The room was so cold I was afraid my butt would get frostbite if I got out of bed. I don't know why Wyatt liked to turn the air-conditioning so cold at night, unless he was part Eskimo. I lifted my head so I could see the clock: five oh five. The alarm wouldn't go off for another twenty-five minutes, but if I was awake, I saw no reason why he shouldn't be awake, too. I poked him in the side.
"Uh. Ouch," he said groggily, and rolled over. His big hand rubbed my stomach. "Are you okay? Another bad dream?"
"No, I had a dream, but it wasn't a nightmare. I'm awake and the room feels like a meat locker. I'm afraid to get up."
He made a half-grunting, half-yawning noise, then got a look at the clock. "It isn't time to get up yet," he said, and burrowed back into the pillow.
I poked him again. "Yes, it is. I need to think about something."
"Can't you think while I sleep?"
"I could, if you didn't insist on putting a layer of frost on everything at night, and if I had a cup of coffee. I think you should turn the thermostat up to, say, forty, so I can start thawing out, and while you're up, you could get one of your flannel shirts or something for me to wear."
He groaned again, and flopped over on his back. "Okay, okay." Muttering something under his breath, he got out of bed and walked out into the hall where the upstairs thermostat was located. Within seconds, the blower stopped. The air was still cold, but at least it wasn't moving around. Then he came back into the bedroom and reached deep into his closet, coming out with something long and dark. He tossed it across the bed, then crawled back under the covers. "See you in twenty minutes," he mumbled, and just that easily went back to sleep.
I grabbed the long dark thing and pulled it around me. It was a robe, nice and thick. When I got out of bed and stood up, the heavy folds of fabric fell to my ankles. I belted it around me as I tiptoed out of the bedroom-I didn't want to disturb him-and turned on the light over the stairs so I wouldn't break my neck on the way down.
The coffeemaker was set to come on automatically at five twenty-five, but I didn't intend to wait that long. I flipped the switch, the little red light came on, and the thing began the hissing and popping sounds that signal help is on the way.
I got a cup from the cabinet and stood there waiting. The floor was cold beneath my bare feet, making my toes curl. When we had kids, I thought, Wyatt would have to get out of the habit of turning the air-conditioning so low at night.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach, just the way it happens when you go over that first steep hill in a roller coaster, and a sense of unreality seized me. I felt as if I were occupying two planes of existence at the same time: the real world, and the dream world. My dream was Wyatt, had been from the moment I met him, but I had accepted that I'd lost my chance. Now, all of a sudden, the dream world was also the real world, and I was having a hard time taking it all in.
In a little over a week's time, everything had reversed. He said he loved me. He said we were getting married. I believed him on both counts, because he'd told my parents the same thing, and his mother, and the whole police force. Not only that, if his feelings for me were anything like my feelings for him, I could understand getting cold feet at first, because how do you deal with something like that?
Women can handle those things more easily than men, because we're tougher. After all, most of us grow up expecting to get pregnant and have kids, and when you think about what that really means to the female body, it's a wonder any woman ever lets a man within a country mile of her.
Men feel put upon because they have to shave their faces every day. Now, I ask you: In comparison to what women go through, is that wussy, or what?
Wyatt had wasted two years because he thought I was high maintenance. I'm not high maintenance. Grammy is high maintenance. Of course, she's had a lot more practice. I hope I'm just like her when I'm that age. What I am now is a reasonable, logical, adult woman who runs her own business and believes in a fifty-fifty relationship. It just so happens there'll be times when I'll have both fifties, such as when I'm shot or when I'm pregnant. But those are special occasions, right?
Enough coffee had dripped into the carafe to fill my cup. Thank heavens for the automatic cutoff on coffeemakers today. I pulled out the carafe, and only one little drop escaped to sizzle on the hot pad. After pouring the coffee, I slid the carafe back into place and leaned against the cabinets while I began to mentally worry at what had been puzzling me in my dream.
My feet were freezing, so after a moment I went into the family room and got the notebook in which I'd been listing Wyatt's transgressions, then curled up in his recliner with the robe tucked around my feet.
What Mom had said last night-well, a few hours ago-had triggered some chain of thought. The problem was, the links weren't connected yet; so technically, I guess, there wasn't a chain, because they have to be linked to make a chain, but the individual little chunks were lying there waiting for someone to put them together.
The thing was, she had said pretty much what I'd already been thinking, but phrased it just a little differently. And she had gone way back, all the way to my senior year in high school when Malinda Connors threw a screaming hissy fit because I was voted Homecoming Queen even though I was already Head Cheerleader and she thought it wasn't fair for me to be both. Not that Malinda would have gotten Homecoming Queen anyway, because she was, like, the poster girl for Skanks Unlimited, but she had a real high opinion of herself and thought I was the only obstacle in her path.
She hadn't tried to kill me, however. Malinda had married some moron and moved to Minneapolis. There's a song in there somewhere.