Tall Dark Stranger (Cajun Cowboys Book 1)

by Patricia Watters

  Whatever connection the sight of the journal brought was broken when Karen appeared in the doorway with the diaper bag, which she placed on the bed beside Anne, while saying, "I'll wait in the living room," then turned and left.

  Anne's attention was again drawn to the journal, but only momentarily because the baby started fussing. She gave Joe a contrite smile. "He's not too patient when he's hungry."

  Joe laughed. "Typical Broussard male." Which drew another smile from Anne. Before turning to go, he said, "I'll leave then. Do you need anything else?"

  "Just the infant carrier on the back seat of the car. If you set it outside the bedroom door I'll get it when I'm finished nursing, and I'll put Tommy down for a nap then."

  Joe eyed the woman he'd loved from as far back as he could remember, finding it strange she felt awkward with him. In creating Joey they'd shared the most intimate moment a man and woman could share, yet the whole episode was scrubbed from her memory, leaving a vacuum filled by a stranger.

  From the car, he grabbed the infant carrier and set it on the floor in front of the closed door to Anne's bedroom then went into the living room where Karen was waiting on the couch. After retrieving a chair from the kitchen table and sitting across from her, he said, "While Anne's nursin' the baby, maybe you can give me some details about this memory problem she has. Has she seen a doctor?"

  Karen shook her head. "She wouldn't go, but I've been on the internet and from what I could piece together she has a kind of amnesia called dissociative fugue, where someone wanders off without being consciously aware of doing so, which is called the fugue period. During this time they appear normal to other people and they attract no attention, but at some point they become confused about their identity and aware of the memory loss, then they come to the realization that they don't know who they are or where they came from."

  "Does she know she has this condition?" Joe asked.

  Karen nodded. "She read about it on the internet and knows as much as I do."

  "Then she must be able to remember things now."

  "Some things. Her memory's clear from the day at the homeless shelter when she became aware that she didn't know who she was or where she came from. The odd thing about this amnesia is they retain memories of skills they've learned, but all memory of their personal identity becomes temporarily inaccessible."

  "So this all started when Anne hit her head during the accident," Joe said.

  "That, and fright because of the flood, maybe seeing the driver drown. It's a complicated disorder, and it's not very well understood."

  That all might be so, Joe thought, but there was still a disconnect. "Why didn't you try to find out who she was, maybe gone to the police or to a TV station to post a picture?"

  "Anne was afraid. The women at the homeless shelter were convinced she'd been abused by the baby's father and advised her to stay away from authorities who could put the baby in foster care until her memory returned while also possibly reconnecting her with an cruel man. I never questioned because when she first came to the mission for meals she had bruises on her face, so it seemed logical, and after she moved in with me I was afraid if I went to the authorities she might take the baby and leave. I figured she'd be safe with me until her memory returned, and we could take things from there."

  Joe considered what Karen said. It all made sense, though it bothered him that Anne could have felt threatened by him in any way, even in her subconscious mind. "Do you have any idea how long this amnesia can last?" he asked.

  Karen shrugged. "From what I read, an episode can last anywhere from a few hours to several months like in Anne's case, and even years in rare incidents, and the memory can come back spontaneously or in fragments when the person's back in familiar surroundings or reintroduced to things that were important to them."

  "Down at the bayou there's a wild hawk Anne taught to come to her," Joe said. "Anne kept a journal about it so I put the journal on the bedstand. When she spotted it, she ran her fingers over it, so I know she found something familiar about it."

  "Is the place where the hawk comes nearby?" Karen asked.

  Joe nodded. "About a ten minute walk."

  "Then take Anne there while I sit with the baby. It might be the spark that ignites a spontaneous recovery."

  Joe held onto hope that Karen was right. Something about the journal definitely caught Anne's notice. He also wanted time alone with her if only to touch her, even if it would be a momentary touch while helping her negotiate the trail to the bayou. A simple want, yet so seemingly out of reach.

  ***

  When Anne entered the living room after nursing the baby and putting him down for a nap, she found Joe showing Karen some documents she heard him telling Karen were a marriage license and a certified copy of her birth certificate, which Joe had found in a folder in her apartment. She took the documents Karen offered, and as she looked at the name, Anne Elizabeth Harrison, on both, she said, "I don't remember these, though I do recognize my signature on the marriage license, but the date on it's no longer valid."

  "It was only good for thirty days," Joe said. "I still want us to marry." His voice was melancholy and his face cheerless, and Anne wished she could reach into her memory bank and pull out the missing pieces. It was a frustration she'd lived with for six months.

  She returned the documents to him. "When my memory comes back, maybe we can make plans again." She strolled around the living room while trying to find some familiarity in the place, but found none.

  In the kitchen, she looked through the window over the sink, her attention again drawn to the large, two-story, southern-style house with its wrap-around verandas, standing at the far end of the recently-harvested sugarcane field. The house didn't look familiar, nor did the outbuildings or the large track, presumably for training thoroughbreds, yet, as she stared at the scene, she was struck with a feeling of uneasiness. She glanced over her shoulder at Joe. "You said my family's place was next door to yours. Is that big house across the cane field where they live?"

  "Yes," Joe replied.

  "Do they know I'm here?"

  Joe moved to stand behind her. "Not yet, but I'll be tellin' the authorities tomorrow so they can close the missing person report. They can tell your parents."

  Anne eyed him in puzzlement. "Why them and not you?"

  "Because our families have been feudin' for decades."

  "Then we wouldn't have had a regular wedding?"

  Joe shook his head. "We planned to be married in the rectory by the parish priest."

  "Then I'm Catholic?" Anne asked, feeling a kind of disconnect with the idea.

  "No, my family is so you went through instruction because you wanted to do it for me." Joe sighed. "You really did love me once."

  Anne felt guilty for putting him through this, and frustrated because she couldn't undo things. And now there was some kind of bad blood between their families. She turned from the window to face him. "Why are our families feuding?"

  Joe drew in a long breath. "It's a complicated story. Maybe we could talk about it down at the bayou. We used to meet there."

  "Where there's a hawk named Tannerin?"

  Joe's eyes sharpened with excitement. "Then you remember him?"

  "No, I read about him in the journal by my bed. I recognized my writing, but I don't remember writing it."

  "Maybe you will down at the bayou. You'd call the hawk's name and he'd fly down and land near you and take strips of meat you'd toss to him. We could go there now and maybe find him perched on a big cypress he's claimed as his. He never would come to me though, only you."

  Anne felt a flurry of eagerness as she pictured the scene Joe described. "I'd like that." She glanced over at Karen. "Will you be okay with Tommy until we get back?"

  "We'll be fine," Karen said. "Take your time."

  Anne left with Joe, who took her arm briefly to nudge her in the direction of the woods skirting the cane field, and a few hundred feet further, he turned into the woods
and followed a narrow trail. As they started down the pathway, he glanced back and said to her, "I haven't been here in a while so the trail's a little overgrown. It used to be well-worn."

  "Because we met there a lot?"

  Joe nodded. "Whenever we could get away without bein' seen."

  Anne followed while also searching her mind for a connection that wasn't there. "I don't remember any of this," she said, in dismay. "I have a total blank for my personal past, yet I can do normal everyday things. It's like storing text on a computer and forgetting the file name. You know it's there but you can't access it."

  Joe paused and turned. "Then I'll fill in the details. We have a past together and when we're married and start living as husband and wife things'll come back."

  Anne drew in a long breath. "It's premature to talk like that when I don't even know you, and I couldn't possibly marry you until I remember why I once loved you."

  "I guess I wasn't thinkin'. You saw our marriage license and know you planned to marry me so I hope you'll at least believe you had a good reason to want to spend the rest of your life with me, and trust what I tell you about us to be the truth?"

  "I don't want to question what you tell me because I want my past back, but I can't be rushed. You're still a stranger," Anne said, exasperated. "It's impossible to explain how it is, not knowing who you are or what kind of person you are, or even what kind of things you like, and the harder I try to pull up my past the more frustrated I get because nothing's there."

  "Maybe you're tryin' too hard. Maybe you need to let things go. It's like tryin' to remember someone's name and it doesn't come when you try, but let it go and get on to other things and when you least expect it the name comes. Just let it all go for a while and get familiar with what's around you. Get familiar with me again. I know you better than anyone, even your parents, because they don't know the intimate side of you that created a child with me."

  Joe's words left Anne more disturbed than before because it seemed unfeasible that she could forget something as momentous as creating a child with a man. But Joe was right. She did need to just let things go and find their way back into her conscious mind.

  After they'd walked a good distance into the woods, she said, "Was the hawk at the bayou the last time you were here?"

  "Yes," Joe replied, "but he doesn't come to me. Only you."

  "That's because I brought him strips of meat."

  "You remember doin' that?"

  "No, I read it in the journal." But as she said the words, the image of tucking a piece of raw beef under a curved slab of bark came to her.

  She started to ask if she played a game with the hawk, like hiding meat for him to find, when Joe said, "Here's the bayou and over there's the pier where we used to sit. The fishing shack's relatively new, but when you were in high school there was only the pier."

  Anne looked in the direction Joe pointed and saw a weatherworn pier, partially hidden from view by low brush, and beyond it stood a small building made of cypress, with a front porch with a line-up of fishing rods. She gazed across the bayou at the vegetation on the opposite bank, and as she scanned the trees, a mix of ash, maple and live oak draped in long, twisted, gray tangles of Spanish moss, she said, "Is this where the hawk usually is?"

  Joe nodded and pointed. "Across the bayou in that huge old cypress. You'd call his name and if he was perched up there he'd fly down, but sometimes when he wasn't there he'd come if you called, so go ahead and call his name."

  Looking toward the woods on the opposite bank, Anne cupped her hands around her mouth, and called out, "Tannerin," then waited and watched. When she got no response she called out a couple more times, and still nothing.

  After a few minutes, Joe said, "If we sit on the pier, maybe he'll come."

  Anne walked over to sit on the weathered boards, and Joe lowered himself beside her. She again looked across the bayou, her gaze following the wide flaring base of the cypress and up the reddish, peeling-bark trunk to scan the needle-like foliage high above, hoping to find the hawk perched hidden among the branches, but as they sat waiting and listening, there was no sign of him. "I guess he's not around." She sighed, wondering how much longer she'd remain in this void. "You mentioned we used to meet here. What did we do when we were here?"

  Joe tossed a stick into the gumbo-like water, and as it moved with the sluggish current, he said, "The first time we came we fished, but you felt sorry for your fish and threw it back."

  "Did you throw yours back too?" Anne asked, while watching the stick float by.

  "No, I took it home and ate it."

  Anne looked up to see him smiling, an appealing smile, like he was teasing. She felt a little frisson of familiarity. Returning her attention to the bayou, she said, "So we came to fish?"

  "No, mostly we came to make out."

  "Then we were dating?"

  "In our own way. Even though we'd lived on neighboring ranches all our lives, we didn't know each other until you started coming to fais do-dos."

  "What's a fais do-do?"

  "A public dance party with Cajun music, food, and a lot of foot stompin'. Your senior year in high school you talked one of your friends into going. You'd never been to one since you weren't allowed to hang out with Cajuns, but the first night you did I spotted you, and since you didn't know how to two-step, I taught you. You started comin' fairly often after that, even though your folks thought you were somewhere else, and whenever you came you'd spend the whole time dancin' with me. Before long, you could dance as good as a Cajun."

  Anne wasn't sure if she'd tapped into memories, but it was as if her body suddenly filled with rhythm and energy… and joy. "Then I started meeting you there regularly?" She looked at him and waited for his response.

  His face sobered and his eyes took on the glint of suppressed anger. "You came until word got back to your folks and your father forbid you to go, but that didn't stop you from callin' me so we could set up a time and place to meet and go anyway."

  Anne figured she must have loved him a lot to slip away to see him like that, but all she knew about him now was he was a tall handsome stranger. She knew nothing about his personality or disposition. Was he funny? Serious? Temperamental? Did he pursue goals and go after them with a passion, or did life roll past him without giving it much thought? She also wondered what she had that made him want to make a lifelong commitment to her in the face of a feud between their families.

  While watching a clump of moss drift by on the water, she said, "You wanted to marry me for a reason. Why do you love me?"

  "Because I could never find a reason not to love you," Joe replied. "You're the only woman I've ever loved, and knowin' everything about me, you were willin' to take a chance on me, even marry me when you knew your family would be against it because I'm a Cajun."

  "You said that before, but what does my family have against Cajuns?"

  Joe snapped a stick in half and tossed the pieces in the water. "What it boils down to is, your father descends from the British Brigadier general and governor who ordered the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in the 1700s and I descend from the Cajun freedom fighter who led the resistance against them, a man they consider an outlaw, a murderer and a thug."

  "The man you said I wanted to name our son after?" Anne asked, perplexed with the thought that she'd go against her family in such a rash way.

  Joe nodded. "You had strong feelings on the subject."

  "Then our families are fighting about an event that took place over two-hundred years ago," she said while trying to get a handle on something that made no sense. Even her position in continuing the feud by giving their son a name that would anger her family seemed pointless.

  "Hatred's passed down through the generations, darlin'. Your father wants to make sure his ancestor's name is held in high regard by perpetuating a falsehood."

  Anne didn't want to get into whatever the falsehood was because she suspected it would be skewed by Joe's strong Cajun stan
ce, and she'd get the details when her memory returned. "Do you hate my father?" she asked.

  Joe shrugged. "I try not to think about him."

  "But you still do because if we marry you'll have a father-in-law who views you as the descendant of an outlaw, a murderer and a thug."

  Joe broke another stick and tossed the pieces into the water. "You have a lot of insight for someone with no memory."

  "What I'm hearing from you has nothing to do with my loss of memory," Anne said. "I'm learning that I was planning to marry someone who wants to hang onto some kind of animosity that started between a British governor and a Cajun rebel, and which has been passed down through the generations. Why can't you just let it go?"

  "Don't exclude yourself, darlin'. You're the one who wanted to name our son after the Cajun rebel, and marryin' me would've definitely been against your father's wishes."

  That caught Anne up short. She wondered now if she might have planned to marry Joe just to defy her father, for whatever reason, a thought she found troubling. In fact, everything about her relationship with Joe and her father was unsettling. She looked at him with curiosity, and uncertainty. "Then my father will be angry with me too?"

  "I don't know what he'll be at this point. All I know is what I feel." To her surprise, Joe covered her hand with his, and said, "I love you, sugah. I'll never stop lovin' you, and I know you'll get through this now that you're home with me, and whatever's goin' on with your folks, we'll work through it together."

  Anne looked at his large work-hardened hand, which covered hers in a protective way. Something about his touch felt familiar. A distant memory flickered, an awareness, and when she looked up and held his gaze, a spark flared, filling her with a warm ache, and she realized the ache was the unmistakable heat of passion, something missing from her life for six long months. Joe moved toward her, as if to kiss her, and in an instant she felt as if with a stranger again, not a complete stranger because she was beginning to know Joe, but enough of a stranger that it seemed awkward with his hand over hers, and him about to kiss her.