While She Was Sleeping... Read Free

They only had her mother’s word they had the same father.
    So. Alana sighed and started up the curving wooden steps to the second floor, lugging her overnight bag. She’d wanted to get this confrontation—or, optimistically, this meeting —over with so she wouldn’t have to think about it all night long. Good thing she’d brought sleeping pills, a new, stronger prescription the doctor said should help her relax on nights when she knew drifting off would take chemical help. Tonight was definitely one of those nights.
    Upstairs, she pushed open the familiar door to her room and stopped dead. Melanie had removed all her personal items. Her stuffed animals from high school, her gymnastic awards, her ceramic animals bought with childhood allowance from a tiny, now-defunct store on Vliet Street, her floral bedspread and curtains, all gone.
    Alana stalked to Melanie’s room, which still looked exactly the same as always, except that the bed was actually made. Betty Boop clock and phone, clothes strewn everywhere, makeup cluttering her dresser, jewelry scattered all over her desk among framed photographs and her clumsy teenage attempts at pottery.
    Next stop, the master bedroom, which showed clear signs of habitation, including the unmade bed. Melanie and Sawyer must be sleeping here. Next door, the guest room—Mom’s girlhood bedroom—was unchanged, twin beds still covered in rose-colored quilts.
    What was the deal with Alana’s room? Was this Melanie’s way of sticking it to her sister? Why not hang a big Alana No Longer Lives Here sign on the front door? At least Mel could have asked if trashing Alana’s past was okay.
    She slumped against the wall in the hallway, head throbbing, on the verge of tears. Maybe she shouldn’t have come.
    Except she had to to make sure the house would be taken good care of, and she had to make sure Sawyer wouldn’t take Melanie on another one-way ride to heartbreak and/or self-destruction.
    She took her makeup kit into the hall bathroom—cleaned recently, thank goodness—brushed her teeth and slugged down a sleeping pill. Tonight at least she’d sleep. Tomorrow she’d deal with all this, when she was refreshed.
    But first, something for this headache. She scoured the medicine cabinet and pulled down a bottle of generic ibuprofen, popped the top and shook one into her hand, staring in the mirror while she filled a paper cup from the clouded plastic dispenser with water. She looked tired, dark circles under her eyes and faint puffiness; the stress of the past few days and this damn headache had turned her pale. Ugh.
    A split second before she tossed back the pill, she noticed it wasn’t ibuprofen’s usual brown-orange color. Funny. Most of the generics looked similar to the brand names. She studied the bottle. It said ibuprofen…Should she panic?
    She was too tired.
    Face washed, changed into the cream-colored cotton camisole and girl boxers she wore in the summer, she settled into bed with A Year of Wonders, a favorite book from her untouched bookshelf—at least Melanie left that alone.
    Within twenty minutes, sleep started to overpower her to the point where her eyes crossed as she struggled vainly to keep them open. Whoa. Those new pills Dr. Bagin gave her were serious.
    The book slid off the bed; she couldn’t even be bothered to stop its fall. She reached for the light and nearly knocked the lamp off the table.
    Sleep. She had to.
    Now. No fighting it.
    She pulled the covers over her with arms that felt like forty-pound weights.
    Very…potent…pills…

2
    S AWYER K ERN opened his eyes. Had he heard something or dreamed it? He frowned. The ceiling looked wrong. Where was his fan? Who had taken his ceiling fan?
    He lifted his head, grimacing at the effort. What the—
    The room wasn’t remotely familiar. Where the hell was he? How did he get here? He couldn’t remember a damn thing.
    His head dropped back; he tried to focus his fuzzy brain, which didn’t want to focus at