Shadow Lake. B.J. Daniels
It hadn’t from the moment she’d awakened to find that her son was dead.
But Anna found herself getting angry. She was tired of just lying down and taking it. Then she picked up the phone and called Marc’s number, planning to demand to know why he had told Officer Walker all those awful things about her—and find out what she’d done last night to make him say them.
But when Marc’s voice mail came up, she hung up and dialed Mary Ellen back.
“Anna.” Mary Ellen sounded relieved to hear her voice. “Where are you? I tried to call you back—”
“Tell me why Marc didn’t go through with the divorce.” Anna felt anger bubble up inside her. “He’s the one who wanted it so badly.”
“You don’t know how hard it’s been on him,” Mary Ellen said. “For six long months he didn’t know whether or not you’d ever wake up. He’d already lost his son—”
“I lost my son, too,” she interrupted.
“Yes, but Marc had months of not knowing if he was going to lose you, too. Then when you came out of the coma and didn’t even know what had happened…”
Anna couldn’t help but bristle at the words. She’d tried so hard to remember the hit-and-run accident that had taken Tyler and nearly killed her as well. The driver of the car that had hit her and her son was never apprehended because Anna couldn’t provide a description. With what little the police had to go on, they hadn’t been able to find out who had hit her car, killing her son and putting her in a coma. She’d never known if she had been somehow partly responsible.
“Marc had to relive it all again with you,” Mary Ellen was saying. “He was dealing with all of it and then…”
Yes, Anna had come back from the darkness to make Marc’s life even harder. She’d often gotten the impression he’d wished she’d died along with Tyler at the scene.
“I think Marc thought divorce would put an end to the pain by distancing himself from you and the memories,” Mary Ellen said.
Anna sniffed and wiped her eyes. She wasn’t insensitive to Marc’s pain. But she had also overheard him question the doctor about whether or not it was possible she’d stayed in the coma because she couldn’t face the truth. “I know it was harder on him than it was on me.”
“But you can put things back together again,” Mary Ellen said brightly. “That’s really what Marc wants. To start over, no more secrets between the two of you.”
Anna had wanted that, too. She just hadn’t expected Marc wanting to come back to her to be so bittersweet.
“He said he told me all of this last night?” Anna asked.
Silence, then Mary Ellen said hesitantly, “Yes. Are you saying he didn’t?”
Had Marc told her? Then why had she taken off to Shadow Lake alone?
Anna had a flash of memory. A nasty argument. Had it been last night? She couldn’t be sure.
Maybe it was last night, because she had a strong feeling that something had happened. Last night. And while she was in a coma. Something that Marc and her friends were keeping from her.
Marc’s change of heart made her suspicious, given what he’d told the Shadow Lake police. Not that she was about to share that with Mary Ellen.
She’d learned that Marc was very deliberate in his decisions. Maybe that was why the outcome always benefited him the most.
If Marc had told her last night that he hadn’t gone through with the divorce, he would have been expecting her to fall to her knees in gratitude. So maybe the argument she vaguely recalled had been last night, because she doubted she’d indulged him in that fantasy.
In fact, she suspected she hadn’t been even gracious. If anything she would have been angry.
You scare me, Anna.
His words came back to her so clearly that they could have been from last night.
Not as much as you’re scaring me, Marc.
She frowned. Why had she said that to him? And had it been last night? Lately, it seemed all the days ran together.
“Anna, are you still there?”
“Yes.” She recalled Mary Ellen’s words from earlier. That’s what Marc really wants. To start over, no more secrets between the two of you.
Secrets?
“Did something happen while I was in the coma?” Anna asked, a trembling in her voice she couldn’t control.
“What do you mean?” Mary Ellen sounded wary now.
Anna wasn’t sure exactly what she meant. “Marc is so different.”
“Anna, of course he’s different. How could he not be different after everything that has happened?”
She looked toward the hospital-room window. She knew she should stop, but it was as if too long, pent-up emotions had burst loose inside her.
She knew she should be talking about this with Gillian, not Mary Ellen. Gillian would understand. She wasn’t so sure Mary Ellen could, especially given her recent “friendship” with Marc. But Anna couldn’t seem to hold it back any longer.
“He’s like a stranger, Mary Ellen. I don’t know him. He…” She choked, unable to say the words out loud, even though she’d been thinking them for a long while now. She’d woken up after six months in a coma to a complete stranger who frightened her.
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