Forget Me Not

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Fear.

  It was too cold, no warmth anywhere, only fear hammering on her, leaving her weak.

  She tried to run, but her feet weighed as much as the mountains and were as deeply rooted in the earth. Each step took an eternity. Try harder, move faster, or get caught.

  She must run!

  But she could not.

  She was broken and bleeding, screaming down the night, running, stumbling, sprawling, and then lifted high, she was falling, she spun and screamed, falling. . . .

  Alana’s heart beat wildly, responding to the fragment of nightmare turning in her mind.

  “Stop it!” she told herself fiercely, seeing the reflection of her terror in dawn-tinted glass and sliding black shadows.

  She took several deep breaths, bringing herself under control, telling herself that she had to stop treating her nightmare as though it was real. It wasn’t.

  The nightmare was simply a creation of her mind as it dealt with the horror of Jack’s death in a mountain storm, and her own near death from exposure and the fall that had left her bruised and beaten.

  That was what Dr. Gene had told Alana, and she had trusted his gravelly voice and gentle smile for as long as she could remember. He had said that her amnesia, while unusual, was not pathological. It was a survival reflex. When her mind felt she was strong enough to remember the details of her husband’s death and her own suffering as she clawed her way down Broken Mountain, then she would remember.

  And if she never remembered?

  That, too, was all right, he had assured her. Alana was young. She was healthy. She could go out and make a new life for herself.

  Alana’s lips twisted bitterly as she remembered the conversation. It had been easy for Dr. Gene to say. He wasn’t the one whose mind was turning six missing days into endless nightmares.

  It wasn’t that Alana missed her dead husband. She and Jack had been two very separate people bound together by the accident of perfect harmony. That was enough for a successful singing career. It wasn’t enough for a successful marriage.

  Yet sometimes Alana couldn’t help feeling that maybe, just maybe, if she had done something different, Jack might have been different. If she had tried harder or not so hard. If she had been weaker or not quite as strong. If she had cared for Jack more or pitied him less . . .

  Maybe it could have worked for the two of them.

  But even as the thought came, Alana knew it was a lie. The only way she might have loved Jack was if she had never met Rafe Winter, never loved and lost him; Rafe, with his laughter and his passion and his gentle, knowing hands.

  She had loved Rafe since she was fifteen, had been engaged to him when she was nineteen. And they had become lovers when she was twenty.

  Rafael, dark hair and amber eyes glowing, watching her change as he touched her. Her fingers had looked so slender against the male planes of his face, the sliding sinew and muscle of his arms. His strength always surprised her, as did his quickness, but she had never been afraid with him. Rafe could hold her, could surround her softness with his power, and she felt no fear, only a consuming need to be closer still, to be held tighter, to give herself to him and to take him in return.

  With Rafe there had only been beauty.

  Then, four years ago, the Pentagon had told Alana that Rafael Winter had died. They had told her nothing more than that. Not where her fiancé had died. Not how. Certainly not why. Just the simple fact of his death.

  It was a fact that had destroyed Alana. Never again would the lyric beauty of Rafe’s harmonica call to her across the western night. Never again would her voice blend with that of the silver instrument that sang so superbly in Rafe’s hands. She had sung with Rafe for pleasure and had known no greater beauty except making love with him, bodies and minds sharing an elemental harmony that surpassed everything, even song.

  Alana had been empty after Rafe’s death. She had cared for nothing. Even life. When the minutes and hours without Rafe had piled up one by one, dragging her down into darkness, she had turned instinctively to a singing career as her only salvation, her only way to hold on to the love she had lost.

  Singing meant Jack Reeves, the man she had sung with in all the little cafés and fairs and roadhouses, the man for whom singing was a business rather than a pleasure. Jack had measured Alana’s vulnerability, her desperation, and then he had calmly told her that there would be no more duets unless she married him and left the high plains for the high life in the city.

  Alana had resisted marriage, wanting no man but the one who was dead.

  Then the hours without Rafe had heaped into the hundreds, a thousand, fifteen hundred . . . and she had agreed to become Jack’s wife because she must do something or go insane. Rafe was dead. There was nothing left but the singing career that Jack had badgered Alana for even while Rafe was alive.

  So Alana had left the high plains and mountains of Wyoming, hoping that in another part of the world she wouldn’t hear Rafe in every summer silence, sense him in every moonrise, feel his heat in the warmth of the sun.

  She had married Jack, but it was a marriage in name only. With Jack Reeves there had been nothing but an emptiness Alana had tried to fill with songs.

  Then, a year ago, she had been told that Rafael Winter was alive.

  Rafe wasn’t the one who told her. Rafe had never called her, never written, never in any way contacted the woman he once had said he loved.

  Now it was Jack who was dead, killed four weeks ago by the wild country he had despised. Alana had been with Jack on Broken Mountain when he died. She didn’t remember it. Those six days were a blank wall.

  Behind that wall, fear seethed and rippled, trying to break free.

  Alana closed her eyes, unable to face their dark reflection in the glass door. Rafe was dead and then not dead. Jack was dead now and forever.

  Her love for Rafe, undying.

  With a small sound, Alana closed her eyes, shutting out her reflection.

  “Enough of that,” she told herself sharply. “Stop living in the past. Stop tearing yourself up over things you can’t change.”

  She opened her eyes, confronting herself in yet another reflection, another window dawn hadn’t yet made transparent. She looked like a mountain deer caught in the instant of stillness that precedes wild flight. Long brown limbs and brown eyes that were very dark, very wide, wild.

  A black braid slid over Alana’s shoulder and swung against the glass as she leaned forward. She brought the other braid forward over her shoulder, too. It was a gesture that had become automatic; when her braids hung down her back she pulled them forward.

  That way if she had to run suddenly, the braids wouldn’t fly out behind her, twin black ropes, perfect handles for something to grab and hold her and lift her up, trapped, weightless, falling, she was falling—

  Alana choked off the scream clawing at her throat as she retreated to the kitchen. Her reflection looked back at her from the window over the kitchen sink.

  Without looking away from her reflection, Alana groped in a nearby drawer. Her fingers closed around the handle of a long carving knife. The honed blade glittered as she pulled it out of the drawer.

  She lifted the knife until the blunt side of the blade rested against her neck just below her chin. Calmly, deliberately, she began slicing through her left braid. The severed hair fell soundlessly to the floor. With no hesitation, she went to work on the right braid.

  When Alana was finished she shook her head, making her hair fly. The loose, natural curls that had been imprisoned beneath the weight of the braids were suddenly set free. Wisps of hair curved around her face, framing it in soft, shiny black. Her brown eyes glowed darkly, haunted by dreams.

  Abruptly Alana realized what she had done. She stared at the long black braids on the floor, the steel knife in her hand, the reflection in the window that no longer looked like Jilly.

  The knife dropped to the floor with a metallic clatter.

  Alana stared at herself a
nd wondered if she had finally gone crazy.

  She ran from the kitchen to the bedroom. There she pulled her few things out of drawers and off hangers, packing haphazardly. It didn’t matter. Most of her clothes were still in L.A. or at the ranch, left there in anticipation of weeks spent with her brother and Merry.

  Alana had been too frightened to go back to the ranch and pack after she had fled from the hospital. She had simply run to Portland, a city she had never lived in, hoping to leave the nightmare behind her.

  It hadn’t worked.

  As Alana packed, she kept looking at the bedroom telephone. She wanted to call Bob, say that she had changed her mind, and then hang up before he could object.

  Yet each time she reached for the phone, she thought of Rafael Winter, a dream to balance her nightmare. She used memories of Rafe like a talisman to draw the terror from her six missing days.

  The greatest pleasure and the greatest horror in Alana’s life had both taken place on Broken Mountain. Perhaps they would simply cancel each other, leaving her free to go on with her life. Neutral, balanced.

  No memories of the man she had loved, or of the husband she had not. No memories of the lover who had died and then come back, or of the husband who had died and would never come back.

  Rafe, who came to her in dreams.

  Jack, who came to her in nightmares.

  When Alana finally picked up the phone, it was to call a nearby beauty salon and make an appointment to have her hair styled. The utterly normal activity reassured her.

  By the time Alana got on the airplane, she felt more calm. Tonight she would be home. If nightmares stalked her, it would be down the familiar corridors of her childhood home rather than the strange hallways of a rented apartment.

  She held to that thought as she switched planes in Salt Lake City and settled in for the flight to Wyoming. When the flight attendant offered her a newspaper, she took it automatically. As she flipped through the pages, a headline in the entertainment section caught her eye: Jack ‘n’ Jilly’s Last Song.

  Though Alana’s stomach tightened just at the headline, she knew she would read the article. She had read everything written about Jack’s death, even the most sleazy imaginings of the yellow press. She would read this article too, because she could not help herself.

  It had been a month since Jack’s death. A month since the gap in Alana’s memory had appeared. She kept hoping that someone, somewhere, would know more about Jack’s death than she did, that a word or a phrase in an article would trigger something in her mind and the six days would spill through, freeing her from nightmare.

  Or sending her into a more terrifying one.

  There was always that possibility lurking in the twisting shadows of Alana’s mind. Dr. Gene had suggested that there could be horrors Alana didn’t imagine, even in her nightmares.

  Amnesia could be looked at in many ways. Gift of a kind God. Survival reflex. Fountainhead of horror. All of them and none of them. But fear was always there, pooled in shadows, waiting for night.

  Maybe Dr. Gene was right. Maybe she would be better off not remembering.

  Impatiently Alana shoved the unwelcome thought away. Nothing could be worse than not trusting her own mind, her own courage, her own sanity.

  Since her mother had died, Alana had always been the strong one, the one who saw what had to be done and did it. Then Rafe had died and Alana had been destroyed.

  Music was her only solace after Rafe died. With music she wove glowing dreams of warmth, of his laughter, and of a love that could only be sung, not spoken.

  With song, Alana had survived even Rafe’s death.

  She could do whatever she had to. She had proved that in the past. Somehow, she would prove it again. She would survive.

  Somehow.

  Alana shook out the paper, folded it carefully, and began to read.

  The first part of the story was a review of the Jack ‘n’ Jilly album that had just been released. The rest of the article was a simple recital of the facts of Jack’s death.

  A month ago, Jack and Jilly Reeves had gone on a pack trip in the Wyoming backcountry. An early winter storm had caught them. They had tried to get out, but only Jilly had made it. Jack had been killed in a fall. Somehow Jilly had managed to hobble down the mountain on a badly wrenched ankle until she had reached a fishing cabin and radioed for help.

  Even so, she had nearly died of exposure. The experience had been so traumatic that she had no memory of the time she spent crawling down the mountain.

  Hysterical amnesia, brought on by husband’s accidental death, said the doctor. Apparently Sheriff Mitchell had agreed, for the autopsy listed the cause of Jack’s death as a broken neck sustained in a fall.

  Accidental.

  Nothing new. Nothing unexpected. Nothing to fill the horrifying gap six days had left in Alana’s mind. Yet still she reread the article, searching for the key to her amnesia.

  She didn’t find it. She was neither surprised nor disappointed.

  As the plane slid into its landing pattern, Alana sat up and nervously ran her fingers through her hair. Her head felt strange, light, no longer anchored by dense black braids. The stylist had transformed the remnants of her knife-cut hair into a gently curling cap that softened but didn’t wholly conceal the taut lines of Alana’s face. The result was arresting—glossy midnight silk framing an intelligent face that was haunted by loss and nightmare.

  The small commercial plane touched down with a slight jerk A few eager trout fishermen got off before Alana, trading stories of the past and bets for the first and biggest fish of the future.

  Reluctantly she stood up and walked slowly down the narrow aisle. By the time she descended the metal stair, her baggage had already been unloaded and placed neatly beside the bottom step. She picked up her light suitcase and turned toward the small building that was the only sign of habitation for miles around.

  Behind her the aircraft began retreating. It moved to the head of the runway, revved hard, and accelerated, gathering speed quickly, preparing itself for a leap into the brilliant high-plains sky.

  Alana reached the building as the plane’s engines gave a full-throated cry. She set down her bag and turned in time to see the aircraft’s wheels lift. It climbed steeply, a powerful silver bird flying free. She listened until the engines were no more than a fading echo and the plane only a molten silver dot flying between the ragged grandeur of the Wind River and Green River mountain ranges.

  For a moment, Alana closed her eyes. Her head tilted toward the sky, catching the surprising warmth of Wyoming’s September sun. The wind was rich with scents of earth and sagebrush. Not the stunted, brittle sagebrush of the southwestern desert but the thick lavender-gray high-country sage, bushes as high as her head, higher, slender shapes weaving patterns against the empty sky.

  A clean wind swept down from the granite heights, carrying sweetness and the promise of blue-green rivers curling lazily between rocky banks, of evergreens standing tall and fragrant against the summer moon, of coyotes calling from the ridge lines in harmonies older than man.

  Home.

  Alana breathed deeply, torn between pleasure and fear. She heard footsteps approaching across the cement. She spun around, her heart beating heavily. Since Broken Mountain, she was terrified if anything approached her unseen.

  A man was walking toward Alana. The sun was at his back, reducing him to a black silhouette.

  As he walked closer, he seemed to condense into three dimensions. He was about seven inches taller than she was. He had the easy stride of someone who spent as much time hiking as he did on horseback. His jeans were faded. His boots showed the scuff marks peculiar to riding. His shirt was the same pale blue as the sky.

  Hair that was a thick, rich brown showed beneath the rim of his black Stetson. His eyes were the color of whiskey. His lips were a firm curve beneath a silky bar of mustache.

  With a small sound, Alana closed her eyes. Her heart beat wildly, but it sent we
akness rather than strength coursing through her. She was going crazy, hallucinating.

  Storm and cold and terror, falling—

  “Alana,” he said.

  His voice was gentle, deep, reaching out to her like an immaterial caress.

  “Rafael?” She breathed raggedly, afraid to open her eyes, torn between hope and nightmare. “Oh, Rafe, is it really you?”

  3

  R AFE TOOK ALANA’S arm, supporting her. Only then did she realize that she had been swaying as she stood. His warmth and strength went through her like a shock wave. For an instant she sagged against him.

  Then she realized that she was being touched, held, and she wrenched away. Since Broken Mountain she was terrified of being touched.

  “It’s really me, Alana,” said Rafe, watching her intently.

  “Rafael—” Alana’s voice broke as emotions overwhelmed her.

  She extended her fingers as though she would touch him, but did not. With an effort that left her aching, she fought down the tangle of emotions that was closing her throat. She was being torn apart by conflicting imperatives.

  Run to him. Run from his male presence.

  Be held by him. Fight not to be held by a man.

  Love him. Feel nothing at all because the only safety lay in numbness.

  Remember how it felt to be loved. Forget, forget everything, amnesia spreading outward like a black balm.

  “Why are you here?” Alana asked in a ragged voice.

  “I’ve come to take you home.”

  Inexplicably the words all but destroyed Alana.

  With a small sound, she closed her eyes and struggled to control herself. Coming here had been a mistake. She had wanted a dream of love to balance a nightmare of terror. Yet Rafe was real, not a dream.

  And so was terror.

  Alana clung to the shreds of her control, wondering what had happened during those six missing days that had left a black legacy of fear. And most of all, she wondered if the nightmare would ever end, freeing her, letting her laugh and sing again . . . or if she would simply give up and let the black balm of amnesia claim all of her mind. All of her.