Mind of Her Own

by Diana Lesire Brandmeyer

  And Louisa? No personality. Lifeless even came to mind as she examined the monotone clothing. If Louisa were trying to blend in, she had managed as well as any American soldier in the desert.

  * * *

  Collin tapped another date on his BlackBerry calendar, then another. Every day seemed to have a court date or a deposition that needed to be done. He would have to find a way to clear his calendar.

  Maybe he could turn over the Esmonde deposition on Friday to Robert. He felt sure it would be a simple one and wouldn’t take long. If Robert would do it, then Collin could leave the office early. He’d be able to get home about the time the kids arrived from school. He clicked the New Message icon in his e-mail account and wrote a short note to Robert. Satisfied with his request, he clicked Send.

  Within seconds Robert e-mailed back, and the deal was made. They had traded work, leaving Collin free for the entire weekend. Now all he had to do was pick up a few supplies and a tent. His family would be bonding this weekend in the great outdoors at Rend Lake. He’d show Jazz how exciting he could be. This would give them a chance to get to know each other as a family. He could picture it now. A hot, blazing fire; the kids asleep in the tent; and he and Jazz sitting outside in chairs, gazing at stars and getting reacquainted.

  Feeling pleased at taking action to pull his family together, he called Jazz, anticipating her response.

  “We’re going to sleep in a tent? Outside?” Jazz didn’t say anything else for a moment. He let her digest the information, hoping she’d warm up to the idea. “Outside? Do I like that?”

  “I don’t know if you like it, Jazz.” Her confusion amused him.

  “Did Louisa?”

  “I don’t know. We never went camping. It will be fun. Think marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate, like when you were a kid.”

  “That sounds like an interesting combination.” Her voice hesitated. “Am I supposed to know about this kind of food?”

  “S’mores. That’s what they’re called. Trust me. I’ve seen you eat, and you’ll like this.”

  “The boys will like the idea, but I’m not sure about Madison,” Jazz said.

  “She’ll be fine once she gets over the shock that there won’t be any instant messaging for an entire weekend.”

  “Maybe we can let her take a friend along?”

  “No. I want this weekend to be about the kids and being a family.” Collin paused. He wanted to add, “and about you falling in love with me again,” but he didn’t. He knew she still held on to the belief that Louisa would return soon. But he hoped if and when she did return, she would keep Jazz alive. When he looked at her, he saw Louisa’s face, but the smile, warmth, energy, and enthusiasm for life belonged to Jazz.

  “Collin? Are you still there?” Jazz interrupted his thoughts.

  “Yeah, just thinking about what we might need to take along.”

  “A Scrabble board, I hope.”

  “Good idea. Can you get the games together? I’ll take care of the equipment. I have a friend who might loan me his camping gear.” He suddenly remembered Jazz’s inability to cook, even in their fifty-thousand-dollar kitchen. “I’ll get the food, too.”

  * * *

  Collin plopped three pizza boxes onto the table. “Let’s eat,” he yelled. “Pizza’s here.” Tim and Joey were the first to climb into their chairs. Madison took her time to get settled. Jazz brought liter bottles of soda over and set them on the table. Collin couldn’t wait any longer. He had finally come up with a family activity, and he knew the kids were going to love it. “Guess what?”

  “You won’t be home next week because you’ll be involved in a trial,” Madison guessed. “That’s nothing new, Dad. You’re gone all the time.” She pulled a slice of cheese pizza from one of the boxes.

  “That’s not it.” Collin grinned. This was going to be good. He could almost hear the whoops of joy when he told them. He looked at Jazz and winked to let her know he appreciated her letting him tell the kids.

  “What is it, Dad?” Joey stuffed a hunk of pepperoni in his mouth.

  “We’re going camping this weekend!” Collin almost shouted the words. He sat back and waited for the information to sink in.

  “Camping? Dad, I am not sleeping in a tent!” Madison tossed her napkin onto the table. She shoved her chair back and stood. “You can’t make me go!” She burst into tears and ran upstairs. Just in case he might mistake her tears for joy, she slammed her door hard enough to correct his erroneous thinking.

  Joey scowled at him. “Dad, I have soccer practice.”

  “Do we have to eat outside with the bugs? I don’t want to eat with bugs.” Tim grabbed another slice of pizza. “I’d better eat a lot now so I don’t have to eat with dirty, disgusting flies.”

  Collin was truly surprised at the reaction from his kids. He thought they would be delighted at the prospect of a weekend family camping trip. Maybe not Madison, but the boys should have been eager to camp. Nope, this hadn’t gone the way he had planned at all. Not one happy face beamed at him from across the table. Not even Jazz looked happy, and she was always ready for adventure.

  Collin sought cover in his workshop. He looked at the unfinished picture frame on the workbench. He picked up the cordless drill, pressed the on switch, and let it run in the air for a minute before setting it back down. He didn’t feel like working on the frame right now.

  Unable to stay away from Louisa’s journals, he lifted the box onto the bench and pulled out a stack of papers that had been stapled at the corner. A title splashed across the first page: The Model and the Taxi Driver, by Jazz Sweet. Startled, he wondered how Jazz had found a way into his workshop. Then he realized it was Louisa’s handwriting, and the air thickened in his throat. He had found it! The connection to Louisa—she really had written a book. He sat down to read.

  Annette Richmond yanked the door handle of the yellow cab. She tossed her leather backpack onto the floor of the taxi and slid onto the worn cloth seat.

  “Twelfth and Oak,” she said to the back of the driver’s head as she slammed the door. Exhausted from hunger, she lay back in the seat. Her stomach growled. She patted it gently as a pregnant woman might to reassure an unsettled child. But no amount of rubbing seemed to calm the stabbing hunger pangs. She made good money, but none of it went for food. She couldn’t afford to eat much, only what would keep her alive and walking down the runway. Some days she came close to spending her money on drugs to curb her appetite. Many of her friends urged her to try some new designer pill. Even Kate, her best friend, had folded, and now she swore she never needed to eat.

  “Miss?”

  She looked into the rearview mirror, where brown eyes reflected back at her. “What?”

  “There isn’t a Twelfth and Oak.” His Southern accent brought her into the world she had given up—no, the world she had fled—twelve months ago.

  “You’re right,” she stuttered, her own accent creeping past her lips. “Ah meant Twelfth and Pine.”

  Collin adjusted the papers in his hand and leaned against the wall. He continued to read. As he flipped the pages, he realized his wife had a gift. One that she’d kept hidden for a long time. He wanted to run upstairs and tell her how well she wrote; he wanted to tell everyone his wife was Jazz. That Louisa was a figment of the world’s imagination, a star peg trying to fit into a square hole. But he couldn’t let her know about the journals because she didn’t remember them. If he told her he had them and hadn’t shown them to her, well, it was just too complicated. For a little longer he would keep the evidence of her previous life to himself.

  Collin looked around his workshop. His getaway-from-the-world place. Jazz needed someplace like this, he thought. And then he had an idea. It would take some time to implement, but it could be done. He sat up straighter, proud that he had thought of something he could do to encourage his wife. He would start today. Collin tossed the stack of papers back into the box and covered it.

  He surveyed the room. He wou
ld hire someone while they were gone this weekend to clean out his tools and paint the room. That brought the first problem to mind: what to do with his tools? He couldn’t put them in the garage because that would mess up the surprise. And he wanted this to shock his wife to the core. Maybe he could build a workshop next to the garage. He’d wanted to do that for a long time. Focus, Copeland. This is about Louisa, not you. For now, to keep this project a surprise, he could rent a storage place. After he gave the room to Jazz, he could put his tools in the garage.

  Walking past the MP3 player, he flipped the off switch before closing the door behind him. He was on a mission, one that would bring a smile to Jazz’s face.

  * * *

  The evenings were getting cooler, and the breeze off the lake chilled Jazz. She zipped her red plaid jacket and plopped down on the deck steps while waiting for Cleo to finish her business so they could go back inside. Her mind was restless. Laurie had tweaked something when she asked about the stories Jazz had written as a child. If she had written stories, wouldn’t Beth—her mother—have brought it up? It seemed logical to Jazz. If Madison had lost her memory and thought she was a writer, at least Jazz could say, “No, you like to draw things, not write.” And she could show her all the sketches she’d piled in a box. Why didn’t Beth say it made sense that Jazz thought she was a writer because she’d written stories as a child? She didn’t know but intended to find out.

  She called Cleo, and the dog bounded across the lawn, her tongue swinging freely from her mouth. “Let’s go inside, girl. You probably need a cool drink of water, and I need to make a phone call.”

  Inside the house, she took off her jacket and placed it on the hook by the others. It felt good to see it there as part of a coat family, like she was now—part of something bigger than she remembered. She grasped the phone and dialed. Beth answered on the first ring, and after a few minutes of niceties, Jazz went to the subject that was bothering her.

  “Can you tell me about the stories I wrote as a kid?” Her throat tightened as anxiety rippled through her.

  “Stories? Oh, those little make-believe things you wrote?” Beth asked.

  “Do you have them stored somewhere?” A flow of excitement knocked out the anxious feelings as she pictured boxes of short stories that only she would probably appreciate. She wondered if she wrote animal stories or stories about people, maybe about her best friends.

  “No, I didn’t keep those. If I remember right, it seemed you were always bothering us with some kind of outlandish problem or idea.”

  Her joyful spirit fizzled. No record of her early work, no books currently in bookstores, and only two chapters written of her new book.

  Maybe she could still get some of the blanks of her life filled in, at least. “When did I write them? How old was I?”

  “You were writing cute little stories before we went to Mexico, but when we came back, you were . . .” Beth stopped.

  “What? What was I writing when you came back?” Jazz pounced through the phone line with her words.

  “You started writing dark stories about people being killed and children being kidnapped. It was upsetting to your father and me, and we asked you to stop writing them.”

  “Who did I write about? What did I say?” Her curiosity increased her heart rate.

  “I don’t remember now.” Beth sighed.

  “Do you remember if I stopped writing when you asked?” Puzzled, Jazz tried to glean some meaning from this information.

  “Of course you did, dear. You were always a good girl.” She could hear the pride in Beth’s voice.

  Jazz hung up the phone, and her stomach churned. Something felt wrong. She didn’t know what, but the cramps in her stomach insisted she needed to figure it out, and she didn’t think they were from the dinner she’d eaten.

  Chapter Sixteen

  In the distance small motorboats raced across the lake, leaving wide wakes that bounced against the shoreline. Jazz felt soothed by the rhythm. The lake didn’t have the color or smell of her beloved ocean, but it was water. The campsite Collin had reserved jutted into the rocky beach. A host of scraggly pines and ash trees with their bright-yellow leaves separated their space from the rest of the campground, giving them privacy. She let the warm rays of sun massage her shoulders. Collin had said it might be the last of the warm weather.

  Jazz swatted at a fly as she stood in the doorway of the unzipped tent. Five sleeping bags lay in a row across the floor. The army-green edges of blow-up mattresses peeked between the plaid bags and blue flooring, mocking her with pretend comfort. “I’m not sleeping here,” she said under her breath.

  She jumped at the touch of Collin’s hand on the small of her back.

  “Why not? It’s perfect. We aren’t sleeping together.” He pointed to one end of the line. “That’s your bed, and I’m over there.” He swept his hand to the other end. “The kids are between us. See, I’m following your rules.”

  She placed one foot on the nylon floor.

  “Stop! You have to take your shoes off and leave them on this rug.” Collin pointed at the rough welcome mat. “It keeps the tent cleaner.”

  Grasping the pole that held the awning upright, she started to balance on one foot to remove her shoe.

  “No! You’ll yank down the entire tent. Look . . .” He collapsed onto the floor of the tent with his legs sticking straight out the door. Bending his knee, he yanked off one sneaker and then the other. “That’s how you do it.”

  “Terrific. I get to practice yoga while camping.” But she followed his example. Once her feet would no longer endanger the tent floor, she swung them inside and stood. “There isn’t any room.”

  “Enough space for all of us to sleep comfortably,” Collin said.

  “Couldn’t we have a girls’ tent?” she pleaded, offering her best beguiling smile. “Like down the road at the Sleep Inn, Sleep Tight?”

  “No, come on, Jazz. Give this a chance. It’s a great way for a family to bond.”

  “In these quarters you don’t have a choice, do you? I mean, it’s like a slapstick comedy in here: if one person rolls over, everyone has to roll.” Jazz sank down on her appointed bed, or tried to. She bounced, then slid to the side. “This isn’t going to work.”

  Collin took her hand. “Please, Jazz, try it—for the kids, for us?”

  His touch sent ripples of heat through her. She wanted to please him, to say yes to anything he asked, but he wasn’t hers.

  “Jazz?”

  It would help if his voice didn’t soothe her like hot fudge on a sundae. “One night. If I don’t like it, I can leave?”

  He considered her offer and then smiled. “Deal.”

  She realized he still held her hand and began to pull away.

  He held on tighter and leaned in to kiss her.

  She didn’t move. Her heart beat faster. Her mind screamed “run,” but her lips said “yes.”

  The kiss lasted only a second. Jazz couldn’t remember another time when a kiss had felt so wonderful. Dazed, she shook her head to wake up from the dreamlike trance she’d fallen into.

  Collin brushed her cheek with his hand and stood. “Thank you for not rejecting me,” he said over his shoulder as he pushed through the loose screen door.

  Jazz lay back on her sleeping bag, hugging the feeling of being wanted. She savored the feel of that kiss. If she were Louisa, she could have Collin’s kisses anytime she wished. Please, God, let me remember this part of me if I turn into Louisa, she prayed.

  Slapping at mosquitoes hours later, Jazz couldn’t imagine why she would ever want to be Louisa. “Tell me again why you didn’t bring any repellent?” She winced as she hit her thigh again, missing the offending insect. The bite marks on her legs told her who was winning this war.

  “I told you I’m sorry.” Collin tossed more dead leaves into the fire.

  “Does smoke really keep them away, Collin, or do people die from lack of air so they don’t know they’re still having their bloo
d sucked from their bodies?” Jazz waved the offending smoke away.

  Madison giggled. “Yeah, Dad, does it work?”

  “Maybe it has something to do with what you burn,” Collin replied.

  Joey threw a potato chip into the fire. He and Tim scooted closer to watch it burn.

  “Back up, boys. You won’t have any eyebrows left if you get too close. The fire will melt them off your faces.” Collin stood, ready to pull them away from the fire. He relaxed when they moved back.

  “That’s okay. We don’t need them,” said Tim. “Mom’s always pulling hers out with tweezers. I don’t want to do that when I get old.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Tim. Women do it to make us look good,” said Madison. “Bushy eyebrows scare men off.”

  “You aren’t a woman, so how do you know?” Joey asked.

  “Stop. She knows, Joey, and she’ll be a woman soon,” Jazz said. “Tim, you need some eyebrows to help protect your eyes, so don’t be burning them off.”

  Thwack. Missed another one. Her leg, where she had been repeatedly defending it, glowed bright red in the firelight. “I think I’ll go to bed. At least it will be bug-free in there.”

  “Me, too.” Madison unfolded her colt-like legs and stood, ready to follow.

  “I think it’s time we all went inside,” Collin said.

  * * *

  Thunder woke Jazz. She struggled to loosen herself from the sleeping bag as lightning lit the inside of the tent. “Collin!”

  “It’s just a storm, Jazz. Don’t scare the kids,” he muttered as he flung his arm over his eyes to block the lightning flashes.

  “Dad? I’m getting wet,” Madison said as she scooted off her mattress and onto Tim’s. “Move over.”

  Tim didn’t move, so Madison pushed him. “Dad?”

  Only a snore from Collin answered back.

  “Madison, want to make a run for the van?” Jazz whispered.

  “It won’t be comfortable,” Madison whined.

  “At least it won’t be wet inside.” She wasn’t about to stay in the tent any longer. Madison could stay and fight off the puddles that were forming by the bed if she wanted to.