“What? Oh. I’m okay, Amelia,” I said, thinking that she had heard that I was walking back and had been worried about me. “I had no problem.”
“Yes, I can see that, and I’m glad, but you have a stubborn young man in the living room who won’t go up to his room and rest as the doctor ordered until he sees you to confirm that you are indeed all right.”
She stepped back from the living-room entrance so I could enter.
“Jim?”
“Who else? Please tell him he has to follow the doctor’s orders, or he’ll only make things worse for himself. Apparently, he needs to hear it from you,” she added firmly when I didn’t move.
“Yes, of course,” I said, and hurried in.
Jim was sitting back on the sofa. He wore a light blue robe and black fur-lined slippers and looked as if he had been in a brutal prizefight in which his opponent didn’t wear gloves. Days later, the bruises from the airbag were larger, darker, and deeper. He was also in a neck brace.
“Why aren’t you upstairs in bed?” I demanded, looking as cross as I could.
“I’m not as bad as I look,” he said, leaning forward. He was staring up at me, almost as if he didn’t know who I was. He looked as if he had fallen under a spell. He smiled. “I’m truly amazed at you, Lorelei.”
“Why?” Had he seen something, realized something, and learned something that I’d rather no one there knew?
“You really didn’t get a scratch. I’m so happy.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved. “I told you I was fine. Now, you had better listen to Mrs. Winston and your doctors and go back to your room.”
“He knows we’re bringing his dinner up to him,” Mrs. Winston said. She was standing right behind me. “And he knows he’s not to be walking around the first day home, for sure.”
“I feel terrible having everyone wait on me. I can walk up and down the stairs and sit at the dinner table. The doctor didn’t say I was confined to my room. Exactly.”
“Maybe we don’t want to look at you,” Mrs. Winston said, half kidding. “It could ruin our appetites.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Look at him,” she told me. “He’s ready to burst into tears.”
“Jim, she’s only kidding. You should follow the doctor’s orders and give yourself a chance to heal. I’ll stop by to see you after dinner.”
That put a smile back on his face. “I never properly apologized for all of this,” he said, rising. “I know I must have looked like a fool driving into that mailbox, but I would swear on my mother’s grave that there was an elderly man standing right in front of us.”
“Sure, put it all on your mother, even now,” Mrs. Winston said. “Just like all you young people these days,” she added, as if she had actually lived during the time of John Adams.
“I was just trying to impress Lorelei that I had no choice but to turn quickly and—”
“I’m not blaming you, Jim. I told you that. C’mon. Go up to your room and relax. I’ll walk up with you,” I said.
He nodded and headed out. Mrs. Winston gave me a nod of approval for how I was handling him. She followed us to the foot of the stairs. I looked up. Had I imagined it, or was he there in my room waiting for me? It was on the tip of my tongue to say something, to ask Mrs. Winston about it, but I held back.
I followed Jim to his room. Mrs. Winston or Mrs. McGruder had brought him additional pillows, and there was a tray at the foot of his bed. His room was very neat and organized. There was an antique maple hutch with a drop-down secretary desk on the right. A small pile of books and some papers were on the desk.
He nodded at it. “My substitute teacher sent along the essays I had assigned last week. The problem is, I get a little headache every time I start reading.”
“They’ll just have to wait,” I said. “Go on. Get into bed. I’ll stop by later.”
“So, you’re really not mad at me?” he asked.
“Of course not, Jim. You did what you thought you had to do.”
“But the police claim there was no one at the scene of the accident fitting the description I gave them.”
“Once he saw what he had caused, he ran off. Case closed,” I said.