Over Her Dead Body
A Kensington Zebra romantic suspense.
Amazon.com
ISBN 0-8217-7752-1
2005
Mary Weaver picked up the phone, scrunched her eyes tightly closed, and concentrated on her next move. What was it?
One more call to make . . . Yes. One more call.
Goodness, but her leg hurt. She looked down at it. All swollen up, like a fat blue-veined sausage, the stuffing inside too big for the thin skin holding it in.
I have to make things right. No time.
She rubbed her knee, looked around, and forced her tired brain to plod through the mist blurring its edges, a mist threatening to curl inward, obscure everything.
Rain. There was rain beating on the old roof, wind hissing down the chimney. Not light. Not yet.
Where am I?
Why is it so dark? She should clean the windows. Yes. They were all fuzzy.
She shook her head until it throbbed, then blinked. No, the windows weren’t fuzzy. She was.
Mary let the tears, frail and hot, run down her puffy cheeks and drip onto her stained nightgown. She struggled to remember putting the gown on, but couldn’t. Buffeted by a new confusion, she sat stone still on the edge of the bed and clasped the gown’s lace-edged collar, bunched tight under chin.
Naked. She’d been naked, dressed by a stranger. The grayness of shame colored the fog in her mind. So many strangers . . .
Maybe that woman . . . the one she didn’t like. Hadn’t she come yesterday? Last week?
Out of memory, out of time, panic closed her throat. Urgency clutched her heart.
I have to make things right!
“Dear God, tell me, please . . . where am I? she screamed into the empty room.
And, as if her scream were a wind blowing at it hard and fast, the fog receded, leaving the barest of clearings. Thoughts straight and sharp rose on the landscape.
Relief flooded her. “You’re home, you mad old woman,” she whispered, then ran a hand over the mattress of the familiar bed she sat on. “Home,” she repeated. “In Mayday House. Where you’ve always been.” She closed her eyes. “You’re here, in the now.”
She brushed the moisture from her cheeks, firmed her will, and tightened her grip on the phone still in her hand.
“And the now won’t last, so you’d best get on with things.”
And she did.