Lost Identity

by Leona Karr

  Now, she knew who she was, and even if she didn’t quite accept it at the moment, she was surrounded with people who would reinforce that identity. When he heard her footsteps in the hall, he was suddenly convinced that the wisest thing for him to do was to withdraw from the whole situation as speedily as possible. This conviction was reinforced when he saw her for the first time as Patricia Radcliffe, wealthy socialite, instead of a drowned waif with fear in her eyes.

  Instead of the inexpensive sundress he had bought her, she wore an expensive stylish tunic and pants set in a pale yellow color. Her long hair had been shampooed and swept up in a twist, softened by wispy tendrils falling around her face. She was absolutely stunning. A choked breath caught in Andrew’s chest, and he could scarcely breathe.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, searching his face. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?” he managed, making an effort to get his emotions under control.

  “I don’t know, like—like you’re looking at something you don’t like.” She smoothed the soft fabric of her narrow pants. “Janelle laid this out for me. She said it was one of my favorites.”

  “Very nice,” Andrew said, forcing a smile. “You have good taste.” The minute he said it, he knew he’d said the wrong thing.

  “Do I? I guess I’ll have to take yours and Janelle’s word for it. Nothing in my closet seems the least bit familiar.” Her face clouded. His forced reaction had not gone unnoticed. She’d taken the time to look her best for him, and she could tell that he didn’t feel any more comfortable with her metamorphosis than she did.

  “It’ll take time to settle in,” Andrew reassured her, realizing he also needed time to get his emotions back on an even keel. All day, he’d been going over what had happened that morning. He had tried to look at each one of the people in her life with as much of a detachment as possible, but he always ended up in the same place. He didn’t like Curtis and Darlene, and the jury was still out on Janelle and Gary. “Does anything ring a bell?” he asked.

  Trish shook her head. “No. Janelle did her best to orient me, but I felt like someone taking a tour through the place. It’s strange, because when I looked over my desk, I understood what the business papers meant, but I don’t remember why. I can’t put a frame around anything, not even people. And the fear is coming back. I want to run away and hide.” She gave a feeble laugh. “Kind of childish, isn’t it?”

  “Not at all.” He reached out and stroked her cheek with a fingertip. “Give yourself some credit.”

  She stiffened against his touch. More than anything, she wanted to feel his arms around her and hear his soothing voice assuring her all of this was just a nightmare. But she knew better. The time for denial had passed.

  “Can we get out of here for a little while?” she said, taking a deep breath. “I really need some space.”

  “Sure. It’s a nice evening. We’ll take a walk and find some place for dinner.” He was relieved that she hadn’t expected him to stay and eat with her and Janelle. Having her all to himself for even a short time was an unexpected blessing.

  “I’ll tell Sasha.” A sparkle came back in her eyes. “Janelle went back to her place to pack a few things. I’m taking her up on her offer to stay around for a few days, and help me get my bearings.” She slipped her arm through his. “I warn you, though. You may have trouble persuading me not to run away with you.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  THE CLEAR SUMMER evening was one of those cooled by a soft breeze and softened by a glow of myriad stars. As they walked arm in arm under a canopy of trees in Central Park, Andrew wondered how many times Trish had been on these very paths. Surely, living so close, the park was like her front yard.

  When she hesitated in front of a fountain and bronze statue, he searched her face. Her eyes had narrowed and her mouth was slightly open in deep concentration.

  He started to ask, “What is it, Trish?” but caught himself in time. He could see the sudden quickening of her breath, and the rapid movement of her chest.

  I remember this place. Recognition of the statue was like a stabbing light coming out of a hidden darkness. She knew that she had stood in that very spot before, and it was the remembered scent of a man’s cologne that was the clue to the memory. Her nostrils quivered and for a moment and her fingertips suddenly tingled as if threading the hairs of a man’s head. She put her hands over her mouth, but they still felt the bruising of a man’s lips. Her emotions were like water tumbling over a fast revolving wheel, spilling and falling in every direction. All of her senses were raw-edged and she couldn’t control any of them.

  She turned and stared at Andrew until his concerned expression settled the confusion within her. Her mind raced to understand what was happening. Apparently her body remembered things that her intellect refused to acknowledge.

  “What it is?” he asked, unable to control himself any longer. “Did you remember something?”

  How could she explain that her senses were filled with the embrace and kiss of a man who was a complete blank in her memory? She couldn’t remember whose arms had held her, and whose lips had kissed her. Something that Dr. Duboise had said came back to her with frightening validity. “For some reason, maybe you chose not to remember.”

  “It must be true.” She looked up at Andrew with pained eyes.

  “What must be true?”

  “That Perry and I were having an affair. I could tell from Janelle’s behavior that she was lying to me when she quickly denied it.”

  “Is that what you saw? You and Perry?” Andrew knew he shouldn’t react to anything she said without thinking it through first, but he couldn’t help himself.

  “Well, not exactly. I didn’t see anything. I just felt it. He must have kissed me right here, and my senses remembered.”

  “But you didn’t actually have an image of Perry standing here with you?” he prodded, and she shook her head. “Then, how do you know it was Perry who kissed you? Surely a young beautiful woman like yourself could have been kissed dozens of times in the park, maybe in this very same spot.”

  He could have added that for his money, he’d bet on Curtis Mandel. Just the thought put a bad taste in his mouth. Maybe it was jealousy, or something else entirely irrational, but Andrew didn’t want it to be either Curtis or Perry. In fact, he didn’t want to think about her being in any man’s arms. Trying to believe that she’d never felt any man’s passion showed how far he’d strayed from reality, he thought grimly.

  “Maybe it wasn’t Perry,” Trish said as if she’d been given a reprieve. She didn’t want to think herself guilty of Darlene’s accusations. “Maybe everyone just thought we were more than business partners.”

  “Be careful that you don’t let these people put a trip on you,” Andrew warned as they started walking again. “Even with the best intentions they could feed you a lot of pure guesses and untruths. Trust yourself and your own feelings, Trish.”

  As she looked up at him, she wondered how he would react if she admitted that she’d be willing to live with him in his cottage and let the rest of the world be damned? Even as the fantasy crossed her mind, she knew there wasn’t any way they could shut out the world for very long.

  They finished their walk in silence, and ate at a small Italian restaurant not far from her apartment. Trish lingered over her coffee and dessert as long as possible. She hated to think about going back to her place almost as much as she had been reluctant to return to Havengate. She felt suspended between two worlds—the known and the unknown—and neither of them were to her liking.

  “Will you be back in the city tomorrow?” she asked hopefully as they entered the foyer and walked toward the elevators. She had asked Andrew not to come up to the apartment with her because she knew she’d make excuses for him to stay as long as possible.

  “I wish I could,” he said honestly. “But I have some programs that I have to finish before the end of the week. I’ve fallen behind on
my deadlines and the boss is kinda breathing down my neck.”

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized, knowing that her situation had been a demand on his time. “But I’ll miss seeing you.”

  Her expression made him reach out and put his hands on her shoulders. “Hey, it’s going to be all right. Maybe you could drop by the cottage one day after your sessions with Dr. Duboise? That is, if you’re not too busy. Things will probably start moving pretty fast once the word is out that you’re back. I’m sure there will be some welcome-home parties.”

  “Parties?” She gulped in horror. Trying to focus on one stranger at a time was excruciating enough. How could she manage a whole roomful of people who would expect her to remember them. “You have to come and be there with me. You will, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” he answered, denying the truth that he hated social gatherings more than anything. He’d never been good at superficial chatter, nor pretending to be enjoying himself when he wasn’t. Only the pleading look in her devastating aqua eyes made him willing to suffer a whole evening of that kind of torture.

  “Thank you,” she said and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek.

  As his hands tightened on her shoulders, he wanted to forget about being the “good guy” and the “trusted friend.” A flood of sexual desire fueled a demanding longing to feel the sweet length of her body responding to his. He wanted to kiss her lips, cup her soft breasts and make passionate love to her. As she drew back from her light kiss on his cheek, her smile was tenuous as if she’d sensed his thoughts and was frightened by them.

  “I’d better go,” she said quickly, not looking at him as she touched the elevator button.

  He wanted to say something that would deny his feelings for her, but he kept silent. She had enough to deal with at the moment. Better pretend that nothing had changed.

  “You can call me anytime, Trish. You know that,” he said in what he hoped was a friendly offer instead of the tense longing of someone falling in love.

  She nodded, and as the elevator door swung open, she almost changed her mind and asked Andrew to go up with her. And then what? she asked herself. Just postponing the inevitable of being alone wasn’t going to change anything. She was being selfish to cling to him like this. How could she expect him to hold her hand at every step of the way? He had his own life to live.

  She gave him a casual wave good-night, and watched the elevator door shut him from view. Then she leaned back against the wall, and tried to pretend that she was Patricia Radcliffe coming home to her fashionable apartment. But her fantasy only increased the sickening sensation in her stomach.

  When she stood in front of her apartment door, she realized that she didn’t have a key. She put an insistent finger on the bell, and was relieved when it only took a moment for Janelle to opened it.

  “There you are,” she said with a smile. “When I got back from my place, Sasha said you’d gone out to dinner.” She peered behind Trish. “Where’s Mr. Davis?”

  “I left him downstairs.”

  Janelle’s eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly. “Oh?”

  Trish didn’t respond to the obvious question, but walked past her into the living room. She saw then that they weren’t alone.

  Gary Reynolds eased to his feet. “Good evening, Patricia.”

  “I was trying to get rid of Gary before you got back,” Janelle said with brutal honesty. “As you can see, I didn’t have much luck.”

  “I don’t mean to butt in,” he said quickly, grinning nervously. “I really need to talk with you, Patricia. And if I wait for that stepmother of mine to spew out her poison, you’ll never give me a chance to explain.”

  “Explain what?”

  Janelle gave an audible sigh. “I can’t believe this, Gary. How can you expect Patricia to bail you out of another mess? We all know your dad put his foot down, and refused to sink any more money into your harebrained schemes.”

  “Is that what this is about…money?” Trish asked bluntly.

  “It’s about my inheritance,” he said flatly. There was a hardness in his eyes that denied his youth. “Darlene refuses to accept the fact that my father probably took some boat out in the storm and got himself killed. She’s holding up everything because she’s got this wild belief that you and he are up to some kind of con game.”

  “That’s totally and utterly ridiculous,” Janelle snapped.

  “I know, but once she gets an idea in that pea brain of hers, she won’t let go. She’s gathering all kinds of evidence to prevent the authorities from declaring him dead. It’s up to you, Patricia, to put them straight.”

  “Put them straight?”

  “Tell them that my father is dead.”

  Trish shook her head as she dropped down in a chair. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation.

  “You idiot, Gary,” Janelle snapped. “Don’t you have a brain in your head? You know that Patricia is suffering from amnesia. She doesn’t even remember what happened to her, let alone your father.”

  “She knows she almost drowned,” Gary retorted, belligerently. “If my father were still alive, he’d have been found by now. Don’t you see, if we have to wait for a body to be washed up—if it ever does—no telling how long it will take to settle his estate—and I need the money now.”

  Trish couldn’t believe his callousness. Listening to the spoiled, selfish young man was like sprinkling pepper on her raw nerve ends. She wanted to tell him exactly what she thought of him, and as a number of less than polite adjectives flowed through her mind, she knew one more thing about herself—she could swear like a bawdy sailor if the occasion arose.

  Janelle must have been familiar with the look Trish gave Gary, because she said hastily, “You’d better leave now, Gary. You’ve had your say, and I don’t want to pick up the pieces if Patricia loses her temper.”

  Gary started to protest, but one look at Trish’s glare made him change his mind. He swallowed back the words on his tongue, turned on the heels of his expensive loafers and left the apartment, banging the door behind him.

  Trish felt strangely elated. From the way Gary and Janelle had reacted, she knew that she wasn’t some mealymouthed pushover. Her present state of indecision and confusion was not her normal behavior. Somehow it was reassuring to know that no one wanted to face her temper.

  Gary had only been gone a few minutes when the doorbell rang, both Janelle and Trish exchanged exasperated looks. Had he come back to finish the argument?

  Janelle answered the door, and when Trish heard her exchange words with someone, she quickly got to her feet, preparing to bolt before anyone else could waylay her.

  “Look at what I have!” Janelle said, coming in before Trish could make it out of the room. She was holding a beautiful bouquet of several dozen roses.

  Trish’s heart quickened with joy. Andrew. He must have stopped and ordered the bouquet before he left the city. She hurried over, took them from Janelle and quickly drew out the white envelope. The smile faded as she read the enclosed card.

  Thinking of you, my darling, and our future together.

  All my love,

  Curtis

  Chapter Eight

  Trish turned away so Janelle couldn’t see her face. Dismayed and shaken to the depths, she felt as if someone had just landed a fist in her middle. Even though she had been aware of Curtis’s proprietary manner that morning, she had never dreamed that there had been a love relationship between them. In fact, she’d given him little thought, assuming that their connection was a business one. He hadn’t even come to mind when she’d had that flickering impression of being in someone’s embrace at the park. Her thoughts had been filled with the fear that what they were saying about her and Perry was true.

  “Well, now it looks as if you have a new admirer, all right,” Janelle said, apparently assuming the flowers had come from Andrew. “He seems like a very nice young man. It’s amazing how fate threw you together, isn’t it?”

  Tha
t much was true, anyway, thought Trish, but for some reason she wasn’t willing to correct Janelle’s assumption that Andrew had sent the flowers. Maybe she was too much of a coward to ask Janelle a lot of questions about Curtis or Perry, she admitted to herself. In any case, she wasn’t up to handling another complication that might send her whole life into another downward spin.

  “Would you like to have me put these flowers in water for you?” Janelle asked, burying her face in their sweet fragrance. “Beautiful. Roses are your favorite flower, aren’t they?”

  Are they? I don’t know. This silent admission seemed to crystallize the utter devastation that went bone-deep. All evening she’d seemed to totter on the edge of remembrance, but even a simple preference for roses as her favorite flower eluded her.

  She turned to Janelle. “I’m very tired,” she said. “I think I’ll call it a day.”

  Janelle nodded. “I understand. It’s been a rough time for you. I wish I knew how to make things easier.”

  “You already have,” Trish said quickly. “Thank you for being here.”

  “Please call me if you need anything. I brought some work from the office, so I’ll probably be up until about eleven. I’m in the guest room just across the hall.” Janelle smiled as she added reassuringly, “Just a holler away.”

  As Trish made ready for bed, she wondered if someone had alerted Janelle to the recurring nightmares she’d been having. No doubt, if she went into one of her crying and screaming jags, she’d scare Janelle out of her wits. It had been bad enough to have Andrew, or the staff at Havengate to help her through those rough moments, but embarrassing herself with Janelle would be worse.

  She hadn’t wanted to leave the hospital, but Dr. Duboise had been insistent. “Trish, we don’t know how long you will suffer a loss of memory. It could be months, and even years. You’re a young, vibrant woman who shouldn’t languish in an institution when you could be making a new life for yourself.”