Chapter 22 Sydney
Sydney
Two Weeks Later
Straightening, I move the sheaf of papers on my bedside table out of the way and place the last dahlia into the vase the cat knocked off my bedside table. I put my hand on my hip and scowl. “Rufus, you need to learn to mind your manners.”
McRae pokes his head around the doorframe of the walk-in closet. “What did he do?”
I pick up a wet and mangled envelope. “Rufus sharpened his claws on my mail and took the whole vase with him. He can be such a jerk, sometimes,” I say affectionately.
McRae enters the room fully and swoops Rufus into his arms. “Don’t listen to her, Fuss-fuss. It’s your responsibility to your species to pounce on shit that doesn’t belong to you. You’re a hunter.”
Rufus purrs.
I cross my arms. “I’m so glad you said that, because you left a book and a cup of coffee beside the bed when you took your shower.”
He glances at his now empty nightstand, cringes, then gives Rufus a stern scowl. “I was on your side, dude. I had your back, and you turned on me.”
Rufus butts his head against him until McRae scratches him behind the ears, then sets him on the floor.
When the cat struts away, tail held high to find a patch of sun, McRae eyes the flowers curiously.
He picks up the mangled card, turning it over to look at the handwriting, then curls his lip. “Amelia? Again.”
“Yup, and she sent cake pops on Wednesday. I gave them to the staff,” I say.
“Your co-worker has a crush on you.”
I eye him to see if that’s jealousy in his voice or simply teasing. He gives me that mildly amused look he loves to use that doesn’t give away anything he doesn’t want it to.
“I don’t think it’s a crush.” I rearrange one of the stems so it doesn’t poke out so far.
“I think she feels guilty. She says I told her you weren’t home the night I vandalized the lab, and I was nervous without my driver.
She thinks she should’ve stayed with me after work because I was acting weird, but she ignored it b-because she had a date. ”
“No one else noticed anything wrong either. It was hardly her fault,” he says.
“I told her that, and I asked her to stop sending me stuff. It’s too much.” If I ever go back to work there, I don’t want that kind of suffocating attention. I’ve been letting most of her calls go to voicemail. She’s nice, but overwhelming.
My gaze trails over my husband, and I can’t suppress my grin. “What are you wearing?”
He reaches for the bottom hem of his shirt, tugs the blue and yellow fabric straight, and raises his chin. “It’s a bowling shirt.”
“Do you belong to a league?” I can actually picture it, as crazy as it sounds.
“You don’t recognize fashion when you see it?” He puffs out his chest and angles himself to give me a better view of the real reason for his dramatic change in style.
Smiling hard enough to make my face hurt, I indicate the blue-trimmed white oval on his chest. “Nice name tag, Gabriel.”
He affects an expression of surprise. “What?! My name is on this shirt? Where any wife could read it?”
“I love it.”
He smooths his hand down the line of buttons like a host on a shopping channel. “This old thing? Good, because I bought seven color combinations.”
My laugh gurgles a little. How ridiculous that I want to cry happy tears over this, but, God, he has to be the sweetest man who ever lived. “Thank you.” I glance at the tag again and read it aloud. “Gabriel.”
He winks at me and clicks his tongue. The sexy, cocky cutie. I used to wonder why I gave someone like him a chance, let alone married him. But he’s so far from being like my father, he doesn’t belong on the same planet. He’s charming, yes, but he’s also thoughtful and responsible.
“What’s the schedule today?” he asks.
I count off the appointments on my thumb and fingers. “Physical therapy in an hour. OT at eleven. Psychiatrist at one. Therapist at one-thirty. Speech therapist will be here at three.”
My speech sounds close to normal now, as long as I’m not stressed out.
My new psychiatrist has been working out well too.
I chose her myself after the debacle with Frankhouser.
She manages my medications and overall psychiatric care, and I have separate appointments in her office building with a licensed therapist. I wanted to travel to her office for my daily appointments, instead of having them come here.
I needed that little bit of normalcy and to start leaving the grounds.
McRae was relieved she agreed that a hospitalization wasn’t necessary under the circumstances. So was I. For now, I’ve accepted the answer is to never be alone until I’m sure I have things under control, which isn’t hard to do.
Maybe I’ve just spent so much time getting my ass chewed out on a soccer field that people who are “fake nice” rub me the wrong way. Or maybe I met too many of those people in the foster system. I like kind people. But I can’t stand people pretending to be nice to try to control me.
The new doctor doesn’t do any of that. Dr. Akana and her staff are honest and empathetic without pitying me or attempting to control me.
My husband shakes his head. “I shouldn’t be surprised by that schedule. Once you decide something, you put everything into it. You always have.”
My occupational therapist, Nalani, has been helping me build up my strength to make everyday things like dressing and brushing my own hair easier. Daniel works with me on putting words and sentences together and maintaining control.
The idea that I’ve become so captive to some unknown fear that it randomly freezes my tongue infuriates me, but getting angry only makes it worse.
Speech therapy. Physical therapy. Occupational therapy. Therapy therapy. Walks with my husband that get a little longer every day, though they’re still pathetically short. Delicious food again and again. Day after day. And medication twice a day, every day.
Forgetting all my appointments with Dr. Granthy is another one of those weird things my brain does to me . . . like forgetting my husband’s first name, but I have notes from his visits.
McRae nods toward the closet. “Do you want me to put the dress back in the safe?”
Henry brought the sealed plastic bag with the clothing from my captivity the day he arrived weeks ago, but it hasn’t caused any memories to shake loose. I placed it on a small table beside the window. Even Rufus avoids it.
“I should try again. I have time,” I say.
“You could take it with you to your therapy appointment, instead.”
“I want to do it now.”
My husband’s mouth flattens, and he points to his temple. “You see these gray hairs, right?”
I roll my eyes. “No.”
“There are two of them. You have to look closely. They’re hidden undernea—Never mind. My point is you gave them to me the first time you opened that bag. Your stubbornness is affecting my hotness.”
I snort. “1) That’s not how gray hair works. And 2) You know you’re pretty. Stop fishing for compliments.”
“I’m hot, not pretty. It’s like you’re trying to hurt my feelings.”
“You can’t distract me by being cute,” I lie.
The first time I opened that bag, I didn’t even touch the dress before the familiar smell of a concrete-block basement had me passing out cold.
I went into shock and hit my head on the table.
It took a minute for me to wake up afterward.
When I came to, he’d already called 911 and the nurse on call was kneeling over me. It wasn’t fun for any of us.
The second time, I managed to touch the dress before my head spun. I had the oddest memory of an empty roll of toilet paper, but I backed off before I passed out. He whisked the dress away and covered me with a blanket until I leveled out.
“You don’t have to push yourself this hard. It could make things worse.”
Henry’s concerns about the unknown holes in our security and the potential danger to the kids play in my mind constantly. Sealing that leak, wherever it is, is more important than my potential discomfort. “I’ll be fine,” I reassure him.
“You’ll take precautions,” he says sternly.
I snap the blade of my hand to my temple. “Sir. Yes, sir.”
“Cute.” He waggles his eyebrows. “If we’re pretending you’d ever let me tell you what to do, I have a list of—”
“Gimme the bag, McRae.”
His smile looks a little forced. “That’s what you used to call me when I ticked you off, so that tracks.”
“You made me mad a lot, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
I don’t know the inside joke, but I smile, anyway. “I mean, you thought stealing food was flirting.”
“I also had the hallways and break areas at your lab painted powder-blue and installed a giant ‘Hang in there’ mural with a kitten dangling from a tree branch.” He spreads his hands to demonstrate.
I scrunch my nose. “What? Why?”
“You told me to do something about the institutional white walls, and I’m an overachiever.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was trying to get your attention,” he says.
“Did it work?”
“My phone rang within fourteen seconds of you getting off the elevator. I was watching on the security monitors to see how you liked it,” he says smugly.
“Tell me I won that battle.”
“We repainted the walls tan, but kept the mural, because kittens are adorable and the world could use more encouragement.”
“And I married you.”
Jade-green eyes serious, he lifts his left hand to show me his ring. “You did.”
A flash of memory has me straightening and lunging for the bag that contains my clothing.
“Whoa.” He drops his hand on top of mine. “You need gloves. Put your feet up. Let me get a cross breeze in here and a blanket for you first. You said you’d be careful.”
I nod, sit, then wait impatiently until he passes me a pair of surgical gloves, pulls over the ottoman for my feet, and opens the door to the patio.
Then, with the bag still resting on the small round table next to me, I slide open the closure because I know exactly why I wanted it in the first place.
The smell of mildew, dirt, old blood, and body odor assaults me.
I look up with a grimace. “How could you stand to touch me when I smelled like that? You carried me out of the warehouse. You h-held me in the hospital.” I can’t remember all of it, but I’ve gotten enough back to piece that much together.
“The hard part was letting go. I’d have climbed into the MRI with you if I could have.”
My heart aches at his words. I’ve been looking at this experience from my own perspective, but he’s been through hell too. Reaching for his hand, I squeeze it. “‘Thank you’ seems weak. It’s not enough. I am so grateful for you. More than I could possibly say.”
He squeezes back, then runs his thumb over my cheekbone. “Right back at you, sunshine.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then he releases my hand.
Straightening, I reach into the bag, but I don’t drag the entirety of the dress out.
I don’t need it, and, at the moment, I don’t really want to see it.
Instead, I find the wide sash used to keep the wrap-style closed.
Slowly, inch-by-inch, I pull the belt from the bag until I reach the end.
“Never buying a dress w-without pockets again.”
A series of knots appear in the sash. Maybe they looked like something I did from anxiety or boredom, but I tied them for a far more precious reason.
I pick at the knots, but having washed the dress in the sink multiple times means those knots got wet, then tightened as they dried. The gloves make it even harder.
After several minutes of unsuccessfully attempting to pick the first one loose, my fingers grow stiff, and I make a sound of frustration.
My husband crouches beside me. “May I?”
I pass the sash. “Maybe I went overboard.”
He eyes me curiously, then goes to work, eventually utilizing the long skinny handle of a rat tail comb to assist. When the last knot loosens, then comes free, a light clatter sounds on the wooden table before us.
Breath whooshes from my lungs. I thought I knew but was afraid to trust myself, worried the maze inside my mind had played tricks on me. “I kept them safe.”
Fingers reverent and shaking, the man I call McRae lifts my wedding rings from the tabletop.
I’d been desperate to hide them from my captors.
They were mine, a part of myself I refused to lose.
So, I hid them. And then I forgot until they were gone, even from myself, and, still, I protected them, refusing to give up the dress when someone I can’t remember offered me new clothes.
Clinging to it. Holding those knots tight to my chest like a talisman, even when I had no idea why I did it.
Something of the ferocity of that act seeps into my whisper as I repeat, “I kept them safe.”