I started to climb, but it felt as if the stair, the entire room, was tilting. I could barely hang on.
Matt stood at the bottom, studying me.
“No closer,” I said. I didn’t want either of us to die.
He put a foot on the bottom plank. “Something’s wrong with you, Megan.”
“No closer!”
I pulled myself up another step, then another. It was like moving in a dream, climbing in slow motion.
Matt started up the steps, but Mrs. Riley came after him like a cat. I saw something flash in her hand. Matt dropped backward. He turned and struggled with her, grabbing her wrists. A knife flew across the floor.
“What have you done to her, Lydia?” he demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Liar!” he shouted. “You’ve poisoned her.”
The woman fought to get free. He pinned her hands behind her, then turned his face up to me. “Don’t run from me, Megan.”
I took two more steps up.
“Can’t you understand? You need help, medical help.
Come down.”
There was a pipe propping open the trapdoor. If I could get through the door and close it, I could use my weight to keep it shut.
“Please,” Matt said, grasping the ladder with one hand, “don’t let Lydia do this to us.”
I reached up to pull myself through.
“April!” he cried. “Don’t leave me again!”
It was the name he had written on my heart. I turned to look down at him. My foot slipped. Reaching out wildly, I grabbed hold of the pipe that propped open the door. For a moment it held me, then I felt its cold iron slide through my fingers, felt myself falling backward. I heard a rushing sound in my ears and plunged into darkness.
I opened my eyes in a white room with pale-striped drapes.
It smelled like raspberry bathroom cleaner.
“Where am I?”
“With me.”
I turned toward Matt’s voice.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
I lifted my head and glanced around. “Well, since I’m in a hospital, I can’t be feeling too well.”
He grinned. “You’re talking like yourself, and you’ve been acting like yourself. The nurse said if you pulled out your IV one more time, she’d staple it to you.”
“It’s out,” I observed.
“The doctor said that you’d come around soon enough, and then they’d irrigate you.”
“Oh, that sounds like fun.” I tried to sit up.
“Easy,” he said, and slid his arm behind me to help.
I rested back against him. “Thanks. You don’t want your arm back, do you?”
“Nah. Slide over.” He sat next to me on the bed. It felt good, the way he kept me close.
“Do you remember anything?”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “If it was a dream, I’m crazy, and if it was real, some awful things have happened.”
“Some awful things have happened,” he said gently. “You may not want to talk about it yet.”
“The sooner the better,” I told him.
He leaned forward to study my face, then sat back again, convinced. “All right. You, Lydia, and I were at the mill, on the first floor. Do you remember our conversation?”
“You talked about who killed Avril, but it was confusing.
The sounds and images kept overlapping. Sometimes I was in the past, sometimes the present.”
“You were drugged.”
“Drugged? But I didn’t have anything to eat all day,” I protested. “Just tea at Mrs. Riley’s.”
Matt said nothing, waiting for me to figure it out. I felt as if I’d just been punched in the stomach. “She did it. She did to me what she did to Avril.”
He lay his cheek against my forehead. “I almost lost you a second time.”
“I remember that she tried to keep you away from me. I thought she was protecting me.”
“She didn’t want me to interfere before the poison took full effect,” he said.
I shivered. “She wanted to kill me, before I could kill her. I remember being at the top of the stairs. My foot slipped and I reached up for something. A pipe, but it gave way. I started falling. I don’t remember landing, just falling.”
One corner of Matt’s mouth turned up in that smirky smile of his, then I noticed the wrap on his left ankle. “Oh, no! Tell me I didn’t.”
“Okay. You didn’t come down like a ballerina,” he said, then laughed at me. “It’s just a sprain. But it’s the last time I’m catching you, so don’t try it again.”