Read Escape for Free Online Page B

car?” she whispered when I cracked open an eye.
    “Oh yeah,” I whispered back. “Black BMW. Can’t miss it.”
    She touched my head. “Sleep.”

Chapter 4

 
    I slept. If there were sounds from other guests, I heard none. Nor did I dream. I was too tired for that. When I awoke, the window above was a wash of azure sky and Norway maple red. The sheets smelled of sunshine, and the billows of clouds and sky I had glimpsed the night before went beyond the voluminous comforter to a blue ceiling and walls, a white dresser and chair, and plaid floor pillows stacked in the corner under the eaves. The tray by the bed now held an aromatic blend of scones and tea.
    Heaven? Absolutely.
    Vicki sat in a ladder-back chair by the bed. “Much longer, and I’d have called the EMTs,” she remarked.
    I turned onto my side to fully take her in: Vicki Bell—not just Vicki, but Vicki Bell—both names affectionately spoken as one through our college years. Medicinal to me now, she wore a sweater and jeans, and had her hair tacked back, ends sticking out at odd places, as they always had. Her skin was scrubbed clean, another down-to-earth Vicki trait. But her cheeks were pink and her features soft.
    “You look amazing,” I said.
    “Amazing good, or amazing familiar?”
    “Both. What time is it?”
    “Eleven.”
    Eleven
. I bolted up and, with a moan, fell right back.
    Vicki was alarmed. “Easy does it. How do you feel?”
    Thick. Logy. “Hungover.”
    “Drinking?”
    “Crying. Maybe sleeping too much.” I shut my eyes tight, but they popped back open. “Eleven Monday morning? Oh boy.”
    “What?”
    “Work.” The old tension returned. “I was there one minute and gone the next. A friend covered for me Friday, but the partner-in-charge has been e-mailing all weekend. I didn’t read any of it.”
    “Nothing new there,” Vicki remarked dryly as she poured me some tea.
    “No, I do read everything you send,” I insisted. “But you’re a good friend, and I can’t send short answers. So I save it all up until I have time to call on the phone, and then I never … never find the time.”
    “After Jude, you moved on.” She handed me the tea.
    It was an offering of warmth, literally, figuratively. I wasn’t ready to talk about Jude yet, but it might be the price I’d have to pay for this room. Pushing my pillows higher, I took the tea. “You won’t let that go.”
    “I can’t. Seeing you brings it back. You went in such a different direction after that summer, like you were repudiating him, me, Bell Valley.”
    “Not repudiating,” I said quickly, then thought back on my life at that time. Painful as it was, this was why I had come—to find out what had happened to me after I’d left. “He took himself out of my life. I had to make another one.”
    “The opposite of what you had here.”
    “Yes. Reminders hurt.”
    “Do tell,” she drawled.
    “I’m sorry. I tried other places before coming back here, only they didn’t work. They were too much like what I was trying to escape.”
    “Which is?”
    I told her what my Friday morning had been like, ending with,“Noise, lots of noise. And machines. And traffic. This is the quietest place I know. I mean, listen.” I stopped talking. The silence spoke for itself.
    Her voice was gentle. “There are lots of other quiet places, Emmie.”
    None with a coyote waiting on the edge of a clearing, I might have said if I had wanted to talk about dreams. “None where I know people. That’s part of the problem, too. There are times in New York when I don’t feel like I
know
anyone. I need human contact. I knew I could get it here.”
    She stared at me for a minute, then broke off a corner of a scone and pressed it into my mouth. “The blueberries are from New Jersey. Ours won’t ripen for another month.”
    I chewed the scone, tasting every crumb, and washed the last down with tea. “See?” I said when my insides were soothed. “You made my point. You’re the