If She Only Knew Read Free

the message.”
    â€œDo that.”
    Marla drifted off again, lost seconds, maybe minutes. Her sluggish consciousness discerned voices again, voices that interrupted her sleep.
    â€œI think Mrs. Cahill should rest now,” the nurse was saying.
    â€œWe’ll leave in just a minute.” Another voice. Elderly. Refined. It floated in on footsteps that were clipped and solid, at odds with the age of the woman’s voice. “We’re family and I’d like a few moments alone with my son and daughter-in-law.”
    â€œFine. But please, for Mrs. Cahill’s sake, make it brief.”
    â€œWe will, dear,” the older woman agreed and Marla felt the touch of cool, dry skin on the back of her hand. “Come on, Marla, wake up. Cissy and little James, they miss you, they need you.” A deep chuckle. “Though I hate to admit it, Nana isn’t quite the same as their mother.”
    Nana? Grandma? Mother-in-law?
    There was a rustle of clothing, the sound of soft soles padding across the floor and a door opening as, presumably, the nurse left.
    â€œSometimes I wonder if she’ll ever wake up,” Alex grumbled. “God, I need a cigarette.”
    â€œJust be patient, son. Marla was in a horrible accident, and then suffered through the surgeries. She’s healing.” God, why couldn’t she remember? There was another long, serious sigh and a kindly pat of fingers on the back of her hand. A waft of perfume . . . a scent she recognized but couldn’t name.
    Why was she in the hospital? What kind of accident were they talking about? Marla tried to concentrate, to think, but the effort brought only an ache that throbbed through her head.
    â€œI just hope there won’t be much disfigurement,” the old woman said again.
    What? Disfigurement? Oh, please, no. Disfigurement? For a second she was jolted out of her haze. Her throat, already parched, nearly closed in fear and her stomach felt as if it had been twisted and tied with rubber bands. She tried to remember what she looked like, but it didn’t matter . . . Her heart was racing with dread. Certainly someone somewhere watching her monitors could see that she was aware, that she was responding, but no loud footsteps pounded outside the door, no urgent voice yelled, “She’s stirring. Look, she’s waking up!”
    â€œShe has the best doctors in the state. She . . . she might not look like what we expect, but she’ll be fine, beautiful.” Alex sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.
    â€œShe always was. You know, Alexander,” the woman who called herself Nana said, “sometimes a woman’s beauty can be a curse.”
    An uncomfortable laugh from this man who was her husband. “I don’t think she’d agree.”
    â€œNo, of course not. But she hasn’t lived long enough to understand.”
    â€œI just wonder what she’ll remember when she wakes up.”
    â€œHopefully, everything,” the woman said, but there was an underlying tension to her words, a pronounced trepidation.
    â€œYes, well, time will tell.”
    â€œWe’re just lucky she wasn’t killed in the accident.”
    There was the tiniest bit of hesitation before her husband replied, “Damned lucky. She should never have been driving in the first place. Hell, she’d just been released from the hospital.”
    Another hospital? It was all getting fuzzy again, the words garbled. Had she heard it right?
    â€œThere are so many questions,” her mother-in-law whispered.
    Yes, so many, but I’m too tired to think of them right now . . . so very tired.

    Whistling sharply to his three-legged dog, Nick Cahill cut the engine of the Notorious and threw a line around a blackened post on the dock where he moored his fishing boat. “Come on, Tough Guy, let’s go home,” he called over his shoulder as the boat undulated with the tide of this backwater Oregon