of uncertainty.”
“What pictures?”
He squints at me. “Don’t you remember talking to me this morning?”
I stutter, “I know I got up this morning and went to the gym . . .” A block of time has been erased, as if the day’s been split into two parts. “You were still in bed when I left this morning.” Then, accidentally moving my body too fast, I grimace.
“We talked this morning, fought, actually, about you dating other people.”
My eyes widen. “What’re you talking about?”
“You don’t recall your dating profile? The provocative photos I saw?”
I want to furiously shake my head, but slowly is all I can manage, the throbbing making my movements jerky and sluggish.
“Never mind.” He squeezes my hand in his. “It’s not important right now.”
“What happened to me?” My free hand drifts over my throat and collarbone area.
“The airbag deployed, thank God, especially since you weren’t wearing your seat belt. You’ve got some burns and lacerations from the airbag and shattered glass.”
“Where was I?”
“Chuck said near your office.” His voice is resigned. “You’re lucky you weren’t arrested and charged with multiple infractions.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were drunk.”
“No way.”
“Yes way.”
“Holden,” I protest. “I was at work.”
“Until you lost your job.”
My mind spins out of control when he says this. Suddenly, tears burn my eyelids. “What happened to my job?”
“Answer me this.” Holden curls his hands into fists. “Why were you over by his place?”
“Whose place?”
“Sib . . .”
“I don’t know what’s going on right now.”
“How convenient.”
I withdraw into the sheets. “What happened at the firm? What happened to my job?”
“They asked you to take a leave of absence.”
Suspicious, I ask, “How do you know?”
As much as I hate lying to Holden about what I remember, I have to play dumb. I might not remember the accident, but I do remember everything before the crash. Unable to fold my cards yet, I find it easier to claim temporary
