"Bad idea," he said.
"Did I ask for your opinion?"
"I'm giving it anyway. This is a real bad idea."
"It's the only option you have. You've had the hell beat out of you. You have a concussion. You need somebody to make sure you don't fall into a sleep you don't wake up from. You also have three broken bones. You need help, mister, and I'm it. If you don't like it, that's just too damn bad."
Marilyn kept her eyes on the highway and the big trucks that were their only companions while Eli stared at her, trying to decide how he felt about her little speech. "Has anybody ever told you you're a little bossy?" he said finally.
She glanced at him. "I'm a lot bossy when I have to be."
"You're right." He wanted to be mad, wanted to rebel against the command in her voice, wanted to feel trapped. He didn't want to be glad he didn't have to say goodbye.
He didn't want her to be right about more than her bossiness, but she was. He needed help. He didn't like knowing it. He felt relieved that she was providing the help he needed and relieved he didn't have to ask for it, and he didn't like feeling that way either. He was supposed to be the one who rode to the rescue, not the one who needed rescuing, and it annoyed the hell out of him to be in this position.
"Are you going to give me any more grief?" she asked, as she took the next exit.
"Probably." He couldn't help it. It was in his nature, like digging holes to a dog. "But not right now."
"Fair enough."
Marilyn lived in a modern-looking building with pretty good security for what you got without a live person on a desk in the lobby. She parked in the no-parking delivery zone out front to walk him inside with her shoulder under his left arm and her arm tight around his waist. It hurt his bruises, but he didn't have to put any weight on his broken leg.
"We'll see about renting a wheelchair tomorrow," Marilyn said, when she'd deposited him on a bench in the lobby.
Eli hurt too much to argue, though his dignity felt dented at the thought of a wheelchair. He sat there and waited for her to come back from parking the car in the lot out back. Marilyn hustled in, her face pink from the cold, her waves of hair tumbled by the wind, and Eli drank in the sight.
"Ready?" She sat down beside him and slipped her arm around his waist.
His coat had ridden up over his sling, so she set her hand on bare skin. Eli hid his reaction to her touch. Marilyn didn't have one from what he could tell.
He draped his good arm over her shoulder. "Let's get it done."
She stood first and provided lift, balance and support while he struggled upright. "Not much farther," she promised.
Eli didn't have breath to reply. He let her half-carry him to the elevator, which was waiting for them, and rode up to the fourth floor. They were both breathless by the time she unlocked her door and got him into the high-backed armchair just inside.
The phone was ringing. Marilyn ignored it as she crossed to the green-and-navy-plaid sofa and started pulling off the cushions. She knew who was calling and didn't want to talk. The phone stopped while Marilyn was hauling the hide-a-bed out of the sofa frame and unfolding it. She straightened, rolled her eyes heavenward and breathed a fervent "Thank you."
But her gratitude came too soon. The phone started ringing again before she'd made it halfway to the closet. Her patience at its last frayed end, Marilyn snatched up the portable handset. "Do you know what time it is, Mother?"
"Do you? It's almost two o'clock in the morning. Where have you been?"
"Out." She took the phone away from her ear and glared at it, tempted to hang up, tempted to throw the thing out the window or against the wall. But that would only annoy the neighbors even more, because Mom would only call back. Or call the police. She'd done that more than once after Marilyn had moved in here just over three months ago.
She put the phone back up to her ear, pulling pillows one-handed out of the closet.
"Marilyn? Talk to me, Marilyn. Where have you been? Are you hurt? Do I need to come over there?"
"Don't you dare. I'm fine, Mom. I've been out." She tossed the pillows on the folded-out bed and looked at Eli sitting slumped in the dining room chair. She didn't have the energy to get him back up right now. She needed a little rest, and from the looks of him, so did he.
"Out where?" Mom was saying. "You don't go out."
"Well, maybe it's time I started, huh? Bill's been dead four years, and I'm not forty yet. I'm not ready to curl up and die." In the kitchen area, Marilyn got the old wooden stepstool Bill had made when Julie was little and shoved it toward Eli with a foot.
"Who were you with? Your girlfriends? A girls' night out can be good fun. Where did you go? That new romance movie with--oh, what's his name? The cute one."
Marilyn got a small ruffled pillow, set it on top of the stool and maneuvered the assembly into position under Eli's cast while she held the phone in place with her shoulder. His eyes opened when she lifted his broken leg, but he didn't say anything. Just watched her.
"Not that it's any of your business, Mom, who I was out with or what I did, but I wasn't with the girls and I didn't go to a movie."
"A mother has a right to take an interest in her daughter's life--"
"Not at two o'clock in the morning."
Marilyn's interruption might never have happened. Mom kept talking. "Especially when that daughter all of a sudden starts acting crazy, quitting her job, moving out of her
