"Amos, I guess this is where we come to a parting of the ways," she murmured. The thought of the lonely hours without him looming ahead of her brought a catch to her throat and a fresh supply of tears to her eyes.
"Oh, Amos," she said, gathering the cat into her arms, and she buried her face in his ginger fur one last time. Puzzled by the unexpected display of affection, he twisted in her arms and batted an experimental paw against her cheek, seeming surprised to discover that it was wet.
Blinded by her tears, she put him down and quickly let herself out of the house before she lost her resolve. Then she set out for the highway. She knew exactly how to get there. Mary Kate had told her.
"Goodbye, llamas," she said as she passed the barn, regretting that she'd never learned anything more about them, had never, in fact, seen one up close. She spared a thought for Mary Kate, wondering if the child would miss her. Then she resolutely turned her back on Placid Valley Ranch.
She reached the highway as the sun sent up feeble fingers of light from the horizon. It was cold, but her coat kept her warm enough. Her breath preceded her in wispy clouds of mist that then trailed behind her as she walked, and as she plodded along she felt herself growing weary already. She was still weak from the strep and bronchitis, she thought. She'd soon be over that, and she had brought the half-used bottle of antibiotic pills with her. They'd continue to fight the infection.
If she were lucky, somebody would stop to pick her up soon. She gazed down the road, watching as a car barreled toward her. She stuck out her thumb and it whizzed past. Perhaps she'd have better luck next time.
She traipsed stoically through chunks of dirty snow at the edge of the highway, avoiding slippery patches of ice on the pavement. The next vehicle was a flatbed truck, and the driver didn't even notice her much less stop to pick her up.
Jane blew on her gloveless hands to warm them, then thrust them deeper into her pockets, where Duncan's money crackled against her knuckles. She closed her hand around the bills, reassured by the security of cash. She walked westward, but no cars came for a long time. Finally she heard one approaching in the distance.
She turned toward it and stuck out her thumb, thinking that next time she hitchhiked in cold weather, she'd make sure she wore a pair of gloves. The big SUV roared toward her at a blistering speed. And then it squealed to a stop.
She had barely wrenched the door open when a familiar voice growled, "Get in." It stopped her flat.
"You heard what I said," Duncan told her, barely containing his fury. He reached across the front seat and grabbed her wrist, yanking her toward him. She cried out in pain but clambered inside and watched him fearfully, wondering what he would do. Certainly he must have found out that she'd taken his money.
He slammed the vehicle into reverse and backed up, completing a turn in record time. When they were heading back to the ranch, he said coldly, "That was a fool thing to do."
Jane stared ahead, unwilling to face his anger.
"The two weeks you need for recuperating aren't up yet, and I don't take kindly to thieves. Also you left your cat."
At the mention of Amos, Jane's eyes filled with tears. She let them roll forlornly down her cheeks, hating herself for stealing and for her weakness now in front of Duncan. Duncan glanced over at her as they approached the turn onto the ranch road. He tossed a tissue in her direction.
"Use that," he said more calmly. "Mop up."
Obediently she wiped her eyes. She turned toward him, wanting to explain.
"I was going to pay the money back," she said.
"We'll talk about it inside," he said gruffly.
Wordlessly she followed him into the house, where Amos ran to greet them, purring and rubbing against her ankles.
"Amos missed you," said Duncan, heavy on the irony. Uncertainly Jane picked up the cat and stood stroking him, holding him up as a shield.
"What are you going to do to me? Are you going to call the sheriff?" she asked in a tremulous voice when it seemed as though they would go on standing there and staring at each other forever.
"Do to you?" He shook his head as if to clear it. "What do you think? That I'm going to punish you? Obviously you have me pegged all wrong."
"Here," she said, yanking the money out of her pocket. "Take it back."
"It's not the money," he said, running his hand through his hair and looking more disturbed than she'd ever seen him. "It's your safety. You could easily become sick again, and as for hitchhiking, it's a dangerous thing to do."
Something broke inside her. This man who lived such a safe and secure life—what did he know about survival? Had he ever had to live on the streets, wondering where his next meal was coming from? Had he ever tried to get a job and discovered that no one would hire him because there was no proof on paper that he existed?
"Don't tell me how to live!" she said. At her outburst Amos jumped down and ran away, and she didn't blame him.
Duncan's surprised look only spurred her on.
"I've been living from hand to mouth, scared to death because people try to hustle me and hurt me and—well, you can't possibly know about the real dangers I've faced. Hitchhiking seems tame by comparison."
"Jane, I only meant—"
"Try getting through the winter with no warm clothes! Try to find a job when you don't have a social security number! Try to find a little warmth and human kindness where none exists, and if that fails—if that fails—oh, why am I trying to tell you?" The money slipped unnoticed from her hand and fluttered to the floor, where it lay between them.
For a long time Duncan was quiet. The only sounds were those of her breathing and, once, a cough.
Duncan thought of Sigrid. If he had listened to her instead of brushing her off when she tried to speak to him of the matters closest to her heart, things might have been different.
"Why are you trying to tell me?" he inquired at last, repeating Jane's question, and his tone was so soft and gentle that she turned around, incredulous that he wasn't still angry.
Amazingly, he walked to her and put an arm around her shoulders. It was such a touching gesture that her reserve started to crumble. She wanted to reach out to him so that he'd hold her in his arms and comfort her. He was so strong and solid; he was so nice.
"You're trying to tell me because you want to tell someone," he said, steering her to the couch and easing her down beside him. His eyes radiated goodness and goodwill, and she wasn't afraid of him. She wondered how he was able to find forgiveness in his heart after she had abused his hospitality, and she felt pained on his behalf because he had misplaced his trust in her.
"Tell me," he said, and when she looked at him she saw such sympathy and understanding that all the barriers fell away. After that, there was nothing else to do but begin her story at the beginning.
Chapter 5
Her life began—her present life, that is—one frosty November morning on the outskirts of an Illinois cornfield.
The first thing to penetrate her consciousness was an inadvertent blow on the right leg, delivered by a muddy boot.
The first words she heard were, "What's this?"
The first object in her line of vision was a scared young boy breathing open-mouthed into her face.
"She's dead, Pop, ain't she?"
A warm hand touched her cheek, and she moaned.
"No, she's not dead. Run call an ambulance, Ollie! Quick!"
The boy's panicked footsteps crashed away through the nearby woods, and Jane became aware of tentative fingers checking her legs and arms for broken bones. When the man noticed that she was looking at him, he said, "There, now. I've sent for an ambulance. Just lie quiet, and it'll be here in a few minutes."
She was cold, so cold. And her head ached with the worst pain imaginable. The only reply she was able to make was another groan.
The ambulance took her to the Tyree Township Hospital, a small rural facility with only fifty-seven beds, and as soon as she reached the emergency room, someone aske
d for her identification.
"She doesn't have any," the farmer in whose field she had been found told the admitting clerk. The clerk followed the gurney right into the emergency room cubicle and stood clucking over her as the nurses swabbed the cut on the back of her head.
"Cell phone?"
"Didn't find one."
"Next of kin?" the clerk asked briskly.
"I don't know," her rescuer said.
"Honey, what's your name?" the clerk asked when she saw that Jane's eyes had opened.
It was a question that drew a complete blank.
"Well?"
She tried very hard to form words. "My n-name?" she managed to say.
"Yes, honey. I've got to have a name."
"Can't think," Jane mumbled. She felt as though she were wrapped in an invisible cocoon, sealed off from everyone and everything. Everything, that is, but the pain in her head.
"Well, that's okay. You just rest, and I'll be back in a few minutes," the clerk said as the punch bell on the admitting desk began to ring wildly. She disappeared through the twin swinging doors, and Jane felt a sense of relief at no longer being badgered for information that she couldn't give.
A doctor came in. "I'm Dr. Bergstrom," he said. He peered into one eye, then the other. He shook his head over her bruised cheekbone, her swollen eyelid, and then sewed up the cut on the back of her head.
"How'd all this happen, anyway?" he asked as he was stripping off his gloves.
"I don't know," she answered in a small voice.
The farmer, who told her hesitantly that his name was Carlton Jones, explained to Dr. Bergstrom that he had stumbled upon her lying not far from the highway in a ditch on the edge of one of his fields when he and his son were out looking for a lost hunting dog.
"There she was, lying there like she was dead," he said. "I thought she was dead. At first I figured she might have had an accident on the highway, but there was no car anywhere around."
"Do you remember anything?" Dr. Bergstrom asked her.
"No," Jane whispered. The sharp pain in her head had subsided to a dull, pounding ache. She didn't know these people or this place or about any accident. As far as she was concerned, this experience was the first thing that had ever happened to her. She didn't know who she was or where she was supposed to be, although she understood that she was expected to know these things and that these people were beginning to be annoyed that she did not.
Mr. Jones apparently knew the doctor, and the two men engaged in an intense discussion out in the hall, during which Jane heard Mr. Jones say, "But Doc, I don't know anything about her. I sure can't pay any hospital bill."
The doctor said wearily, "We'll go ahead and admit her to the hospital, but I have to call the police."
After that, the doctor, forcing a stiff smile, hurried back into the cubicle, and Jane was wheeled into a dingy little room with beige walls, cracked plaster on the ceiling, and vintage blinds with one slat missing. Finally, thankfully, she slept.
When she awoke, a man she'd never seen before was lounging beside her bed.
"I'm Detective Sid Reedy of the Tyree County Sheriff's Department," he said in an impersonal tone.
She blinked.
"I'm trying to find out a few things about your accident," he said.
"I don't remember," she murmured, but he hadn't heard her.
"What's that?"
"I don't remember," she said in a louder tone.
"I have to fill out a report," he said. "Why don't you just tell me what happened?"
"All I know is I woke up and a boy was looking at me."
"Right. You were lying in a ditch between Jones's field and the highway. What I need to know is how you got there."
"I don't remember," she repeated, sounding even to her own ears like a broken record.
"Look, lady, it's late, and I'd like to get home in time for dinner just this once. So if your boyfriend pushed you out of a car or something, don't be embarrassed. I've seen and heard everything, believe me. Just let me file my report and I'll leave you alone." He was frowning at her now.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to figure out if that was what had happened. But if she had a boyfriend, she couldn't picture his face, and if she'd been riding in a car, she couldn't recall anything about it. She forced herself to narrow her range of thoughts down to a single pinpoint somewhere inside her brain, trying to remember, to remember....
"Well?"
The sudden question interrupted her effort. A crushing feeling of helplessness descended on her. If only she could satisfy these people—the admitting clerk, the doctor, this insensitive policeman. They all demanded something that she couldn't give, and she felt so sad that it wasn't within her power to help them.
"I'm sorry," she said, on the verge of tears. "I'm really sorry."
"Okay, okay," he muttered, and he strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Tears were etching shiny trails down Jane's cheeks and falling unheeded onto the pillow by the time a nurse arrived. The nurse's name tag identified her as R. Sanchez.
"Oh, did he upset you? Can I get you anything?" asked the little nurse, who appeared to be very young.
A name, she thought, staring at the nurse's name tag with longing. Get me a name. But she didn't say it.
Dr. Bergstrom didn't return to her room until late that night. He wore an expression of concern.
"Having any luck with your memory?" he asked.
She shook her head.
He sat down beside the bed. "Try to remember what you were doing the day of your accident. Who you might have been with, where you went," he urged quietly.
Jane tried, but there was nothing. No associations, no fragments of conversation, no faces.
"It's just—blank," she said unhappily.
"I've had the police run a missing persons check. There's no one who matches your description. No accidents have been reported along that particular stretch of highway, either. You seem to have appeared out of nowhere."
She swallowed and stared at him. "What's going to happen to me?" she ventured.
He stood up and shook his head. "I hope you're going to remember something," he said grimly before he left.
But she didn't remember anything. As far as she was concerned, she was nobody.
It was extremely frustrating not to be able to identify anything about her past life. At night when she was alone she would stare up at the stained ceiling above her hospital bed and wonder, Who am I? The more she tried to figure it out, the more defeated she felt. There seemed to be no clues.
Her clothing was ordinary, the kind that could have been bought in any Wal-Mart anywhere in the United States. When a search was conducted in the area where she had been found, someone turned up a purse that might have been hers. It was handmade of a coarsely woven wool fabric, but there was nothing in it to prove that it belonged to her—no money, no personal effects, and most importantly, no identification. Someone put it in the closet along with the salvageable clothing she was wearing when Carlton Jones and his son found her. She would take it with her when she left, she supposed.
Dr. Bergstrom brought her a United States atlas, and she sat for hours poring over it, hoping that one of the town names or river names or highways might seem familiar. Because Chicago was the nearest big city, the sympathetic little nurse, whose name was Rosemary Sanchez, brought photos of some of the places there—O'Hare Airport, Lincoln Park, a five-story Picasso sculpture. None of them jogged her memory.
She watched television, hoping that she would see clues to her background on the local news. She didn't.
Following a feature story about her plight in the local newspaper, Rosemary began to call her Jane Doe, first as a kind of joke, then more seriously. By the time she left the hospital, it was the only name she knew. The hospital staff had grown so fond of her that they took up a collection to pay her bill, because as far as anyone knew, she had no insurance, and she certainly had no money.
A welter of good wishes accompanied her discharge. Rosemary tied helium balloons to the wheelchair that they insisted she ride to the door, and an aide settled a bouquet of flowers in her arms. Besides the hand-woven purse, she carried a small donated suitcase that was too big for the meager change of clothes someone had given her.
Dr. Bergstrom had, with great difficulty, found a place for her to stay in the nearby medium-sized town of Apollonia, Illinois, where the department of social services had agreed to help her find a job. But her assigned social worker, a Ms. Bird, whose task it was to pick her up at the hospital and install her at the shelter for battered women where she was to stay, turned out to be a malcontent who was miffed because she would have rather been out shopping for her trousseau.
When they got to the big converted house in Apollonia, Ms. Bird all but pushed Jane out of the car and would have driven away before Jane retrieved her suitcase from the back seat if Jane had not yelped in protest. There wasn't time to grab the bouquet of flowers or Rosemary's balloons. Jane was abandoned at the curbside and left to introduce herself to the shelter's administrator, who stated with some irritation that Jane didn't really fall into the category of women that the shelter was supposed to help but would be allowed to stay anyway, since they had an opening.
Jane felt abandoned, exhausted, worried and confused. She was subject to incapacitating headaches that did not abate even with the strong pain medicine that Dr. Bergstrom had prescribed.
For two weeks Jane lived at the shelter and helped the other women care for their children when she could. The women were grateful but wary for reasons of their own. Jane made no friends.
When Jane went to the social services office for her first appointment with Miss Bird, who was supposed to help her find a job, she was curtly informed that the woman had been fired.
Until Spring Page 6