by Tammy Walsh
“What do you think he was referring to when he said the word ‘shadows’?”
“I have no idea. He wasn’t in the best condition. He’d just fallen from the sky. He was lucky to be saying anything at all.”
The officer nodded, not so sure.
“Did anything else happen while you waited for the ambulance to arrive?”
I thought back to the scene, with the rain pouring down and us caked in mud, and the final few gurgling belches from the plane as it sank deeper into the lake’s bedrock.
We were illuminated by my pick-up’s bright headlights and I quickly fished the worn blanket off the backseat.
I draped it over the pilot and crouched over him to prevent the worst of the rain from patting his face.
I probably should have dragged him onto the backseat of the pick-up but I didn’t want to move him and risk doing him further harm.
It was a strangely intimate moment.
It occurred to me even then, while I was perched over his unmoving body.
And I did the strangest thing, without even thinking.
I ran my fingers through his hair and hummed a tune as I rocked him gently back and forth.
No doubt it bubbled up from some deep mothering nature developed over millions of years of evolution.
I used a corner of the damp blanket to wipe the dirt from his face.
I began with his cheeks and forehead, then his nose and chin.
He had a remarkably handsome face beneath the grime.
His chin was a square, his hair thick and long enough to tickle his muscular shoulders.
His eyes fluttered open just once.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said, at a loss for what else to say. “I called an ambulance. They’re on their way.”
The guy’s lips moved but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“What?” I said, leaning closer and pressing my ear to his lips.
“Are you an angel?”
His voice was so soft it tugged at my heart for him to think he was dead.
Falling from such a height and into the lake, and managing to survive it, was nothing short of a miracle.
So if miracles could exist, why not angels?
“No, I’m not an angel,” I said.
“But you are.”
His hand drifted up to my face, and although he barely had the power, his fingers gently stroked me.
He peered into my eyes as I peered into his.
The moment belonged to us, so small and warm and personal, beside this lake and a constant stream of rain drizzling down on us.
The spell was broken only when the ambulance turned up and the man’s eyes fluttered shut.
“No,” I said to the officer, returning to the hospital waiting room. “Nothing else happened.”
The officer could probably tell when someone was lying to him, but he said nothing and tucked his notepad away.
“Is there anyone you would like us to call?” he said. “Or perhaps you would like a lift?”
“Sorry I’m late,” Liam said, hustling over to us.
The other cops nodded respectfully to their sheriff.
Liam ignored them and had eyes only for me.
He placed a hand on my shoulder.
I eyeballed it.
No doubt he did it in a way he thought was comforting but it felt more like he was claiming ownership over me.
His expression was soft and caring in a way I’d never associated with him in the past.
We had a relationship once, long ago.
Back when we were teenagers fooling around in the back seat of his Honda Accord.
One thing never led to another, and his pushy nature ended up shoving me violently away from him.
That, among other things…
I dumped him, and he hung around me for the rest of the school year.
After an endless campaign of calls and texts, I finally confronted him.
“We’re friends,” I told him. “Nothing more.”
He went silent for a good week and I breathed a sigh of relief.
When I next saw him, he greeted me with calm indifference.
Finally, I thought. Peace.
Shortly after that, I left Ashbourne and headed to Portland.
I hadn’t thought about him once in five years.
Not until I returned home.
It came as a shock when he was the first to welcome me at my parent’s home.
All at once, those negative experiences flooded my pre-frontal cortex and my guard was raised.
He flouted his badge like it’d been bestowed by God himself.
He came armed with a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates, keen to rekindle whatever relationship might still be possible.
But no relationship was possible.
I’d moved on, grown, and was shocked to see how little he had changed.
He had aged—and aged well—but that same impetuous nature and pinched expression still emerged every time I said or did something he disliked.
He either didn’t realize he did that or had no desire to know he did.
“I hope their questions weren’t too taxing,” he said, grinning at me amiably.
“No, not too difficult,” I said shrugging off his hand.
The two cops shared a glance, aimed pointedly in my direction.
Afraid of being embarrassed at my rebuff, Liam was quick to turn on them.
“Don’t you have some real police work to do?”
Neither of the cops pointed out he had been the one to send them there.
“Yes, sir,” the cops said before shuffling away, no doubt pleased to leave.
It only occurred to me then that the scene somehow felt… staged, as if they’d been given instructions on how to act.
The victorious grin on Liam’s face said it all.
Yes, he expected our relationship to restart after all these years.
I would tell him it was impossible, but not right now.
Not when he needed to investigate what’d happened with the pilot.
He might use the situation to engineer reasons to question me.
“Those two can be quite a handful at times,” he said. “Don’t worry, Isabella. I’ll protect you.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need protecting.”
He raised his hands in surrender.
“Hey, we’re on the same side, remember? We’re just doing our jobs and upholding the law.”
I folded my arms.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know you didn’t. How could you? You’ve only been back ninety-three days.”
Ninety-three days…
Somebody’s been counting…
“But this all does seem very fishy to me,” Liam said.
My ears perked up.
“What does?”
“The pilot. Falling out of the sky like that.”
“So maybe his plane suffered a malfunction.”
“It’s not the crash that smells fishy. Sometimes these things happen. It’s that no one seems interested in finding him.”
I blinked at this revelation.
“What do you mean? Surely the Air Force has records of their guys going off the radar?”
“You would have thought so. I certainly did. I’m pretty sure the Air Force would be here by now if it was anything of a… sensitive nature.”
He smirked at me as if he’d told me enough to understand what he was going on about.
“I’m not following you,” I said.
Liam glanced one way and then the other, checking to make sure no one could overhear us.
He needn’t have worried.
I couldn’t imagine a single person wanting to know what was on his mind right now, and by the way his eyes drifted down the front of my dress, I didn’t either.
I wanted to know where his logic was taking him.
He might be a fool when it came to our relationship and where it was heading, but that didn’t
mean he hadn’t learned a thing or two on his way to becoming the town’s sheriff.
“What do you think happened?” I pressed.
His eyes lingered on my bare knee and the thought alone of what was passing through his mind made me shiver, but I let him look.
A girl needed to use what she had.
Liam’s eyes darted left to right, checking again to ensure no one was listening.
Who would ever want to listen to what this asshole has to say? I wondered.
I blinked in surprise when I realized I did want to know.
“The way I look at it is this,” he said in a hushed whisper. “The plane crashed and no one has come to claim it or the pilot. So that leads me to think maybe they want this whole thing to disappear, for no one to take any notice. For it all to be forgotten.”
“Why would anyone want that?”
“Maybe this pilot has some kind of link to secret research. There are plenty of bases around here—those we know about and those we don’t know about.”
I leaned back in my chair and rolled my eyes.
“Area 51 is a loooong way from here, Liam.”
“Sure. But Area 51 is a tourist attraction. They aren’t going to do their most sensitive research where just anybody can see it. And if they’re working on something top secret, they wouldn’t come to claim ownership of it. If you ask me, they would pretend like they don’t want the pilot or the plane. But they’ll come to pick up both in the dead of night.”
He leaned back, pleased with himself.
He might be content with his theory, but that was all it was, wasn’t it?
A theory.
Where was the hard evidence?
It did seem strange he didn’t have any ID on him.
How many people carried no form of ID around with them these days?
Even if it was fake, he should have something on him.
His plane had come down, so why wouldn’t the Air Force claim it?
Why wouldn’t they admit a pilot had gone down in the area?
“And check out the news,” Liam said, pointing to the monitor over my shoulder. “There’s nothing at all about the crash. You would have thought a local news station would have covered it. Instead, nothing.”
Could I have been the only person to witness the plane crash?
It didn’t seem likely, but it was an explanation.
I’d been in the hospital ever since I climbed aboard the ambulance so I hadn’t seen any of the coverage… or lack of coverage as the case may be.
“Isabella?”
Having someone call out my name made me hop in my seat.
The nurse who’d given me the Coke earlier peered up from the clipboard she carried.
“I’m Isabella.”
“We’ve conducted the tests and the results have come back. The patient has amnesia.”
Okay, so I wasn’t expecting that.
“Amnesia?”
Who had amnesia in this day and age except for characters in bad daytime TV shows?
I didn’t know amnesia was something people really suffered from these days.
I mean, I knew people suffered from it but it wasn’t exactly a common ailment.
I wondered if the tropes I recalled from movies and TV shows were right.
Could the patient really not remember anything from their past?
Or was it more like a single painful event that acted as a dam and held back the memories from a specific time and place?
I was as ignorant on the subject as the next person.
“Amnesia?” I repeated out loud.
I took a seat and tried to make sense of what she’d told me.
Amnesia.
I still couldn’t quite believe it.
“As in forever or only parts of his memory is missing?”
“As far as we can tell, he can’t recall a single thing about his past,” the nurse said. “Are you his family?”
“No. I’m the person who found him.”
“Found him?” Liam interjected. “She did more than find him! She rescued him!”
The nurse focused her attention on me.
“I’ve been tasked with finding him somewhere to stay. He needs to recuperate and rediscover the pathways in his mind. With any luck, he’ll recall what happened to him and where he comes from.”
I felt an unfamiliar strum across my chest that made my heart skip several beats.
“If you know of anyone who could help him—” the nurse began.
“I can,” I found myself saying.
Liam’s head snapped toward me.
“What? You don’t even know him! He might be dangerous!”
The nurse peered at me intently.
“It would be a real help if you could look after him for a little while. I’ll try to find somewhere more permanent for him to stay.”
Oh, jeez, was I really going to do this?
Trust a stranger?
After the recent experience I had with the last one?
I nodded.
“Thank you,” the nurse said. “Please wait a moment while I prepare the patient and his things.”
She disappeared back through the doors into the heart of the hospital.
Liam pressed his fists to his hips.
“Isabella, I sure would like to know what you think you’re doing.”
I didn’t even know myself.
What was I letting myself in for?
Good Samaritans did this kind of thing, not me.
But I somehow knew deep in my heart that there was no way I could let him be taken from me.
I knew what it was like to be adrift and alone in an ocean of infinite space and time.
I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone, and I wasn’t about to sit back and let it happen to the pilot.
Not on my watch.
Ras
I declined the nurse’s offer of leaving the hospital.
I’d already vowed to myself the best thing to do was stay in one place.
If someone I knew heard about my crash, the most logical place to find me was in the hospital.
“Oh, don’t worry about that, dear,” the nurse said. “We’ll pass your details onto anyone who comes along asking after you.”
I eyed a second-hand suitcase someone had discovered in lost and found, along with a bunch of clothes other patients had left behind.
That was how I was beginning to feel too.
Like something in the bottom of a drawer no one wanted any longer.
My things—or rather, someone else’s things—were packed.
I changed into the best set of mismatched clothes they’d found and scrambled for a reason to stay in the hospital.
I checked myself in the small mirror.
I wore a regular pair of faded blue jeans and a shirt made from some kind of smooth silky material.
The black boots might have been brand-new for the lack of use they’d seen.
I exited the bathroom and handed my old gown to the nurse.
“What if I fall sick?” I said, latching onto the best excuse I could come up with.
“You’re a strong young man and besides the knock to the noggin’, you’re as healthy as a horse. Even Dr. Foster says so and he’s very hard to impress.”
If my primary caregiver didn’t care about my health, what other excuse could I use?
I sighed and hung my head.
“Fine. Where am I going?”
I didn’t have much hope it would be somewhere decent.
“The young lady who found you is going to take care of you for a few days,” the nurse said, setting to turning down the bed in preparation for its next occupant.
“The girl who brought me here? Why would she do that?”
“Beats me. Maybe she feels some responsibility for you now that you have nowhere else to go. I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth if I were you. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Is this all you have?”
I turned at the voice a
nd saw the most gorgeous creature I had ever set eyes on.
She had long mousey brown hair but her natural blonde had already begun to seep through it, giving her hair the appearance of caramel chocolate.
She was tall and lithe, the body of an athlete.
But as tall as she was, the top of her head only reached up to my chin.
She wore a pair of boots that gave her an extra two inches in height and had scuff marks along either side.
Here was a woman used to work, I thought.
Her tight blue jeans were tucked inside the boots but didn’t restrict her graceful movements.
She was looking at me, waiting for me to respond.
She would have to wait a moment longer as I gazed into those deep blue pools that threatened to suck me in and drown me if I wasn’t careful.
“Uh, yeah. This is my stuff. Well, it’s not really my stuff. The nurses went shopping for me in found and lost… I mean, lost and found.”
I grinned sheepishly, suddenly very pleased to be leaving the hospital.
The nurse was right.
They could always pass on my details to anyone who turned up.
And if it took them a little longer than usual to locate me… it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
“He was just telling me he’s not sure about leaving the hospital,” the nurse said.
The girl folded her arms and her eyes flicked over to mine.
“Oh, really?”
My cheeks flushed and I wished the nurse would be quiet!
I might have had second thoughts but that was before seeing this gorgeous specimen.
Wild horses couldn’t keep me here now.
“He’s free to do as he pleases,” the girl said.
The nurse said, “I was just telling him—”
“It’s not right for me to take up a bed when other patients are out there waiting to get in here,” I interrupted. “I totally agree. I was being selfish.”
“I’m sure I can convince the orderlies to find a bed for you,” the nurse said. “It won’t be a private room like this, but one of the wards. I’ll go speak with them now—”
“No, no. That’s okay. This young lady very kindly opened up her home to me and it would be an insult to turn her down.”
The girl unfolded her arms.
“I’d prefer for you to be comfortable. Don’t worry about me. And it’s not my home. It’s my parents’.”
“Even better,” I said, grinning foolishly at her.
Her lips quirked up at the corners.