Until Spring

by Pamela Browning

  Carl thought for a moment, then shook his head again. "I looked for tire tracks or something at the side of the road, but I didn't see any. I wish I could help you, but, well, I don't know anything more."

  Duncan stood up. "Then I guess we won't waste more of your time," he said.

  "Please don't go," Carl said. "I've made coffee, and Ollie and I baked a cake. Imagine that," he said with a chortle, "I baked a cake! My wife died a few years back, and I've had to learn to take care of Ollie and me almost from scratch, but I'd never thought I'd be baking cakes."

  Thinking that Carl might be offended if they left, Jane restrained Duncan with a look of resignation. They both sat down again, and Carl disappeared into the back of the house.

  "I thought you wanted to leave," Duncan said under his breath.

  "Well, I do, but he's so nice," Jane whispered back.

  "Careful, Ollie, don't drop it," they heard Carl say in the kitchen just before Ollie appeared, his tongue between his teeth in concentration, as he balanced plates of cake in his hands.

  "Ollie, you remember me, don't you?" Jane asked. She attempted to put the boy at ease with a smile.

  "Sure," Ollie said. "You're the lady we found."

  Carl returned with coffee for the adults and a glass of milk for Ollie. He sat down and Jane decided to keep pursuing information, any information that might help her.

  "Do you remember anything at all unusual about that day?" she asked Ollie gently.

  He swallowed a mouthful of chocolate cake and shook his head. "It was early in the day yet," he said. "We'd only just got up, Pop and me."

  "So I must have been left in the ditch the night before," prompted Jane.

  "Yeah, I remember old Jiggers—that's one of our dogs—was missing. We went out early to look for him."

  "It took us a while to find him, too. The ambulance blowing its siren ran him off when it came to get you," Carl said with a twinkle.

  "We didn't ever find him, Pop. He came home all by himself."

  Carl and Ollie got into an interminable discussion about what time Jiggers had loped up to the back porch after his jaunt in the woods.

  Jane had nearly finished eating her cake before she could slip into the discussion and ask, "How about the night before? Do you recall strange cars or lights or anything?"

  Carl started to shake his head, but Ollie said, "Yeah, I do remember something! I was out looking for Jiggers—sorry, Dad, I know I was supposed to be in bed, but I was worried about Jiggers and went out after you were asleep. Anyway, I was out looking for him, and I was trying to stay out of the woods, 'cause it's scary there in the dark. And I was on the other side of the field from where we found you. I saw this van going real slow up by the road."

  "Ollie! How come you never told anybody from the sheriff's department about the van?" Carl wanted to know.

  Ollie's face flushed and he looked down at his shoes. "I forgot. And even if I'd remembered, Pop, I probably wouldn't have said anything. You told me not to go out by myself after dark."

  Carl looked exasperated, but Jane smiled warmly at the boy. "Do you recall what color it was? What make? If it had an Illinois license tag?"

  Ollie thought, but shook his head. "I shined my flashlight on it, but it was so dark that it was hard to tell," he said. "The taillights lit up the back of it a little. It was blue, I think. Or green. No, I think it was blue, because my friend's father was looking at a blue van to buy, and we went with him just a few days before. But he didn't buy it, so I know it wasn't him."

  "Did anyone get out of the van?"

  "I didn't see anyone. Only a van driving real slow. Then it speeded up and went fast."

  "How about the license tag?" Duncan asked.

  "I was too far away to read it," Ollie said.

  Repeated questioning of Ollie turned up no further information, but Jane thought that the van might be a good lead. After Carl told her how to get to the exact spot where she'd been left all those months ago, they thanked both Joneses and left.

  It was too dark and cold to examine the ditch near the cornfield that night, so they reluctantly headed back toward the Prairie Rose.

  "A blue van—does that mean anything to you?" Duncan asked.

  Jane shook her head, but then a picture of a blue van unexpectedly flashed into her mind. They had seen a blue Ford van on the road yesterday as they were driving out of Chicago, and she had noticed it, had studied it carefully, had even wondered why she was paying so much attention to it.

  "Duncan," she said with a kind of darting excitement.

  "What is it?" he asked, glancing quickly over at her.

  "A blue van. I remember something about a blue van."

  "What?" he asked, sounding alarmed.

  She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to think. The only thing that appeared was the image of the blue van she had seen riding along next to them on the highway yesterday. She willed the image to disappear, to clear her mind for something else to come through, but it refused to go. A blue van, a blue van... something about a blue van hovered on the edge of her consciousness, waiting to be recognized.

  "The Coca-Cola spilled," she said suddenly.

  Duncan braked the car. They were coming into the outskirts of Tyree now, and a bright sign from a local hamburger joint cast a fleeting glow across his face.

  "What Coca-Cola?"

  "A can of Coke was sitting in a cup holder. It got knocked over and spilled all over the carpet, and I was angry and wanted to clean it up." She didn't know where the words were coming from, and suddenly her mind went blank.

  "What are you talking about?" Duncan pulled into the Prairie Rose parking lot and switched off the engine.

  She turned to him, feeling as though she had accomplished a major breakthrough.

  "I don't know, Duncan, I can't understand what it means, but I remember! I remember, Duncan!"

  He looked startled, but when he saw that she was serious, that she really had remembered something about her past life, he opened his arms and she fell into them.

  All Jane could do was say over and over, "I remember, I remember," and soon she was sobbing the words as though her heart would break.

  Chapter 12

  Jane didn't want to be alone. She couldn't be alone. She had to talk, and Duncan was happy to oblige her by listening.

  It was much too cold to stay in the car, so he bundled her up the walkway to the motel, making sure she didn't slip on one of the many ice patches.

  "It's so strange," she said, heedless of his hurry to get her inside where it was warm. "I have a clear memory of a van, and it was blue just like Ollie saw, and I know I was sitting in it and the Coca-Cola went all over the floor, and I was angry because it was making a big mess and—"

  "Shh," he cautioned as they approached the door of her room. "Someone nearby may be trying to sleep."

  She lowered her voice. "So I looked around for something to blot up the Coke, and that's where the whole scene stops."

  Duncan unlocked the door of her room for her, and she put a hand on his arm. Her eyes were enormous, and they pleaded with him.

  "Don't go," she said. "Please come in."

  If he were to be invited into her room at all, he would have preferred the invitation to be couched in romantic terms, but if this was all she could offer at the moment, he wouldn't refuse. They stepped inside, and Jane shivered even though she still wore her heavy coat.

  Jane seemed tense, restless, as though she couldn't be still. "It's too cool in here," she said, resetting the controls on the thermostat. After that she seemed not to know what to do with herself.

  "I'd better hang up our coats," she said. Wordlessly he slipped out of his, and she took both coats and hung them together in the alcove that passed for a closet at the Prairie Rose Motel.

  His gaze wandered to the bed, which was an ordinary double bed, but it seemed so large. So welcoming. He looked around for somewhere else to sit. There was only one chair, a stiff plastic-covered armchai
r, so he sat down on the edge of it. Jane returned and hesitated before sitting down on the edge of the bed. Duncan thought it best to return the conversation to her memory of the van.

  "You were saying that the Coke spilled," he prodded gently. "Who spilled it?"

  Her knuckles bleached white with the force of her grip on the edge of the mattress. She leaned forward in concentration. "I—I can't picture another person," she said finally. "And yet it doesn't seem as though I was alone."

  "Were you sitting on one of the front seats in the van? And if so, which one?"

  "It seems like I was to the right of the spilled Coke, so I'd be in the passenger side, wouldn't I?"

  "I suppose so," he said. He felt sorry for her. She seemed fragile and tiny, and the Little Girl Lost quality that had made him want to protect her in the beginning had returned. He wanted nothing so much as to take her into his arms and comfort her, to tell her that everything was going to turn out fine.

  To his surprise, she stood up and started pacing the floor. She looked so pretty in the clothes she had made out of Sigrid's discarded fabric. Her figure was petite and yet rounded in all the right places. There was certainly nothing wrong with his own memory. Anytime he chose, he could summon to mind a sharp picture of the way she had looked when he stripped off her wet clothes in the old mine and discovered that she was not a girl, but a woman.

  Jane stopped pacing in front of him, deep in thought. "I'm sure I was in a van shortly before I was found in the field—it definitely rings a bell. The fact that Ollie saw one late the night before I was found is an important coincidence, don't you think?" she asked. Her eyes were anxious.

  "Yes, I do," he said, although it was easier at the moment to think about the unintentionally alluring way she moved than about the blue van.

  "And Detective Schmidt might be able to trace such a van," she said. She reached for the telephone. "I'm going to call him."

  His hand reached out and stopped her. "It's much too late for phone calls," he reminded her.

  "What time is it?"

  "It's after ten o'clock. He could be sleeping. Besides, we don't know his home number."

  Jane pressed her hand to her temple for a moment and closed her eyes. When she opened them, it was with a rueful laugh. "I forgot about time. I'm so intensely involved in this thing that I don't think about anything else."

  "We'll call him in the morning," Duncan said, rising to his feet.

  "In the morning," she agreed. She seemed to deflate at the idea that this had to be put off until then, and he could sense her disappointment.

  She went to get his coat, and he turned away so that if his longing showed on his face, she wouldn't see it. He would have given almost anything to stay the night with her.

  "I'll see you tomorrow," he said more gruffly than he intended, then let himself out of her room. He could have sworn that she said his name as the door closed, and he stood outside listening, in case she spoke again or opened the door, but she didn't.

  He let himself into his own room and took in the sight of the tightly made bed with distaste. It was a king-size bed with a mattress that he was sure would be too hard. He wouldn't have chosen a room with such a large bed on his own, but it had been assigned to him by the desk clerk. The size of it would only remind him of how alone he was. He briefly contemplated sleeping on the pull-out sofa that occupied the far wall, then discarded the idea. Those things usually had flimsy mattresses unsuited to his big frame.

  As he took his clothes out of the suitcase, he wondered how much longer he and Jane could go on like this. More to the point, he didn't know how much longer he could go on like this. This brother-and-sister malarkey was a charade.

  He was head over heels in love with her and sure that she wasn't aware of the depth of his feelings. But last night when they danced, he'd been convinced that she had been as aroused by their sexual chemistry as he was. Dancing with her had been sweet torture, knowing as he did that he could take things no further until she gave him a sign that she was ready. He was honor-bound to be nothing more than her protector until then.

  He threw himself across the bed, thumbing through the paperback mystery he'd brought along to read. He couldn't get interested in it, though, because the real-life mystery of Jane Rhodes was so much more absorbing.

  He tossed the book to one side and linked his hands behind his head, thinking.

  What was Jane's connection to a blue van? And did she really remember spilling a Coke in one? Was it merely wishful thinking on her part? Or perhaps only part of a dream she'd had? He didn't know what to think.

  He tried to figure out if he knew how amnesia victims went about regaining their memories. He'd once seen a segment on television's 60 Minutes about a man who had been missing after an accident where he'd bumped his head, had disappeared from his former life and been absent from home for twenty years or so. After this period of building a new life for himself, he'd been inadvertently hit on the head by the boom on a sailboat, and when he'd regained consciousness he remembered who he was and where he was supposed to be. He'd gone home to discover that he'd been declared dead, and his wife had remarried and raised a couple of kids with her new husband.

  He turned out the light, rolled over on his side, and tried unsuccessfully to go to sleep. His mind was too active. He kept thinking about Jane in a blue van, Jane in her blue jeans, Jane and her blue eyes. Finally he gave up and turned on the light again. There was no use trying to sleep when he felt so wide awake.

  He dressed and went down to the lobby where there was a small display of reading matter. In his present frame of mind, he wanted something that wasn't too stimulating, so he bought a newspaper.

  He was no sooner back inside his room than he heard a light knock on his door. To his surprise, Jane's voice called, "Duncan! Duncan?" It held a frantic note, and he flung the door open wide to find her standing there in an old flannel robe of his and looking pinched and white.

  "Is something wrong?"

  Much to his amazement, she hurtled into his room and all but fell into his arms. He steadied her with one hand, closing the door with the other.

  "I thought you'd left. I came over to knock on the door and you didn't answer and I was afraid you had gone," she said all in one breath. Her eyes were dark with alarm.

  "Left?" he exclaimed incredulously.

  "Gone home. To the ranch." She clutched his arm tightly.

  "I would never do that," he said in gentle surprise. He saw her pulse beating in a pale blue vein at her temple, and realized that she really was frightened.

  "But you weren't here," she said in bewilderment, and he slid his arm around her shoulders to discover that she was trembling as though she was very cold.

  "I went downstairs to buy a paper," he explained. He pointed to it on the table.

  "I don't know what's wrong with me," Jane said, her teeth chattering. She managed to calm herself slightly. "I know you wouldn't go off and leave me here alone, it's a completely irrational fear, but it's all I could think of when you were gone," she said, attempting a smile.

  "Shh, it's all right," Duncan said as—against his better judgment—he pulled her close. He felt her heart beating beneath the thin robe, and the beat slowed as he stroked her hair. He could only imagine the terror in her heart; he had never been alone in the world as she had. That kind of experience was sure to leave its mark, and even though she had come so far since the night he had found her in the mine, she still had a long way to go before she felt totally secure.

  Slowly his hand found its way under her long hair and settled on her neck. His touch seemed to have a calming effect on her. She heaved a great shuddering sigh and moved closer, resting her head upon his chest. And that was when his heart started to beat louder.

  It was a moment of great tenderness between them, and Duncan cautioned himself not to ruin it. Presently Jane lifted her head and asked unsteadily, "Would you mind if I had a glass of water?"

  He pulled himself away, tho
ugh he hated to do it, and went to the sink where he ran water into a glass. She followed him, taking the cup from him after he'd filled it.

  "Thanks," she said after taking several big gulps. She looked somewhat revived and put the cup back on the edge of the sink. When she turned around again, he saw that the front of her robe gapped slightly, and he averted his eyes.

  "Why did you come over to see me?" he asked.

  "I remembered something else. When I was in the van—when the Coke spilled—I was worried about some things in the back. Whatever they were, they belonged to me, and I have a vague memory of hoping that nothing happened to them."

  "What kind of things?" Duncan said. He was interested, but she was very beautiful, very intense, and he kept thinking of how soft and warm she had felt when he comforted her in his arms.

  "Oh—personal belongings. And something else." She wrinkled her forehead in concentration.

  "I wish I could help," he said, feeling helpless in the face of her obvious anguish.

  She pulled herself out of her thoughts and focused startled eyes on his face. "You wouldn't have had to get involved in any of this," she said. "You are helping. You have helped."

  "Not as much as I'd like," he said.

  "I can never repay you enough." Her voice was low and troubled.

  "When you get a job—" he began, deliberately misunderstanding.

  "I don't mean the money. I was talking about the moral support. Being there. It means a lot."

  Duncan knew that Jane was sincere, but they seemed to be dragging out this conversation. He tried to think of some way to ease her exit. It wasn't what he wanted to do, but he thought she'd better leave before he said or did something stupid.

  "I'd better go," she said with that uncanny faculty she had of reading his mind.

  He started for the door, but then she raised anxious eyes to his and said in a low tone, "But I'd rather stay."

  "Stay?" he inquired, feeling his spirits lift.

  "Just—to not be alone," she replied. In her eyes he read the message, Don't get the wrong idea.

  His mind ran off on a couple of tangents. She wanted to stay—but didn't want it to go too far. She was lonely. She was afraid, for some irrational reason that was the result of her background, that he would somehow disappear. She was struggling with a memory that was foggy and unreliable.