"In other words, you're trying to keep her from us. When were you planning to tell us?"
"I just got back from filin' a report with the police. You'll be hearin' from them, probably this afternoon."
Anne's father glanced at her momentarily, then returned to Joe. "Has she seen a doctor?"
"Not yet."
"Then her mother and I will take her to our family doctor," her father said in a tone that told Joe he wasn't open to compromise, a tone that sparked a flash of memory in Anne, and not a good one.
Joe squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. "I'll take her to a doctor," he said, a clear challenge as well as a message to her father that he would not be bullied.
Her father eyed Joe with disgust. "What kind of doctor. One of those faith healers you people go to who'll say some chants, make a few signs of the cross, and claim she's cured?"
Anne looked from one man to the other, Joe with his jaws locked and his fists clenched at his sides, her father with his intense glare and rigid posture, both men filled with animosity, both unapproachable. She was beginning to have a clear understanding of Joe's character, a man protecting the woman he loved, but she knew nothing about the character of her father.
She did know one thing though. She would not leave with these people. The woman, her mother, seemed okay, but she suspected her mother placated her father and did what he wanted just to keep the peace. She could see him as a difficult man.
Joe compressed his lips, as if holding back words he might regret, and his nostrils flared with his sharp intake of breath. Then he said in a restrained voice, "I'll make sure Anne sees a regular doctor."
"When? She needs to see someone now," her father clipped. "She has a doctor who has all her records, and I have the money to pay since her insurance ran out with her job."
Joe's eyes fixed on the man confronting him. "Look, I have no problem with Anne goin' to see her doctor, but I'll be the one to take her there and be with her."
"We're her parents. We'll be there too, unless you're afraid the doctor will tell us something you wouldn't want us to hear," her father challenged.
Joe's eyes sharpened. "What are you implying?"
Before her father could respond, the baby started crying.
"Good God!" Charles Harrison exclaimed.
Anne left the living room and went into the bedroom, and bundling Joey and his light flannel blanket in her arms, she returned to find her mother staring in disbelief, and her father's face stony. Walking up to them, she said, "Go ahead and look at your grandson, but then I want to take him into the bedroom and nurse him." It seemed strange referring to Joey as these strangers' grandson, but he was, and maybe by acknowledging that to these people, they'd accept it as a kind of olive branch of peace, if that was even possible at this point.
Anne's mother stepped up to her, and moving the light blanket away from Joey's face, she peered down at him, and said, "How old is he?"
"Two months." Anne looked beyond her mother and saw that the stony look on her father's face had been replaced by an awareness, the reality that the son of a Cajun man was the first to break the purebred Charles Harrison bloodline.
A moment later, the baby started crying and nuzzling Anne's chest, which prompted her to say, "I have to feed Joey."
"Joey?" Her father eyed her sharply. "Then his name is…?"
"Joseph Broussard, like his father." Anne felt a spurt of defiance, along with the pluck to reestablish her position with this caustic man she knew to be her father, even if she was doing it while operating out of a memory void.
Her father looked at her with skepticism. "You claim you have no memory of who you are, which I assume means the baby's father as well. Is that the name on his birth certificate?"
"No, it's Thomas Hanks," Anne admitted, "but I'll be changing it to Joe's name."
"What about parents?" her father asked. "What names did you put on the certificate?"
"Julia Hanks for me, and I put father unknown, but I'll be changing that to Joseph Broussard, along with my real name, as soon as we get to the courthouse." Anne looked at Joe. The hint of a smile on his lips told her he was pleased with her announcement. "Now, I need to feed Joey."
When she turned and started for the bedroom, her father called after her in a forceful tone, "You also need to see the doctor."
She eyed the man with growing resentment. "I will, as long as Joe takes me there and brings me back here afterwards." She didn't know where she got the spunk to speak her mind to this antagonistic stranger staring at her. He was a man she could imagine butting horns with, a man she had no desire to get to know again, but would, because she needed to fill all the gaps in her memory. Only then would she know exactly who Anne Elizabeth Harrison was. Anne Elizabeth Broussard, she could now imagine herself becoming, the mother of Joseph Beausoleil Broussard, an impulsive decision she'd just made, and let the chips fall where they may…
You have a lot of spitfire in you.
It was beginning to come back.
***
At the doctor's office, Joe looked across the waiting room at Charles Harrison, who sat with his wife. He held the man's hard gaze for a moment, then returned to the Chamber of Commerce magazine he'd picked up, flipping a page occasionally to keep himself occupied, when what he wanted was to be away from the Harrisons, take Anne and Joey home with him and begin to build a life with them. He'd hoped to be with Anne in the examination room when she talked to the doctor, but when the nurse handed Anne a gown, Anne gave him a look that said, "You will not be coming in with me," so he told her he'd be in the waiting room...
"How do you intend to support my daughter and grandson," Harrison cut into Joe's thoughts.
His eyes remaining on the magazine, a subtle message to let the man know he wasn't important enough to look at, Joe said in an unruffled voice, "The same way my family's been supporting themselves for over two-hundred years. Runnin' cattle."
"Running cattle might keep the lights on and the tax assessor away, but you people don't seem to have any sense of bettering yourselves," Harrison clipped. "Right now you've got Anne in a house that's barely livable."
"I'll be fixin' it up." Joe flipped another page in the magazine.
"When? Anne said you got the house before she disappeared and that was six months ago."
"When I thought she was dead I lost my incentive to do anything with it."
"I don't think you Cajuns have much incentive to do anything but eat, drink, gamble, and dance to a loud racket of noise."
Joe looked up. "You left out cock fights and moonshinin'," he said with irony.
He withheld telling the man his grandson's name was now Joseph Beausoleil Broussard. That bomb would drop in due course. The day after Anne announced to her parents that they'd be updating the birth certificate, he and Anne went to the parish courthouse where they completed an Acknowledgement of Paternity Affidavit in which Anne signed another affidavit, explaining the circumstances surrounding Joey's current birth certificate, then they both signed the affidavit for paternity, which was then submitted to Vital Records.
When he saw Anne enter the name, Joseph Beausoleil Broussard, on the form, he said, "Are you sure you don't want to wait until your memory comes back before adding Beausoleil?"
Anne shook her head. "You're Cajun and Joey's half Cajun, so if Joseph Beausoleil Broussard's someone Joey will be proud of, then that's the name I want him to have."
Joe knew the Harrisons would be fuming mad, but that was their problem. Anne made her decision and they'd have to live with it. There would also be a baptism, with every Broussard blood kin coming to the ranch afterwards to celebrate the way Cajuns did best. Eating gumbo, drinking beer, and dancing to a combo band that would make a loud racket of noise, while they welcomed the addition of little Joseph Beausoleil Broussard into the family…
"You know those horse races you people hold are illegal," Harrison added another dig.
"Racin' horses isn't illegal," Joe countered.
"But unlicensed gambling is, and you can't tell me that's not what's going on at your place."
"If that's what you believe then report it to the sheriff. He's usually there," Joe challenged.
Harrison laughed derisively. "That's right. He's one of you."
Which was true, Joe acknowledged. It was also true there was no passing through hands of money during the races. Off track was another matter, but what people did with their money was their business. Bush track races had been a regular after-Sunday-mass event in Cajun country for decades when the last of the tracks shut down a few years back because of worries about liability, and his grandfather's reintroduction had set off a fire storm of enthusiasm.
Glancing up to catch Harrison's eye, Joe said in a dry tone, "I'll be sure to remind my grandfather to send for an official from the racing commission to monitor."
Before Harrison could respond, Helen Harrison placed her hand on her husband's arm, no doubt to cut the caustic exchange between them. "Charles, we need to focus on Anne right now." Looking at Joe, she added, "I hope you won't try to prevent her from seeing us."
"Anne's just across the cane field. She can see you whenever she wants. It's up to her." Joe glanced at Charles Harrison, saw the look of disgust on his face, and ignoring the man, returned to flipping pages in the magazine.
Harrison, apparently taking the cue from his wife, picked up a magazine and also started flipping pages. The silent, mental, contest of wills between them continued until the doctor stepped through the door from the hallway to the examination rooms and headed toward them.
Taking a seat, the doctor said to the three of them, "After talking to Anne at length, I can confirm she's suffering from dissociative fugue amnesia, a type of amnesia that involves sudden, unexpected travel from home during which time the person has forgotten some or all of their past, including who they are. These episodes of travel and unawareness are called fugues."
"Anne was in the flood and the car accident," Anne's mother said, "but it's so unusual to lose memory like this, when she remembers things in her past but nothing recent, including who she is. Could something else have caused it?"
"Many things can cause dissociative fugue," the doctor replied. "A natural disaster, an accident, a traumatic injury or knock on the head, or it can be caused by something going wrong in a person's life—financial problems, family or marital stress, an abusive relationship."
Joe saw a knowing look pass between the Harrisons, silent speculation that he'd abused Anne and she ran off. At some point he'd set them straight, but for now, the less contact he had with these people, the better.
Charles Harrison said to the doctor, "Anne's purse was found in the car. How does she explain getting to New Orleans without any memory or money?"
"She believes she got there by bus," the doctor replied. "Her first recollection was of finding herself in a homeless shelter near the bus station in New Orleans. She reasons, from what people told her, that she was brought there with other people who'd been moved to shelters away from the flood area. She has no idea how long she was at the shelter, only of one day having an awareness of being there and not knowing who she was or how she got there. The thing is, she may never remember the period from the onset of the accident to the time when she had this awareness, which is common for many with this disorder, and usually is best left at that."
"So, what's the treatment?" Joe asked.
"Usually fugues that last hours or days resolve on their own, but if the memory doesn't begin to come back, especially when the person is returned to familiar surroundings, treatment can include hypnosis, or a therapist can help the person explore their patterns of handling the types of situations or conflicts that triggered the fugue to prevent subsequent fugues."
"Subsequent fugues?" Harrison stared at the doctor. "This could happen again?"
"In Anne's case, it's not likely," the doctor said. "With her, it was like the perfect storm. She was caught in a flood, involved in an automobile accident in which the driver drowned, and hit her head, any one of which could cause a fugue."
"But it could happen again," Harrison reaffirmed.
"It's possible, but it's best not to dwell on it and just let Anne get on with her life. In a sense, the kind of amnesia she has is like a person with Alzheimer's. People they've known all their lives come to see them and they can carry on a conversation but have no idea who the person is. The difference is, with Alzheimer's the memory's gone forever, but with dissociative fugue, in most cases the memory will return. We just can't say when."
Harrison eyed his wife, then said to the doctor, "So it seems logical if Anne spends time with her mother and me in the house and the surroundings where she grew up, that should help restore her memory."
The doctor nodded. "I believe time spent in any familiar surroundings should help."
When Joe caught the looks passing between the Harrisons, he knew that having Anne move in with them, in the name of recovering her memory, was exactly what they intended to do. Once there, they'd take the next step, which would be to convince Anne she'd ruin her life and the life of her son if she married the man next door.
It was a Catch-22 for him. By living with her parents, Anne would be in familiar surroundings where the chance for a spontaneous recover would be more likely, bringing with it the love and passion she once had for him, but if her memory was slow to return while there, the Harrisons could gain the upper hand and convince her to stay.
CHAPTER 6
Anne awakened the following morning to the sound of things being moved around in the living room. She was curious to know what was going on, but whatever it was, she'd have to wait and wonder a little longer because the noise awakened Joey, who was demanding to be fed. While she nursed, the house became quiet again, so she assumed if people had stopped by earlier, they'd left. She still heard some sounds though, muffled sounds, like something scraping and bumping along the floor.
A half hour later, after having bathed Joey and put him in a footed stretchie, she placed him in his infant carrier and hastily showered and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, curious about what was going on beyond the closed door at the end of the hallway.
Gathering Joey in her arms, she said to him, "Joseph Beausoleil Broussard, let's go see what your daddy's doing." With her own words, she felt a sense of belonging, not only belonging to Joey as his mother, but belonging to Joe as his wife. She could imagine it now. Marrying him.
It was odd, feeling a bond with a man she still didn't know in her conscious mind. She knew him in her heart though. She could feel it. But for whatever reason she was still being denied, or denying herself that information, and as the days, hours, and minutes passed, she was becoming impatient to know again the love she once had for Joe. She felt a new love growing, but she had no memories to back up the feelings, only the presence of a man who was becoming increasingly more important to her as time crept by.
Yet, she still felt shy about expressing anything physical, even a hug or a little kiss, because in her conscious mind he was still a stranger she'd met a little over a week ago, even though her logical mind told her he was far more than a stranger because they created a child. But if they ever express those feelings again physically it will be with her full awareness of everything they'd shared in the past, and as husband and wife.
What first caught her eye on walking into the living room was that the furniture had been shoved to one end of the room, then she spotted a couple of gallon cans of paint, a paint roller, and a paint tray. Joe was on his knees on a floor covered with a drop cloth while taping paper to protect the baseboards. To ask what he was doing would be silly, so she said instead, "What color are you going to paint the room?"
"White," Joe replied. "I would've asked what color you want but we had white paint in the shed and I want to get the job done. I'll repaint it later if you want."
"White's fine, but why are you in such a hurry? My room is comfortable and I'm fine with things the way
they are."
Joe paused from what he was doing, and looked up. "I don't want your parents comin' here again, thinkin' I can't provide a decent place for you and Joey to live. We'll buy furniture later. I still want to paint the small bedroom and get a crib and whatever Joey needs, and as soon as we get married and you move into my bedroom I'll clear out the room you're in and paint it too."
Joe's comment about marrying caught Anne off guard. He talked as if it would happen, and she could imagine it one day, but that was in the future. It was still too new. "You don't need to do all this right away," she said.
"Yes, I do. I should've done it months ago just to prove to your father I'm not the no-count coonass he accused me of being."
"My father called you that?" As she asked the question, a vague memory came into her conscious awareness. She didn't remember where or when, but she was certain she heard those words from the man she knew to be her father.
Joe nodded. "It was in the feed store when we were in high school. You came in with your father, and when you spotted me, you walked around the store like you were lookin' at things, and when you made your way to where I was you started talkin' about mineral blocks like we were casual friends, even though you'd been with me at the bayou the day before. You even had a hickey on your neck. I remember hopin' your father hadn't noticed it since word was already goin' around that we'd been seen together holding hands at several fais-do-dos, but I knew he had because the second he saw us talkin' he called you over to leave, and that's when he said the words."
"He called you that in the feed store?" Anne asked, wondering just exactly what kind of man her father really was. What she'd seen of him so far was troubling at best.
"He didn't call me that directly, just loud enough for me to hear him tell you if you didn't stay away from the no-count coonass next door he'd send you away to school."
"That's odd. Do you sometimes call your brothers coonasses?"
"All the time, but it's always in fun. What made you ask?"
"Something came back. You calling one of your brothers that. I'm beginning to get little snatches of memory at odd times. I just wish the good memories would come, memories of being with you. It's all still a big blank, yet I know we had a life together."
Tall Dark Stranger (Cajun Cowboys Book 1) Page 7