“I’m warning you, Cristobal—”
Anson punched the door open. “You can’t hold us.”
Sairs said nothing to rebut his contention.
Chapter Twenty
The white-on-gray-on-black smudging the sky reflected my mood. The wind pushed gusts of debris along the sidewalk, plastering scraps of odd items in unnatural places. A soda lid smacked against a trash can, its claws still grasping a straw. The promise of rain weighted the air. A trail of dust scurried and whirled, only to deposit on the ground a brief moment before dancing once again.
I tried to keep up with Anson, but he was galloping away from Sairs. My lungs struggled to draw in a deep breath before my complaint exploded. “Hey, wait up. I can’t walk as fast as you can.”
Anson glanced over his shoulder. “Move. We have to get out of here before that idiot does something stupid.”
I came alongside him. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. I told Sairs we were leaving town, but we can’t go back to the beach house.”
I dragged on his arm, trying to slow him. “I know where we should go.”
“Where?”
“California.”
“No.”
“We have to.” I was practically skip-hopping to keep up with him.
He slowed his pace. “You can’t go back there.”
I looked left and right along the busy roadway. I turned and stared at the sheriff’s office behind us, making sure Sairs wasn’t eavesdropping on our private conversation. “When we get in the car, I’ll tell you exactly why we need to go back there.” We crossed the road together.
“We?” His brow arched in astonishment.
“Of course, we. I can’t go back there alone. So come with me.” Then I was the one dragging him down the street.
We sat in the car as the first hard pelts of rain pounded the windshield. “So tell me why we should go to California.”
I used my best I’m-being-logical voice. “Everything comes back to California. It all started there and we have to figure out how to end it there.”
“Go on.”
I dragged the picture of Claire’s mother from my purse. “I think she’s my mother.”
“Whoa!” The blank expression on his face changed. His brows raised in alarm, or surprise, or a strange combination of both.
“Remember when I told you what I thought Claire looked like?” I asked. He winced and nodded. “I was describing this woman. She’s the one I remember.”
He reached for the photo but drew his hand back as if the woman had fangs. “Where did you get that picture?” His voice indicted me of something…but I wasn’t sure what.
“I found it on the dresser while you were missing.”
“I wasn’t missing.”
I grimaced. In my haste to exonerate myself, I had revisited a sore subject. “No, you weren’t, were you? You knew exactly where you were. But I didn’t. I had to go looking for you.”
He glanced at me, but didn’t react to the mention of his recent descent into criminal behavior. “How did it get there?”
I rubbed my eyes, glad the rough moment had passed. “I thought maybe you left it there for me to find.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked.
“I don’t know…to shake me up maybe…”
He grunted. “You have a vivid imagination.” He returned his attention to the photograph. “That picture has been missing for years. Claire looked for it before she died. Shook her up when she couldn’t find it.”
I flicked one corner of the photo, studying the details of the woman’s face. So familiar. “That’s what Marnie said,” I mumbled.
He scrunched his nose. “Marnie? When did you and Marnie—”
“Marnie and I…it’s a long story.”
“The same story you haven’t been telling me?” he asked with just a hint of a sulky whine.
When I nodded, he grumbled something. I didn’t ask him to repeat himself. Leaving the subject alone for a while longer suited me just fine.
“Maybe Sudha put it there. Was it there the night she…?”
The memory of that night flashed across my subconscious. I didn’t want to think about it. “Let’s explore that question later. Let me continue.” I placed the photo on the dash and leaned toward him.
He consented with silence, but his obvious reluctance drew weary lines on his face. His eyes kept shifting to Claire’s mother.
“You said I was adopted. You said I went to California hoping Rhonda was my birth mother. Marnie said her grandmother was from California.” I stopped for a quick breath. “California, Anson.” I nudged him. He nodded and tightened his hands around the steering wheel. “Why would I have memories of Marnie’s grandmother unless I remember her? Maybe she’s my mother.”
His brows drew together. “That would mean that Claire was your sister—half-sister.”
My excitement bubbled. I was on to something and couldn’t be slowed down. “Marnie said her grandmother left some things behind in California that she wouldn’t talk about.”
“Yes, that’s true. She said that often, but never explained.”
“Could she have left a daughter behind?”
“Jennifer, honey,” he said and reached for my hand. There was nothing but kindness in his husky tone. “I know how much you want to find your mother, but this is too big a coincidence.”
My whole existence seemed to be a series of weird coincidences. Nothing in my memory confirmed Jennifer’s desire to find her mother. The only marker the need existed lay deep in her memory—a longing that swelled from within and pushed through the amnesia when I least expected it.
“Let’s assume you’ve stumbled upon something. What does your search for your mother have to do with Jackson Prentiss and Sudha? I mean, I get the California connection, but it’s thin.”
“I realize it’s a thin connection,” I muttered.
He squeezed my hand. I almost pulled back, but then the assurance of his support penetrated my insecurity. I closed my eyes and pretended nothing existed except the physicality of Anson’s comfort.
After a moment of blissful indulgence, I pulled Dr. Crane into the messy jumble of variables. “Why did I have my surgery in California? Why not here on the east coast?”
“Crane found the heart. He insisted on doing the surgery where he had privileges. I questioned it, but his reasoning sounded…well, reasonable.”
“Wasn’t the trip hard on me? I mean, my heart was failing.”
His face registered thoughts I couldn’t decipher. He dropped my hand and twisted the key in the ignition. When he spoke, he enunciated every word as if precision relieved the stress of recalling difficult memories. “He said it was worth the risk to do it where he felt more comfortable. He threatened to give the heart to someone else if you didn’t accept his offer. He didn’t give us much time to think about it.”
I tapped my pointer finger on the console between us. “Heart transplant patients are on a waiting list—a national registry. Why did I get special treatment?”
His voice slowed while he wiggled the car out of the spot where he had parallel parked. “I offered him a premium to bump you up the list—”
“Anson!”
He turned to me, then swiveled his head back toward easing the car onto the rain-slicked road. “I know what I did wasn’t right…or fair. But I was in a panic. I won’t make excuses. I did what I had to do to keep my wife alive. I couldn’t lose another—”
I placed my fingers over his lips. “Hush. I won’t ask any more questions.”
****
“Don’t crowd me,” Anson whispered as he tried to find the right key to fit the lock on the back door.
“I still don’t understand why we have to sneak into our own house,” I argued.
“I already explained this to you.”
I fell back from a squat and landed on my backside. “You don’t want anybody to know we’ve been here. I get it.” I scooted back
to give him more room.
He finally managed to open the door just a crack and slipped into the house, keeping his profile below the windowsill. I did likewise, crawling behind him and sitting on the floor just inside the door. “I thought you said we weren’t being followed. So if nobody’s watching, why are we doing this?”
He punched the correct security code into the alarm system. “Because somebody might be following us,” he replied, as if his reasoning was perfectly logical and he hadn’t just contradicted himself.
“But you said—”
“Shhh…”
He slinked toward the front of the house. I followed a few paces behind. I smirked. “You’re paranoid.”
“Will you keep your voice down?” he whispered. “I’ll go upstairs and get the money. You go to your office and find your papers.” His orders carried like a shotgun blast.
I couldn’t believe he was telling me to keep my voice down. “Where will I find them?”
“Don’t you have a safe?”
“Well, yeah, I think so. But I don’t know the combination. I mean, that’s one of those things I don’t remember.” I rolled my eyes.
“Jennifer, stop being difficult. Just stand in front of it and close your eyes. Maybe your fingers will do the remembering for you.”
“Are you serious?”
“Just try.” His voice crackled with exaggerated patience. “You know we need those documents—”
“You don’t have to explain it to me like I’m a three-year-old…again,” I muttered and glared at him.
He straightened and stretched when we reached the darkened hallway. I grabbed him by the elbow. “Can’t I go upstairs with you while you get the cash? Then you can come with me to my office. I don’t like wandering around in the dark as if we’re criminals or something. This is…stupid.”
“You are such a wuss, and we are wasting time arguing about this. Can’t you pull yourself up by the bra straps and handle one thing for us?”
I propped my hands on my hips. “My bra straps? Aren’t you funny? I don’t like your tone, Anson Cristobal. What if someone is in this house? What if someone’s waiting for me? Trying to…attack me? Again? You know that’s happened to me before.”
“Scream.”
“What?”
He pushed me toward my office with one sharp jab in my lower back and then headed up the stairs.
He can’t push me around so easily.
I followed him upstairs to our bedroom and found him leaning head first into the bottom of his closet. I whistled my admiration of his tight behind.
He looked up at me with a stack of cash in each hand. “I thought I told you to go open the safe.” His reprimand scared my arguments right back into my mouth.
“All right, already.” I scowled at him. “I’m going.”
He marched across the room and grabbed a pillow from the bed—the case a makeshift bag for the cash, no doubt. I grumbled about his insensitivity and lack of judgment all the way down the stairs. My muttering ceased as I stopped on the bottom step, listening for any faint noise, looking for the slightest movement among the shadows.
Light glowed from the bottom of the office door. We left no lights on. I glanced up the stairs. Anson wouldn’t countenance any more of my cowardice. I was on my own. Again. I spotted a heavy vase on a hall stand. Tossing the dead flowers on the floor, I slipped down the hall and then turned the knob with my free hand, attentive to any sign that someone might be lurking on the other side of the door. I slammed it open with a bang. The empty room hummed with the lingering specter of invasion—the unsettling suspicion that someone had rifled through my belongings.
Urgency pushed me to finish my assigned task. I opened the closet door, pushed aside some boxes on the middle shelf, and then stood without a clue in front of the wall safe. Closing my eyes per Anson’s instructions, I placed my fingers on the dial. Left, right, left. Nothing. I wanted to holler up the stairs that his stupid idea wasn’t working. I tried again. To my amazement, this time it worked. And even more amazing—my birth certificate and social security card were inside.
I ran my finger over the raised lettering and the official seal.
Jennifer Calhoun. Who was she?
The paper listed my adoptive parents and where they came from but nothing more. It didn’t tell me how I got from a small town in California to Virginia Beach, Virginia.
There were other papers in the safe. I opened a large manila envelope and found newspaper clippings. I leaned my back against the adjacent wall. Engrossed in what I read, I slid down until my bottom hit the floor beneath me.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs, so I stuffed everything behind my back.
“Jennifer?” Anson called, his whisper loud enough to wake the dead. I cringed. He had broken his own mandate. His voice blared like a foghorn on a still night. Except the night wasn’t quiet. Rain pounded the window and pummeled the side of the house in angry gusts. A shadow shifted and captured my attention. I looked across the office at the wedding picture.
“Anson!” I yelled without care for who might be listening.
“What?” He was beside me before my heart started pumping again. “I told you not to yell.”
“Look.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked without turning in the direction my shaky finger pointed. “I heard a door slam.” He glanced toward the portrait on the wall. The glass was smashed. The surface sliced and scored. The picture ruined. Our faces removed from the scene.
“Why?” I asked. The answer came to me in a flash. “Marnie.”
“What? No. She wouldn’t do anything like this.”
“Does she have a key to the house? Did you give her the security code?” It made no sense that someone slipped past our security. The little red light blinked when we entered the house.
“Sure, but—”
“She ruined my wedding gown. She did it on purpose,” I reminded him.
“She was young and grieving her mother,” he replied, his words falling on me like a stone weight. “Cut her some slack.”
“You know what they say,” I babbled from a mental distance. “If your wedding gown gets ruined on your wedding day, it’s bad luck.”
“That’s just superstition—”
“Bad luck,” I repeated for emphasis.
“I don’t believe in luck.” He reached for my elbow to help me up. “Come on, Jen. We’ve got to get out of here.”
I pulled my arm away. “If you heard the door slam, why did it take you so long to come downstairs?” I asked, suspicion spiking beneath my words.
“Well, honey…” He stopped, embarrassment covering his features.
“Well? What?”
“I thought you might want this…” He held up one of my flimsy nighties. One of those slinky little things I’d refused to wear since I woke up with Rhonda’s memories. I turned my head away. He nudged my face back to his with the tip of his pointer finger. The glow of a forty-watt light bulb illuminated the amusement on his face. “Are you blushing?”
“Don’t torment me,” I fussed.
“I have no intention of tormenting you.” He brushed my cheek with his fingertips—a tantalizing reminder of what he wanted from me. “I have other plans,” he whispered. “I just thought…you know…you’d look…sexy in this.”
“Sexy?” I hurled my disbelief at him. “I can’t believe—”
“Why not? I can say things like that to you, can’t I? I’m your husband, remember?” The mist in his eyes informed me he was mushy again. That was fine with me. I was getting used to his romantic advances. Anticipating them. Desiring them. Needing them desperately. His mouth hovered near mine. I closed my eyes, waiting in delicious expectation of the kiss he was about to plant on me.
Maybe we can delay our departure for a few…
The phone on my desk rang, startling us both out of our very personal moment. Without a word, he pulled me up. We ignored the call and left the house the way we arrived.
Chapter Twenty-One
Anson draped his arm over my shoulder. Across the room, the rain outside the double window slid down the dirty pane in cascading rivulets, causing the world outside to wobble. Inside our world was warm, if not exactly secure. The motel room we shared was tiny and dingy—not at all up to Anson’s standards.
We pretended to watch mindless television drivel, almost like a normal couple, but I suspected his mind was miles away from here. Mine was. The sitcom caught my attention for a minute and a half until I sighed and shifted.
“Are you okay?” Anson asked into my hair, caressing my bare shoulder with his warm hand. The nightie didn’t stay on very long.
“You want the truth or a well-intentioned lie?” I snuggled closer into his side. Anson was an interesting combination of gentle passion and ardent tenderness. It felt good to lean into him, to absorb his strength.
“Lie to me,” he said with a humorless chuckle and circled me in his embrace.
I closed my eyes and relished the closeness. “Okay, then I’m just dandy,” I murmured almost truthfully, but not quite.
“Hey, what more could you want?” He turned his head toward mine. Amusement danced in the warmth of his reply.
“I have news for you, mister. It does get better than this,” I said, despite the last few hours of my life.
I would live in a backwoods shack in the middle of nowhere if I could be with him.
“Really? When it gets better, wake me up.” The strained, raspy tenor of my man’s voice revealed his exhaustion. I reveled in calling him my man. All afternoon I had delighted in the knowledge that Anson wanted me. His love for me was still raw, but it was active and living and expanding into something sweet and sensual and worth holding next to my ragged, bruised, unreliable heart.
“When we get there, let’s start with the newspaper archives,” he said, opening the conversation we’d been sidestepping.
My happy bubble burst. I blew the weariness out of my mouth, past my lips. I didn’t want to talk about the past or my birth mother or Jackson or Alex or Rhonda’s miserable life in California. I didn’t want to think about any of it. I didn’t want to live it. I wanted it to go away. I just wanted to remain in this state of limbo, where no one and nothing existed except me and Anson and the grungy motel room.
Deceptions of the Heart Page 14