No Stone Tells Where I Lie - Madeline Kalvis (easy books to read txt) 📗

a sedative they used in emergencies. One more thing. One more thing to remember for him. The faucet reduced to a trickle, then stopped, but the patter of water from the other room persisted. She returned to the bedroom and leaned against the wall as much as she dared until it wobbled. She stared at her husband while he slept.

“Not a care in the world. Not a one. Pretty soon…” she lowered her voice and remembered the feeling of his fish-oil covered fingers on the back of her hand. “Not a one.” It felt good to indulge in self pity.

“I know what she wants, and I’m not going to give it to her. You’re going to help me, while you still can. What do you think about that, lazy bones?”

The yellow lamp light turned the wrinkles in the blanket into sharp ridges and deep valleys, following the lines of David’s body. He lied there, not moving. Not moving at all.

Not even breathing.

Emma moved in close. Her fingers crept forward, hesitated, then pressed under his jaw. No pulse. She leaned one ear over his nose. Nothing. From this angle, she saw the empty bottle that had rolled under the desk.

Obviously, this was not what it seemed. She had missed something. With shaking hands, she checked David's pulse again. She shook him, a little at first, then violently.

She whispered his name, afraid to hear her own voice in the quiet room. Then she screamed.

“David!”

She needed to think. Somehow this wasn't happening. She needed to figure out how. She paced the length of the room, returned to the bed, and listened to his breathing again. Then she did it again. And again. She lost track of her body’s movement as her mind raced to make sense of what she was seeing.

She struggled to take a full breath. Pulse. Check again. The booming of her own blood made it impossible to tell. Maybe it was weak. But he wasn't breathing. A doctor. In Perth.

A doctor might tell her that she wasn't imagining things.

“Fucking idiot!” Emma tried to scream at her husband but only a hoarse scraping sound came out. “She was after me! Me! Why the fuck would you do this?”

David said nothing.

“You think you're protecting me? Wake up! Get the fuck up!”

Emma didn't realize she was pacing until she stopped and looked around. There was a tapping sound coming from somewhere. Zoe could be here. No, not Zoe. The real Zoe would show up in a few days with a pained expression, jagged fingernails, and no memory. She looked down and saw her foot was tapping against the wooden floor.

Steve’s mother was a nurse. He might have a defibrillator. Adrenaline. Anything. Maybe she taught him about overdoses and what to do. She threw herself on the ground and snatched up the empty pill bottle. It took effort to make her fingers close around the bottle.

Someone made a noise behind her, but when she looked over her shoulder there was no one. She glanced into the bathroom, and stepped through the door into the dark, moldering hallway. There was no one. Still she couldn't shake the feeling that someone was there with her. There was someone.

What was she doing? She looked down at David’s empty pill bottle in her hand. No sense in carrying something like that around. She put it on the nightstand.

Emma stood in the hallway and noticed that her hands were shaking. Her heart pounded and her face felt wet. How embarrassing. Whoever she had been talking to, they shouldn’t see her in a state like this. She tried to wipe her eyes and was surprised when her hand didn’t move. She looked at it and tried again, clearing the tears from her eyes and cheeks. When she could see clearly again, she turned around.

“Sorry, I'm not feeling...” There was no one, just the door to the room she shared with her husband. Funny. Someone had been there a moment ago. She peeked through the door at David, lying perfectly still on the bed.

“God, how does he manage to sleep through anything?” There had been something she needed to talk to him about, something about that girl who showed up that morning. But it wasn’t important, whatever it was. Right now, there was another job to do.

She closed the door as gingerly as she could so as not to wake David, wiped her face one more time with the end of her sleeve, and walked down the stairs to the pub.

The Rock never changed. Jessie fussed over a dust pan full of broken glass. Darren was settled in with his back to the fire slurping the head off of a fresh pour. The snooker table still had the one sagging corner. Red slouched over his usual table. Good old Red.

The large man nursing his beer was in pain. It couldn’t go on any longer. He needed her help.

“Hello, Red.” She sat down across from him and assumed his hunched posture. He smiled. She smiled back.

“Constable. Are you alright?” His eyes narrowed. “Your eyes look a bit red.”

Emma matched his expression. “The salt air doesn't agree with them. Just wanted to check in, see how you all are holding up with everything that's gone on lately.”

“Very kind of you.”

“Can't have anyone fall to pieces on my watch. Very unprofessional. Reflects bad on our whole operation. How is work?”

“Fine, fine.”

“And Sarah?”

Red shuffled his feet under the table. “Same.”

“No better, then?”

“How do you mean?”

Emma ignored him and looked at his glass. “Have you been here all day?”

“That’s not a crime, is it?” Emma could hear his foot tapping under the table.

“I get it. It’s a good place to forget. You can forget quite a lot here, I guarantee it. To answer your question, nothing is a crime when there are no police around to see it.” She watched him squint in confusion. “What I mean is, I didn’t see you at the bonfire.”

“I wasn’t in the mood.”

“Sure, I get that. Crowds. Sheep shit. What