He put his hand on her arm. “The old man was right. I can’t go running around in women’s sweats.”
She gave him a tender smile. “Men. Really, don’t worry. We’ll deal with the clothing issue. But the clinic comes first.”
He released her and stepped back. “I feel fine.”
She gaped at him. “Maybe you do feel fine now. But you were comatose for hours.”
“That was Saturday. I’ve been conscious—except for normal sleep—ever since.”
She pressed her lips together. He knew she was reminding herself to go easy on him. “You’re suffering from amnesia, remember?”
He glared at her. “As if it’s something I could forget.”
“You have headaches.”
“Hardly at all the past couple of days—and let’s go inside. We don’t need to stand out here and freeze while we argue over this.” He turned and headed for the house. She didn’t follow. He glanced back at her. “Come inside. Please.”
Her mouth a grim line, she finally started walking.
Inside, he hung the coat she’d loaned him on the hook in the front hall. She kept hers on—and her snow boots, too, a decision that did not bode well for his chances of convincing her to forget about the clinic visit. She was ready to go and staying that way.
He went in and took a seat at the table. She remained standing at the counter, in about the same spot she’d stood while she waited for her grandfather to leave.
She said, tightly, “Are you telling me that you refuse to get medical help? Because I’m so serious here, Bill. You need, at the very least, to let someone who knows about brain injuries have a look at you.”
“And then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“After they have a look at me, then what?”
“Well, I don’t know. Will Bacon—he’s the nurse-practitioner at the clinic—will decide what’s next. Maybe a CAT scan, or X-rays, or whatever. Maybe surgery. Maybe…honestly, Bill. I don’t know. If I knew, I’d be a doctor. And I’m not.”
He didn’t want it. He really didn’t want some doctor or nurse working him over, asking him questions when he had no answers. Or cutting his head open, if it came to that. The idea made his skin crawl. Plus, somehow, deep down, he knew it would all be unnecessary.
He knew he was getting better. He hadn’t had a headache since the other night when he dreamed of his real life—and actually remembered a little of it. He improved daily.
Hourly. Every damn minute. He was going to be fine in the end. He’d recover on his own, he was absolutely sure of that. All he really needed was time. His memory, already returning in snatches, would eventually come back completely.
But she looked so damned determined.
In the end, Ash knew she would find a way to make him do what she felt was right for him. “Okay.”
Her sweet face lit up. “You’ll go?”
“I’ll go.”
“Now?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, even though he could think of a thousand good reasons not to.
Who the hell was going to pay for it? They’d have to take a damn IOU. Tessa was already footing the tab for his daily existence. Damned if he’d let her take responsibility for his medical bills, too.
And how would he fill out his personal information when he didn’t have any? Not to mention, what about his medical history? He didn’t have that, either. He had no history of any kind before Saturday—well, beyond knowing his name was Asher, called Ash, and a few random details about a large family that had to be out there somewhere, along with some unknown woman he dreaded having to face…
Tessa snatched her keys from the key rack and her purse from its spot at the end of the counter. “Let’s go, then.” She headed for the door.
Resigned to his fate, Ash got up and followed her out.
Chapter Ten
“I can’t believe this,” Tessa fumed.
The local clinic had been set up in what Ash assumed had once been someone’s house—a cute, yellow clapboard cottage with white shutters. They stood on the front porch.
The place was locked up tight. A note taped to the door said the clinic was temporarily closed. For further information, call 555-3695.
Ash tried not to look as relieved as he felt to be let off this particular hook. “Not a big deal,” he said mildly. “I’m fine, really.”
The dark, determined glance she shot him made it all too clear that she hadn’t given up on getting him the medical attention she was so sure he needed. “Come on. We’ll see if the phone’s working at the store.”
So they got back in the wagon and she drove them to Main Street. She parked in the lot by the town hall and they crossed the street to a shop between the gold sales store and the café. Jones Mercantile, the sign read in old-timey letters that matched the ones on the signs at the bar across and down the street and The Mercantile Grill next to it.
A couple of elderly women—one skinny, the other built like a tank—tromped up in snow boots, baggy jeans and fat down jackets as Tessa unlocked the glass-topped door.
“Nellie. Linda Lou.” Tessa smiled and nodded.
“Teresa,” said the skinny one, with a sharp look for Ash—including a definite scowl when she took in the purple sweats.
“My friend, Bill,” Tessa said. Ash knew a moment’s gratitude that she’d tacitly agreed to carry on with the fiction that he was someone he wasn’t. It just made things simpler, for now. And kept people from asking a lot of unanswerable questions. These two, he could tell at first glance, would consider it their civic duty to find out everything they could about him. “Bill, this is Linda Lou Beardsly.” Tessa tipped her head at the big one. “And Nellie Anderson.” A smile in the skinny one’s direction.
“Pleased to meet you, ladies.”
The two nodded and gave him a grudging, “Hello,” in unison. The skinny one said, “What happened to your head?”
He gave her a half shrug. “Ran into a door.”
The big one asked, “So you’re Tessa’s special friend from Napa, are you? I’ve been wondering when you’d finally show up.”
As Ash tried to decide how to reply to that one, Tessa dealt with it. “Well, he’s here now and I’m so glad.” She gave him a fond smile.
The two old ladies exchanged knowing looks.
“Are you opening up?” Nellie, the skinny one, wanted to know.
“Not today,” Tessa told her. “Got some things to…catch up on first. But tomorrow at ten for sure. Unless there’s something you need right now?”
“No,” said the big one. “Not a thing. Nellie?”
“I was only curious, that’s all. I hate to walk around town and see half the businesses dark. These storms are just so disruptive.” Nellie pursed up her skinny lips and shook her head in disapproval—as if the weather ought to pay attention to her complaint and do better next time.
“We’ll be back to normal by tomorrow,” Tessa promised with a bright smile. “See you two later.” She pushed the door open.
The two got the message and trudged on by at last.
Inside, Tessa punched some buttons on a simple alarm and then went around turning on lights. Ash hung back as she disappeared through another door on the far side of the large main room.
He glanced around. The store was wood-floored and wood-paneled, with a pressed-tin ceiling maybe twenty feet up. His first impression was that Jones Mercantile was the small-town version of a department store. At the far wall, above the door to the back room, stairs ascended to an open second floor. He could see clothing up there. Downstairs was for housewares, jewelry, towels and sheets, all kinds of knickknacks, pictures, scented soaps, stuff women went gaga for. He guessed Tessa did a good business with the locals and with whatever tourist trade the town attracted.
She came back through the door. He heard a heater kick in. “Warm things up in here,” she said with a shiver.
“Teresa?” he repeated the name Nellie Anderson had called her. “Is th
at your given name?”
“Unfortunately.”
“You don’t like it.”
“I hate it. When we were kids and Marnie and I were always fighting, she started calling me Saint Teresa—partly because of the whole nun thing my grandpa mentioned and also because I was such a goody-goody type. Most of the kids in town picked it up.”
“And what about ‘Tessy’?”
“That was my nickname, too. I never liked it, not anymore than I liked being called Saint Teresa. When I was in my teens, I started insisting my name was Tessa. I refused to answer to anything else. Eventually, everyone accepted that I was Tessa now. Well, except for my grandpa. Nobody tells Oggie Jones what to do.”
He grinned. “How long have you owned this place?”
“Five years. It used be a barber shop and variety store owned by the Santino family. But when they decided to sell out, my dad and Gina helped me buy it. Come on.” She signaled him back through the door with her, into a storage area and on through another door into a small, windowless office. She sat at the tidy oak desk, dropped her keys and her purse, and snatched up the phone. “Bingo.” She smiled wide. “We’re in business. I’ll just give the clinic a call, see what’s up.” She dialed and then signaled him to take the one extra chair.
He felt too edgy at the looming prospect of medical treatment to sit, so he lurked in the doorway. She listened. “Great,” she muttered, meaning it wasn’t. She scribbled a number on her desk pad and hung up. “The answering machine at the clinic says they’re closed until next week. Will Bacon—that’s the nurse practitioner—is out of town till a week from tomorrow. If there’s an emergency while he’s gone, we’re supposed to call Sierra Nevada Memorial in Grass Valley. Which is pointless.” Pointless. Was that good news? Was she finally giving this up? She went on, “I mean, why call? We might as well just go on down there.”
“Down…?”
“To Grass Valley. It’s less than an hour away.” She grabbed her keys and purse again and shoved back her chair. “Let’s get moving.”
He just didn’t want to do it. “Enough.” She was halfway around the desk. He went to her, took her by the shoulders and guided her backward.
“Stop this.” She tried to shrug him off. “We have to—”
“No.” Gently he pushed her back into the chair. “We don’t.”
“We do.” When she tried to rise again, he grabbed on to the chair arms and trapped her there.
He also pinned her with his determined gaze. “Accept it. The crisis has passed. Whatever happened to me, I’m getting better. I’ll recover completely in time. Watch me.”
“But you still need to—”
“Tessa. I’m not going to the damn hospital.”
“You are. You have to.”
“I’m not. And I don’t.”
A stare-down ensued. He refused to give in. She was the one who dropped her gaze first. “I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to you.”
He touched her chin, urging her to look at him. When she finally met his gaze, he said, “Nothing is going to happen. And if it did—which it won’t—it wouldn’t be your fault anyway. It would be mine. I’m making this decision, not you.”
“But—”
He didn’t let her finish. “I’ll say it again. I’m not going.”
“I just…” She was weakening, realizing that if he flat-out refused to go, there wasn’t much she could do about it. “You have to face reality here. You don’t even know who you are. You need medical help, Bill.”
“Ash,” he corrected her softly, knowing he had to give her something in the way of proof he was getting better. “My name is Ash.”
She gaped at him. Wonder filled those gold-green eyes. “You’ve…remembered?”
He nodded.
“But…you didn’t say a word.”
“Yeah, well. I should have, I guess.”
She reached up, cupped his face between her hands. “Oh, you’d better believe you should have.”
“I don’t remember everything,” he warned. “Really, it’s not much. But I feel…encouraged, you know?”
“Tell me. All of it.”
So he sat on the edge of her desk and filled her in on the things he’d recalled about his family and about the life he’d lived before he came to her. He left out the mysterious woman in the ballroom, telling himself he’d wait on that. Until he saw the woman’s face. Until he knew who she was and what significance she had to him.
“It’s something,” he said, when he was finished. “But I could really use a last name. Maybe a phone number or a mailing address. I have this feeling I’m from Texas. Though I’m not sure why I think that.”
“Texas, huh? Well, this is definitely a start. I’m so glad—and I still think you should see a doctor.”
He only looked at her. Steadily.
She blew out a breath. “Will you at least promise that if the headaches come back, if you have blurry vision or feel nauseous or anything like that, you’ll tell me and we’ll head straight for the hospital?”
“Deal.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You’ve made that more than clear.”
She stood again. “All right then. Time to go visit my Uncle Jack.”
Damn. The sheriff. He still had that to get through.
“I don’t like your expression,” she muttered. “Don’t try and tell me we’re not going to talk to Uncle Jack.”
“Look. I’m willing to go see him, to tell him all I know…”
“Why am I hearing a ‘but’ in there somewhere?”
“I just want your agreement that the sheriff is one thing. But for everyone else around here, let me keep on being Bill. It’s a lot easier than trying to explain the truth. Everyone’s heard of your boyfriend, Bill, right?”
She rolled her eyes. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“So if I’m Bill, it cuts down on the questions.”
She gave him one of those so-patient looks of hers. “It’s obvious you know nothing about the people in this town. There will be questions no matter what you call yourself.”
“But fewer, if I’m Bill.”
“No. Really. The more I think about this, the more certain I am that lying is only going to create more problems than it can possibly solve. You say you’re certain your memory will return in full.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, when you remember everything, when you know who you are completely, then what will we tell them? That I thought you were the Bill I met in Napa, but I was mistaken?”
What she said made way too much sense.
But he still felt protective, somehow, of all he didn’t know about his “real” self. He preferred making up a temporary identity to admitting outright that he didn’t know who he was.
He muttered defensively, “We’re already set with Bill.”
“Says who?”
“I introduced myself as Bill to your grandfather. And then there were those two ladies we saw on the street. They think I’m Bill, too.”
“So?” Now she was the one rising, taking him by the shoulders. “Tell them the truth the next time you see them. Just, you know, ‘Sorry for the confusion. My name is Asher. Call me Ash.’ You don’t need to explain. No matter what they hit you with, shrug and move on. You don’t owe them any explanations. And what’s the point in lying, really? It’ll only trip you up in the end. Plus, when you finally remember everything and get your real identity back, you’ll just have more explaining to do. Better to be honest, but vague, at this point.”
He knew she was right. In the end, there was no protecting himself from questions he couldn’t answer. Maybe he needed to stop trying to hide from everything he didn’t know.
“All right,” he said, and discovered the choice to be honest had him feeling more at ease in his own skin than he had since he found himself riding down the highway in a big rig with no clue who he was or how he got there. “Ash, then. Call me Ash.”
“Ash
.” She said it softly. “It’s a beautiful name. I really love it.” And then she bent closer. She kissed him, a tender press of her lips to his. Before he got a chance to wrap her tight in his arms and ramp up the heat a little, she was pulling away. “Okay. Now, for the sheriff’s station…”
“One more thing.”
She braced her hands on her hips. “Isn’t there always?”
He grabbed a handful of purple sweats. “Do you sell men’s clothing in here?”
She looked relieved. “Now, that I can help you with.”
Forty-five minutes later, dressed in jeans and sturdy lace-up boots, a black sweatshirt and a new jacket, Ash shook hands with Jack Roper. Tessa’s uncle was tanned and fit in middle age, his piercing black eyes a startling contrast to his almost-white hair.
“Ash…?” Roper was waiting for a last name.
Ash shrugged. “Can’t say—which is a big part of what we came to see you about.”
Roper frowned. “I think maybe we need a little privacy. This way.” He gestured them into the back, where he led them to his office and shut the door. “Have a seat.” Ash and Tessa sat opposite the desk. Roper offered coffee, which they declined. He went around and took the desk chair.
After a minute or two of small talk about the storm and how everyone seemed to have made it through in one piece, he asked, “So then, Ash. Why can’t you say what your last name is?”
“Because I don’t know.” As simply and directly as he could, Ash told the sheriff all he knew. From the truck ride down the mountain to the way Tessa had rescued him and cared for him while they waited out the storm. He said what he’d remembered of who he was—except for the unknown woman in the ballroom. He kept that to himself.
When he’d finished, the first question out of the sheriff’s mouth was, “That gash on your forehead looks nasty. Have you been to a doctor?”
Tessa piped up. “He won’t go.”
Roper looked at him as if he’d lost more than his memory. “Go. Let them at least do a physical exam. A wound like you’ve got there is nothing to fool with, not with the symptoms you just described—plus, if it turns out a crime has been committed, we’ll be in better shape to do something about it if you’ve seen a doctor and there’s a medical record of your injuries and whatever treatment you underwent.”
The Stranger and Tessa Jones Page 11