time to say it. Not now, when they weren’t even in the same country, when she couldn’t see the expression on his face as he heard it. Not now, when she couldn’t feel his arms around her. When he couldn’t take her to bed.
Instead, she said, “Good night.”
Annalise was awakened the next morning by a knocking at her apartment door.
She staggered out of bed and was displeased to find that she was still unsteady on her feet, her stomach still queasy. Sleep hadn’t helped. In fact, she felt worse than she had the night before.
She opened the door to find a courier on the other side. He was smiling broadly—it seemed to Annalise to be too early in the morning for that kind of cheer—and he held a large basket in his arms.
“Annalise Hope?” he asked.
She nodded.
“For you,” the courier said, holding the basket out to her.
She took it, feeling bemused. “Do I need to sign something?”
“No,” he said. “Everything’s taken care of. You have a nice day.”
Annalise shut the door and carried the basket into her kitchen. She set it down on the table and pulled the card off the top.
Annalise,
Feel better soon!
Thinking of you,
Curt
She unpacked the basket’s contents. There were several kinds of tea and a few packages of crackers. There were instant soups that could be heated up in the microwave or on the stove. There was also a little jar of bath salts and a pair of fluffy socks.
Annalise smiled. He’d sent her a care package.
She attached the card to her refrigerator with a magnet, knowing that she would want to keep that memento long after the soups and the bath salts had been used up.
She wished she had time to try some of the things he had sent her right now. But she had to get ready for work.
Moving more slowly than she would have on an ordinary morning, she went to the shower and turned it on.
Her stomach lurched.
She dropped to her knees and vomited last night’s crackers into the toilet bowl.
Feeling only slightly steadier, she got up and showered, hoping against hope that the hot water would make her feel like herself again. But it didn’t.
She went to her room and dressed in a cotton maxi dress, one that was professional enough for work but also comfortable enough that she would feel relaxed. She needed that today. She put a cardigan over it, pulled her hair into a messy bun, and applied a minimal amount of makeup—just enough to restore the color to her cheeks and make her look a little more like her normal self.
The kids wouldn’t be able to tell that she was off. Kids didn’t notice things like that. But her fellow teachers might. And she didn’t want them to.
She examined herself in the mirror.
I still don’t look like myself. I look like I’m not well.
But she had to go to work. She hadn’t been lying to Curt about that. She couldn’t stand the idea of leaving her kids with a substitute any more often than was strictly necessary.
So she turned away from the mirror, grabbed her purse from the end table where she’d left it last night, slipped into her shoes, and headed out the door.
I’ll make the best of it. And I’ll do what I can to keep from thinking about Curt while I’m at it.
Chapter 12
Three days went by, and they left Annalise feeling worse instead of better.
She didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“I’m fine,” she insisted to Curt on the phone on the third evening. “I think I’m about to turn a corner. Really.”
“Are you still throwing up?” he asked her.
She hesitated.
“You are,” he surmised.
“But it’s only, like, once a day,” she said quickly.
“That’s not a condition you can just live with until it goes away, Annalise,” Curt said. “If nothing else, you’re going to become dehydrated.”
“I’m drinking a lot of water.” That was true. She had a huge glass of water on her bedside table right now.
“I’m going to come home,” Curt decided.
“No, Curt.” They’d had some version of this conversation every evening since she’d returned from Costa Rica.
Tonight, though, he sounded more serious than usual. “You’re sick, Annalise,” he said. “You’re not taking care of yourself. Someone needs to.”
“You know I have people here,” she said.
“Have you even told anybody you’re not well? Your sister?”
Annalise bit her lip. She hadn’t mentioned anything to Janette. “It doesn’t seem like a big enough deal to bother her with.”
“What has to happen before you’ll be willing to bother