Rain. He reached for the memory the way a man reaches into a dark drawer, feeling for the shape of a thing he knows must be there. He found pieces. Headlights behind him, very bright, too close. The smell of wet asphalt.
His own voice saying something, saying something that mattered, the most important thing he had said in years, and then nothing. Then a wall of black. "I don't remember," he said. "I don't remember why I'd be on that road. I don't go up there. " "I know. " "Then why? " The door opened.
He knew her before he fully turned his head. He knew her by the way the air in the room seemed to change, the way Denise straightened in her chair. Lia stood in the doorway with one arm cradled against her chest, the forearm wrapped in white gauze, a bandage taped along her temple. Her hair was pulled back carelessly, and there were shadows under her eyes that he had never seen on her before. She looked as though she had not slept, as though she had aged a decade in a single night.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Henry felt his heart climb into his throat, and the monitor beside him quickened, betraying him. "You're awake," Lia said. Her voice was flat, guarded, but it trembled at the edge. "Good.
That's good. " She did not come closer. She stayed near the door if she might need to leave it quickly, as if standing too near him cost her something. Henry stared at the gauze on her arm, at the bandage on her head, and a cold understanding settled into him. "You were there," he said slowly. "You were in the truck. " "With me. " Lia's gaze flicked to her mother.
Something passed between the two women, quick and silent and full of meaning he could not read. It was the look of people who shared a secret and were deciding in real time how much of it to let out. "What is going on? " Henry pushed himself up against the pillows and the pain that shot through his side made him gasp. "Both of you are looking at me like like I did something. I can't remember anything past leaving my shop.
I close up, I lock the door, and then I'm here. There's a whole night missing. Somebody tell me what's in it. " Lia's composure cracked. She pressed the back of her bandaged hands to her mouth and turned away toward the window, her shoulders rigid. It was Denise who finally answered because someone had to, and because she was the one who had been sitting with the weight of it all night long.
"You called her," Denise said quietly. "Two nights ago. You called Lia. " The words landed strangely. Henry turned them over. "Why would I call her?