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This feeble story didn’t seem to convince him, because he said, “Selena, if someone pushed you, then we’re talking about an attempted murder investigation.”
“I know,” I said. “Or I mean, I get it. But it all happened so fast, and everything was so muddled, that I can’t really remember for sure what happened.”
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel, but he remained silent, as if he’d realized that pushing me on the subject wasn’t going to accomplish anything. And I couldn’t say for sure why I was trying to muddy the waters — or why I didn’t want to tell him about the weird wallpaper I was investigating when those unseen hands had shoved me — only that my sixth sense was telling me this was a clue I needed to follow up on my own.
We were quiet the rest of the way to my place. When we got there, he insisted on helping me up the stairs and into my apartment. I didn’t argue, mostly because I was pretty sure I couldn’t have managed those steps on my own.
“Are you sure you’re still doing all right?” he asked as I eased myself onto the couch. “Any more dizziness? Blurred vision?”
I raised a weary hand. “None of that. I’m sure I’ll be all sorts of interesting colors tomorrow, but I’m okay. I’m tougher than I look.”
“Apparently.” He bent and laid a gentle kiss on my forehead, and I breathed in, instantly feeling better. There was something solid and reassuring about Calvin, something that made me think nothing truly bad could happen while he was around. For a second, he hovered near the sofa, clearly uncertain as to what he should do next. “Do you want me to stay?” he said. “I can sleep on the couch.”
“You don’t need to do that,” I told him. “Really, I’m fine. Besides…what time do you have to be at work?”
“Seven.”
I generally didn’t even lift my head from my pillow before seven-thirty, and so I knew I didn’t want him rattling around the front room while I was trying to sleep. Again I said, “I’m fine. I’m just going to rest here for a bit, and then I’ll go to bed. And you need to get to bed, too, if you have to be up that early.”
He glanced toward the door and back toward me. “If you’re sure….”
“I’m sure,” I said, my tone firm. “You need your sleep. And I’ll text you as soon as I’m up. Okay?”
“Okay,” he echoed. He stood there a moment more, then bent and kissed me again, a very gentle touch of his mouth against mine. “You took a big risk tonight, Selena.”
Since he was right, I didn’t bother to argue. Besides, my head was starting to throb again, and I didn’t want to make it hurt more by going back and forth with Calvin all over again. “I know. It was stupid. But I’m all right.”
He only shook his head, then touched my hand before heading to the door. Once there, he paused and said, “I’ll wait for your text,” before letting himself out.
For a minute or two, I remained on the couch, trying to gauge whether I actually had the strength to walk from the sofa to the living room, or whether I should just crash where I was and pull up the afghan I had draped over one arm of the couch and call it a night.
But no, sleeping on the sofa would only make me that much more cramped and achy and generally unhappy with life. I gritted my teeth and made myself limp to the bedroom, and prayed I’d feel better when I woke up.
“Better” was probably a relative term. However, even though I ached all over and could see the bruises that had formed on my arms and legs overnight, my head wasn’t hurting quite as much as it had been when I went to bed, so I doubted I had a concussion, even a minor one.
Well, my mother had always said I was hard-headed.
Moving slowly, I shuffled into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove, hoping that a cup of strong Darjeeling might make me feel a bit better about life.
I’d just finished wincing my way through bending down to put some food in Archie’s bowl when the cat appeared at the entrance to the kitchen. “Wild night?” he asked in sour tones.
“You missed all that?” I responded, straightening with some effort as I reached around to massage the small of my back. Well, maybe a long, hot shower would help with some of the aches and pains.
“I was sleeping.”
Of course he was. “I took a tumble down the stairs at the Bigelow mansion last night.”
Archie’s little pink nose twitched. “I told you not to go there.”
You and everyone else, I thought. But because I didn’t see any reason to withhold the truth from my feline roommate, I said, “Someone pushed me.”
That comment earned me a slight tilt of his head. Rather than respond with questions about my well-being, however, he only said, “The same person who pushed the man from Sedona?”
“Maybe. They came up behind me, so I didn’t see anything.”
Archie walked over to his bowl, glanced into it, and then deigned to take a few mincing bites. After he was done chewing, he said, “It sounds like someone has something to hide.”
I’d been thinking pretty much the same thing. The memory of the rough edge of the wallpaper I’d found flashed into my mind. I had been just about to start tugging at it when my attacker had pushed me away.
