Curiosity overtaking me, I sat down to look things over. The papers came from Jarret’s work, judging by the logo: Englehardt, Cultural Resource Management. The left-hand drawers held boxes of envelopes and unused checks, USB flash drives, thin black cords, and miscellaneous office supplies. The bottom drawer on the right had files labeled with neat hand-printed tabs: gas bill, electric bill, phone bill...
As I pulled out the credit card file, Mike darkened the doorway.
“Looks like Jarret’s going to be awhile on the phone.” He stepped into the den.
I set the file on the desk and turned the chair to watch him peruse the room.
“Jarret has quite the weight set.”
“He does. I guess he likes to stay fit.” I had unintentionally dropped my accent. Why did he make me so uncomfortable? He was a doctor, after all? “Mike, can I ask you...” I sucked in a deep breath and resolved to trust him, at least with this one question. “I don’t know what happened to me, but, I mean, you checked me over, so do you think the baby’s okay?”
His expression showing compassion and a hint of amusement, Mike squatted before me.
I tried to avoid staring at the ugly scar under his eye, but I couldn’t help wondering how it got there. Probably a childhood accident or something innocent like that.
His pale green eyes conveyed sincerity and comfort as he gazed up at me. “Your baby’s fine, Caitlyn. I checked its heartbeat with a fetal Doppler.”
“A what? You did?” Joy rushed into my heart at the words “your baby” and my hand shot to my tummy.
Eyes dropping to my waist, he smiled and nodded. “If you’d like, I can check again.”
“No, that’s okay, if you checked already. I—I didn’t know.”
“You know now. And you’d best take care of yourself. No more running off through the woods and getting your head banged up.”
“In the woods? What makes you think I was in the woods when I got my head—”
Averting his gaze, he laughed and straightened. “I meant no more running off like you did Saturday morning. Who knows what you were doing Friday night.” He stared past me. “Say, is that your camera?”
“What?” I turned to see. “Oh, I think that’s—”
Mike reached for the camera just as Jarret poked his head into the room. “What’re you guys doing in here? It’s nice out. Let’s go sit on the deck.”
“Sure. That sounds fine,” Mike said.
“I’ll be out in a bit,” I said.
Jarret gave me a nod and his gaze slid to Mike, as if he suspected Mike made me uncomfortable.
As soon as they left, I grabbed the camera. I’d meant to look through the pictures stored in it. When Jarret had taken it from me, I had forgotten all about it.
It took me a minute to figure out how to view the pictures. Most of them were boring. A field with orange markers, a section of land where the grass had been taken up, the same section dug out, a row of stones in red dirt, a spread of dirty tools evenly spaced on the ground... So far, I’d found no people, other than a guy and a girl standing in the background of a picture of dirty pottery. The dark-haired man dwarfed the petite girl. His posture, arms out and palms turned up, made him seem angry or defensive. The girl stood rigidly with one hand on her hip and the other a raised fist.
Jarret was in the next picture.
I smiled.
He pointed to the neck of the dirty piece of pottery he held, his self-assured attitude coming across. Was it the confident look in his eyes? The tilt of his head? His mouth was open as if the camera caught him speaking. He had such nice, shapely lips for a guy.
What was I thinking?
I clicked to the next picture. The couple stood in the background of this picture too. They were kissing. The next few pictures were as boring as the first, so I decided against viewing the rest and set the camera on the desk.
Switching gears, I picked up the credit card file. One could learn a lot from a credit card statement. I opened the file and reviewed the top statement. April. We used the card to eat out twice a week. We seemed to have a favorite restaurant, El Sombrero’s, and we liked to try new places. We shopped at—
Wow. Jarret shops at the Supermart! With his expensive tastes, I found it hard to believe. Of course, he did say we struggled to make ends meet.
A charge to the Indian Fort Hotel caught my attention. Why would we stay at a hotel in the town where we lived? I flipped to another statement: March. Another hotel charge. And the month before that... an airline ticket? According to the description, someone had purchased a single ticket to South Dakota.
CHAPTER 10
AS IF VERIFYING what he’d claimed the other day—that his culinary skills were limited to eggs and cooking on the grill—Jarret made omelets for breakfast. The two of us ate in sleepy silence under the yellowish glow of the overhead light in the eat-in kitchen. Outside, gray clouds stretched across the sky and the birds seemed to have forgotten how to sing, creating a sullen atmosphere that matched my mood. After breakfast, I offered to wash the dishes, but he said he’d do them. So, I wandered about the house.
He didn’t do the dishes. Instead, he cleaned the table and spread work papers on it. Then, with one knee resting on a chair, he leaned over the table and shuffled papers and 35mm slides around as if working a puzzle. Every now and then, he held a slide up to the light, squinted at it, and jotted down a note. He barely seemed to notice me.
At first the lack of attention had given me a sense of relief and I’d curled up on the couch to try to finish the Western I’d started. But I soon found myself staring at the fly that had been buzzing around the house yesterday and was now flitting around in circles, trapped between the window and the screen. Trapped and restless. I sighed, identifying with it.
My ears perked every time the phone rang. It rang a lot. Jarret always took the calls outside. Most of the time, when he returned the phone to its cradle in the kitchen, he looked grumpy. Sometimes he muttered under his breath.
I had just finished washing the breakfast dishes and gotten out the whole-wheat bread to make sandwiches for lunch, when he came grumbling back inside with the phone.
“What’s the matter?” I said, mildly interested.
“Nothing. Just work.” He gathered a few papers and made a pile on the table, clearing room for us to have lunch.
By noon, the rain clouds had passed and a gentle breeze blew through the house. We sat at the table eating lunch, each lost in our own thoughts. With every bite of every meal, my thoughts turned to the baby and my heart stirred.
When I lifted my tuna, tomato, pickle, lettuce, and cheese sandwich to my mouth, a tomato slid out. It landed on the heaping pile of potato chips on my plate and knocked a few chips to the table. As I reached for the chips, my napkin slid from the table and fell to the floor.
I pushed my chair back and looked at it. A question popped into my mind, halting me from retrieving the napkin. I turned to Jarret instead. “Jarret? Did I drop something?”
“Huh?” One cheek bulged with a bite of his sandwich. His gaze darted to the floor and back to me.
“I mean, not recently, but before. Like, salsa and applesauce?”
“What?” he asked with a mouthful of ham and tomato sandwich.
I sighed. Why didn’t my words come out right? Maybe I should’ve kept it to myself. It was probably nothing. “Never mind.”
He swallowed. “Did you...” He cleared his throat and took a swig of water. “Did you say salsa and applesauce?”
“Yes, I—I was just wondering. Did I ever drop salsa and applesauce on the kitchen floor?”
His face froze. The sandwich slipped from his hand and fell apart on his plate. “You…remember that?”
“Sort of. It didn’t seem like it was here, though.”
He shook his head, a desperate, anxious gleam emerging in his brown eyes. “It wasn’t here. Tell me what you remember.”
The emotion radiating from him startled me but then tou
ched some deep place in my heart, making me want to give him more. “Okay. Well, Sunday, when I dropped the pickle relish, I got this frantic, sick feeling and I think a memory came back. I saw broken glass, red slop, and an ugly mess on the kitchen floor. Salsa and applesauce, I think. And you were there. You helped clean it up. And...” Turning inward, I searched for the words to explain how it had made me feel. “An overpowering emotion struck me the day it happened, something wonderful and violent inside me, something I don’t understand.”
Looking up, I found him blinking back tears, his forehead wrinkling.
He wiped his face, glanced at the ceiling, and looked at me with the hint of a smile. “You remember that? You’re getting your memory back.” He stretched his arms across the table and rested his hands two inches from mine. “That was the first time we kissed. You kissed me.”
Once I processed his statement, my eyes popped open and my temperature spiked. “Our first kiss? I kissed you?”
“Yeah.” One of his hands jerked, as if he were dying to stretch those last two inches and hold my hands.
“I don’t remember that.” I resisted the urge to pull back. It wouldn’t kill me to let him touch me. I should hold his hand. Maybe it would spark something. Our first kiss? If only I could fully remember. “Tell me about it.”
“It was at my house. You were getting ready for the Salazars’ visit. And we hadn’t been talking for a few days, ’cuz—”
The phone rang. We both looked at it and then at each other. It rang again and he sighed. On the third ring, he got up to answer it and carried it out to the deck.
“Yeah, this is Jarret.”
After taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, trying to regulate my mood, I took another bite of my sandwich. I hadn’t meant to be nosy, but his voice traveled into the house.
“Hey, hey, I want you to calm down. Calm down!”
I stopped chewing. That did not sound like a work call.
Jarret sat on the top step of the deck, facing the backyard. “I need you to listen to me... Heather, listen! It’s going to be okay.”
I dropped my sandwich. Heather?
Mumbling into the phone, Jarret got up and paced back and forth on the deck.
I pushed my chair out and stood. As I slid the screen door open, he caught my gaze and gulped as I approached. I stopped directly in front of him and folded my arms. “Heather? Really, you’re talking to a girl?” Just when I was beginning to believe I’d had it wrong about him... “Has she been calling all day? You said it was work.”
He shook his head. “Hold on,” he said into the phone. “I’ll explain in a minute,” he whispered as he moved past me.
I stared, dumbfounded as he went back into the house. Explain what? One minute we’re discussing our first kiss and now he’s talking to another girl. “Give me a chance,” he had said. A chance for what?
Irritation building, morphing into anger, I followed him into the house. “Who’s Heather?”
He turned and gave me the once-over. Backing away, he whispered into the phone, “Now wait. Slow down. It’s not as bad as it seems.”
I gave him a fierce, narrow-eyed glare. All the rumors I’d heard about him in high school rushed into my mind. Was Heather a girlfriend?
He put up his index finger and mouthed, “One minute.” Mumbling into the phone, he turned and headed for the weight room.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” I zipped past him and blocked the door with my body.
Jarret pressed the phone to his chest and whispered to me, “I need to help her. I’ll explain in a minute.”
I let out a disgusted, “Her?”
He rolled his eyes. Then he touched my arm, which he had to know would make me move out of his way. But I hadn’t moved far enough, and our bodies brushed as he slunk into the weight room.
Skin crawling, I scooted back more.
He gave me a glance and proceeded to close the door, whispering into the phone before it clicked shut.
I strained to hear his low voice, now muffled by the door, unable to make out anything, until he said, “The baby.”
I jerked back. The baby? Did he mean our baby? Or some other baby? Heather’s baby? Was he cheating on me? My eyebrows drew together. My heart slammed against my ribs with hard, angry thuds. I did not need this.
This was the father of my baby? Why had he bothered saying I shouldn’t think of him as being sixteen? He was no different. How did I end up with him? Why hadn’t I seen it before I married him? Could I really have been so blind? He must’ve seduced me with his smooth ways. What a fool I had been.
I stomped to the bedroom and snatched Jarret’s wallet from the dresser. I pulled out all the bills, maybe a hundred dollars’ worth, and stuffed them into a canvas purse I found hanging in the closet. As I headed for the front door, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
The weight room door opened. Jarret leaned against the doorframe, the phone still pressed to his ear, mumbling low.
He could have his private call. I was out of here. How could I possibly maintain a peaceful disposition for the baby when I had to deal with his games?
No sooner had I touched the front doorknob than Jarret dashed over. He slid between me and the door, peered down his nose at me and shook his head slowly. “Just wait,” he said maybe to me, maybe to Heather.
I stepped back and made a face to show my disgust. “You can’t keep me here. I don’t care if I have amnesia, and I don’t care if I am your wife. I don’t want to live with you.” I regretted saying such harsh words. I never said things like that.
My words should’ve stung him, but his eyes only flickered. Then he lowered his head and spoke low into the phone. “So don’t tell them yet. I’ll go with you if you need me to.”
The nerve! I growled then shouted, “Get out of my way!”
“Uh, yeah. I gotta little problem here.” He gave me a glance. “Don’t be scared. I promise you’ll get through this... All right. Bye.” He pressed a button and tossed the phone to the leather chair.
I glared, stars popping out one by one in my vision. “So, how many girls are there?” Self-control abandoned me and I lunged at him. It didn’t feel real as I smacked my palms against his chest. I had never shoved anyone in my life.
He yielded to my violence, making no effort to resist me. His back cracked against the door and his head rolled back. He winced.
“You don’t know what that was about.” An aura of calm surrounded him. Did nothing disturb him? “Why don’t you let me explain—”
“I don’t know what it’s about, huh?” Did he think I was stupid? “I’m right here. I heard you.” I grimaced with anger. “Let me guess: is she pregnant?”
He inhaled and, avoiding my gaze, nodded.
“Yours?”
With an air of exhaustion, he exhaled loudly and pushed off the door. “I’m a married man. Married to you.” He stood too close.
I scooted to the loveseat, snatched up a decorative pillow, and whipped it at him. He dodged out of the way. “Married! What does that mean to you?”
His arms shot up in an agitated gesture, and he started pacing back and forth behind the couch.
“I told you I didn’t want you talking to girls!” I shrieked. I hated losing control to anger. I needed to calm down for the baby. Sucking in a deep breath, my bottom lip trembled. Why did I care what he did? If he wasn’t my baby’s father, I wouldn’t care at all.
He ran his hand through his hair and stopped by the bookshelf. Was he looking at our wedding picture?
“So, Jarret...” With a few deep breaths, I had composed myself but I couldn’t avoid the accusing tone. “Who went to South Dakota last month?”
He spun to face me, irritation in his eyes. “What?”
“I saw the credit card bill. One plane ticket to South Dakota. Was it for me? Was I trying to get away from you? Did I want to move back home?”
He sighed and stomped past me, stooping for the pillow I had thrown. “No. I went
back home.” He whipped the pillow onto the loveseat and snatched up the phone from the chair.
With jerky, angry movements, I grabbed the purse I had inadvertently dropped and slung the strap over my shoulder. Then I followed him to the kitchen. “Alone? Why didn’t we go? Was it a little vacation? I am your wife, right? Shouldn’t I have been with you?”
He set the phone in its cradle, grabbed the edge of the countertop, and leaned into it a few times, rocking back and forth like a nervous child. Then he pounded a fist to the counter, took a deep breath, and glanced in the direction of the sliding glass doors. A squirrel sat on the patio table.
Leaning against the opposite counter, I glared at the back of Jarret’s head. “Well? Why didn’t I go?”
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “You couldn’t go. It was a last-minute thing.”
“What was a last-minute thing?”
Straightening, he folded his arms and turned to face me with a sulky, stubborn look.
“Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“I’d like you to remember it for yourself.”
A surge of anger made my eyes snap open as wide as they could go. How could anyone make me so furious? “Tell. Me. Now.”
His gaze skittered to the floor. “I, uh, I went to see Zoë.”
“Zoë?” I searched through my memories, trying to fit pieces together. Zoë had broken up with Jarret after the baby. They’d avoided each other after that, for the most part. She hadn’t dated anyone in her sophomore year of high school, but then over the summer she’d met someone. Was she still seeing him? How long ago was that? Why would Jarret fly back home to see Zoë? Zoë had once told me he’d taken the break-up hard. Did he still love her?
A burst of irritation coursed through me. Why wouldn’t my memories fall into place! My gaze snapped back to Jarret, who still stared at me through sulky eyes. “You went to see my best friend, your ex-girlfriend, without me? Did I know about it?”
Eyes narrowing, he snapped, “Of course you knew.”
“Really?” I let out an angry laugh. “So, we must have an open relationship. That sounds like me.”
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