Unforgettable Love

by Kelsey MacBride

  Tears filled her eyes as she looked at Aaron.

  “You followed me?” she said.

  “Well, yeah. I didn’t know if you knew where the house was or...”

  “If you hadn’t been there ... I don’t know ... what would have happened.”

  Aaron said nothing as tears of fear, relief and gratitude all mixed together streamed down Julie’s face. She stepped up to Aaron, slipped her arms around his waist, laid her head against his chest and hugged him tightly. Her tears soaked through his shirt, and he could feel them on his skin. He wrapped his arms around her and patted her back.

  They stood there for a while. The rest of the night they chatted and then retreated to their prospective rooms.

  Aaron couldn’t sleep. He had been a little rattled too. But not so much by his act of bravery, but by the sweet reward of feeling Julie’s arms around him. Deep down, he knew she was right, and that she not only couldn’t, but shouldn’t get involved with anyone until she found out her true identity.

  But that gave him an idea. Tonight, he saved her. He put himself in harm’s way to save her, and she was thankful. She would forever see him in a new light. Like a hero. And if she saw him as her hero, then he was going to run with it.

  Tomorrow morning, he would find out who Julie was and get her back to her family, no matter what the situation would be. If she were married, well, he would have done a good deed. If she were single, then maybe, just maybe, she would see how much he was willing to do for her and give him a chance. And if there was something in between that he couldn’t foresee? Well, he knew he’d at least have a beautiful friend that would make him the envy of all the dudes on the island.

  Julie woke up after the sun had peeked over the horizon. She looked at her wrist and saw the fingerprints of the attacker had turned a grayish blue color where his fingers had squeezed leaving four thick lines.

  She rubbed them with her other hand, but they still remained.

  Getting slowly out of bed, Julie quietly got dressed. She didn’t want to wake anyone. Karen, Cindy, Aaron and her had stayed up late talking about what had happened and how the world sometimes seemed so heartless. It wasn’t hard after that to snuggle up next to Aaron and feel the reassurance of his firm body against hers. If she had been willing to be more open to his advances, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten hurt.

  “He saved your life,” she whispered to herself. “You owe him something.”

  Tiptoeing through the house and out the back door, Julie walked down to the area of the beach where Cindy and Karen had found her. She didn’t know what she was looking for. Perhaps the ocean would reach up and sweep her out to sea, just to put her back where it had originally found her. Yeah, and maybe she’d see a UFO with little green men traipsing along out there, too.

  She walked and was happy to see the beach was alive with other early risers. There were about half a dozen people in the distance all doing yoga. A couple of joggers waved as they passed each other. And there was a couple that looked like they had weathered the whole night together. Yet, they were holding hands and smiling.

  “Time to head back to reality,” Julie thought as she looked at them.

  And then something caught her eye. In the sand, just a little bit out of her view to the right, something flickered. Walking up to the glistening thing, she bent down and scraped the sand away. It was a necklace. And she recognized it.

  Quickly she dug it out, brushing off the grime and grit. She stared at it with wild excitement. It was a crystal heart. It was hers. Someone she cared about gave it to her. It wasn’t a gift from a mother to a daughter or a father to his daughter. No. It was a gift from someone else. Someone different. Someone she cared a great deal about.

  Her heart leapt. It was her necklace. She had been wearing it since she received it. Her gut told her so. It must have come off some time while she was in the water. Now, here it was. And the person who gave it to her was special. Very special.

  When Mark Stewart returned from his business trip, he couldn’t wait to stop by Mrs. Carter’s house. Mrs. Carter was kind as she was eccentric, carrying on conversations with her relatives who were either dead or in a completely other state, stopping in to make appearances at the latest gallery openings or concerts, or just reaching out to quietly help a stray or two. Mark had been one of those strays at one time. He never forgot her kindness, and now he was counting the minutes to get back to her house. Not to see her directly, but the guest, the stray she was currently helping. Julie Peterson. Her name made his heart vibrate with excitement. Like the rumble of a nearby train could sometimes shake a person’s insides, the thought of Julie Peterson gave him goose bumps.

  Their meeting was so random that Mark couldn’t help but thank heaven for Tobie, his Golden Retriever, for pulling him out of his apartment that day. Deep in his heart, he didn’t think it was Tobie alone. Julie was an angel, and God gave him that extra push so he would see her, go talk to her, walk with her and what? Fall in love? The idea pushed a smile across his lips every time. But he didn’t dare say it out loud or think it for very long. One indulgence he did allow himself was to say he did indeed like her very much.

  And the minutes were crawling around his timepiece as the day seemed to offer up every delay or inconvenience imaginable.

  He had waited two hours before his flight home, then he waited in the plane as it sat on the runway for an additional half an hour. The white clouds that flew over gave no indication of how close or how far he was from his final destination to Los Angeles.

  Once off the plane, he waited on a taxi. He waited in traffic. He waited at the dog sitters as Tobie said good-bye to his buddies. Then he waited in traffic some more. Finally, when he got to his apartment, he could barely stand it.

  Marching over to Mrs. Carter’s house like a man going off to war, Mark felt like a teenager. Like anything and everything was new and bright and possible if he could just look at the angel, Julie, again.

  But when he heard Mrs. Carter call for him to come around the back to the patio, he could tell something was wrong. As he stepped inside the gate and let Tobie off his leash to run in the grass and dirty up his shiny clean coat, Mark knew something was wrong.

  “I don’t know where she went,” Mrs. Carter finally said, fanning herself gently with the lacy handkerchief she had in her hand. Her eyes were red and without makeup. Only once before had Mark seen Mrs. Carter without the effects of makeup and that was when she had the flu. For about two weeks she wore no makeup, just being too exhausted and miserable to put any on. “If I die, just slap on some red lipstick before you call the mortician,” she grumbled to Mark who came to visit her every other day.

  But this time her naked face looked not just unadorned, but worried.

  “All of her things are still upstairs. Her backpack, the clothes I bought her. Mark, something has happened to that sweet girl, and I’m afraid it isn’t good.”

  Mark stared out into the yard, watching Tobie chase the birds and run around to sniff every corner or points only a dog would find of interest.

  “Did she tell you why she was in L.A.?” Not looking at Mrs. Carter, Mark instead studied his hands. They were strong hands. Steady hands. Hands that could be firm yet kind. But, right now, he saw them as the most useless appendages on his body.

  “She didn’t come right out and say it, but I know she was running from something or someone. No one comes to Los Angeles without money or clothes or a plan. She had to get out of Dodge, didn’t she?”

  Mark nodded. He gave Mrs. Carter a brief rundown of what Julie had told him. She was engaged but called it off. The ex-fiancé didn’t take it very well. She left.

  “Do you think that man has anything to do with this?”

  “I think it would be pretty shocking if he didn’t.”

  “Then brace yourself. I found this the day before yesterday in the yard. By the gate. At first, I didn’t think anything of it. But when I saw Julie was gone, I knew they were hers.” She sto
od slowly, walked into the kitchen and reappeared holding a drying bouquet of flowers. Mark had given those to Julie, minus the one that he had stuck in the bud vase when they had dinner together. He swallowed hard.

  “Francine, where do I start? I barely know anything about her.” He looked at the flowers as if they were some grotesque thing that offended his eyes. “If something terrible has happened to her, I’ll never forgive myself, ever.”

  Mrs. Carter resumed her seat in her tall backed wicker chair and placed her hands elegantly on the arm rests. She looked like the Queen of England about to announce a life-changing decision to her subjects.

  “We start with what we know. Her name. She obviously shared details about her life with you. Start there. Check her things. I’ve left her room as it was so when she comes back it will be as she remembers. Perhaps that will give you a lead.”

  She blinked back the tears in her eyes, squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. Not being the kind of Southern Belle to weep and wail, she looked at Mark seriously.

  “Tell me, Mark. Do you think we should call the police?”

  Mark thought for a moment then stood.

  “Yes. There should be a record that someone is looking for her. They probably can’t do anything, but I think that would be wise.” He looked at the open door to the kitchen. Taking one step, he leaned in and kissed Mrs. Carter on the cheek, then walked into the house and up the stairs to the room Julie had been using.

  Looking around, he saw the sweet looking things Mrs. Carter had bought for her. The blue jeans she had been wearing when he met her. The pretty skirt and blouse she had been wearing when she came for dinner was missing. She had left that night either on her own or by force. Something in Mark’s gut told him it wasn’t on her own.

  “Why didn’t I walk her home? What kind of a jerk doesn’t walk a girl home?”

  He grabbed her backpack, slung it over his shoulder and left. He’d go through all of it at his apartment. Including the cell phone that was currently blinking, announcing there were unheard messages.

  James Turner was nervous. For the first time in his life, he was nervous. His boat was now scattered in pieces across the ocean. One of the men who had worked on his boat for years now lay in the hospital. James didn’t realize the man was over sixty years old. He never spoke to any of them. Their leathery skin and rough hands he assumed just came with being out in the sun all day. Not because they were old, and certainly not because they were sick with psoriasis of the liver. What was that guy’s name? Ed? Earl? James couldn’t remember.

  He couldn’t believe Julie could be capable of causing so much destruction. Her mother and father were on the phone constantly with James now. Had he heard anything? What was he doing to find her? If she was on his boat and now that his boat was a permanent resident at the bottom of the sea, where was she?

  Swallowing hard at these words, James soothed his future in-laws.

  “She had a life preserver on,” he lied.

  “She knew how to swim and even managed to get to the life raft before I lost sight of her,” he lied again.

  “I’ve got everyone working to find her. One way or another, she’ll show up.” James was amazed at how easily he lied to these people. They just lapped up his optimism and reassurances. He was their stability, and he wouldn’t let them down. Not now. Not when so much was riding on him getting to Julie first, whatever condition she was in.

  “What was she doing in Los Angeles?” her mother kept crying as if L.A. were the worst den of debauchery a person could end up.

  “How did she even manage to get there? I don’t even want to think of what that girl did to get the money to leave us like this. She’s doing this to hurt me. You know that don’t you, Richard. This is all to get back at me.”

  Richard had saved a voicemail recording of Julie telling him she was okay and not to worry. He had listened to it. He thought she sounded healthy. Happy. Not scared or belligerent. What kind of girl did he raise? He wasn’t even sure. After all these years of pushing her off on piano lessons and singing lessons and art classes and foreign languages and travel from here to Timbuktu and back, he had no idea who his daughter was. Yet he complained about her. When she did something on her own. When she expressed herself, he actually had the nerve to complain about her. It wasn’t Julie who was wrong. It was him. But there was no telling his wife that. Not now. When he looked at her, he saw the shadow of regret she kept pushing aside. The pride that kept her from accepting the culpability that perhaps both of them were just as responsible for this situation as she was. She was being tortured inside. Richard knew it. Because if he were, he knew for certain his wife was too.

  But James was more annoyed than anything else. If only Julie would have listened to him. What was wrong with her?

  The excuses that he was passing around when people inquired about Julie were slowly becoming cumbersome. How long was he supposed to neglect his tennis game and social engagements all because his selfish fiancé jumped off his boat during a storm?

  “Yes, we’re all worried, but we’re sure she’ll be alright. No. I know she is alive and trying to get back to me. My heart won’t accept anything else,” he would say to the nosey members of Sutter Hill Country Club where he and Julie were members. It was where James had proposed to Julie and where he had made it perfectly clear in the front seat of his car, when he grabbed her wrists and demanded she fall in line or risk starting their marriage off on very rocky ground. A spoiled girl was what she was. And just like when she avoided his phone calls to make him sweat, that was what she was doing now.

  “But what if she’s really dead?” the voice in his head whispered. “It would be your fault.”

  “No,” he said out loud to himself as he drove his car, like the many times he washed his hands of any responsibility when things went wrong. “No. It wouldn’t be my fault. It would be her fault. She jumped into the water. She refused the life preserver because she was a little drama queen who thrived on this kind of hysteria. If she’s dead, it’s her own fault. Not mine. Not mine.”

  If Julie were dead, James would play the part of the grieving fiancé, leave the country for Europe and take an extended vacation until such a time that Julie would be completely forgotten in a ceremonial burial, with an empty coffin because they never would have found the body that was lost at sea.

  Still, even with most of the details wrapped up tight with witnesses that would be more than happy to back up his account of the events that afternoon, James felt Julie was alive. And if she were, he needed to get to her before anyone else did and before she could tell her side of the story.

  The San Francisco papers ran several blurbs on the police blotter for a couple of days asking for any information on the disappearance of Julie Peterson. It was the last submission that finally stirred up a response. The key words being REWARD: $100,000.

  “Yes, the reward is serious. We are desperate for any information about our girl,” James told the man on the other end of the line while he studied his fingernails.

  But as the man on the phone continued his description of the woman that had washed up on the beach, James knew for certain he had found Julie. His mouth became dry. His eyes scanned his desk as he chose his words carefully.

  “Has she said anything about how she got there? How she ended up on the beach?”

  The response from the other end was almost enough to make James burst out laughing. Amnesia? Of all the dumb luck. James thought he may have to place a bet on a long shot since this just might be his lucky day.

  “The poor thing,” James said, putting his hand over the mouthpiece of his cell phone, just in case a joyful titter escaped and reached the ears of this do-gooder.

  “I just need to get her parents, and we will be there by tomorrow morning. Thank you and uh, God bless,” James spat out the words as if they were an afterthought. He never said them, but it seemed that these people might go for a comment like that. Standing up from the desk in his home offic
e, James looked at his watch. He had plenty of time to take a shower and get something to eat before he contacted the Petersons and gave them the news. Julie wasn’t going anywhere. She wouldn’t know where to go if she had to.

  “Amnesia,” he said aloud again and chuckling to himself. This was too convenient.

  Julie quietly stepped into the house after her journey to the beach. She was bubbling over with excitement and wanted to rush in to Karen and Cindy and tell them of the treasure she found. But the vibe of the house suddenly seemed different.

  Looking at the necklace, she quickly secured the clasp around her neck and then stood still.

  There where whispers going on down the hallway toward the kitchen. Closing her eyes and listening hard, Julie was transported to a huge stairwell that faced a massive front door and whispers could be heard there, too. Where was that place? She got the feeling there were many conversations she stumbled upon in this big place, but where that place was, she didn’t know. Opening her eyes she heard Aaron speaking and then Karen.

  “That is really amazing, Aaron. She’s going to be so relieved.”

  “Plus, there is a little bonus. A reward.”

  “How much?”

  “A lot.”

  Quiet settled again in the kitchen.

  “Well, that doesn’t matter. She needs to be with her family. And you said you spoke with her fiancé?” Karen’s voice was no-nonsense as usual.

  “Yes. I hate to say it, but he sounded nice. I’m still not giving up.”

  “Aaron, you are such a hopeless romantic,” Cindy spoke with a mouth full of something.

  Julie wasn’t sure what they were really talking about. And she was so excited about her find that she tiptoed in and stood in the kitchen door.

  Karen was facing her direction and looked over Aaron’s head to greet Julie.

  “We thought you were still sleeping. After last night, no one would blame you for getting a couple extra “Zs” in. How’s your lip?”