We didn’t speak. She dried her eyes and smiled.
“Thanks for coming. Thanks for doing what you think is right. . . . I didn’t put my head in that oven. Why would I do that? I want to live.”
She dried her cheeks. “Those phone calls. I thought they were nothing—maybe they were nothing. But I am . . . going to tell you, even though you’ll probably think I’m nuts and I’ll get locked up till who-knows-when.”
She began to cry.
I put my hand on her shoulder and it made her cry harder. When she stopped, she said, “I so don’t want to be locked up. I cherish my independence.”
“I won’t do anything to lock you up, if you promise not to hurt yourself.”
“That’s easy. I don’t want to hurt myself. I promise, Dr. Delaware—I swear.”
She sat quietly for several moments. “One time—right after I started seeing you—I came home and found some of my stuff moved.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Clothes . . . underwear. I’m no neat freak, but I do have places for everything. And my panties and bras had been moved—reversed in the drawer—as if someone had taken them out and put them back, folded a way I never fold them. And one pair of panties was missing.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone about this?”
“I don’t know. It only happened once, and I thought maybe I was imagining it. I’d just done a load of laundry the day before; I figured it was possible I’d left the panties in the machine and maybe I had put my stuff back differently—absentminded. I mean, I’m not the kind of person to imagine the worst. But now I realize someone must have been in my place.”
She grabbed my arm. “Maybe that’s why I started having the dream again. Because I felt threatened. I don’t know; sometimes I think I am imagining everything. But I’m not crazy.”
I patted her shoulder and she let go of my arm.
“Did Ken really save me?”
“Yes.”
“What’s he like?”
“He seems nice.”
“Another thing I’m worried about is, where’s Puck? Embrey’s giving me some story about his calling her from New Mexico, but that makes no sense.”
“He called Ken from there, too.”
She took hold of my arm again, harder. “Then why hasn’t he called me?”
I was silent.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said.
“He told both Dr. Embrey and Ken that he was on some kind of business trip. He had a dinner date with Ken a couple of nights ago but didn’t show up. That’s how Ken came to save you. He was looking for Puck at your place because Puck told him you were close.”
“We are. . . . Puck never told me about any dinner date.”
“It was a trial balloon the two of them had worked out, to see how they’d get along. If they did, they were going to get you involved.”
“Protecting me? Typical.” She stood up and yanked her hair loose. “Puck’s always trying to protect me, even though—so why hasn’t he called?”
“Even though what?”
Hesitation. “Even though he’s not the toughest guy in the world himself.”
“What does he do for a living?”
Another pause. “Different things, over the years.”
She turned around, brown eyes hot. “Right now, he’s not doing anything. He has three years of college with a major in history. Try to find something decent with that. Well, I’m sure he’ll be back soon and we’ll straighten it out. I’ve got lots of things to straighten out. Thank God I’m getting out soon.”
CHAPTER
13
I left the hospital parking lot and got onto the freeway. I agreed with Embrey: Lucy really believed she hadn’t tried to kill herself.
Had the walk to the oven occurred during sleepwalking?
Not impossible, I supposed. For some people, slumber could be a shadow life. Some sleepwalkers denied walking; lots of snorers claimed they were silent. I’d seen patients experience shrieking night terrors only to wake up the next morning claiming they’d had sweet dreams. The man who’d tried to strangle his wife in his sleep refused to believe it until confronted by videotape.