Die Before I Wake by Laurie Breton

Author:Laurie Breton [Breton, Laurie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780778325901
Google: 4P2_YdkOnvsC
Amazon: 0778325903
Goodreads: 3595200
Published: 2008-11-30T13:00:00+00:00

Nine

I tried not to worry about what had happened to the note, but I couldn’t help myself. Had it fallen out of my pocket at some point and been picked up later by a cleaning person who read it and then discarded it? Or would the hospital maintenance crew have been trained to turn in to the nurse’s station any random papers they found on the floor? I’d been gone for over an hour to X-ray. All that time, my clothing had been sitting unattended in the E.R. cubicle. Anybody could have rifled through my pockets. Riley had been there, and Tom. Dr. Jankowski, and a never-ending stream of nurses in their modern-day uniforms of pastel polyester pants and tops that featured happy little cartoon animals. The nursing profession had come a long way from the days when they wore white dresses with starched collars.

All considerations of nursing attire aside, I had a serious problem. Somebody was in possession of Beth’s note. Somebody who wasn’t the police. Or me.

And I had no idea who.

To say the idea was unsettling is an understate-ment, but once we reached the house, I didn’t have time to worry about it, because everybody in Newmarket, it seemed, was there to greet the returning invalid. Claudia was there, and even Monica, the teenage babysitter. A stone-faced Riley remained silent, but Claudia greeted me with a gasp and an,

“Oh, you poor thing!” which made me suspect my appearance wasn’t quite as innocuous as Tom had claimed. Sadie, big-eyed and concerned, plastered herself to my side, while Taylor, reticent as ever, stayed in the background, although her eyes never seemed to leave me. While Tom got me settled in semi-comfort on the living room couch, with a feather pillow that was heavenly and a blanket I didn’t really need, Jeannette hovered anxiously, wringing her hands and casting furtive glances at Tom. “This is not my fault,” I heard her say once, to nobody in particular. “Nobody is going to blame this on me.” Since nobody was accusing her of anything, I thought it strange. Was she expecting to be criti-cized for her housekeeping skills, allowing random objects to show up in even more random places? Or was she expecting at any minute that I would say to her, “Aha! It was you who drove home from work in the middle of the day to place those batteries on the stairs so that when I came back down from the attic, I’d fall and break my ass.” For an instant, I semi-seriously considered saying it, just to see what would happen. But I wasn’t into deliberate cruelty, even towards a woman who seemed to hate me for no better reason than the fact that she could. Since the night I’d heard her arguing with Tom in the kitchen, our relationship—if you could call it that—had been civil but strained. I knew she wanted me gone from this house, from Tom’s life. But I couldn’t imagine her stooping so low as to booby-trap the stairs in the hopes that I’d break my neck.

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