The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [161]
“What’d he say?”
“ ‘Tell him. Tell him.’ ” She crossed her legs and sank down onto the grass. Tiny pink and white flowers sprouted and bloomed everywhere. “So I told you.”
“Why the hell doesn’t he talk to me?”
She lay back in the grass. The sky was bright blue and the clouds were tall and billowy with flat bottoms—her favorite kind. “He tried, but you wouldn’t listen to him.” Stars twinkled beside a big full moon. “Which, frankly, I find amazing, since I don’t seem to be able to ignore him at all. Do you think we’ll remember talking to each other when we wake up?” A rainbow arched through the sky repeatedly like a neon sign. “Although, considering the dreams I’ve been having lately, this one is pretty tame.”
She heard birds chirping in the woods and the sound of the waves from the bottom of the cliffs . . . but no Oliver . . . or Craig. Rolling her head slightly in the grass, she glanced at the gazebo. And there with her forearms flat on the railing and her chin on the back of her hands, Patty Ann Pettigrew stared back at her.
“Oh, hey. Hi.” She was on her feet again. “What are you doing here?” She looked around for Craig. The canopy was empty—a drab gray sketch of the structure except for Patty Ann. “Where is everyone?”
“I need a dog. Or a goldfish.” The little girl stood up straight and put her hands on her hips, determinedly. “All kids have pets.”
“I didn’t.”
“You had Jay. I want an iguana.”
“No lizards.”
“What about a bang, bang, bang?”
“A what?”
“Wake up.”
“What?”
“Answer the window.”
Patty Ann, the gazebo, the stars, the tiny flowers, and the rainbows went to black and were replaced by the rapid-fire sounds of knuckles on glass.
“Ivy, wake up!”
With a groan and a grunt she threw off the covers and staggered to the curtains covering the sliding glass door that led to the flagstone patio at the back of the house. She didn’t need to lift the curtain to know who it was, it was simply automatic while her other hand fumbled with the buttons on the security alarm.
“Finally! Open this.” His face was in shadow by the motion lights as he rattled the door by its handle. She slipped the security bar and unlocked the door, and he was on her before she could open her mouth. “Judas priest, woman, you sleep like the dead.” He scolded even as he held her so tight she could scarcely draw air. “I thought you were dead.”
Her lips tangled in his T-shirt when she tried to speak. He slackened his grip but didn’t let go. “Why? What’s happened? What made you think I was dead?”
That’s when she felt him trembling; his muscles tight as piano strings. It was too dark to see his face clearly, but his hands were shaking when she pried them from around her waist and pulled him over to the bed to sit down. He tossed his flashlight on the bed and let his knees—his whole body—go limp. Bending at the waist, she turned on the lamp on the bedside table and felt his head come to rest against her abdomen before she could right herself. He held her around the waist; she caressed his hair, then his face, and whispered, “Talk to me. What happened?”
His shoulders shuddered with a derisive chuckle and he shook his head. “ A dream. A nightmare, but it was so real . . .” He looked up at her with beleaguered eyes. “Look, I know it’s too soon. I know we barely know each other, but you need to know that it’s important to me that nothing happens to you. That you are important to me.”
“I know. And I’m fine. Nothing’s happened to me.”
“You went over the cliff. In the dream. Like Oliver.”
In her mind she saw the furious bashing of the waves against the cliff wall and flinched. “That’s how Oliver died?”
Falling, falling, falling . . .
“We were talking, in the dream. You were dressed in a long white dress and you were . . . You are so beautiful.” She smiled, not pretending she didn’t understand that he meant in the dream and at that moment—even in her way cool oversized T-shirt and mismatched baggy boxers. “My parents were there, and Oliver. Except for you, it was a typical scene from our