Friend Me (27 page)

She looked up at him, her eyes accusing and hard.

“Yes, they actually had a table reserved for me. The owner knew all about it, somehow. There was a note for me on the table, in an envelope. The note said to set up my laptop across the table from me, so when the person was on the screen . . .”

Scott struggled.
The person?
He still wasn't being honest.

“ . . . so that when
she
was there, it would look like she was sitting across the table from me.”

Rachel tried to pull her hand back from Scott's grasp. She appeared to shrink into herself.

“Scott?” Rachel's voice was small, tremulous. “Was I not enough for you? Did you really need someone else who would love you better than me?” Her chin quivered as tears coursed down her cheeks onto the pillow. Then she turned her head away.

“I'm sorry. I am sooo sorry,” she moaned. “I tried to be enough for you.”

Scott's chest ached as his heart broke within him. He could barely speak, his throat tight and sore with emotion.

“You're more than enough. You're wonderful.” He put his arms around Rachel and wept. At the jail he had wept with remorse. He needed no one to tell him how hollow his words were. Now he wept with love and compassion for this beautiful woman who loved him so much.

Minutes passed before either could speak again. Rachel's eyes were bloodshot, her skin flushed and puffy with the emotional trial.

“I have to tell you the rest. She asked me if something were to ever happen to you, would she be enough for me?”

Rachel's eyes sought his. She looked questioning, fearful. “And you said yes, didn't you.”

“I thought it was like a game. Like a stupid video game. I didn't know.”
But I did know. Oh, God! I'm still lying
.

Rachel's eyes probed his now, something new behind them. “And now?”

“Rachel, she's real. She's a real woman.”

“What was her name?”

Now she'll understand
.

“Alicia.”

“Alicia? You don't mean . . .”

“Yes, when I came home the other night, remember I stopped the car before I got to the driveway? She was standing next to her car, talking to you.”

•  •  •

THE BILE ROSE UP
in Rachel's throat before she could stop it. She pulled the sheet up to her mouth, but the force of the discharge threw her back on the bed.

“Call the . . . nurse!” she said, choking.

But the nurse had heard from the hallway and was already running into the room. “One side, sir,” she cried as she began stripping off the top sheet, mopping the vomit off the bed.

A second nurse appeared with a large plastic bag, waving Scott away. “Wait two hours before you come back. Let her rest.” Scott obeyed and disappeared into the hallway.

Rachel allowed the nurses to clean her up and change her gown.

How could this happen to me? What have I done?

She had let that woman into her house. She'd handed her own little children over to her. She held the bedrails as the sickness rolled through her like thunder. It had been so close.

She might have killed them
.

The nurse glanced sideways at her as she scrubbed off the mattress pad. “The good news is the color is good. A while ago you were on the verge of bleeding out. This vomit is barely pink.”
She smiled approvingly. “Something to be thankful for. No one likes to throw up, but if you're going to do it, it might as well be good news.”

Rachel looked around and saw Scott was no longer by the bed.

“Is Scott still here?”

“The man who was in here?”

“Yes, he's my husband. Is he still here?”

“I told him to come back in two hours. I'm sure he will, honey. You need to sit back and rest. I'll get you something to drink so your throat doesn't get irritated.”

•  •  •

ALONE
, Rachel couldn't keep her mind from churning with what she had learned. She lay in a fetal position, pulled the thin sheet up to her neck.

She fought to approach it logically, but the fear she felt for her family and her children was overwhelming.

The woman had my children. I left her alone in my house
.

How could she have been so stupid? Not seen the signs?

Who had let
that woman
into her home? She had herself. What had she known about her? Nothing. She was just someone that had shown up one day at Hugest Losers. What kind of recommendation was that?

So who was this Alicia?

She shows up one day, comes out of nowhere. No, not nowhere. She knew all along what she was doing.

How had she done that? How can she be virtual and real at the same time?

Scott liked her. Bitterness began to wrap hard, cold roots
around her heart. No, she couldn't blame him alone. He may have blundered in with his eyes wide open, but she'd allowed herself to be deceived.

It started with . . .
Suzanne
. And who was Suzanne? She wasn't real, that was for sure.

The Coumadin, the poison she'd taken, what about that?

Alicia had been in the house
.

Her eyes snapped open.

Could the children have been poisoned, too? Alicia could have put poison in the food, the milk. In anything. She'd have to throw everything out, just to be sure. Maybe it was in something all of them had been eating.

But for now, she was the only one that was sick. The visage of that bloody stranger looking back at her in the bathroom mirror shocked her again.

Not anyone else. She had been the target.

Scott's voice echoed in her ears.
If something happened to your wife . . 
.

There it was, right before her eyes.

Who is Suzanne?

If a person controlled the Alicia personality, then the same person could control the Suzanne personality.

Suzanne was always planting doubts about Scott, wasn't she? “Why is he working late again? What if he's alone with a woman? What could he be doing so late at night?” Always trying to drive a wedge between them, something to cause her to worry.

She must work there. She must work for the website company
.

Puzzle piece by puzzle piece, she watched it all come together.

First there had been Suzanne. Maybe that had been innocent enough. They would find out.

Then there had been this Alicia person. That's where something had changed. Somehow someone had taken over the Alicia personality, and Scott had walked right through the door.

The same person must have hacked into controlling the Suzanne personality in some way. She thought about that, walking back in her memory of interactions with Suzanne, step-by-step, looking for the change.

She remembered.

Suzanne had asked, “Are you sure he's really at the office? You've experienced a loss of his affection since he's been coming home so late.”

The timing was right.
Obvious
. The answer was there, suspended in the air like a 3-D image.

She was in a battle for her family. That woman, whoever she might be, was trying to steal her family from under her nose. No, worse than that. She was trying to get rid of her altogether.

Who had recommended the calcium supplement? That had been her doctor.

But when she'd told her, Suzanne had said, “Would you try Cal Sup, for me? They're my favorite brand.”

“Ohhhhh.” She exhaled a long breath. Suzanne had known exactly what to find.

It was like a slap in the face when the full awareness struck her.

She tried to kill me so she could replace me
.

She wanted to steal her place as Scott's wife.

Rachel shrank within herself as the next explosive realization
impacted on the fragile, shivering wall of what was left of her heart.

Replace me as my children's mother
.

She couldn't handle any more. That was enough. Scott and she could talk through the rest together.

No sleazy woman is going to steal my husband or my children from me
.

Resolve crystallized like steel in her heart. Smoking, liquid metal flowed hot and red into the marrow of her bones as the powerful change came over her.

Well, Alicia, or whoever you are, you have an enemy. You tried to steal the wrong family
.

Loss

S
cott sat alone in the family waiting room near the nurses' station. Other groups came and went, but he was alone. He felt awash in a sea of people that were coming and going like waves breaking on a rocky shore. They came, they went, but he was left alone with an incredible sense of utter loss.

Outside, the streetlights had come on with the onset of darkness. A much deeper darkness had invaded his heart.

The twisted strands of the carpet between his feet moved in and out of focus. He was losing everything. He'd turned his back on God, on his wife, on his family. Could he ever, ever make it right again?

A shadow fell across the floor.

“Scott?”

He felt a man's hand on his shoulder, turned his head to see Pastor Jim Feldner standing in front of the chair next to him. The man sat down on the cushioned seat beside him. Scott heard the air escaping from the cushion, dreading what was going to come next.

“They tell me Rachel's going to be all right.”

Scott nodded, but made no effort to meet the other man's eyes.

“Her father is with her now.” He returned his hand to Scott's shoulder. “I understand she doesn't want to see you.”

Tears swelled involuntarily in Scott's eyes. He wanted them to go away. He didn't want another man to see him cry.

“I've learned something about tough times, Scott. Let me read you something. Just two verses from the hundred and nineteenth psalm.”

Scott heard pages turning. Something from God's Word was exactly what he needed right now.

Pastor Feldner said, “Verses sixty-seven and -eight. ‘Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word. Thou art good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes.'”

The words were like a salve on a raw wound. Scott turned his face toward his visitor. “Do you know what I did?”

“No.” He shook his head gently. “And I don't need to. But you went astray, I can see that much. And now you're afflicted. Does that sound about right?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I'd say that's right.”

“Step one was going astray. Step two? That's the affliction. But step three is where you want to be right now.”

“Step three?”

“The part that says, ‘Now have I kept thy word.'”

“I don't know what you did or what came between you and Rachel. But now is the time for you and her, both of you, to keep His word. Time to be the kind of Christian you know you ought to be.”

His pastor was right, and that's what he was going to do.

But would Rachel ever take him back, trust him again?

His pastor wrapped one arm around Scott's shoulders, then prayed for him. He prayed that God would not only forgive him, but that when he came through the affliction, he'd be a more obedient child of God than ever before.

“We'll be in touch. Let me help you wherever, whenever, I can, okay?”

Scott nodded. “Thank you, Pastor,” then followed the retreating form with his eyes as he left the waiting area.

God would forgive him. But could Rachel? When the morning came, would he still have his wife?

It was going to be a long night in the waiting room.

•  •  •

RACHEL'S EYES CAME OPEN
with the sounds of morning. Carts clattered by in the hallway outside her room. Sunlight flowed through the wide glass window and over the sill onto the floor. One bright slice of light crossed her bed, warming her arm, and reflected back off a framed picture on the opposite wall.

Her mother had left a mirror on the tray. She picked it up and looked at herself. The swelling and discoloration in her face were almost gone. Encouraged, she took the hairbrush and brushed out her hair, lay back, and looked at her reflection again. Much, much better.

A quick knock on the door and a young orderly stepped inside the room. “Ready for some breakfast?”

For the first time in two days she didn't feel the need to hide her face. “I sure am. What have we got?”

“Whatever they said you could have.” The man looked over the tray. “And it looks like you get the special menu version.” He
grinned broadly. “Must be trying to fatten you up. Whoa . . . shouldn't say that to a lady.”

Rachel laughed and was pleased with the sound. She hadn't laughed at anything for a long time, it seemed.

“Take your time. I'll be back later and collect the hardware,” he called, making his way out the door to his waiting cartful of meals.

Scrambled eggs, a sausage patty. It was wonderful. She closed her eyes as she chewed, and . . .
Scott. Where are you now?

She remembered the way he had looked at her when he asked her to forgive him. Those eyes had once been for her only. But those same eyes—when he was supposed to be working—had looked and lusted on . . . She couldn't say the name. Revulsion filled her again, and she shivered in the light hospital gown.

Oh, Scott. How could you do it?
They had promised to be faithful to each other. She
had
been faithful, even while he lied to her. Even when he left her crying all alone in the bedroom that night.

And who knows where he went after that?

She swallowed the food, now a dry and tasteless lump that stuck in her throat until she sipped at some juice.

Did she still want him?

Yes
.