Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
E li knocked twice on Darby’s door. Previously he would have given up after the first time, but knowing what he now knew about how rarely she went out, as well as her recent blackouts, he stayed to knock a second time. With more urgency. Eventually she opened the door, blinking at him with a dazed look.
“Did you just wake up?” he asked.
“No,” she said, but it sounded like a question.
The dark shadows like bruises under her eyes did nothing to take away from her attractiveness, and he sighed, annoyed to notice it in the middle of his concern. Her eyes narrowed, picking up on his annoyance but misattributing its meaning to annoyance with her.
“You know you’re the one who knocked on my door, right?”
He puffed a laugh. “Yes. How are you?”
“Good,” she said, another question.
“Tristan moved in.”
She blinked. “He works fast.”
“I don’t think it takes long to pack up ten fake boxes and a few barbells,” he said, which earned a laugh from her that made him smile. He leaned against the jamb. “What are you doing?”
“I…” she trailed off and turned helplessly toward the inside of her apartment. “I was, um…” Her hand came up and made a vague motion. “I don’t actually know. Crazy people stuff, apparently.” She swallowed hard, lip wobbling. “There are so many blanks. I don’t realize I’m out of it until I get snapped back, and then I can’t remember.” A lone tear trickled down her cheek. No one appeared to be watching them, but Eli couldn’t be certain. The apartment complex thrived on gossip. He slipped inside the door, clicking it closed behind him.
“Come on,” he said and herded her to her couch. She sank into it, blinking up at him in confusion.
“Should you be in here?” Her hand wiped her wet cheek.
“You owed me a break in. It’s just good manners,” he said.
She laughed, but it sounded weak.
“Did you eat today?” he asked.
She shrugged.
He sniffed. “It smells edible in here. Did you cook something?”
She perked up, looking surprised. “I must have.” She started to stand, but he put out a hand to halt her.
“I’ll go check.”
“Make yourself at home,” she said with an attempt at sarcasm that fell flat when she curled into a sad little ball and rested her head on the arm of the sofa.
Eli went into the kitchen, noting the apartment was cozier than his, despite the fact that he thought he’d done a pretty good job of decorating. This one looked like a family place, not a lone bachelor hangout. There were pictures of a couple on the wall, in various poses, but he didn’t pause to regard them. Instead he went to the kitchen, lifted the lid on a pot on the stove, turned the burner off, and gave it a stir.
“Chicken and dumplings,” he muttered to himself as he held the spoon aloft and let the contents drip back into the pan. “Huh.” He hadn’t taken Darby for a comfort food kind of girl. If he’d had to guess, he would have said she was the type to get sushi takeout delivered by someone she kept on speed dial. As before, he realized he had stereotyped her and vowed to do better at not letting his preformed impressions get the better of him. He dished up a bowl and carried it to her, finding her asleep on the couch, curled up like a street urchin who had wandered inside for the warmth.
“Darby.” He said it softly, but she still startled awake, eyes wide with momentary confusion. “I have food.”
She sat up and ran a hand through her tumbly curls, pausing when her fingers got stuck. Instead of taking the time to unsnarl them, she merely abandoned the effort and reached for the bowl he held out to her. “Thank you.”
“You cooked it. I’m merely the delivery method.” He perched on the edge of the coffee table across from her. “So you can cook.”
“I don’t like to eat out. Plus it’s cheaper.”
That gave him pause. Was Darby having financial problems? He didn’t think she worked, but he assumed she received her income from the apartment building. Maybe not, though. Maybe her husband had left her with unresolved debt.
She stirred her dumplings listlessly, staring into the bowl. “I grew up poor,” she blurted, apropos of nothing. “In the middle of nowhere Mississippi. I had to drive forty minutes to get to the gas station where I worked as a waitress. That was where Ham found me.” She took a bite.
Eli waited her out, sensing she wasn’t done talking.
“I’d never left my small town, figured I would probably be there until I died. It was a depressing thought. Ham was charming, a talker. He was traveling through and I thought it was something that he could pick up and travel whenever he wanted, felt like a dream to me. He told me about the places he’d been, about Washington DC, about his carefree lifestyle. It sounded so wonderful, but at the same time I sensed that he was lonely, and maybe a little sad. He was almost forty years older than me, but we had that in common, a sort of sad desperation that made us feel isolated.” She stirred her dumplings some more. “He stayed in town for two weeks, and by the end of it we were engaged. I like to think we both had good intentions, that we genuinely believed we were in love. Now, ten years later, I don’t know.” She finally took a bite.
“Was the marriage…bad?” Eli asked.
She shook her head, waiting to speak until she swallowed. “No, nothing like that. Ham was kind to me, generous, caring. But I was eighteen years old. I had no idea how sheltered I was until I wasn’t anymore. The things I knew could have fit in a jelly jar. And all of a sudden I was living ten hours from everyone I knew, in a city a hundred times the size of the one I left, with a husband who had four decades on me. Culture shock is probably the best way to describe it. It’s complex because on the one hand I realized how much I’d missed out on by marrying at eighteen, but on the other it made me realize how much I would have missed out on by staying there.”
She listlessly stirred her dumplings. “Who taught you to cook like this?” he asked.
“My meemaw.”
There it was, the one tiny phrase that shattered the remainder of his image of her. The pristine, standoffish, beauty queen ice princess Darby was nothing like the tumbly haired widow who made dumplings and talked about her meemaw.
“I’m so tired,” she said, staring listlessly at her bowl.
“It’s almost like blacking out and prowling in other people’s houses at night has consequences,” Eli suggested, but in a light enough tone to tell her he was teasing.
She finally cracked a smile, her first since he entered her house. “Of all the things I thought I’d become, crazy wasn’t on my radar.” She pushed away her plate and curled into a little ball on the couch.
“What was on your radar?” Eli asked curiously, but too late, she was already asleep. He finished his bowl of dumplings, trying not to feel like a creeper as he stared at her. As much as he had resisted getting involved or getting close to her, he was invested now, and it was uncomfortable how worried he was for her. She was a stranger, and yet in a weird way she had become his responsibility. Even Tristan thought so.
He finished his food, carried both their bowls to the kitchen, put the leftover food in the fridge, and washed the dishes. When that was done, Darby was still asleep. He paused, wondering if there was something more he could or should do, but nothing came to mind. Reluctantly, he let himself out and closed the door, making certain it was locked behind him.
D arby woke an unknown time later in a darkened apartment. Her first moment of panic made her believe someone was in the apartment with her, but after taking a few deep breaths, she shook off the panic and tried to backtrack. How had she wound up asleep on her couch? Eli. Had Eli been there, or was that a dream? She wouldn’t have dreamed him eating dumplings, would she?
She reached for the television remote and turned it on, supplying the space with both noise and much-needed light. When she entered the kitchen, she stopped short. Where there was once a pot of dumplings, there was only empty space, and the dishes that had been in her sink were also gone, leaving a clean and empty space in their wake. Cautiously, she tiptoed to the fridge, pulled it open, and peeked inside. Eli put away my food and cleaned my kitchen. It hadn’t been horribly dirty, only a little untidy, but she wasn’t certain how she felt about that. Exposed, maybe? Vulnerable and off-kilter for certain. Darby was self-contained, perfectly content to look after herself. And yet lately a total stranger had come to her rescue in multiple ways, most recently by helping her ward off food poisoning by refrigerating her leftovers. She was mid-contemplation of reheating said leftovers when she heard something.
Scritchhhhh
Darby had lived in the apartment for ten years, and she knew every sound, no matter how tiny. This one was anomalous, nothing she’d ever heard before, though she knew exactly what it was, the sound of something outside scratching the vinyl siding of her apartment. Someone is outside. She closed the refrigerator door and froze, trying to peer frantically out the window. Were they watching her? Could they see? The apartment was dark, save for the dim glow of the television now radiating from the living room, but was it enough to illuminate Darby, to show her fear?
I should call someone, she thought, but who? The police? She’d lived in the city long enough to know what DC cops would do with someone who reported a scratching sound outside. Ignore me or laugh at me or both. Either way, they certainly wouldn’t respond. Who else? Eli. That gave her pause. He would come, she knew, and he would make her feel better, but what if the person outside was dangerous? And then she remembered Tristan, who was such an obvious answer, that she rolled her eyes at her stupidity. Of course she should call the private eye/security guard she had hired for the purpose of investigating weird events. He was steps away, trained to track bad guys, and owned a gun. Not to mention the fact that he was menacing and huge, a walking barrel of muscles.
Her phone was conveniently in her pocket, but still she hesitated. Why, though? If she were honest with herself, she didn’t want Tristan; she wanted Eli. Tristan, for all his largeness and severity, did not make her feel safe the same way that Eli made her feel safe, as if she could be herself, tell him anything, and trust him with the outcome. Tristan was undoubtedly better at punching and shooting people and handling bad guys. But when she thought of who she wanted with her in this darkened apartment while an unknown person roamed outside, it wasn’t the former cop; it was the guy who worked with old people in assisted living. Why, though? The inability to find a solid answer disturbed her because of the vulnerability she saw in herself. Darby was alone, and she was fine with it. She had purposely chosen not to date again after Ham died, preferring to eschew the hassle of tying herself to another person, no matter how peripherally. Financially, she was set. While it would be nice to occasionally have a man to advise her on mechanical things that went wrong with her car or the apartments, it was nothing she couldn’t take care of by hiring someone. She assumed hiring Tristan would be the same; she needed extra security, so she hired a guy. But this was…different somehow. She felt a void she hadn’t felt since…she wasn’t certain she’d ever felt it.
Before Ham, she’d been too busy to date much. High school activities, family life, and her job had kept her calendar filled, too much to worry about boys, more than flirting with one at the Friday night football game. After Ham, she’d been resolved: no more men. Now? She was still resolved, at least mentally. She was better off remaining independent. That was why this feeling baffled her, almost a yearning sort of ache she couldn’t nail down. And if she couldn’t name it, she couldn’t resolve or fix it.
I will call Tristan, she decided. It was the most pragmatic thing, to utilize the person she had already hired for the purpose. Once again she reached in her pocket and then, unknown to her, stared into space, her mind a blank void.
When she came to, some unknown time later, she had no idea why she was in the kitchen, nor why all the lights were off. On autopilot now, she turned, went back to the couch, lay down, and promptly fell asleep.