“I think we went blind.”
When she felt him shift, Abra opened her eyes, looked into the glint of his. “No, I can see you. It’s just dark. There’s only a quarter moon tonight.”
“I feel like I landed on it.”
“A trip to the moon.” It made her smile as she brushed at his hair. “I like it. All I need now is some water, before I die of thirst, and maybe some food before we try for the return trip.”
“I can supply the water. I keep some in the . . .” He rolled over, reached out for the nightstand, and ended up on the floor. “What the hell!”
“Are you okay?” She scrambled to the edge of the bed to stare down at him. “Why are you on the floor?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s the lamp? Where’s the nightstand?”
“I don’t know. Did we end up in an alternate universe?” He rubbed his hip as he got to his feet, and stood straining to see while his eyes adjusted to the dark. “Something’s not right. The terrace doors are supposed to be over there, but they’re over there. And the . . . Wait a minute.”
Cautious, he moved in the darkened room, cursed when his toe stubbed against a chair, skirted it, then groped for the bedside lamp.
The light flashed on.
“Why am I over here?” she asked him.
“Because the bed’s over there. It was over here. Now it’s over there and turned sideways.”
“We moved the bed?”
“It was over here,” he repeated, then walked back to her. “Now it’s over here.” He got back in as she sat up beside him. Both of them sat, studying the empty space between the two nightstands.
“That’s a lot of pent-up sexual energy,” she decided.
“I’d say massive amounts. Has this ever happened to you before?”
“It’s a first.”
“Me, too.” He turned, grinned at her. “I’m going to mark it down on the calendar.”
Laughing, she twined her arms around his neck. “Let’s leave it here for now, see if we can move it back again later.”
“There are a lot of other beds in this house. We could experiment. I think . . . Shit. Shit. Pent-up sexual energy. Abra, the bed’s here, the nightstands, and the condoms are over there. I didn’t think. I couldn’t think.”
“We’re okay. I’m on birth control. How long have you been storing up your sexual energy?”
“Some over a year.”
“Same here. I think that area of safety’s covered, so to speak. Why don’t we hydrate, eat, then see what else we can move?”
“I really like the way your mind works.”
She was right about the soup. It was exceptional. He’d begun to think she was very rarely wrong about anything.
They sat at the kitchen island, he in flannel pants and a sweatshirt, Abra in one of his grandmother’s robes. Eating soup, hunks of bread, drinking wine, talking about movies she claimed he had to see or books they’d both read.
He told her about his find in the house’s library. “It’s interesting, definitely written by a woman with a male pseudonym.”
“That sounds biased and a little snarky.”
“Not meant that way,” he claimed. “Writer’s a word without gender. But this struck me as female, especially given the era it was written in. It’s a little flowery, definitely romantic. I liked it, even if it should’ve been labeled fiction.”
“I’d like to be the judge of that. Can I borrow it?”
“Sure. I thought, given the trench, I’d take a pass through the library here, read what we’ve got on the legend, the Calypso, on Nathanial Broome and my ancestor Violeta.”
“Now that’s a project I can get behind. I always meant to ask Hester if I could borrow some of the books, but never did. I tend toward fiction or self-help.”
Since he considered her one of the most self-aware and contented women he’d ever met, he had to ask, “What help does your self need?”
“Depends on the day. But when I first moved here I still felt a little unsteady. I read a lot of books on finding balance, dealing with trauma.”
He laid a hand over hers. “I don’t want to bring back bad memories, but I want to ask how long he got.”
“Twenty years. The prosecutor was pushing for rape, battery, attempted murder, and he would’ve faced life. So they pleaded it down to aggravated sexual assault, adding in the knife, and held to the maximum. I didn’t think he’d take it, but—”
“Factor in the stalking, the premeditation in breaking into your place, eyewitnesses in your neighbors. He was smart to take it. How are you about the twenty?”