Walk Through the Valley (Psalm 23 Mysteries) (7 page)

Her father continued eating his hamburger, and she managed to choke down some of the meatloaf. Cindy was struggling with what to say to him.

His phone rang and he snatched it off the table and brought it to his ear. “Hello? Yes. I’ll be right there.”

He stood up as he disconnected the call. “They’re taking Kyle in for another round of surgery. The bleeding’s gotten worse,” he said.

Cindy started to stand up and he put a hand on her shoulder. “You need to eat, keep your strength up. There’s nothing you can do right now.”

“Mom-”

“I’ll take care of her,” he said.

Cindy swallowed hard. “Isn’t there something I can do?”

He nodded. “Actually, I would appreciate it if you’d let Lisa know.”

“Okay,” Cindy said.

“She’s in room 214. Finish your dinner first.”

Cindy watched her father hurry from the room. She shoved the rest of her food in her mouth. She hadn’t wanted to meet Lisa yet, but her father was right, she needed to know what was happening.

Finished, Cindy tossed her trash and then hurried to the elevator. A minute later she was walking timidly into room 214.

Her heart was in her throat. She didn’t know what to expect. She wasn’t sure how badly Lisa was injured or what the other woman would know about Kyle’s condition or about Cindy. There were just too many unknowns and it was only adding to her anxiety.

Lisa was on the hospital bed, partially sitting up. Her red hair was pulled back from a pale face. There was bruising on her face and her right wrist was in a cast. She was talking to two people who were already in the room. Two things struck Cindy nearly simultaneously. Lisa was talking to two police officers and on Lisa’s left hand there was an engagement ring.

6

Cindy stared in shock. Lisa wasn’t just her brother’s girlfriend. From the looks of the ring on her finger she was his fiancée. She wondered when that had happened. It had to be recent. Otherwise surely Kyle or their mother would have called. That wasn’t the kind of news Cindy’s mom could keep for half a second.

“You two got engaged?” she blurt out. Horrified, she looked up and met Lisa’s tear-filled eyes.

“Last night,” Lisa confirmed in a whispery voice.

“I’m sorry, miss? You can’t be in here,” one of the officers, a tall man with graying hair said.

“It’s okay,” Lisa said. “She’s Kyle’s sister.”

Cindy’s astonishment must have shown on her face, because Lisa went on to tell her, “I recognized you from the pictures I’ve seen.”

Cindy nodded mutely as her brain seemed to switch gears. Now that the shock of the engagement ring was wearing off she wondered what the two police officers were doing there.

“You don’t remember anything else about the car that hit you?” the other officer asked.

“No, it was dark and it came out of nowhere. By the time the car stopped spinning and sliding I didn’t see it anywhere.”

The tall one muttered something that sounded like “hate drunk tourists,” under his breath.

Cindy cleared her throat. “I’m very sorry to interrupt and also very sorry to meet you under these circumstances, but my dad wanted me to tell you that Kyle’s going in for another round of surgery. Apparently he’s still bleeding a lot internally.”

She was shocked that she managed to get through saying that without choking up. On some level she realized that all of this just wasn’t real for her yet. The whole day had been one long, surreal nightmare it seemed.

Lisa nodded, biting her lip.

Having delivered her message, Cindy suddenly felt very weak and exhausted. It was as though everything that had happened that day caught up to her all at once. Given that she still hadn’t had time to rest and recover after the chaos of Geanie and Joseph’s wedding, it was probably amazing that she was still standing upright let alone speaking coherently.

“I guess I should go,” she said uncertainly.

“No, stay, please,” Lisa said, her eyes entreating.

Cindy nodded as she realized that she really had nowhere else to be at the moment. Kyle was in surgery, and her father would have his hands full with her mom. It was either sit and wait in a room pretty much by herself or sit and wait here with the woman her brother loved enough to marry.

There was a chair near the bed and Cindy sat down in it and leaned back slightly. She was exhausted, and she would give anything to just go get a hotel room and get some sleep. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, though. At least not until Kyle was out of surgery.

Lisa turned to the officers. “Are there any other questions?” she asked.

“Not at this time,” the taller one said. “We will be in touch, though, and if you think of anything you have our card.”

She nodded and the two officers left.

Lisa turned and gave Cindy a weak smile. “Not exactly how I pictured our first meeting,” she said.

“Me either. Although it is good to finally meet you. Kyle told me a lot about you.”

“And he talks about you constantly.”

“He does?” Cindy asked, trying to mask her surprise.

“Yes. He’s very proud of all the cases you help the police solve. It’s like you’re a real life Nancy Drew, only cooler.”

Cindy felt her cheeks grow warm at the compliment. “And I hear you’re a genius with interior design.”

“Did you like what I did with your parents’ place?”

Cindy sighed. “I haven’t seen it, to be honest.”

Lisa nodded. “That’s right. I forgot that you don’t ever go home.”

Cindy winced. Hearing a stranger say it that way made it sound bad. There were lots of reasons she didn’t, but none of them that she wanted to get into right now. “So, your parents live here in town?” she asked, trying to deflect.

“Just outside of town. I sent them home to get some rest just a little bit ago.”

“I’m sure they needed it,” Cindy said. She covered a yawn with her hand, and looked closely at Lisa. Aside from the bruises on her face her skin was bone white and there were dark circles under her eyes. “You could probably use some rest, too,” she added.

Lisa shook her head. “I can’t rest until I know Kyle is going to be okay.”

“I’m sure he will be,” Cindy said, lying for both their sakes.

Lisa’s eyes shimmered with tears. “I just keep going over it and over it in my mind, thinking about what I could have done, how I could have stopped it from happening.”

“My dad told me that you guys were hit when a car ran a red light,” Cindy said. “There’s nothing you can do about that. It was an accident.”

“I know, but I keep thinking about...everything, you know?” Lisa said. “If we had hit that intersection one second sooner or one second later, then we would have spent the day celebrating our engagement. Instead we’re here.”

“You can’t think like that,” Cindy said, her heart breaking for the other woman. “Counting the seconds won’t help you. I mean, maybe if you’d been a few seconds earlier or later you might have been in an even worse accident.”

“I don’t know how it could have been worse,” Lisa sniffled as tears started to stream down her face.

You could have both been killed on impact
, Cindy thought but decided not to say it out loud.

Instead she reached out and grabbed Lisa’s good hand, and gave it a little squeeze. “So, tell me how Kyle proposed,” she said.

Lisa smiled a little. “Kyle decided about a month ago that he wanted to meet my parents and so he arranged for us to take a quick vacation out here. When I visit I usually just stay with them. I tend to avoid the Vegas strip like the plague. Kyle made all the arrangements, though. I could tell he was going for a romantic gesture and he wouldn’t be talked out of it. So, after a while, I gave up and just went with it.”

“Sometimes with Kyle that’s all you can do.”

“I know, right? When he gets something in his head, he just has to see it through,” Lisa said. “Half the time it’s really charming and the other half it’s...”

“Irritating?” Cindy suggested.

“Yes, exactly! Anyway, we checked into our hotel two days ago. He had booked us two rooms at the Excalibur. It’s the one that’s shaped like a castle. Anyway, he said he had some work calls to make but he told me he’d meet me in a couple of hours for dinner. Then he called and apologized. He said he was going to be running late, but that he didn’t want me to miss anything. He’d gotten us tickets to the medieval dinner show at the hotel with all the knights on horseback jousting. He said he’d be there just as soon as he could.”

Lisa paused and cleared her throat. Cindy quickly handed her a cup of water from the bedside tray, and Lisa drank it.

“Thank you,” she said, handing the cup back.

“No problem. What happened next?”

“I went to the box office and picked up my ticket. We had seats in the first row of one of the sections. The knights came out on horseback, and they all looked magnificent. The master of ceremonies made an announcement and said that one knight was on a special crusade of his own that night. I kept looking for Kyle, sad that he was missing out. All of a sudden this one knight rode his horse right up to the edge of the arena until he was right in front of me. He tilted his lance forward and I noticed that there was a satin bow tied on it, and on the bow was a ring. He took off his helmet and it was Kyle.”

Lisa’s eyes were tearing up again. Cindy’s were, too, as she pictured the scene playing out.

“He said that he would slay dragons for me, that he loved me. He asked me to marry him. I said ‘yes’ and untied the ring. A squire came and took his horse and he came to sit beside me. Everyone toasted us and cheered. It was amazing, crazy, so very, very over-the-top.”

“So very Kyle,” Cindy said with a choked laugh that ended as a sob.

Lisa nodded. “I barely even saw the rest of the show, I was so dazed. It turns out he knew some of the guys from one of his filming trips here and I guess he’d been planning this for a while.”

“I know when I saw him back in November he seemed pretty sure you were the one,” Cindy said, hoping it would bring Lisa comfort in some small way.

A nurse bustled in, interrupting, and Cindy took a moment to dry her eyes.

“You need to rest now,” the nurse told Lisa, giving a significant glance at Cindy.

“I can’t,” Lisa protested.

“You must. I’m giving you something to help with that,” the nurse said.

Cindy took the hint and stood shakily to her feet. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she promised Lisa who just nodded.

Out in the hall Cindy checked her phone. No messages from her father yet. She wanted to call Jeremiah, but she knew she’d completely lose it and she didn’t want to sob uncontrollably in the hospital corridor. She leaned for a
second against the wall, exhausted, spent, and unsure what to do with herself.

“Cindy? Are you okay?”

She glanced up at the sound of her name and stared at a man standing a couple of feet from her. It took her a moment, but she finally recognized him as Martin, the man who’d been next to her on the plane.

“I have to admit I kind of wondered if I’d run into you,” he said.

She stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

“My job. I’m a salesman, remember? I sell hospital supplies and equipment. I was supposed to take the administrator of this hospital out to dinner tonight, but he had a family thing he had to deal with.”

“Oh.”

He took a step closer, his brow furrowing. “Seriously, are you okay? How’s your brother?”

“Not good,” she admitted.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is he in there?” he said, gesturing to the room she’d just left.

“No, his fiancée is in there. She’s doing better than he is.”

“Oh. Well, where are you headed?”

“I don’t know,” she said. It was the truth.

“Well, I haven’t eaten, so care to join me downstairs? The cafeteria here isn’t half bad.”

“I’ve already eaten.”

“Okay, then watch me eat and have a cup of coffee. You look like you need some caffeine to keep you going.”

She had nowhere else to go and he was right, caffeine would probably be a good idea.

“Okay,” she said with a weary nod. She took one step away from the wall and then stopped.

She was tired and not thinking quite straight, but she had a sudden pressing question she needed him to answer. “You’re not going to like try to kill me or kidnap me or anything, are you?”

It sounded absurd even as she was saying it.

“Excuse me?” he asked, eyebrows raising incredulously. “Ah, no. Do I look like a killer or a kidnapper?”

“No, but you’d be surprised how many people are and don’t look like it.”

He took a step backward, hands partially raised.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really tired and I’ve been through some...stuff...the last few years.”

“Clearly,” he said, nodding. He still looked wary, though.

“You’re right. I need some caffeine. Shall we go?”