The shrill ring of the telephone interrupted them. Gathering the copies close, Melissa hurried to the bedside table before the instrument could ring again. She spoke softly, asking few questions, and replaced the receiver. She turned slowly. “It isn’t good. Her med levels are much too high.”
Richard faced her silently. The news shouldn’t have surprised him. They had discussed addiction as a possibility. But only as a possibility. Now it was reality. A reality he had to confirm by looking at the figure in the bed.
Her eyes were open, watching him.
“Lexi?”
At his sharp intake of breath, Melissa turned, too, until she was standing beside him.
Lexi’s head twisted on the pillow, a pale blur against the pale linens. She looked from Richard, to Melissa, then back at Richard. Before he realized her intentions, she scrambled up against the headboard, taking the sheet with her. She felt beneath the cover. She was naked except for the ugly cotton underpants, but she seemed to take no notice of that. She bent her legs, reaching to feel her feet.
“My shoes,” she said in a little voice. “Where are my shoes?”
Her shoes, those cheap cotton slippers, had fallen from her feet as he carried her to the bed. They had lain in the middle of the floor until the nurse had picked them up and at Richard’s insistence had thrown them in the wastebasket, along with her dress.
Richard dropped to sit on the edge of the bed. “You don’t need them any longer. You’ll have new ones tomorrow. All you want.”
“I want them!” She shrank away from him, and Richard heard rising hysteria in her voice. “Please. Let me have them. I’ll be good. I promise. I’ll be good.”
Richard clutched her shoulders, holding her in the bed. “For God’s sake, Mel, get the damned shoes.”
The moment Melissa thrust the shoes into Lexi’s groping hands, all the fight went out of her. She ran searching fingers along the insole of each one, then, clutching them to her, she curled around them and slid back down in the bed and into unconsciousness.
Richard sat dazed beside her, looking at the soiled and pitiful treasure she had fought for. The cotton was worn almost through on the soles, and ragged cardboard protruded from rips in the fabric. But Lexi had fought for them.
Why?
Even in sleep, her fingers clutched them, fighting his attempts to remove them. As gently as possible, though, he did.
He glanced at Melissa, but she shook her head, telling him silently that she understood no more than he did. It was almost as if Lexi had searched them. He ran his fingers over the insoles as she had. The change in texture was slight, so slight he almost didn’t notice—an area slightly stiffer than the rest of the backing. The tear in the lining was just one of many, but he found it.
Impatient with the tiny opening, he ripped the lining, exposing a folded piece of cardboard different from the faded gray backing. He unfolded it, and a moan broke from him.
The print was cracked and faded from the constant pressure of her foot. It wasn’t dated, but Richard needed no date. He and Lexi had renovated the conservatory of his house in Backwater Bay, Oklahoma, the preceding winter. Together they had selected the furniture and had taken delivery on it the week before he left. The picture he held was a snapshot, not a very good one, but good enough to show him and Mel seated on the floral-covered rattan love seat in the conservatory. His face was turned so that his unmarked profile faced the camera, and they were smiling at each other as they shared one of the few moments of the past months in which they had found any reason to smile.
He handed the picture to Melissa, and she studied it silently.
“Do you know what this means?” he asked.
“Yes.” She smiled grimly, the first time she had smiled since entering the room. “It means that Alexandra is very tenacious. It means that she has more spirit than either of us gave her credit for. It means that at least a part of her is still intact, still holding on, in spite of what she’s gone through.”
“And it means,” Richard said, not wanting yet to digest what Melissa had said, “it means that someone in the house, close enough to us to take that photo, made sure that she got a copy of it.”
“Richard.” Melissa put her hand on his chest. “She ought to be in a hospital.”
“No! She’s been hospitalized too long. I won’t send her back to one, and I won’t run the risk of exposing her to the press during the early court proceedings unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”
“Withdrawal will be painful for her.”
Richard closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I know.”
“And for you.”
“I know that, too.”
He opened his eyes and met Melissa’s clear, considering gaze. “How long?” he asked.
“Several days at a minimum.”
“And after that?”
Melissa refused to look away from him. “I can’t make any promises.”
He groped for her, like a blind man searching for shelter, and she went into his arms, holding him to her. “Oh, Richard,” she murmured. “My dear, dear Richard. I wish I could tell you, but I just don’t know.”
Two
Her first clear thought was that it was snowing.
The only light came from the windows across the room, and in the gray light of early morning, through the partially opened draperies, she saw great white flakes falling straight down.
Her next thought was that she ached—all over—and the weight of the blankets intensified that ache. Her left arm lay on top of the blankets, held immobile by some sort of brace. She grimaced when she saw the needle, but traced a wary glance up the tube leading from it to an IV bottle suspended from a metal rack.
Was this a hospital?
She doubted it The blankets were too soft and the room was too large for a hospital. And it was too finely furnished.
She glanced around the room, quietly absorbing impressions of her surroundings. There were two chairs near the windows, and across one of them lay a dark mass. As her eyes became accustomed to the light, she realized that the mass was a man, sprawled in the chair. His long legs stretched out in jeans straining at his thighs, and he’d thrown his dark head back while he slept, making vulnerable a strong throat above a black turtleneck sweater.
“Hello.”
Her voice cracked, and it was little more than a hoarse whisper, but he heard her. He awoke immediately—she could tell by the way his body tensed—but he lifted his head slowly, looking toward her, before he rose with an agile grace she thought must be unusual for someone of his size and walked to stand beside her.
For a moment his size intimidated her as he loomed over her. He was tall, well over six feet, or so it looked to her from her position of weakness, with a lean strength that reminded her of danger and darkness.
He switched on the lamp on the bedside table, and soft light pooled over that corner of the room, illuminating her. Illuminating him.
He had an aggressive jaw—that was the only word she could find to describe it—shadowed by a night’s growth of beard, or more, a straight nose, slightly longish, and a mouth that just missed being generous and was now fixed in a grim frown. His hair was dark, probably black, but it was difficult for her to be sure in the subdued light. His skin should have been swarthy, she thought, to go with the image he presented. But while it was probably naturally dark, now it was unhealthily pale. Deep grooves ran from each side of his nose to the corners of his mouth, emphasizing the frown. His eyes were dark, too, but now they were red rimmed and shadowed.
Do