Page 53 of Her Property

“Aubrey, can I help you lock up now?” he said. “There’s someplace I need to be.”

Cat

Laura appeared at the door of Alfred’s room with two giant paper coffee cups at just around the time Cat found herself nodding off in the chair next to his bed again. She hadn’t slept more than an hour the night before. Though she’d been here most of the day yesterday, she’d insisted to Laura that she didn’t mind taking the night shift. She wanted to stay as close as possible to Alfred. Plus, staying far away from Jake’s vicinity was an added bonus. Here, she could focus only on Alfred.

“You’re an angel!” Cat said, nearly in tears of joy at fresh hot coffee that didn’t come from the vending machine down the hall.

She’d been close to tears about everything in the past 24 hours.

More than the past 24 hours if she counted the sobbing she’d done the previous night, before she’d even learned about Alfred.

“How’s he been?” Laura asked. “Any change?”

“Not since they moved him here.”

In the middle of the night, they’d declared Alfred well enough to go down to the ward. As far as the first responders figured, he’d had a heart attack only about a mile away from the road leading to Ruby Lake, just about the time Jake had been dropping Cat off at the house. Luckily it had been a straight stretch of highway, so when he’d taken his foot off the gas he’d slowed down considerably before going off the road. He’d hit a tree—the front end of his Boxster was a write-off. Alfred was extremely lucky as far as the crash went. He’d broken his arm, but besides that—and some scrapes and bruises—he hadn’t been seriously injured. But his heart was in rough shape.

“He’s stable for now,” the doctor had said, “but we’ll be playing it by ear for the next little while.”

“It’s a lot better here than in intensive care,” Cat said, taking a sip of gloriously strong caffeine.

“A thousand percent,” Laura agreed.

They sat for a moment in quiet coffee contentment before Laura spoke. “Hey Cat?”

“Yeah?”

“You going to tell me what happened with handsome neighbor man?”

Cat’s stomach dipped. “How did you…” she honestly couldn’t remember talking to Laura about Jake at all. Certainly not since she’d been up here.

“Did you ever see him after the… incident?”

Cat let out a breath. Right. Her sense of time and all that had happened had muddled her mind—she forgot she’d told Laura about the skinny dipping incident last week. But a lot had happened between then and now.

She considered telling a white lie—just for now, to keep her from having to talk about it. But looking over at Laura, who was grinning and waiting intently for her to speak—clearly she knew something was up—she sighed.

Cat glanced at Alfred as if he might be listening. Didn’t people hear things when they were unconscious?

“Tell me everything!” Laura said.

Taking a shaky breath, she did. Cat told Laura about everything from the first day with the hand injury, to the last time she saw him, peeling out of Alfred’s driveway like he couldn’t get away fast enough. By the end, Laura’s jaw was practically on the floor.

“First of all,” she said, “you told me that bandage on your hand wasnothing.”

“It is nothing. The cut, anyway.”

“Okay, well I might forgive you for keeping all that from me given the circumstances, and I have about a thousand questions, but first, did you learn anything more about Alfred and Stella?”

Cat shook her head. “No. Jake doesn’t have any family left who could provide any info. I think the only one who can help is Alfred but…” she trailed off.

“Then he’ll just have to get better, won’t he,” Laura said.

Cat smiled, but felt her eyes growing wet again. “God, I hope so. Can you imagine our lives without Alfred?”

Laura shook her head. “Nope.”

Cat leaned back in her chair, taking another sip from her coffee. She was nearing the bottom, and it was growing cold. Then a thought struck her.

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