Rachel Dahlrumple. Shea McMaster
one last quickie before heading home to the ball and chain? Had there ever been an ethics seminar? Certainly hadn’t been a golf game on a big name course.
“Is that how they were found?” Burt was–had been–a big man. Six feet, three inches, and inching closer to two hundred fifty pounds every year, despite working out and my attempts to provide a healthy diet. I knew exactly how heavy he was. Had he collapsed on me, I would have been trapped. And I didn’t qualify as a tiny thing of fluff. If I had the picture of the right woman in my head, lil ol’ Julianna qualified as pretty tiny. Amazing, really, that he hadn’t crushed her to death. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe Julianna was the tall, athletic brunette. No, she would have been able to push Burt off and perform CPR. Must have been the tiny redhead.
“Yes.” Dan’s calm response solidified the images in my head.
Shamefully, a giggle escaped me. My heart barely beat, an icy block settled in my chest, and I felt dizzy and sick, but a sense of the ridiculous touched me. “Was she…is she…” I couldn’t even ask, not quite knowing how to phrase the question.
“She was trapped for about twenty minutes,” Mark said. “It took her that long to, uh, loosen the knots…” He cleared his throat and looked away. “She’s traumatized.”
Shaking Cyndi’s hand loose, I could finally use mine to speak for me and held it up to stop any further words of description. Loosen knots? He’d had her tied up? Well, chalk that one up in the TMI column. I didn’t care about Julianna whatsherface’s frame of mind. Served her right. Call me bitchy, but she’d been the one sneaking around with a married man pushing fifty. A man well past his prime, though still fairly handsome. Frankly, his age and size were the reasons I’d begun to insist on the top position. The thought of him having a heart attack in the midst of orgasm had occurred to me more than once–a la the beginning of Private Benjamin–and Burt, being somewhat lazy, hadn’t argued. Said he liked the view. I hadn’t cared about that. Besides, I could only get a decent orgasm on top.
“So, you’re telling me an untold number of emergency personnel, hotel employees, and the entire town council, know the details?”
Several heads nodded solemnly.
“Is it too much to hope everyone will keep their mouths shut about the circumstances?”
Doubt filled the silence. Small town, county grapevine syndrome. The details would eventually spread and the pitying looks would follow me throughout town. Nothing new there.
“For tonight, please, keep it as quiet as possible…” My small spurt of defiance left me and weariness filled the hole left behind. Dr. Sorrenson pressed the iced tea glass to my lips again and I drank deeply, more to please him than from any great thirst.
Finished, I pushed the glass away and leaned against Dan. Why? I’d already come to rely on his strong, solid presence, which fit me comfortably in a way I’d never imagined. I’d known him, known these people around me, more than half, if not my entire, life. Until that day, I’d never once imagined turning to Dan. We’d never been friends. Distant acquaintances, but not friends, casual or close.
“Rachel, do you have pictures? Scrapbooks?” Pastor McHugh would think of something like that. I privately thought of him as an expert in the matter of death. His guidance had been invaluable with all those other deaths in my life.
Sniffling, Cyndi answered for me as I began to cough. “I know where they are. I’ll get together a remembrance book. People can write in it tonight.”
A hand patted mine as my coughing eased for a moment and my head began to float off my shoulders. Good thing Dan’s hand held it in place.
“Your inhaler, Rachel.” Good old Doc held it to my mouth and I obediently inhaled. Almost immediately my chest began to ease, taking away the feeling of constriction in my lungs.
“Don’t worry, lass. We’ll do up a right and proper wake tonight.”
I nodded once before my eyes closed and blackness enfolded me.
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