In the morning, the first thing he did was head down the hall toward Courtney’s bedroom to be sure she was there. Fortunately, he didn’t have to go all the way to her room; he heard the shower in her bathroom. As he passed through the great room, he noticed the DVDs were put away. Put away or maybe stuffed back into the backpack for the little felon in question. He turned off the house alarm, made the coffee, headed for his own shower. She should be ready for school on time today; it didn’t take her long to mess up her multicolored hair.
When he got back to the kitchen, her homework and a note were on the table.
I made a copy of my homework for you to look at, but I’m taking the bus today so I left. Will you pick me up after school? Please.
Bone.
The very first rays of sunlight streaming into the window stirred Kelly from sleep. She sat up in bed and took stock of her surroundings—Jillian’s guest room. And there beside her in the bed, sleeping facedown, Jillian.
“Hey,” Kelly said, giving her a jostle.
Jill turned her head and peered at her through tangled hair. “Ugh. You’re up.”
“Last thing I remember, I was chatting it up with some cute guy at the bar. Over a killer martini.”
Jill pushed her hair out of her eyes. “It didn’t kill you. But it tried to kill me.”
“Huh?”
Struggling to a sitting position, Jill faced Kelly. “Do you realize what you did?”
Kelly let her eyes briefly close. “Gave myself a very large headache?”
“I went through your purse. You were taking both blood pressure medicine and antidepressants or something like that. Both bottles say alcohol could intensify the effects.”
“I can see that now.”
“I had to count the pills left to make sure you hadn’t OD’d. But I sat up and watched over you until you started to snore at about three in the morning. And boy, can you snore! I don’t think I’ve slept for ten whole minutes.”
“Oh, man,” Kelly said, rubbing her temples. “Who knew?”
“You know, if you’d had a little glass of wine, you might’ve gotten kind of tipsy. But a martini? Overkill.”
“I needed a shot of courage before dropping in on you and spoiling your hot new romance with Colin. And about those pills—I started the blood pressure stuff as directed, but the antianxiety pills were as needed. But I was feeling pretty anxious on the way up here, so I popped one. And I was still feeling pretty anxious a few hours later, so I had another one for good measure.”
“You’ll be happy to know you weren’t at all anxious by the time you got here.”
“Whew. Kind of scary to think I’d drive like that!”
“You didn’t. Your car is at the bar. The cute guy you were talking to brought you out here. Colin had to carry you to bed.”
“Oh, please tell me you’re making that up!”
“Not making it up. Now, what has you so anxious?”
“A lot has been going on for the last week. Can we have coffee? And aspirin? And I’ll tell you all about it. I might’ve really screwed up my life.”
Lief made phone contact with the counselor Jack had recommended and had an appointment for himself, after which he could go to Valley High School and pick up Courtney. On the way to Grace Valley, he decided to swing by Jillian’s big house to check on Kelly. He didn’t have to look far; he found her sitting by herself on the back porch, her feet drawn up and a throw wrapped around her shoulders.
He was grinning as he got out of his truck and approached her. “Well, you look none the worse for wear.”
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “I guess it was too much to hope I’d never see you again.”
“Aw, I’m crushed,” he said. “I thought we bonded.”
“That’s one of the reasons I was hoping…”
“I’m glad you came through it. I wanted to check on you. You look fine.”
“Well, the bad news is, I don’t remember your name. The good news is, I do remember mine. That means I haven’t killed off too many brain cells.”
He chuckled and took the first step up the porch to lean against the post. “They grow back,” he said. “Takes a while, though. You could be dumb as shit for a couple of weeks.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “I can live up to that.”