by Joanne Fluke
What decisions were they making in that small room? He had the insane urge to run, but he knew that fleeing would send the wrong message. He’d done nothing wrong. What had happened had been out of his control. He had to stay to convince them that he was blameless.
Just then the door opened, and he was beckoned in. He got up on shaking legs to enter the room, standing in front of the desk, waiting for permission to sit down. After a moment of standing there silently, he realized that permission wasn’t forthcoming. They’d make him stand, like a failed errand boy, until they’d made their judgment.
“She’s alive.”
The voice had a hard edge, even though it was a simple statement of fact. He took a deep breath, and nodded. “I know. She went home from the hospital today.”
“Lucky for you, she’s lost her memory.”
This time there was a ghost of a smile, and he began to take heart. “She doesn’t remember the accident?”
“She doesn’t remember anything.” The second man spoke. “She’s lost total memory of the last twenty years of her life.”
The second man was much more frightening than the first. His voice was soft, but it could turn hard at a moment’s notice, and he knew that he had to be very careful. “Do you want me to finish the job?”
His question hung in the air for a moment and then faded away as if he’d never spoken. The look in their eyes told him they’d already discussed it and made up their minds.
“Perhaps.” The first man shrugged. “We’ll let you know. If her amnesia is permanent, there’s no need for you.”
Their implied meaning was clear and he shivered. If he wasn’t needed, he was in big trouble. Guys in his line of work didn’t retire to Florida when their services were no longer required.
“But it wouldn’t be difficult. I could arrange another accident.” He knew he was saying too much, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “It could happen at work, or at home, or even at the club. Nobody’ll suspect anything. I guarantee it.”
The second man shook his head. “No!”
The word was clipped and cold, a definite command. He nodded his acceptance, and looked down at his shoes. No way he wanted to face the ice in their eyes.
“You do nothing unless you hear from us. Is that clear?”
“Yes.” He nodded again, and clamped his lips shut to stifle the flow of apologies that threatened to erupt from his throat. He wanted to tell them that he was their man. If they’d just give him a second chance, it was as good as done. There was no way she’d escape him this time. He was good. He was the best. But he said nothing, because nothing was what they wanted to hear.
“Go. We’ll be in touch.”
He forced his legs to move, to carry him to the door. His hands were shaking as he opened it, and then closed it softly behind him. He hurried across the waiting room to the hallway outside, but he didn’t relax, not even when he was in the elevator, riding down to the street level.
When he reached the lobby, he had a sudden urge to stop at the men’s room, but he didn’t want to take the chance. They’d let him go, and he wanted to get the hell out of the building, out of the area, before they changed their minds.
The moment he got out on the street, he flagged down a cab. His voice was unsteady as he gave the driver an address two blocks from the place where he’d parked his car. As he got out of the cab, he took the time to make sure he wasn’t being followed before he walked to his car. And once he got there, he checked it out carefully before he got in, making sure that no one had wired it.
He felt slightly better as he pulled out in traffic, taking a circuitous route toward the freeway entrance. There were no familiar cars behind him, but he checked the rearview mirror constantly, alert to any surveillance. He didn’t relax for an instant, not even when he was on the freeway traveling in the opposite direction. He knew all the tricks and that knowledge might buy him a little time, but it couldn’t save him.
When he got home, he double-locked the door and pulled the curtains. Then he got out the bottle, poured himself a drink, and sank down in his favorite chair to think. All his precautions were useless. They knew where he lived. They knew everything about him. There was nowhere to run, no place to hide. He could do nothing to change the inevitable if they decided to take him out. He had to stay on their good side, convince them that his talents were useful, and do exactly what they said. He was merely a pawn in their game, and that made him completely expendable.
* * *
“This is wonderful!” Maura smiled at Nita and took another sip of her coffee. “It’s the best coffee I’ve ever tasted!”
“That is what you always say.” Nita looked pleased. “I made this for you every night, when you worked late. That was before Jan was old enough to go to school, and sometimes we would wake her up so she could have coffee with us.”
“I gave a preschooler coffee?!”
“No, Mom.” Jan laughed. “You called it coffee, but it wasn’t. Nita made hot chocolate for me and I drank it out of a special mug.”
“Pigs.” Maura winced as her head began to throb. She could almost remember those nights. She turned to Jan, almost afraid to describe the visual image that had come to her. “I’m not sure, but . . . I seem to remember a child’s mug. It was green plastic with pink pigs.”
“That’s right!” Jan jumped up to hug her. “What else do you remember, Mom?”
“I’m not sure . . . but this isn’t the table, is it? Our table was . . . blue?”
A broad grin spread over Nita’s face. “That is right, Miss Maura. We had a blue kitchen table when we lived in the condo. You still have it, out in the garage. Dr. Steve was right. Now that you are home, your memories are starting to come back.”
“Maybe.” Maura was a little more skeptical. Regaining her lost memory couldn’t be that simple. “Tell me about the table, Nita. Did I buy it here in Los Angeles?”
“No. You brought it with you, from your apartment in San Diego. You said it was the first thing you bought when you moved into your dorm . . .” Nita stopped suddenly and frowned. “Do you think you remember it from before?”
“It’s possible.” Maura tried not to look as disappointed as she felt.
“But you remembered my baby mug!” Jan was still excited. “How do you explain that?”
“I don’t know.” Maura turned to Nita. “Do you know anything about it?”
Nita nodded. “I am sorry, Miss Maura. You said it was yours, when you were a baby. You did not take much from your parents’ house. All you brought back were some keepsakes . . . family pictures, your mother’s jewelr y box, the pretty little footstool that is up in your room, and . . . your baby mug. You said you wanted to give it to Jan.”
“The pig mug.” Maura sighed deeply. And then she realized what Nita had said, and her face turned pale. “My parents . . . are they dead?”
“I am afraid so, Miss Maura. Do you remember how they had always wanted to go to England?”
Maura thought for a moment and then she nodded. “Yes. My father loved Shakespeare. He always talked about going to Stratford-on-Avon. And my mother wanted to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Was it . . . a plane crash?”
“No. Your mother was afraid to fly, so they took one of those cruise ships. And the day before they were ready to come home, they both took sick. You got a long-distance call from the hospital in London.”
Maura shivered. She’d lived through it all, but she didn’t remember. And now, being forced to hear about her parents’ deaths from Nita, she felt the pain of loss as clearly as she must have felt it then. “Did I fly over there to see them?”
“There was no time.” Nita reached out to pat her shoulder. “You were on your way to the airport when the hospital called to tell you they had died. I paged Dr. Steve and he caught you, just as you were about to get on the plane.”
“I didn’t go to bring them back?”
Nita shook her head. “You were in no shape to trav
el. Dr. Steve brought you home, and then he got on the phone. He made all the arrangements to bring them back here.”
“What . . . what kind of illness was it?”
“It was a virus.” Jan spoke up. “Uncle Steve called the hospital and he talked to the doctor over there.”
Nita got up and poured more coffee. When she sat back down at the table, she was frowning. “You were very upset. You thought that if only they had come home, there would have been a way to save them.”
“But that wasn’t true?”
Jan shook her head. “Uncle Steve found out that it was a new strain of virus. They called it the swine flu, and the doctors over here had never heard of it. They’ve got a shot for it now, but back then it was usually fatal.”
“I see.” Maura swallowed the sob that threatened to burst from her throat. Her parents were dead. And she’d lost her last, precious memories of them. She took another sip of coffee and sighed deeply. “Where . . . uh . . . where are they buried?”
“Right here in Forest Lawn.” Jan draped a comforting arm around her mother’s shoulders. “You wanted them close to you. We go out there sometimes, and you tell me things you remember about them, like the incredible wedding dress Grandma made for you, and the time Grandpa babysat with me while you went out shopping with Grandma. He didn’t know about disposables, so he used your best pillowcase for a diaper.”
Maura winced. She didn’t remember any of that. Now, when they went out to visit her parents’ graves, Jan would have to tell the stories to her.
Jan exchanged glances with Nita. When she turned back to face Maura, she looked very worried. “You’re really pale, Mom. Maybe we shouldn’t have told you so much, all at once.”
“No. I’m all right.” Maura took a deep, steadying breath. “I have to know what happened. Putting off the bad news isn’t going to help.”
Nita nodded, and exchanged glances with Jan again. “Maybe that is true. But I think we should think of some good news to tell your mother. She does not remember about your scholarship.”
“Scholarship?” Maura seized the abrupt change in subject eagerly. Jan looked a little embarrassed, but she was smiling. “Tell me about it, honey.”
“Well, it’s not that great. But I did graduate at the top of my class in high school, and I got a scholarship to Princeton. That’s a really good college in . . .”
“I know where it is.” Maura interrupted her with a smile. “And I’m very proud of you. Do you like it?”
“I love it! Princeton’s got the best psychology department in the nation!”
“And that’s your major? Psychology?”
Jan nodded. “Clinical psychology. I’ve always been interested in why people do what they do. I did a lot of reading when I was in high school. Freud, Jung, Adler . . . anything I could find in the library. And I used to make up psychological profiles of everyone I knew. That’s part of the reason I’m going to Princeton. One of the psychology professors read my profiles, and he convinced the college to offer me a scholarship.”
“You did profiles of everyone?”
Jan shrugged. “Just about. I had almost fifty.”
“How about me?”
“Well . . . actually . . .” Jan stopped, obviously embarrassed. “You don’t really want to know, do you, Mom?”
“But I do! If you did a psychological profile of me, I’d like to read it.”
“But, Mom!” Bright spots of color rose to Jan’s cheeks. “People aren’t supposed to read their psychological profiles. It could be damaging to their psyches.”
“But you let your psychology professor read them. His psyche wasn’t damaged, was it?”
Jan began to frown. “No. Of course not. But he didn’t know any of the people I profiled.”
“Exactly!” Maura began to smile. “And I don’t know the me that you profiled, either. I’m a blank slate, Jan. The person I was is a total stranger to me. There’s no way the psyche I had could be damaged. It doesn’t exist anymore.”
Jan looked thoughtful, and then she shook her head. “You’re trying to snow me, Mom. And it won’t work. Just think about what your profile might say. How would you feel if you found out that you weren’t the kind of person you hope you were?”
“I don’t have any hope. You have to know yourself to have hope. And I don’t know me at all. Look at it like this, Jan. I’m starting over at the age of nineteen. It might help me to know the mistakes I made, so I don’t have to make them all over again.”
Jan was silent for a long minute. And then she turned to Nita. “What do you think?”
“That is not up to me!” Nita began to frown. “You are the psychologist, Miss Jan. And you are the only one who knows what her profile says. You have to decide.”
Jan swallowed hard, and Maura felt a rush of sympathy. She knew she was putting her daughter in a terribly uncomfortable position, but she simply had to read that profile. Something in it might jog her memory. She searched Jan’s face for any clue to what she was thinking, but Jan’s eyes were cast downward, staring at the table.
“I don’t know, Mom.” When Jan raised her eyes, at last, she looked very uncertain. “I’d feel a lot better if I could talk to my professor. I don’t want to do anything that might hurt you.”
Maura nodded. “That’s a very good idea. Why don’t you call him now?”
As Jan hurried off to make the call, Nita reached out to touch Maura’s arm. “Are you really sure you want to read that paper? Jan was still in high school when she wrote it. She was a teenager, and teenagers are very resentful. They are convinced they have all the answers, and that makes them very critical of their parents.”
“Are you trying to warn me that Jan’s profile might be uncomplimentary?”
“Well . . . yes. It could be.” Nita looked very serious. “You two got along just fine, but you did not exactly see eye to eye on everything.”
Maura laughed. “That makes sense. Most mothers and daughters disagree on something. But Jan seems to be a very bright young woman. I’ve got to assume that her profile of me is accurate.”
“Maybe. And maybe not. Just remember that she wrote it three years ago, and she is a much better judge of character now. Back then, she still dreamed about running off with Slash.”
“Slash?!”
“He’s the lead guitar player with Guns N’ Roses!” Nita noticed Maura’s blank expression and she hurried to explain. “Guns N’ Roses is a rock group. And Slash is . . . well . . . he is not the type of boy a mother would like her daughter to date. Perhaps it is a good thing you do not remember.”
Maura grinned. “I never thought I’d say it, but there might be some advantages to losing my memory, after all. The last rock group I remember is Guess Who.”
“Who?”
“No, Nita. “The Who’s a different group.”
Nita looked confused. “Yes?”
“Yes is another rock group.” Maura started to laugh. “I think we’d better change the subject, Nita . . . unless we want to start our own Abbott and Costello routine.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Maura sat in her wingback chair, tortoiseshell reading glasses perched on her nose. She’d felt strange when she’d put on the glasses; her eyesight had always been a perfect twenty-twenty. But the lenses eliminated the blur she’d noticed when she’d attempted to read without them, and Nita had made her promise to wear them. They’d been prescribed for her a year ago, and Nita said she was prone to headaches if she tried to read for prolonged periods without them.
The glasses weren’t the only aid she was forced to use. Nita had also told her that she’d had a problem with leg cramps at night. Her doctor had prescribed some quinine-based capsules that Maura was to take before she went to bed. There was also a special pillow, designed to cushion her neck. If she slept without it, Nita had warned that she’d wake up with a sore, stiff neck.
Maura sighed as she thought about her age. It was hell being suddenly over forty without remembering a
ny of the good times in between. She felt a little like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Everything was strange and new, and not always pleasant. She was no longer familiar with her own body, much less her own mind.
Maura got up and switched on the stereo. At least the music she’d loved hadn’t changed. Recordings were like little time capsules. The music on them was frozen in time to be replayed whenever one wished. Beethoven’s Pastoral was still comfortingly familiar, and so was Handel’s Water Music. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was exactly the same, Bessie Smith’s voice was still belting out the blues, and Woody Herman and his Thundering Herd were still thrilling audiences with “Early Autumn” and “Caldonia.” Compact discs had replaced records in what Maura hoped was her temporary absence, but the music she loved and remembered was still available at the flick of a switch.
Realizing that she was procrastinating, Maura looked down at the thick folder in her hands. Jan’s psychology professor had agreed that she should be allowed to read it, but she’d been sitting here for fifteen minutes, clutching the folder like a letter bomb, not daring to open it for fear her life would shatter into a million painful pieces.
With shaking fingers, Maura forced herself to open the folder. Her name was on the first page: Maura Bennett. Of course she wasn’t Maura Bennett anymore, not since she’d married Keith over two years ago. Now she was Maura Thomas.
“Maura Thomas.” She said the name out loud. It was totally unfamiliar, a stranger to her lips, so she repeated it. “I am Maura Thomas, Mrs. Keith Thomas.”
What would her husband think if she forgot her married name? Just to be sure, Maura repeated it again. And then she looked back down at the folder.
A Psychological Profile by Janelle C. Bennett. Maura blinked back tears are she stared at her daughter’s name. What did the C stand for? Carole? Candice? Catherine? Charlotte? She had no idea, and that made her very sad.
Suddenly an image popped into Maura’s mind. She remembered a sweet gray-haired woman who’d held her on her lap and given her something wonderful to eat. Maura could almost taste it now . . . sweet and crunchy, with a dark, mysterious flavor. Molasses cookies! Maura began to smile as the memory grew. Molasses cookies with crunchy sugar on the top, the way only Granny Kate could make them. Granny Kate . . .