“When they wear off I can feel shaky . . . sort of panicky sometimes.”
“See? This is why they’re addictive, El, because then you’ll want more in order to stop the withdrawal symptoms, and it becomes a vicious spiral.”
He was right.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I’m not who you thought I was. I’m a bit of a mess still.”
He took my hand in his, laced his fingers through mine. “We’ll do this together, okay, El? We’ll be open with each other. If you keep talking to me, I can keep helping you. A team, right? Our second chance—” Emotion caught his voice and shone in his eyes. “I don’t want to blow this.”
“Neither do I.”
“I’m truly sorry I pushed you yesterday. I should have seen how badly you needed to sleep after you landed. I . . . This is why you need to talk to me. I hadn’t realized.” He squeezed my hand tightly.
Emotion surged into my throat. Martin leaned forward and kissed my cheek. So gently that I knew with sudden and firm conviction that my nightmare had been just that—a stupid, terrible, feverish dream that had probably grown out of jet lag, dehydration, the aftereffects of wine and the Ativan plus some rough and exuberant but good and healthy sex that my fogged-up brain just never encoded into memory.
“I’ll stop the pills—I promise,” I said. And I felt better for voicing it.
“I’m here for you, okay?”
I nodded, reached for my mug. I took another sip of coffee, and a feeling of benevolence and warmth bloomed through my chest. I actually felt happy having gotten that out of the way.
“It’s getting late,” he said as the sun slipped into the sea. “How about stopping for a bite at the Puggo on the way home? We can do Zog’s fish on the barbie tomoz.”
“Puggo?”
“The Pug and Whistler,” he said with a grin. “Puggo for short.”
I laughed, suddenly light inside again. “Of course it is. Is nothing in this country safe from hypocorism?”
“Hypo-what?”
“Turning words into diminutive or cutesy-folksy forms.”
“That’s your degree in literature talking.” He chuckled, got to his feet, and held out his hand.
I allowed him to pull me to my feet, and I punched him playfully on the arm. “Tease.”
But as we started up the dune path toward the road, I lost my balance and stumbled in the soft sand. He stopped and eyed me.
Sweat prickled my skin.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, just feel a bit . . . odd again.”
Concern reentered his eyes. “We can go right home.”
“No. No, it’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
He placed his hand at the small of my spine and guided me up the dune path and onto the sidewalk. There was a public washroom off the sidewalk with a mosaic mural on the wall. Beside it was an outdoor shower where surfers rinsed off their wet suits and boards. I suddenly became conscious of a brown sedan parked across the road. I stilled.
A man in the driver’s seat watched us. As I stared at him he powered up the window. I frowned. I wasn’t sure why the car had caught my eye in the first place. Maybe it was just that eerie sense of being observed. I’d read somewhere long ago that our bodies can be aware of things when our brains aren’t. Perhaps my unconscious had picked up something.
When we reached the end of the beach road, I glanced back. The dark sedan had pulled out of its parking spot. It was coming slowly up the road behind us.
THEN
ELLIE
I was so absorbed watching the car following us that I tripped on the uneven paving of the sidewalk.
“You okay?” Martin asked.
“I wish you’d stop saying that,” I snapped. “You make it sound like there’s something wrong with me.”
“You’re stumbling a lot, El.”
“It’s nothing. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Did you take another one of those Ativan before leaving the house?”
My chest cramped.
“Ellie? We need to be open, remember?”
“I . . . needed something after—after that spider, seeing all the blood on you. It made me panicky. I needed to take the edge off.”
“Do you have any pills on you now?”
Guilt washed hot up my throat. “No,” I lied. “I’m going to be fine. I told you. It’s just . . . I need to wean myself off them slowly.” I’d been here before. Tapering was better than cold turkey. This was a medical fact. Going cold turkey could spark a resurgence