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Grant returned with a bottle of fish oil capsules. “I should have thought of this right away. My dad’s a big off-the-grid health nut and raised me on this stuff. I take it every day, but I know not everyone’s as weird as we are, so I forget to suggest it to other people. I bet this’ll really help your head. Despite the landslide of carbs we just ate,” he said with a smile.
He shook four capsules into her palm and passed her the refilled sundae glass of water. She downed the pills and smiled her thanks.
“We’re going to repeat those every few hours, okay?” he asked her, and she nodded. “We want to get ahead of the pain, and as much fun as that dinner was, that wasn’t the way to do it.” She nodded again.
“Are we allowed to converse, Doctor?” she asked.
“If you’re a good patient, yes,” he answered with false sternness. “Do you have everything you need?” She watched him scan her body and imagined his assessment: Ice pack on her head, heating pad on her shoulders, blanket across her lap as she stretched lengthwise on the couch, two pairs of socks on her feet.
“Do you approve?”
“It’s not the ICU but it’ll do,” he said without humor.
“Everything beeps in the ICU,” she said. “Not exactly conducive to rest.”
“True, and in the ICU I’d have to wear scrubs, and I’m betting they don’t come in my size.”
That’s better, she thought. She liked him better happy. Not somber. He sat on the floor near her feet with his back against the couch, both of them facing the fire. “So how do you know this Paul character?” she asked. “You play hooky together?”
Grant snorted. “Hockey,” he said. “We play ice hockey. There’s a league that meets on the lake every Saturday. Paul plays when he’s here on the weekends. He’s some financial guy at a bank down below, but he loves his cabin and comes up here as much as he can, which isn’t often. The type who’s married to his job, you know?”
Melinda nodded. It was nice to hear about Paul as a relatively normal person instead of keeping him in the Psycho Bad Guy room in her mind. Paul was Grant’s friend. Grant was turning out to be a Good Guy. Paul needed to be a Good Guy, too, otherwise Grant might be a Bad Guy by association, and that wouldn’t do. Bad Guys wouldn’t carry you through the snow after you’d ignored their warnings and gotten a smackdown from a vengeful tree.
“Three questions,” she said. “All equally important, and I don’t want to get sidetracked, so I’m asking them all at the same time. One, what does Melisa do? Two, how long have you and Paul known each other such that you have never met her? And three, if you play hockey every week, do you still have all your teeth? Hang on, one more, does Paul still have his teeth?”
Grant’s laugh reverberated through his chest, curling Melinda’s toes.
“Despite how much I want to talk dental damage, I’ll tell you about Melisa first, since she’s an important player here.”
Melinda shifted on the couch and he waited.
“Melisa’s some kind of water therapist.” Grant searched for the word. “Washer. Washu. Watsu. That’s it. She’s a Watsu therapist—like a massage therapist who works in the water or something. I don’t know much about it, or her. Like I told you before, she and Paul met because she was kidnapped by some guys that were after her brother. They wanted to get to him through her. She and Paul happened to live in the same building. He got wind of what was happening and got to be the hero.”
“How do a water worker and a fancy bank guy live in the same apartment building?” she asked.
“Good question,” he said. “Maybe she got in when it was rent-controlled. I think he has the whole top floor,” Grant mused. “A few years ago he bought the building.”
“And you’ve never met her,” she said.
“And I’ve never met her,” he repeated. “Paul doesn’t talk too much about her, but that’s how he is—private. Plus, I see him mostly up here and she’s down below.”
“Do we look alike?” Melinda asked, suddenly curious about the face that so resembled hers that she’d ended up a captive on a snowy mountainside.
Grant grabbed his phone from the end table. He swiped the screen and pushed icons and a woman’s face appeared.
“Here,” he said, passing her the device. “You tell me.”
Melinda took the phone and there she was. Dark, shoulder-length hair, though Melinda’s was more unruly. Long nose, though Melinda’s curved more at the tip, with delicately flared nostrils. Wide mouth, wide eyes. Melisa’s features are more Caucasian, Melinda decided. Probably since she isn’t half-Bengali.
“I can see it,” she said with a smile, handing the phone back to him.
“Are you serious?” Grant’s head jerked back.
“What?”
“She’s nothing like you!” he said.
“Grant...You stole me from the airport because you thought I was her!” Had she entered the Twilight Zone?
