Free Gatekeeper by Archer Mayor Page A

and that despite her protests to the contrary, she'd eventually become firm-footed enough to start longing for her independence of old. His moving out had actually come as somewhat of a relief to both of them.
    Still, it felt funny to be "back home," where, as with a long-delayed visit to a grandparent's house, familiar smells and sights commingled and got confused with foreign ones. The pull between feeling like an intruder and standing on safe ground was palpable, and Joe proceeded quickly through the darkness upstairs to Gail's bedroom hoping to end the awkwardness as fast as possible. But he also couldn't lie to himself—by now, he'd become alarmed by her silence.
    He paused on the threshold of her room, the moon through the skylight revealing a shape in her bed.
    "Gail?"
    He half held his breath to better hear some sound from her, watching intently, until the merest hint of a movement finally gave him relief. Only then did he step inside and cross over to the bed.
    "Gail. It's Joe."
    He sat by her side and gently laid his hand against her head, noticing as he did so the prescription bottle and glass of water on the nightstand.
    "Gail," he said, his voice still soft. "Wake up."
    With his other hand, he reached behind the phone and hooked a finger around the cord, pulling it free from where it dangled unattached to its nearby outlet. That explained why she hadn't been answering his calls; only the downstairs machine had been picking up.
    He leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Come on, sweetheart. It's Joe."
    Finally, she stirred, moaning briefly.
    He took advantage of that to roll her onto her back, sweeping her hair clear of her face as he did.
    "Wake up, Gail."
    Her eyes fluttered and opened slightly.
    "Joe?" Her voice was groggy and clotted with induced sleep.
    "Yeah. It's me. Everything's okay. I had to see if you were all right."
    She blinked several times, clearly trying to understand what was going on.
    "Everything's okay?"
    "I hope so," he told her, kissing her cheek again. "I heard you had a tough time yesterday afternoon at Laurie's place. I'm sorry I wasn't there."
    The eyes closed again, hoping to shut out the memory. "He was horrible."
    "You don't have to worry about him. We got him. What happened, anyway?"
    She had all but surfaced by now, her breathing more rapid, her responses close to normal. He could still sense the effects of the sleeping pills, but his mind was at ease that she'd obviously only taken enough to knock herself out for a while.
    She rubbed a hand across her face. "Nothing really. I mean, nothing you could point at. I just had a bad flashback is all. The guy . . . something about him. He was creepy and insinuated what he wanted to have happen, but it was his smell more than anything that brought me back. He never touched me, but I almost felt it had happened all over again. I felt . . . violated. And scared. Humiliated."
    She suddenly raised both her arms and encircled Joe's neck, pulling him down to her and sobbing into his chest. "I thought it was behind me. Even when I was with him, I thought maybe I still had it under control. But then all afternoon I got pulled lower and lower."
    He let her cry for a while, rubbing her shoulder, his face half buried in her hair and her pillow, breathing her in.
    Eventually, she quieted enough that he could straighten slightly and look at her. "I've been worried about you. Called a few times, drove by earlier. Couldn't figure out where you'd gone. Sam said you came by."
    "It's not just that, Joe. It's Laurie, too. I can't get what she went through out of my mind. I feel responsible. Of all people, I should have known to watch out for her. I know how things are out there."
    Joe was shaking his head. "Gail, you can't do that. We all have our own lives to lead. We can care for each other and try to help when the going gets tough—you did that when you suggested Laurie come up here in the first place. But she came with her own baggage. You're not responsible