At Her Service. Maureen Child

happening. She’d lost her son. Now her husband.

      Coward that she was, she’d also pretended that she didn’t know why Marc had wanted the divorce.

      As of yesterday, she was no longer Mrs. Marc Collins.

      She realized she was still gripping the phone. She needed to talk to someone. If not Gillian, then Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen was a mutual friend of Anna and Gillian’s, a college sorority sister. Blond, buxom, a bit scatterbrained, but a talented interior designer, Mary Ellen had gotten through life on “cute” and good taste.

      Anna dialed Mary Ellen’s number trying to get into the mood to talk to her always bubbly friend. She was tired of calling her friends crying and desperate. She was tired of being depressed and morbid and scared. And she knew they were even more sick of it than she was.

      The phone rang four times and Anna was about to hang up when Mary Ellen finally picked up.

      “Hello?”

      “Hi, it’s me.”

      “Oh, hello.”

      Anna was momentarily taken aback by Mary Ellen’s blasé reaction. This was not like her. “Is everything all right?”

      Silence. “Yes, I’m in the middle of something right now. Can I call you back?”

      Anna sat up a little straighter in the bed at Mary Ellen’s overformal tone. “Okay, I mean, no. I…” She glanced at the phone, unsure of the hospital number. “I’ll call you back later.”

      “That would be fine.” Mary Ellen hung up, but not before Anna heard a man’s voice in the background.

      She stared at the phone as she replaced the receiver. What had that been about? The voice she’d heard definitely hadn’t been Mary Ellen’s husband, David.

      The voice had sounded like…

      Anna felt a wave of nausea wash over her.

      Marc. The voice had sounded like Marc’s, but that wasn’t possible. Marc didn’t like Mary Ellen. He’d never liked any of her friends. But while he made fun of Mary Ellen, he was much harsher when it came to Gillian. He could barely be civil to Gillian—and vice versa.

      So it couldn’t have been Marc’s voice Anna had heard in the background.

      She fought her disappointment in not being able to talk to Mary Ellen. She needed to talk to a friend. Gillian and Mary Ellen were the only ones she still saw. The rest of her so-called friends had disappeared.

      She thought about calling Marc, just to prove to herself that it hadn’t been his voice she’d heard at Mary Ellen’s. But she had nothing to say to him. Gillian was right. Tyler had been the reason Anna had stayed with Marc. She’d so desperately wanted Tyler to have a father even if Marc had been a disappointing one. She’d hoped that as Tyler got older, Marc would get better.

      Her throat closed at the thought of Tyler, her chest aching as tears again burned her eyes, blurring everything.

      You have to stop this, Anna.

      Marc’s voice again and a memory so clear it hurt. “You have to stop, Anna, before you drive us both crazy. I can’t take any more.” Possibly his last words to her before he moved out of their house. Or maybe more recently. They’d had so many fights she couldn’t remember the last one.

      She dried her eyes and dialed Gillian’s cell again. Still no answer. She hung up without leaving a message.

      Had it only been yesterday that she’d had Gillian and Mary Ellen over for lunch? Mary Ellen and Gillian had made a point of not mentioning the divorce or the fact it was to be final later that day.

      Needless to say, the lunch had been strained. Anna frowned as she recalled how distracted Gillian had been. Even Mary Ellen had been unusually quiet. At the time, Anna had thought it was just her pending divorce causing it, but now she recalled she’d picked up an undercurrent. Mary Ellen and Gillian had seemed upset with each other.

      Funny she would realize that now. She’d thought she was doing so well yesterday, but apparently she’d been numb to what had been happening around her.

      She felt a sliver of anxiety burrow under her skin. Since she’d come out of the coma she’d been picking up weird vibes from everyone, especially Marc. But often Mary Ellen and Gillian, as well. Either they were all walking on eggshells around her, or they were keeping something from her.

      When she’d mentioned this to Marc, he’d accused her of thinking everyone was plotting against her—especially him. But she still couldn’t shake the feeling that from the moment she’d opened her eyes two months ago in another hospital, her husband and friends had some secret they didn’t want her to find out about.

      She knew that was crazy thinking. No secret was as horrible as the reality of what she’d awakened to.

      Closing her eyes, she lay back on the bed. Her head ached and she felt sick to her stomach. She pulled the sheet up to her chin. It felt cool and smelled fresh from the laundry. Her stomach did a slow sickening roll as she recalled her friend’s stilted part of the conversation. Mary Ellen hadn’t even used Anna’s name during the call.

      Because Mary Ellen didn’t want whoever was there to know it was her?

      Marc would say this was just another case of her imagining things. What did she think Mary Ellen and Marc were doing? Plotting against her? It might not even have been Marc’s voice she heard.

      She was acting irrational. She battled the urge to call Mary Ellen back and demand to know what was going on. She could feel another panic attack coming on. Marc had told her she was delusional enough times. She felt delusional.

      She tried her friend Gillian’s cell phone again. Still no answer. Gillian always had her cell phone with her. It wasn’t like her not to answer unless she was in court.

      Anna didn’t leave a message. Instead, she tried Mary Ellen again.

      Mary Ellen answered this time on the first ring. “Anna?” Apparently she’d been waiting by the phone. “Where are you? Are you all right? We’ve been worried sick about you.”

      Hearing the concern in her friend’s voice, Anna started to pour out her story about the accident, but she heard herself say “We?”

      Mary Ellen’s voice softened. “Honey, Marc is really worried about you.”

      Anna closed her eyes. It had been Marc’s voice she’d heard earlier in the background. Just as she wasn’t mistaken about the recrimination she now heard in her friend’s voice.

      “I’m sure Marc has better things to do than worry about me,” she said. “We’re divorced. I’m not his concern anymore.”

      An odd silence then, “Honey, Marc didn’t go through with the divorce. The papers were never filed.”

      “What?” Hadn’t that been her hope, her prayer? Losing Marc had made Tyler’s death more real somehow. Anna had clung to the marriage because it was all she had.

      “He changed his mind,” Mary Ellen was saying. “But, honey, I was sure he told you that last night.”

      “Last night?”

      AFTER OFFICER D.C. WALKER disconnected his call with Marc Collins, he had started to dial his boss when he noticed Mac was having a problem with the winch. He walked back over to the side of the mountain and saw nothing in the mist but water.

      “Hook came undone,” the wrecker operator yelled to him. “Divers are down reattaching the cable.”

      Walker stared at the lake with the rain clouds mirrored in it, still shocked by what he’d learned from Marc Collins. The gloomy gray day did nothing to lift his spirits. Where the hell was spring?

      The news he’d received had left him angry and upset. What else was the woman in the hospital keeping from him?

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