Page 13 of Hush Money

The huskiness of that laugh is a dead giveaway, and suddenly the laugh isn’t the only thing that’s off. It’s all wrong. The wrong voice murmuring the wrong endearment. The wrong hand. The wrong vibe. My delicious semi-dream curdles like expired milk left in the sun for three days. I slam into wakefulness with enough force to make my entire body spasm in the wing chair where I fell asleep with a blanket draped over my lap.

That’s when I discover that last night was just the beginning of this nightmarish new phase of my life.

Ravenna sits on my chair’s arm, firmly inside my space. Somehow, she looks worse for the wear, but also much better. The dried blood on her forehead bandage stands out in stark relief against her pale skin. Her black hair has dried into a rumpled halo with all its natural waves. The dark smudges under her eyes tell the story of her mostly sleepless night.

But…

Bright sunlight hits those green eyes at the perfect angle, making them sparkle just right. I never met anyone who had Ravenna’s eyes. Emerald City eyes. She seems focused and alert, with none of last night’s confusion. She seems…energized.

She was back yesterday. But now she’s back.

I jerk away from her touch and stand, turning away from her as fast as I can and working hard to get my feet under me. But I’m having a tough time reconciling the two halves of my spiraling brain. The half that allowed me to believe she really was dead and that I was a free man, versus the half that knew she wasn’t dead at all and that the whole exercise in death was simply an intermission.

That was the smarter half of my brain. The one I should have listened to.

I head for the bar cart in the corner and pour myself a tall glass of water, wishing it was socially acceptable for me to drink a tall glass of scotch instead. But if there’s one thing I know about Ravenna, it’s that I need to keep my wits sharp when she’s around.

So I give myself a second to get my brain back online by guzzling the water and glancing outside. There’s all kinds of storm debris strewn across the driveway—looks like a large portion of my flowers got slaughtered, not to mention a couple of the bushes—but the good news is that a utility truck has appeared on the other side of the downed tree and workers in hard hats are getting started. Hopefully the power will be back soon. As for Tamsyn and Daniel? No sign of them. I assume they went to scrounge up something to eat in the kitchen.

Leaving me alone with Ravenna, who watches me from her perch on her armchair.

I clear my throat and turn to face her, setting my empty glass down. “How are you feeling?”

She thinks it over. “Better. I still have a headache. I’m still confused.”

I hesitate because I know we can push each other’s buttons and because I know that she’s recovering. But we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and we might as well get started. “Confused? So am I. Where have you been for two years?”

She blinks. Frowns. Stares off in the distance, her mouth opening and closing around an answer that’s nowhere in sight. “I don’t know.”

Right. Like I believe that. I watch her more closely. “How did you get back here?”

More blinking. More casting around, trying to come up with something as her expression falls. “I don’t know.”

She does confusion well. I’ll give her that. And the tinge of dismay is a nice touch. But Ravenna has always been a good actress. I’m betting her skills go back to birth.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” I say.

She presses both hands to her forehead. “How can I do that when my head is splitting open?”

Yeah, okay. I turn away with rising frustration at this waste-of-time conversation, determined not to lose my shit this early in the proceedings. She’s hurt. It’s possible she doesn’t remember. Not likely, but possible. Now is not the time for me to go at her with both barrels.

I glance back over my shoulder at her. “We’re going to take you to the hospital. Get you checked out. As soon as they get the driveway cleared. Matter of fact, I think I’ll head out and tell them we’ve got an emergency. See if they can work a little faster. The sooner we get your, ah, memory issues straightened out, the sooner we can get some answers.”

“That’s what I want, too,” she says, brightening. “The sooner we get answers, the sooner we can get back to our life together. And you can stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” I say, but I already know. I don’t believe a fucking word that’s come out of her mouth since she showed up again, and I’m sure my expression reflects it.

“Like you hate me,” she says, and there’s a wobble in her voice now.

I shrug and decide not to bother denying it. Unlike her, I’ve never had any acting skills to speak of. “I’m having a tough time with a lot of this. You’ve been somewhere doing something for two years. It’s pretty convenient that you don’t remember any of it.”

She looks stricken. “You think I want to have a big gash on my head? A concussion? Do I look like I’m having fun? Does that make sense to you?”

“Nothing you do has ever made any sense to me. But we don’t need to get into that now. Why don’t we start with what you do remember? Tell me anything you remember about the last few days.”

She hesitates and frowns at some distant point, her gaze slipping out of focus. “It got dark so quickly. Then the rain started. It was so cold.”

I make an impatient sound. Generic facts that don’t tell us anything. What a surprise. “Anything else?”

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