by Mary Brady
Mrs. Chisholm was still dredging up her own memories. “What sticks with me most is that I worried about you. I always have several students who make me anxious for one reason or another, and you were one of them. You had friends, but I wondered if you really opened up to them. You came alive when you read aloud, and sometimes when we had a good class discussion going, but otherwise you were so withdrawn. You always seemed surprised by praise.” Her eyes soft, she sounded apologetic. “I’d met both your parents, and you didn’t seem frightened of them, but...I did speculate. I even hinted a few times that you could tell me anything, and you only looked at me with those sorrowful eyes and said you didn’t know what I was talking about.”
Nell’s throat clogged. “Unfortunately, I still don’t know.”
“As a teacher, it’s terribly frustrating when I know something is wrong and can’t do anything about it.”
Nell smiled tremulously. “Now I know why I remember you and not most of my other teachers.”
“I wish I could have helped then. I’m so very glad to see you here. I can’t tell you how sad I was when I read in the newspaper about your bike being found in the park, and the blood, and you simply gone. It wasn’t what I’d expected, but I felt as if I should have intervened somehow.”
“The assault might not have had anything to do with why I was so shy,” Nell felt obliged to point out.
Mrs. Chisholm raised her eyebrows. “Do you believe that?”
Nell hesitated. “I wish I knew,” she said finally.
She asked if Mrs. Chisholm remembered who her friends were and learned that she had had two best friends, Emily and Hailey. “Allen!” the teacher said triumphantly. “Hailey Allen. My goodness. I’m surprised I remember that. I know Emily went off to college, but I don’t recall ever hearing what became of Hailey. Emily recently got married, you know.”
Why couldn’t she remember her best friend?
“No, I haven’t tried to track her down yet.”
“Oh, she’s still here in Angel Butte. In fact, she became a teacher. She’s at one of the elementary schools, I’m afraid I don’t remember which. Her husband is a newcomer, a pharmacist.”
“Do you remember his name?”
She chuckled. “I’m afraid not. The notice of their wedding wouldn’t have even caught my eye had it not been for Emily’s name and the photo.”
They chatted a little more, and Nell promised to come back for another visit before she returned to Seattle. When Mrs. Chisholm rose to her feet, Nell surprised herself by reaching for an impulsive hug.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice choked.
Her former teacher gave an audible sniff. “You have turned into a fine young woman despite everything. I’m proud of you, Maddie.”
Nell came very close to breaking into tears as she backed away, then hurried out of the room.
* * *
COLIN EXPECTED TO catch hell from Duane, and wasn’t surprised when, midmorning, he burst into Colin’s office without knocking.
Face stormy, he slapped his hands on the surface of Colin’s desk and leaned forward, his face suffused with anger. “You’ve been feeding me a load of shit this past month.”
Colin leaned back in his chair comfortably and grinned. “Not as long as a month.”
Apparently, his good humor only pissed off Duane. He snarled, “Helen says you’ve known for weeks.”
Colin’s smile faded. He could understand how betrayed Maddie’s uncle felt. Duane had not only been his mentor, but Colin also considered them to be friends. He’d justified his decision to keep Nell Smith’s existence a secret until she said otherwise, but he still suffered some guilt for it.
“I have,” he agreed. “I wanted to tell you, but I made a promise to her.”
He realized suddenly that Duane’s eyes, currently slitted with temper, were nearly the same color as Maddie’s. Not a comfortable moment to notice.
But Duane pushed himself upright in an abrupt movement. “Goddamn. Maddie’s home.”
Exhilaration rose in Colin, making him want to go back to grinning. “I told you I thought she was alive.”
The lieutenant scrubbed his hand over the disheveled spikes of his gray hair. “You knew she was when you said that.”
“I’d just found her the day before.”
“Unbelievable.” He sagged into a chair. “Helen said she has some memory problems.” His voice expressed uncertainty.
“More than problems. She has amnesia. When she escaped, she didn’t remember her own name. Where home was. Who her parents were. All she knew was that somebody had tried to kill her.”
“Maybe it was a ransom deal.”
They’d talked about this before, and Colin knew Duane didn’t believe that explanation any more than he did.
“It was a pretty bad head injury. She’s got a hell of a scar. There was a lot of blood, and a concussion severe enough to cause the memory loss. She could have been snatched without being harmed at all. No.” He shook his head. “My best guess is, her abductor tossed her in the trunk of his car thinking she was dead, or would be by the time he got wherever he was going with her.”
Duane’s eyes met Colin’s. “I got to tell you, I really thought she was dead. I figured you were deluded when you said that, about her being alive.”
“I might have, too, if I hadn’t talked to her the night before.”
“Damn,” he said again. After a moment of sitting there looking as if he had been poleaxed, Duane suddenly swiveled in his seat to stare at the bulletin board with the photos of faces Colin wouldn’t let himself forget. “You already took her picture down.”
“First thing this morning.” Colin couldn’t keep himself from smiling. He didn’t know when anything had last given him more satisfaction than the one small act—pulling the pin from that picture, leaving a blank space where it had been, carrying the photograph to his desk and putting it in a drawer. One victory. He wouldn’t have admitted to anyone that he intended to keep the photo close.
“I didn’t hear Helen’s message until this morning. I didn’t believe it until I called her back. That’s when I found out my good buddy Captain McAllister had brought Maddie home without letting a soul know what he was up to.”
“We’re doing this her way.” His voice had hardened. Duane needed to know that they were going to keep doing this Maddie’s way.
Nell’s way.
“She’s having lunch today with your sister.”
“I know.” Duane looked baffled. “Helen says Maddie claims not to remember me.”
“She doesn’t remember much at all, Duane. When she saw photos of her parents online, they looked familiar, that’s all. I don’t remember there being a picture of you in the news.” No surprise there—their not-so-esteemed leader Bystrom seized every opportunity to speak for the department. In that case, he’d played up his friendship with the Dubeaus, although Colin had never known how real that friendship was.
Duane grunted. “I don’t pay attention to crap like that.”
“No,” Colin said in amusement. “Not your style.”
Shaking his head, the older man stood. “Who knew? I guess miracles do happen. I don’t have to dig up the goddamn park after all.”
Colin laughed. “No.” He sobered quick enough, though. “Anything new on those bones?”
“With the ground frozen solid? Hell, no.”
“I saw Palmer this morning.” Andy Palmer was the unfortunate detective who had been shot by a fellow officer when all he was trying to do was buy diapers on his way home.
“Yeah, he got the go-ahead to come back to work. He’s not a happy camper.”
Colin raised an eyebrow. “I’m not real happy about him being shot, either.”
“Stupid kid should’ve been fired.”
/> “The kid was still baby-pea green. He shouldn’t have been out on his own at all. The incident wasn’t his fault.”
Duane grunted again. “Just don’t stick me with him until I’ve forgotten his name.”
The glass in the door rattled when he left.
Smiling again, Colin glanced at the time on his computer monitor. Was Nell still at the high school? He wondered what she’d learned. At least she should be safe enough there.
Word of her reappearance would spread rapidly, though, and that reawakened his unease. He might suggest she emphasize the amnesia when she talked to people, instead of hinting at the memories that did float through her head. They needed to keep in mind that there was somebody out there who wouldn’t like the idea of Maddie Dubeau remembering what happened that night in the park.
Brooding, Colin wished she knew why she’d slipped out of her house and was riding her bike through the dark park. He’d like to feel more confident that she was safe with her parents.
Groaning, he looked at the fat, open personnel file on his desk. He had too much to do to be mentally tracking Nell’s every movement.
Nothing to worry about today anyway, he told himself. Certainly not at the high school or at the historic inn where she was to meet her mother for lunch.
Tomorrow, though... Tomorrow, he would really start worrying.
* * *
NELL USED THE hour before she was to meet her mother to drive around town. She drove the circular route to the top of Angel Butte and got out at the viewpoint to look at Angel Butte and the volcanic landscape stretching to the horizon in one direction, the Cascade Mountains in the other. There were glimpses of lakes here and there, and when she looked at one she knew suddenly that her father’s resort was on the shore.
The angel that gave the town and butte the name gazed serenely out over the same landscape. Eight feet tall, carved of marble. According to local history she had been put in place in 1884. There wasn’t much here then but a trading post and stagecoach stop. But farther northeast, in the ranching country around Prineville, a Wild West culture had arisen. Vigilantes strung supposed wrong-doers up without the bother of a trial. They came to suspect the man who ran the trading post of some kind of skullduggery and attempted to hang him. His story was that an angel appeared to protect him, glowing white and fierce in her holiness. The vigilantes retreated in disarray, and the saved man kept a promise and ordered the marble statue to be shipped all the way from Italy. Getting it here unbroken was miracle enough; carrying it up to the crater rim when there was no road must have taken a dozen men and a lot of unholy language.
How he could have afforded the gesture was left unstated. Nobody wanted to challenge a man with an angel straight from heaven on his side.
The previous name had been Carlson’s Butte—for the first owner of the post and stagecoach inn. But that quickly disappeared from the records. Everyone knew it as Angel Butte. There she was, watching over them.
She’d weathered over the years, and, according to the sign telling her history, she had been hoisted onto her current granite-and-concrete pedestal the year Maddie had turned ten. Trees clinging to the cinder sides of the butte had grown to the point where the angel could no longer be seen from below. A little selective logging, plus the pedestal that boosted her up five feet or so, and once more she commanded a wide swath of Oregon. Nell thought she remembered a political debate about whether spending the money for a fancy pedestal was justified. Her father, she thought, had been for it—probably because the angel was good for business.
Turning away, she breathed in the sharp, cold air with its distinct scent that seemed to light up every receptor in her brain. Was it the tang of ponderosa pines? The gritty, volcanic soil? She could stand here inhaling forever, but didn’t let herself.
There had been flashes of the familiar in town. A red brick elementary school. Old West–style false-fronted buildings along the main street, decorated with Christmas lights and swags of pine with red bows. There were mostly boutiques and brew pubs and coffee shops instead of the more mundane businesses she could almost remember—a dry cleaner, she thought, old-fashioned cafés, a dime store. The town boasted some distinctive buildings she had read were turn-of-the-last-century, like the original stone-and-brick county courthouse complete with cupola, and the sprawling timber inn where she was to have lunch.
The big Nordic ski development outside town was probably responsible for much of the growth that sprawled even outside the city limits. Someday she would drive out to see it, but not today. She wouldn’t find any memories there.
She had to hunt to locate grocery and hardware stores and the like, and suspected most had been downtown but had been displaced because of tourism. Only once did she brake sharply, her heart jolting when she set eyes on a small hardware store with attached lumberyard.
That’s where I crawled into the trunk to unlatch the backseat and fold it down.
That memory that had saved her life when she regained consciousness in the trunk.
But she wasn’t in the mood to dwell. With glimpses of snow-peaked mountains and the volcanic landscape of lava beds and tree-clad cinder cones, the area was beautiful. No wonder tourists had found this pocket of central Oregon. Despite the cold, she left her window cracked so she could keep smelling the air that called to her.
A light turned red ahead of her and, even as she braked, she had one of those disconcertingly vivid recollections....
The turn signal was on. Click, click, click. Dad was tapping the steering wheel impatiently, too. She slouched in the front seat beside him, wishing Felix was coming, too. Hanging around the resort all day alone would be boring, but better than staying home. Mom had wanted to take her back-to-school shopping. Maddie hated shopping. Mom always picked out clothes she liked. She didn’t even listen when Maddie tried to tell her what she liked. Suddenly sulky, she thought, I’ll never be pretty anyway, never. So why does she bother?
Oh, well. Once they reached the resort, Dad wouldn’t pay any attention to her. She could feed the chipmunks—she liked doing that. She’d dangle her feet in the lake and lie on her stomach on the slab of rock and watch the silver flash of the minnows as they darted in the clear water. She’d brought a couple of books, too. Sitting in the sun and reading made her happy....
A car horn startled her back to the present. The light had changed to green and she shook herself and started forward cautiously. This time she drove straight to the Newberry Inn and parked, although she made no immediate move to get out.
She was breathing hard. This was like being schizophrenic or having multiple personalities. No, worse, like having someone else crawl under her skin. She wanted to remember, but she didn’t want to sink into memories so powerful she was there and not here. And they weren’t even helpful! They all seemed to be these dumb, random moments when nothing important was happening. Along with this most recent memory came the knowledge that she’d often gone to work with her father during the summer. Mostly, she’d liked going, because otherwise her mother would organize her. Sign her up for activities at the park or the seasonal swim team or—one horrible summer—ballet. Her parents just wouldn’t give up. They couldn’t understand how she could be so klutzy instead of athletic like her brother.
Nell gripped the steering wheel and thought, I’m just not. Disconcerted, she didn’t even know if that thought was hers, or Maddie’s.
And to think she’d been envious when the friends in her book club reminisced about playing the clarinet in fifth grade or having to wear the world’s ugliest saddle shoes for two whole years to correct flat arches. Or a first kiss to cement a relationship started when his friends told her friends he liked her and she said he could be her boyfriend because he was the fourth cutest boy in the class so why not. Nell didn’t have those kinds of memories. I’m not a whole person, she used to think. I must have been normal once, be
fore...whatever it was that happened. Maybe I played the clarinet, too, or the flute. There might have been a first kiss, in fifth or sixth grade. Except adult Nell looked at her still slight body and plain brown hair and the sprinkle of freckles and doubted any of the boys in fifth or sixth grade had thought of her that way.
Although later, there had been men who wanted a girl who looked even younger than she really was.
She didn’t let herself linger on those memories.
Talking and laughing, two women passed in front of her car on the way to the inn, and Nell looked at her watch. Twelve-thirty. Her mother was probably waiting for her.
This was what she was here for, she reminded herself.
So don’t be a wuss. Get on with it.
Feeling unexpectedly shaky, she got out, locked the car and followed the women to the front entrance.
* * *
AS HE WAITED for the garage door to lift so he could drive in, Colin smiled at the sight of the lights already on in the house.
Crossing the yard a minute later, Colin realized ruefully how unfamiliar this sense of anticipation was. Maybe he’d been an idiot to let memories of his own screwed-up family keep him from ever seriously considering marriage or starting a family of his own. Life was damn lonely without.
Yeah, but how could he asked a woman to marry him when he didn’t even want to hold hands with her?
The memory of Nell’s small hand in his slid under his guard, disturbing him. As did the thought that he wouldn’t have her here now, if he had a wife.
The frown slid away as soon as he turned the key in the lock. At least she’d been smart enough to lock the door after letting herself in.
“It’s me,” he called, and Nell appeared immediately.
“Dinner will be ready as soon as I cook the spaghetti. I didn’t want it to get mushy if you were held up.”
He smiled, taking in her appearance. She’d dressed up a little for her day, in slacks and a sort of modern-day version of a twinset. She’d shed her shoes now, though, and was padding around his house in stocking feet. Cute socks—striped purple and school-bus-yellow. Interesting that when her clothing choices were subdued, she’d choose something so loud for the garments she expected to remain unseen. That thought made Colin wonder what her bra and panties looked like.