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He cupped her chin, tilting her face until she was forced to look at him.
“Hey, you.”
Now her nerves were really on edge. There was a low, breathless quality to his voice that she’d never thought she’d hear. At least, not when speaking to her.
“What?”
“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
Jessica’s heart started to thump erratically. “Long time since what?”
His voice deepened. “Since we’ve been together.”
“I’ve spent two years trying to forget,” she muttered.
“So that’s why you left without so much as a goodbye.”
She swallowed, trying to get past the pain. “You’d made yourself painfully clear,” she said, and then looked deeply into his eyes. “There wasn’t anything left to say…was there?”
He looked away, and then back. “Will you be afraid?”
She gripped the arms of the chair as her heart skipped a beat. Afraid? The only thing that ever scared me was losing you and I survived that. This is a piece of cake. But she didn’t answer.
“If you are, I can have a patrol car swing by here every so often to make sure you’re okay.”
She gritted her teeth. “I’m not afraid of the dark, and I want you to go.”
He sighed, then stood up, hesitating. Sitting there in the dark with nothing but candlelight by which to see, she seemed awfully small and so alone. He couldn’t bear to leave her…at least not like this. He thrust his hand in his pocket and pulled out his card.
“If you need me, the number is on the card.”
Jessica fought an urge to cry. Her fingers curled around the card as he shut the door behind him. Even after the sound of his car engine had faded away, she sat unmoving, clutching the card as if it was her lifeline to normalcy in a world lost in darkness.
She fell asleep in the chair, and when she awoke, the candle was out, yet the room was not dark. Disoriented, it took her a moment to focus on the fact that the light she was seeing was coming through the windows, and that it was growing brighter and brighter with each passing second.
Tension pulled the muscles at the back of her neck, and her breath began to shorten. Her fingers dug into the arms of the chair as the familiarity of her home began to change before her eyes. Unable to look away from the light, she stared into a nightmare that wouldn’t let her go.
* * *
Olivia Stuart smiled as she walked around the kitchen, adding the finishing touches to the ensemble she’d chosen for Hal’s wedding. Teal was her favorite color. Somewhere between true blue and green, it accentuated her coloring to perfection. She paused in front of the sink and picked up a picture that stood on the windowsill, smiling to herself as she remembered the day it had been taken. Eve had been fussing with her hair, and Hal had been laughing at her futile attempts to make it glamorous. Even as adults, they were good children.
Just as she started to move toward the table, to pick up her purse and the umbrella lying there, the scent of flowers drifted into the room. A slight frown drew between her brows as she tried to identify the scent. Gardenias! She was smelling gardenias!
A hand came around her mouth without warning, and Olivia dropped the picture and shrieked, swallowing her own cry as the fingers upon her face clamped too tightly for the sound to escape. Fear shattered her control as she reached behind her, trying to tear free. The struggle was brief. Shock turned to pain as a sharp, burning sensation pierced the back of her leg.
She remembered thinking that this didn’t make sense. Her leg had been stabbed, but there was pain in her chest. She reached out, gasping desperately for air. She wasn’t going to make Hal’s wedding, after all.
My son…my son.
Pain blossomed and burst, splintering throughout her body in a white-hot heat.
* * *
Jessica jerked. The bright orb of light was still present, but there was a constant, repetitive thump that hadn’t been there before. She blinked, then blinked again as she realized this wasn’t part of the dream. Someone was knocking on her door.
It took her a moment to switch gears, and when she did, her first thought was that Stone had come back. And then she heard her sister’s voice.
“Jessica! Are you in there? Jessie, it’s me, Brenda! Let me in!”
Jessica blinked again, her perception of what she’d just seen suddenly clear. The light was nothing more than the headlights of Brenda’s car shining through the sheer curtains at her front window.
I must have been dreaming again.
“Be right there,” she called, and headed for the door. As soon as she turned the knob, Brenda came rushing in and threw her arms around Jessica’s neck.
“I went to the hospital and they said you’d been dismissed! Why didn’t you call?”
“I tried. It was busy, so I got a ride home.”
Brenda threw up her arms in disgust and pointed to Jessica’s phone on a nearby table. “Is your phone working yet?”
“I don’t know. Stone brought me home. I didn’t think to check.”
Even in the shadows, Jessica was aware of her sister’s shock.
“Stone? As in Richardson?”
Jessica shrugged. “Do we know another? For Pete’s sake, Brenda, come inside. I need to sit down.”
Brenda’s mouth pursed. “Obviously you’ve been keeping secrets from me. However, we’ll discuss that later. You need to be in bed. Here, take my flashlight.”
“I have one somewhere,” Jessica muttered, looking back toward the chair in which she’d been sitting.
“No. Take mine and don’t move,” Brenda said. “I’ll be right back.”
Jessica waited while her sister killed the car engine, turned off the lights, then returned, carrying an overnight bag in her hand.
Jessica pointed the beam of the flashlight at the small blue bag. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Spending the night. And don’t argue. You have a concussion. You shouldn’t be alone.”
Jessica groaned. The last thing she needed was a baby-sitter, but from the look on Brenda’s face, it would seem she was getting one, just the same.
“You’re a mess,” Brenda said, fingering Jessica’s matted hair and drawn expression. “Come with me. I’ll get you cleaned up and tucked in a bed.”
“I don’t need to be tucked in. Besides, someone told me water is being rationed.”
“Up to now, you haven’t used any, so I’d say you’re allowed a quick bath. And you know what Mother used to say. Everything will look better in the morning.”
Jessica sighed. She knew better than to argue with Brenda when she got on a roll.
“Then, will you help me wash my hair? It feels awful.”
Brenda hugged her. “We’ll have to be careful not to get your stitches wet, but I suppose something can be arranged.”
“Then, okay. But you have to stick to your side of the bed.”
In the glow of the flashlight, Jessica saw her sister grin.
* * *
Jessica awoke in a panic and sat straight up in bed. Her heart was pounding, and the scent of gardenias was thick in her nostrils. She covered her face with her hands, fighting the urge to cry. Why was this happening? Why did she keep having this same awful dream, over and over and over?
Brenda sighed and rolled onto her back, one arm outflung on Jessica’s pillow, the other trailing off the side of the bed. Jessica glanced down and frowned. As if the dreams weren’t bad enough, Brenda had a tendency to take her half of the bed from the middle. She patted Brenda on the shoulder.
“Brenda!”
Brenda snorted softly, muttering something in her sleep.
The pat turned into a shove. “Brenda!”
Brenda groaned and cracked an eye. “What?” Then she remembered where she was and why she’d come. When she saw Jessica sitting up in the bed, she came awake in an instant.
“What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”
“No, but you’re going to be if you don’t move over,” Jessica muttered.
Brenda blinked like a baby owl. “Sorry,” she said, and scooted back to her side of the bed.
With a defeated sigh, Jessica tried to go back to sleep. But she kept seeing the needle glittering in the lamplight as the assailant plunged it into the back of Olivia Stuart’s leg. Something kept telling her there was more to what she was seeing than just a dream. Long minutes later, she rolled over.
“Brenda. Are you asleep?”
Brenda shoved a lock of hair from her face. “I’m not now,” she mumbled.
“Have you ever had a vision?”
Brenda rolled over. “Jessie, honey, does your head still hurt?”
“Of course it does. But one thing has nothing to do with the other.”
Brenda eyed the clock and groaned. “It’s three in the morning. Don’t you think we could save this conversation for daylight? You need your rest. I need my rest. Go back to sleep.”
“I’m afraid to,” Jessica said in a quiet, resigned tone.
Brenda sat up, her attention caught. “What do you mean?”
Jessica picked at a loose thread on the edge of the blanket without answering until Brenda yanked the blanket away.
“Jessica Leigh Hanson, I asked you a question.”
Jessica’s smile was slight as she looked up. “You sounded just like Mother.”
Dismayed, Brenda sighed and slid her arm around her sister’s neck. “Jessie, if you don’t talk, I can’t help.”
Jessica frowned. “I could talk from now to daylight and I still don’t think you can help. In fact, I don’t think anyone can help.”
“You’ll never know until you try.”
Jessica sighed. “I keep having this dream about Olivia Stuart dying.”
Brenda’s voice softened. “Oh, honey. That’s understandable. You must have been in the ER when they brought her in.”
Jessica shook her head. “I don’t think so. If I was, I don’t remember. I don’t remember much of anything after I hit my head.” Except Stone Richardson…but that doesn’t count.
“Maybe talking about it will help. What were you dreaming?”
“She was by a table.”
“Who was by a table?” Brenda asked.
Jessica rolled her eyes, trying not to let her frustration show. “Olivia Stuart,” she repeated. “At first I thought she was at my desk, but she wouldn’t come help me.”
Brenda brushed the hair away from Jessica’s bandage and patted her arm. “Honey, head injuries do weird things to people. Maybe you just—”
Jessica drew back in frustration. “I knew you would say that, but it’s not so! I know what I saw. I mean… I know what I saw in my dream, and in my dream, Olivia Stuart did not die from a heart attack. She was stabbed.”
Brenda gasped, for the moment caught up in the telling. And then she remembered. “But don’t you see? Now you know for certain it was just a dream. I heard that the doctors and nurses at Vanderbilt worked on her for some time. They would have seen a stab wound. There would have been blood. Lots of blood.” She patted Jessica’s arm. “It’s just a bad dream caused by the blow to your head.”
Fighting exhaustion and tears, Jessica laid back down and pulled the covers up to her chin as her sister rolled over to her side of the bed. Wrapped in quiet and lulled by a false sense of security, Jessica began to settle. But at the edge of sleep, her voice broke the silence.
“She wasn’t stabbed with a knife. It was a needle. A hypodermic needle…in the back of the leg.”
* * *
Brenda thrust her foot into the leg of her jeans and yanked them up while Jessica watched from the bed.
“Thank you for spending the night with me,” she said.
Brenda smiled. “That’s what sisters are for.” And then the smile quirked. “That is, when there are no good-looking cops around.”
Jessica refused to look at Brenda. Her heart was so full of memories that she feared if Brenda saw her face, she would know. “I already told you. I have nothing in common with the man. You’re the one he dated, not me.”
“And there’s your answer. Dated. As in…past tense. Also, that was ages ago. I haven’t given him a thought in forever.”
Yeah, well, I wish I could say the same.
Brenda stuffed her nightgown into her bag. “There. I think I have everything. I need to go home and feed the cat and check my messages.” She glanced toward the clock and realized it was running. “Oh, look! The power is back on.”
