Chapter 19
There were some disconnected memories between finding myself on the bathroom floor and waking in a much cleaner hospital bed, but I couldn’t really piece them together into anything coherent. I tried, but nothing would fit or make sense.
Auris sat on the edge of the hospital bed, and his fingers brushed my cheek. He talked to me, but I wasn’t always able to hold the words in my mind long enough to understand their meaning.
After what felt like a long time, the fog lifted, and I was able to open my eyes and keep them open. Auris was still there, my hand in his. His eyes were darkness, so I knew it was night.
“Hello,” he said. The emotions I could see on his face scared me. “You’re safe now.”
I wanted to say something. I wanted to know if my pictures and my camera were safe. I wanted another shower. I wanted Auris at my dad’s wedding. Nothing but a croak came out.
“Your neck is bruised. Don’t speak, just try to relax. I’m here.”
A nurse came in and looked at me and the monitors next to me. “He’s doing better,” he told Auris, and he made a note on a chart before he left. I squeezed Auris’s hand before I passed out again.
I woke a few more times during the night, always just for a few minutes, thanks to whatever they had given me.
The next morning in the hospital was hazy, but they discharged me with a baggy of antibiotics to prevent me from getting pneumonia after so much water had gotten into my lungs.
There were painkillers in there as well. My neck was still raw and swollen.
They’d just barely been able to avoid intubating me, I’d overheard a doctor tell Auris.
I almost fell asleep in the car on the drive back to the beach house. Everything was hazy, unreal, scary.
When we got to the house, I was ridiculously proud that I walked myself to the couch without leaning all of my weight on Auris.
“I’ll go and light the fire,” he said. He’d carried my bag inside. Learning that my camera and laptop were undamaged had come as an incredible, tear-inducing relief. “Do you want anything? Water, tea?” His silver eyes were glued to my face.
In barely more than a whisper, I said, “Just water. I think I want another pain pill.”
Auris got me a glass of water from the kitchen and handed me a pain pill from the bottle. Swallowing it was difficult, and in the end, it took me three tries to get it down.
When I’d settled and Auris had made sure I had a blanket and a pillow from the bedroom, I finally dared to ask the question that had coagulated in my mind.
“What happened in the motel room?”
Auris was still busy with the fire, clearly calmed by the menial nature of what he was doing. He looked at me over his shoulder. “How much detail do you want right now?”
I considered it. “All of it.”
He nodded, watching the fire grow, and fed it two more logs before he sat down next to me and draped a second blanket that lay folded at one end of the couch over my legs.
“I can stop when it gets too much,” he said.
I nodded. “You left for the café. I had this odd feeling. You weren’t there at the time, but the priests told me they had someone following another lead, meaning you.
I didn’t tell you because clearly you were working through the rest of the situation, and I didn’t want you worrying over nothing.
I thought anyone following you would go to your home first, not stay in the area.
“In any case, I decided to walk over to the café, just to see if you were there. You weren’t.
I know most of the business owners in town, and it didn’t take much for them to tell me you had come in and worked on your laptop for a while before you had walked out with some man.
Daisy, the woman that served you, thought something looked off about him.
She’d seen him drive you away and told me where he’d been headed.
“The motel was an easy guess. I broke down the door, only just in time. Do you remember any of that?”
I let go of the corner of the blanket I’d been rubbing between my fingers. “Bits and pieces. Noises. I was on the floor.”
Auris nodded. “I don’t think he planned on drowning you. Then again, those people are only ever a step away from worse.”
I licked my lips. “He enjoyed it. Pushing me under. He was mad about the church. He told me my footprints were in the church.”
“I see. Yes. Vengeance, I suppose. I pulled you out.” He put his arm around me. “I pulled you out.”
“The guy?”
Auris hesitated as if he was trying to decide what to tell, how much to tell me.
“Dead.”
His tone was flat. There was no remorse in it. I nodded.
“It was daylight.”
“That’s right. I’m weaker during the day, but not that weak.
He wasn’t fast enough. He was distracted with hurting you when I came in.
He had his back to me, and he’d left his own knife on the bed in the motel room.
I stabbed him.” Auris paused, gauging my reaction.
Whatever he saw kept him from telling me more, and I didn’t press him.
“I took you to the local hospital. They held off on calling the police at my request, and once night fell, I entranced them just in case. That’s it. ”
“What about the body?”
He looked at me, his eyes a glistening silver. “Are you sure you want to know?”
I nodded.
“I had some paramedics from the hospital pick it up and take it to the morgue. By now, he’s been cremated and his ashes have been scattered.”
“That’s very efficient.”
“Yes.” He pulled me into his arms. “It is.”
“I thought I was going to die.”
His hold on me tightened, and he rocked me. “You didn’t.”
“I was having coffee, and the next moment I was being drowned in a bathtub. He ate my bear claw. He ate my fucking bear claw.”
Auris kissed my forehead. “I’ll get you another bear claw. It’s okay to be scared now, but don’t be scared forever.”
I fell asleep in his arms to the sound of the fire crackling.