Blood Vines

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Sunday, March 7

9:40 A.M.

Alex awakened with a start. She moved her gaze around the room, disoriented. She’d been dreaming, she realized. One of those disjointed dreams that left her feeling vaguely uneasy.

She untangled herself from the sheet and sat up, struggling to recall what the dream had been about. She’d been moving toward the sound of voices. There had been a strange light. The smell of incense, like in the cave.

The incense. She recognized the scent, Alex realized. But from where?

On the bed stand, her cell phone went off. She snatched it up. From the display, she saw it was Tim. “Morning,” she said.

“Way to answer your phone. I called three times last night. I was getting worried.”

“You did? I never heard it ring.”

Probably because she had been in the middle of a mind-blowing orgasm.

She squirmed, remembering how loud she’d been. Damn, Alex, could you be any classier?

“Are you okay?”

“Sure.” She cleared her throat. “Why?”

“Just thinking about you. What’d you do last night?”

She supposed, Went to bed with an incredibly sexy guy I hardly know, had some of the best sex of my life and now want to crawl under a rock and hide wasn’t appropriate, so she told him the other truth.

“Went to a fabulous wine launch party.”

“What wine?”

She climbed out of bed and, phone propped to her ear, headed to the bathroom. “The new Red Crest Bear Creek Zin. Fabulous. Hold on, would you?”

She relieved herself, then went back to her cell. “You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. And green with envy. You have room in that rental for two?”

She pictured Reed and Tim in a staredown. “Sorry.”

“Seriously, you’re okay? You need anything?”

“Some help analyzing a dream I had last night would be nice.”

Tim had done his doctoral dissertation on dream interpretation. While they were married, he’d analyzed plenty of them for her.

“Shoot.”

“I was watching some sort of religious ceremony or ritual.”

“Part of the worshippers?”

“No. On the outside. Looking on.”

“Spying?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you remember how you felt while looking on?”

She thought a moment, then shook her head. “No. But I woke up disoriented and uneasy.”

“Go on.”

“I was inside, but it wasn’t a traditional church. I remember feeling closed in. Or surrounded.”

“Trapped?” he asked.

She thought a moment. “No.”

“What else do you remember?”

“Nothing.” She squirted toothpaste onto her brush, ran it under the water, then stuck it in her mouth.

“It’s not much to go on, but here goes. Your dream’s clearly about ceremony and commitment. It’s your subconscious urging you to cling to what’s deeply important to you. On a physical and spiritual level.” He paused. “Me.”

It took her a moment to realize what he had said. When she did, she laughed, nearly choking on toothpaste foam.

“No, listen to me,” he said. “Clearly, you’re longing for me and the comfort of our marriage.”

She laughed again, then spit. “Goodbye, Tim.”

“It’s true,” he said. “You’re crazy about me.”

“Goodbye, Tim,” she said again, ending the call. She rinsed her toothbrush, then her mouth. Truth was, she did miss him.

She just didn’t miss being married to him. Tim was a better friend “with benefits” than he had been a husband.

Some guys just weren’t meant to be married.

Alex grabbed the hand towel to wipe the sink and vanity top, then stopped, her gaze settling on what appeared to be a drop of blood on the rounded lip of the sink. Dried but distinctive.

She looked at both her hands, palms and backs. No cuts or scrapes. It hadn’t been there yesterday, she was certain of that.

Maybe Reed, she thought, from the night before. She didn’t remember him using the bathroom… but it wasn’t like she had been thinking all that clearly.

Reed. Damn. She dampened the towel and wiped away the spot. Another expertly executed move on her part. Way to think it through, Alex.

Think it through, that’s what she needed to do. But she definitely needed coffee to make that happen.

A short time later, mug of coffee cupped in her hands, she sat in the swing on her small front porch. She breathed deeply, working to quiet her mind and focus her thoughts. On what her first steps would be, what she wanted to accomplish.

The task should have been be easy. Instead, her thoughts kept circling back to the same three things: the bizarre dream she had awakened to, her panic in the wine cave the night before, and making love with Reed.

Quite a way to start off her stay here in Sonoma; not quite the “bang” she had hoped for.

Alex rolled her eyes at her own crude play on words. Other than her making an ass of herself in front of her former family, what had happened in the cave the night before? She knew what she had heard and smelled. Others had been in the cave and had somehow slipped out before Reed and his brother came along.

But that wasn’t what was really bothering her. It was her panicked reaction to being lost. Her absolute terror when the lights went off.

Neither was like her. She had been mostly taking care of herself all her life. She remembered being in grade school and getting herself up, fed and ready for school, then walking alone to the bus stop, remembered coming home in the afternoon and finding her mother still in bed, too depressed to participate in her daughter’s life. Many times she had prepared them both dinner, then gotten herself put to bed. No hand-holding or night-lights for her.

The amount of wine she’d drunk, Alex decided. Fatigue. Grief. The newness of her situation. A potent mix that had upended her typically self-confident and fearless self.

Alex sipped her coffee, picturing the smiling, obviously happy woman her mother had been in Lyla Reed’s photographs. She couldn’t lose focus, Alex reminded herself. That woman was why she was here. To discover what had happened to her.

Maybe, as Lyla had suggested, the loss of Dylan had destroyed her. Maybe, because Alex wasn’t a mother, she couldn’t understand.

Even if that was true, she wanted to know that Patsy. The woman who had smiled and laughed and taken pleasure in being alive. She was hungry to know her.

Coffee mug empty, she stood and headed back into the house. After being out in the fresh air, she noticed a subtle, sour odor inside. She wrinkled her nose, trying to identify the smell. She couldn’t and decided it must be something that had drifted in the night before.