Chapter 14
One week later
Have you ever had one of those days where just about everything
seems to be going wrong? As soon as
Olivia woke up that morning, she could tell it was going to be one of those
days.
It was still dim in her room when she woke up, and so, assuming it
was still very early in the morning, Olivia rolled over to glance at the clock,
prepared to go right back to sleep.
But when she caught sight of the digital red numbers on the clock
on her night table, she gasped and squinted at it. 11:30?
Olivia never slept that late.
And she had gone to bed before midnight the night before. That meant she had slept about twelve hours
straight.
And why was it so dark? A
clap of thunder sounded, answering her question. She then became aware of the raindrops
clattering onto the gutter on the roof outside her bedroom window.
Olivia groaned. She hated
rain, especially now that she practically lived on the beach. What a drag.
But as she felt the pressure building in her head, she no longer
cared about the rain. Within minutes,
she had another splitting headache, one of the worst she had had in weeks.
The throbbing pain just got worse and worse, nearly bringing tears
to her eyes. She longed to just go back
to sleep, for although she had had twelve hours of sleep, she still felt
exhausted. But the pain would not allow
her any comfort.
Olivia moaned as she struggled to sit up. She got out from under her warm covers and
slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed. As she stood up, her vision darkened as
momentary dizziness plagued her. She
stood still for a few seconds, until she could see clearly again, and then
staggered into her bathroom.
She opened up the medicine cabinet and took out her bottle of
Excedrin, her new best friend, it seemed.
“Great,” she muttered, as she shook the last two pills out of the
bottle. “Now I’ll have to run to the
drugstore and pick up some more.”
The thought of that made her feel even more fatigued. She could barely walk, let alone drive to the
store.
Suddenly, a wave of nausea came over her. Olivia dropped the pills in her hand,
quickly using it to cover her mouth as she rushed over to the toilet. Seconds later, she was leaning over it,
retching violently.
When she was finished, she flushed the toilet and sank down onto
the tiled floor of the bathroom, too weak and sick to even stand back up. The cold tiles felt good on her clammy skin. Suddenly very sleepy, Olivia lay down right
on the bathroom floor and closed her eyes.
Moments later, she was out cold.
***
A few hours later
Nick sighed as he hung up the phone. He had been trying to call Olivia for the
past three hours. But she was either
not home or not answering the phone.
And he didn’t think she was gone.
After all, her car was parked in the driveway, and it was pouring rain
outside, so he doubted she would go out on foot.
Nick wondered what was up with her lately. She hadn’t been out much the past week, and
they hadn’t done anything since the boat trip.
Maybe it was her headaches again.
He knew that she got bad migraines.
Maybe she was taking a nap or something.
Nick glanced out his window and over to her house. He could see her garbage cans still sitting
at the top of the driveway, turned upside down from when the garbage truck had
been by, hours earlier.
Maybe I should go over and bring her garbage cans up to her
garage for her so she won’t have to go out into the rain to get them, Nick
thought. Nodding, he slipped on his
shoes and headed out the front door.
He hauled her wet, plastic garbage cans up her long driveway and
set them by her garage door. Then he
headed up to her front porch, hoping to ring the bell and find out if she was
home.
Lying on the porch steps was the morning paper. Nick frowned at it, wondering why she hadn’t
brought it in yet. The newspaper was
wrapped in a plastic covering, but Nick could see that rain was somehow seeping
into it, for the ink on the paper was starting to run.
Picking it up, he hurried up onto the porch, taking cover from the
rain under the overhang, and rang her doorbell. He waited a moment, and when no one
answered, he rang it again.
He rang it several more times after that and then tried the
knob. It was locked, either because she
was gone or hadn’t let unlocked it from the night before. But if she had left the house earlier that
day, wouldn’t she have gotten the paper and garbage cans before she left?
Something didn’t seem right to Nick, and he didn’t feel
comfortable just leaving the paper there on her porch and heading back to his
house. He tried the doorknob again, to
make sure it wasn’t just stuck, but it wouldn’t turn at all.
Nick frowned, then thought of something. He lifted up a corner of the mat he was
standing on, and sure enough, there was a key lying under it. He personally thought it was a stupid thing
to do to leave a key somewhere like that, but in this case, it had come in
handy for him.
He used the key to unlock the front door and went inside, quietly
wiping his wet feet off on the rug in the foyer. Glancing around, he saw no sign of life and
heard nothing either.
“Olivia!” he called. He
looked into the living room first, but it was empty. Same with the kitchen and all the other
downstairs rooms. So he headed
upstairs.
“Olivia?” he asked again, as he walked slowly down the hall. The door to her bedroom was closed. He went up to it and softly knocked. No answer.
Quietly, he turned the knob and pushed the door open just enough
so he could peek in. He saw that
Olivia’s bed was unmade, but she was not in it.
Nick opened the door wider and stuck his head in, looking around
the room. She was not in there. But then he saw that the bathroom light was
on, the door partway open.
“Olivia?” he called softly, stepping into the bedroom. He walked through the bedroom and peered
into the bathroom. And he gasped.
***
