Page 5 of Outside the Veil
No, she was gone. Years ago.
Pain edged into his back and his joints. His hip stabbed at him. Someone had overstuffed his head with cotton batting until it threatened to burst. A low moan escaped before he could open his eyes.
“Diego?Despiertos?”
The voice percolated through the fuzz in his brain and took on an identity. “Si,Tia Carmen. I’m awake.” Not him, that scraggly rasp. Couldn’t be.
“Bueno. That wasn’t so long.”
Tia Carmen’s face hovered above him. Teacup. Aspirin. Diego blinked, trying to pull the disparate images into a less disorienting whole. He took another moment to resolve the usual idiotic questions himself.What happened? Grand mal. Where am I? Living room sofa.
“When did you get here?”
She perched beside him, her white hair luminous in the lamplight. “I heard drumming on my ceiling. I thought ‘Diego is either having a tantrum or a stroke’.”
“Seizure,” he corrected absently.Though I might have both at once someday.
“Yes, yes.” She patted his arm. “So the door was unlocked and your friend was with you—”
“Mitch?”
She snorted. “That one? No. The sick one with the pretty hair. He was crawling on the floor shoving furniture away from you.”
Diego’s head snapped around to search for Finn, the movement knifing pain behind his eyes.
“I put him back to bed.” She rested an arthritis-gnarled hand on his chest to keep him down. “With a plate ofplatanos.”
“Is that good for him? Fried food? I don’t think he’s eaten in a long time.”
She gave him a look, at once imperious and amused. “And how many children have you raised,niño? He liked them. He ate them. Let him eat what he wants right now.” She rose, smoothing her skirt. “Dinner will be ready in an hour. Try to sleep.”
“Tia Carmen? I’m sorry.”
“Shush.” She flapped a dismissive hand at him. “Don’t be sorry for needing help. Everyone needs help sometimes. So someone told me.”
Diego managed a wry smile at having his words thrown back at him. He downed the aspirin and, as he sipped his tea, her words slid through his jumbled brain. Finn, sick as he was, had dragged himself out of bed to help. He couldn’t begin to contemplate what that meant yet.
And how had he gotten on the sofa?
He woke later to the sound of dishes being set down near his ear. Finn sat cross-legged on the floor at one end of the coffee table, already wolfing down a portion ofmole-smothered enchiladas.
“Your stomach’s going to hate you.”
Finn put down the plate and wiped his chin on his sleeve. “Evening. Feeling better?”
“I will in the morning. And you? You seem…livelier.”
“This lovely lady’s cooking has amazing restorative powers.” His hair was brushed to gleaming and pulled back in a black elastic, most likely Tia Carmen’s doing. “That nasty churl was your lover?”
Diego levered himself up against the cushions, nausea fighting hunger. “Was. Yes.”
Finn shook his head and returned to devouring his dinner. “Can’t say much for your tastes. Anyone who’d run off while his friend has an attack of the falling sickness…a right bastard.”
“I told him this, many times.” Tia Carmen settled in the wing chair to his left. “He never listens to me.”
Wonderful. My landlady and my bridge jumper have formed an alliance.“I’d like to take you down to the clinic tomorrow, Finn,” he said, to change the subject. “Get you checked out.”
Finn cocked his head to one side like a puzzled bird. “Checked out?”
