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“I don’t know.”
“What kind of answer is that?” He stood across the table from her, looking ready to argue this point to death. “This shit is dangerous for him.”
An intense punch of anger hit her, pushing out the threatening abyss. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child. I mean, do you really think I don’t know that?”
But he was on a roll. “We have a system. We have rules about meds.”
Jesus. She got it. She screwed up. “I know, Harris.”
“We agreed you wouldn’t take these anymore.” He rattled the pills in the bottle. “They made you feel cloudy.”
They made her forget, and some days she welcomed that sensation. “I haven’t.”
“Then...” He exhaled, clearly trying to calm his anger. “Do you need a different anxiety prescription? Maybe another appointment with the doctor—”
“No... I don’t know.”Oh, hell. It wasn’t as if she had a right to be furious about his reaction. If he left a vitamin on the counter she’d lectured him about how curious Nathan was these days. “I’m just tired.”
Her mind kept telling her she deserved this interrogation,but she could not handle one more thing. Not when she’d spent the entire night wondering about Lauren and this surprise girlfriend in Harris’s past.
He frowned at her. “Come on. That’s your excuse?”
Right.He worked hard. Sheusedto work hard, but now she struggled to concentrate long enough to get a few hours of work in each workday. He never complained, but he had to begrudge her being in bed when he left for work some days... even if she was there because shecouldn’tget up.
“Say it.” She’d tried to get him to admit it before today, thinking it was bad for their marriage for him to think it—for it to fester—and not yell about it.
“What?” He rolled his eyes. “Oh, God. Not this again. This is not a battle about your work hours.”
“I stayed up trying to figure out why my brother-in-law has two dead wives, why my husband kept secrets from me, and how much Patricia whatever-her-name-was meant to you.” There. Done. All the sorry pieces dropped between them and now it was up to him.
“You care about Patricia?” He rubbed his forehead. “What the fuck, Elisa? I married you, not her.”
That really wasn’t the point.
“Where is she? I did a computer search and couldn’t find her.” She hadn’t meant to admit that last part, but in all the back-and-forth bluster it slipped out.
He grabbed onto the back of the chair in front of him. “Are you kidding me?”
“Did she drop out of vet school?” Was she another lie he was using to cover up something far worse and more sinisterabout what happened that night at the lake? That question had settled in her brain around four this morning and refused to leave it again.
His grip on the chair tightened until his knuckles turned white. “After seeing Lauren and trying to help me revive her, Patricia decided she wanted to go to med school, not vet school.”
Oh... The explanation made sense. But so had Candace’s fall and Abby’s need for space, and Elisa didn’t believe either of those stories now.
“The fact that I have to explain an old girlfriend to you... someone who means nothing to me...” He visibly gained control. His stance changed and the tightness across his cheeks seemed to ease. “I get that I messed up. I should have told you about Lauren. At the least, I should have made Josh tell you, but this is paranoid bullshit.”
“I’m not paranoid. I am not crazy.” But she was shouting.
Through the fog and the arguing, the distrust and the confusion, she feared she was falling apart. Slowly but definitely losing her ability to ferret out what was real and what was some horrifying spin her mind added.
“Elisa.”
No. No to the sad, sympathetic voice. Not until she made him understand. Even then, no.
“Josh’s love life is not normal. No one has two wives die by accident and a fiancée go missing. Not unless he’s the subject of a television crime show.” She walked around the table and laid her palm flat against Harris’s chest, let his steady heartbeat relax her. “Please tell me you understand that.”
“I just want you to be okay.”
He believed Josh, but he worried about her. There was only one way to interpret that. He believed she was the one who was out of line.
