He kept his promise. I wasn’t cold anymore, not with my body curled so perfectly against him. His leg wrapped over mine and his arms held me tight. I loved the warmth of his breath against the back of my neck. This is what I missed so desperately on TDY, feeling this total serenity.
I snuggled deeper into the downy cocoon of our bed. Sleep had been difficult since I got back. Tonight I’d reached that state where ordinary things made me edgy. But Remy fixed that problem too. I felt myself drifting off, though memories still played in my head.
This TDY left me so tired I’d been tempted to cancel our class reunion, but Remy insisted we come. Twenty years. We might not get the chance for another one. Time had changed everyone more than I thought it would.
Some people I didn’t recognize at all, but Lizzy reminded us what a wild bunch we’d been. Always in some kind of trouble, usually at her hands. Remy laughed as hard as the other spouses, while new boyfriends were shocked at the vivid details Lizzy disclosed.
I laughed along with them, until her stories shifted to our childhood, particularly her rendition of a second-grade escapade. She’d turned many of our adolescent experiences into children’s books. She usually didn’t stray too far from the truth, until now. This time she said we ran away because my dad got rid of my dog.
We didn’t run away and I didn’t have a dog. We did go camping. Her brother had a secret fort in the woods, down the hill from my house. It sat up the bank from the river. At least it seemed like a river to us, fifteen-feet wide and waist deep.
The fort was the boys’ place to hang out. Girls weren’t allowed. Lizzy and I commandeered it while the boys were at summer camp. Tom-boys both of us, we had no problem camping out, eating the military rations her brother got from my dad, or getting up the next morning to go fishing.
We took the cane-poles and climbed into their little boat, casting off into the river. What we didn’t remember were the oars. I thought I could pull us back to shore, but after several days of rain, the deeper river swallowed me. Lizzy managed to help me back into the boat, just before the current pulled us downstream.
The further we drifted away from the fort, the less familiar and darker the woods got. To a couple of seven-year-old girls, we envisioned ending up in China. It wasn’t long before we alternated between crying and screaming for help.
Then the river bent around a curve and dumped us into the town lake. We’d have gotten over the embarrassment of not really being lost, except half the town was there. They had a search party out to find us, since we hadn’t told anyone where we went.
But why did Lizzy add the dog? Or that we ran away? Why did she change the story? A stab of pain crushed into my temples. Fire raged in my head as hands grabbed me, shaking me. My uncle’s face appeared. “Where have you been? What were you thinking? Your dad is crazy trying to find you. How could you do this after your mother…”
No, it wasn’t Uncle Jimmy shaking me, yelling at me. “Wake up, Shara! Wake up!” Another face came into focus. “What’s wrong? Come out of it.”
“Remy?” I could barely get my eyes open. My head pounded. Where was I? Our hotel. Colorado. “My head. Something’s wrong.”
“I can see that. Hang on. I’ll get your meds.” He rushed to the bathroom, returning with the hypo and a wet towel. “These migraines are getting worse. You need to go back to the doctor.” He pressed the hypo into my shoulder and held the dripping towel against my face.
It took a couple minutes before the imaginary hands ripping my head from my body eased up. I curled up, blocking everything out as I pressed my face into the towel.
He pulled the heavy blanket around me as chills replaced the cramped muscles in my body. “Any better?” I could barely nod. “Okay, a couple more minutes.”
His promise was good. Finally, I was able to breathe. “That’s not how I like to wake up.”
“Me neither.” Remy gave me a half-smile. “Surprised the police aren’t knocking down the door the way you were screaming. That’s not normal, and with the dose I gave you, you should be asleep.” He swiped stray strands of hair out of my face. “The way you were irritated with Lizzy, I should have known something was off. Why didn’t you tell me you had a headache coming on?”
“I didn’t feel it brewing. As for Lizzy, I’m not used to her changing her stories.”
“What changes? They were the same stories I’ve heard a dozen times.”
“No they weren’t.” I could see the incredulity on his face. “We didn’t run away and I never had a dog… a dog named...” A surge of pain swelled in my head again. “It didn’t happen that way.” Images flashed in my head of a huge dog with grey and black striped fur. “Zebra…”
Saying the name set off another explosion in my head.
CHAPTER TWO
I’d given up trying to tell anyone I was awake. No one could hear me, not the doctors or nurses, not even Remy when they pushed him out of the room.
I tried to make them hear me, to make him stay with me. Instead Remy and Lizzy leaned against the room’s window, staring in at me. I could see they were worried. Hell, Remy even hugged Lizzy.
Something was definitely wrong. I had a headache, no… two headaches. Remy thought I was crazy because I said I never had a dog… but Lizzy talked
