Hollow

by Maggie Shayne

"Oui, it is done." Nadine spun her chair around so she faced the mirror. "Voila!"

  Kira stared at her reflection. A familiar stranger stared back. And she felt the oddest, most surreal sense of wanting to hug her and say welcome home. And then her black-lined eyes slammed closed against the tidal wave that suddenly hit her brain. There were people running, children crying, women screaming, debris raining down, smoke, blood, tears. Pain.

  There was a dead man lying beneath her, a man she ought to know. And there was another man leaning over her, his eyes stricken as he stared down at her. "Kira? Baby? Are you okay?"

  She stared up at Marshall for just an instant, knowing she was safe, she’d be okay, he was there. Her lips moved to form words, but she didn't know what they were. And then she sank into darkness to the sound of his tormented whisper, "God, no."

  "Oh, no, you hate it," Nadine moaned. "I was afraid of this. I can fix, don't worry—"

  "No." Kira opened her eyes, but she couldn't get the image of those other eyes to leave her alone. They were Marshall's eyes. And they'd been way more intense than she had ever seen them. Tortured, scared, worried.

  Loving.

  She focused again on her reflection in the mirror. And then she nodded. "I love it, Nadine. I love it. Don't change a thing."

  Chapter 5

  At noon, Kira slipped as quietly as she could through the front entrance. The wedding wasn’t until two. Her mother would be out back, tending to last-minute preparations. Kira still didn’t know what she was going to do about anything, but she didn’t feel afraid anymore.

  She felt strong. Maybe she didn’t remember who she’d been, but she could feel herself slowly discovering her again. And the old Kira was not the kind of woman who would let herself be pushed into anything she didn’t want to do.

  And yet she kept feeling as if there was a very good reason not to call off the wedding. She just couldn’t remember what it was.

  She closed the door quietly and light-stepped across the foyer toward the wide staircase. A soft gasp stopped her in her tracks, however.

  Biting her lip, she pivoted to face her mother, who stood just to her right, staring at her in what looked like disappointment. “Oh, Kira. What did you do?”

  “What did I do?” She tilted her head slightly, really studying her mother for the first time, and seeing the emotions in her face. Seeing them really, all the way back to when she’d first brought her home. And the truth hit her like a slap across the face. “You didn’t like me very much before, did you, Mother? The woman I was before wasn’t the daughter you wanted.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” But she averted her eyes when she said it. And then she almost whispered, “Have you… remembered, then?”

  “Just the hair. The way I used to dress. The attitude.”

  “That attitude,” her mother repeated. But when she said it, it was as if the word left a bad taste in her mouth.

  “You’ve been actively keeping the truth from me, haven’t you? Trying to remake me into some kind of Stepford daughter.”

  “The only thing I’ve ever tried to do is to take care of you, Kira.”

  “By lying to me about my past? By keeping secrets from me? Secrets about who I am?”

  Her mother closed her eyes, lowered her head. “I just didn’t want to lose you…the way I lost your father.”

  “You’re gonna lose me if you don’t tell me the truth, Mom. Right now. I’ve been lost at sea, just fighting the waves and praying for some scrap of my identity to cling to, to keep from drowning. And you’ve deliberately kept that from me.”

  Lifting her chin, her mother met her eyes, didn’t flinch away this time when Kira probed right back. “All right. All right. Fine. You want to know so bad, I’ll tell you.” She turned and walked away. “Although, your timing on this is abysmal, Kira.”

  “Seems kind of perfect to me.” Kira followed her mother into her father’s den. It was a large room, lined with built-in bookcases. It had a curving wall of windows and a round Turkish rug in front of the stately desk. No one seemed to use the room much, and Kira hadn’t been inside it before, at least not since the accident.

  But she stepped in then, and stopped with her toes just at the edge of that rug. She caught a whiff of pipe tobacco and a hint of Old Spice, and a sharp pain knifed right through her heart, making her press her hand there. An involuntary stuttering gasp, three quick inhales.

  Her mother looked at her sharply. “Kira?”

  She held up a hand, her eyes wide but focused inwardly on the teasing clips of memory playing out on the movie screen of her mind. Riding on her father’s shoulders as he romped around a grassy back yard, tickle fights on the living room floor, slow dancing while standing on top of his big feet and hugging his waist.

  Leaning over his broken body in a smoky marketplace of death.

  His eyes opened, ringed with dust. “I need to tell you—”

  Her head was pounding, her ears ringing, her body trembling. She clung to consciousness with everything in her. “Tell me what?” she whispered, or maybe she shouted it. She was no longer fully connected to her body.

  She leaned closer, and he spoke into her ear.

  “I never wanted you to know, Kira. That’s why I didn’t want you working with me. Your insatiable curiosity, your uncanny ability to sniff out a lie, the resources you’d have access to, I… I knew you’d find out.”

  And she had found out, and she’d thought it meant everything, when it turned out to mean nothing. Nothing at all. “Dad, be quiet. You’re weak.” And so was she. Weak and getting weaker. Her vision kept going black, her eyes falling closed. She kept forcing them wide again, trying to see where he was hurt, what she could do.

  “No, I have to be the one to tell you. Kira, I’m not your birth father,” he whispered. “But I love you more than any other man ever could.”

  Kira stood there as the memory faded. She tried to grab onto it, fearing it would recede back into the depths of her mind where she couldn’t access it again. But it didn’t. It just tucked itself away in a newly unlocked file in her brain. She could call it up anytime she wanted.

  She blinked herself back into the present, and saw that her mother was holding a file folder she’d removed from her dad’s desk. “Your father never wanted you to learn the truth, Kira, but you have a right to know.”

  “He wasn’t my birth father,” she whispered. Tears kept flooding her eyes. The grief she’d never processed. Her throat was so tight she could barely breathe and her voice was an octave deeper than usual.

  “You… knew?” Her mother looked at her wide eyed and maybe ashamed.

  “I found out on my own, I think. But just now I remembered… he told me just before he….”

  “Oh God.” Her mother’s knees gave out, but she was near a chair, and managed to land in it. She held the file at arm’s length, then just let it drop onto the floor.

  “He said he had to be the one to tell me,” Kira said.

  “He’d have told you sooner, if I hadn’t fought him so hard. I just… I was so ashamed. I begged him not to. And you know your father loved me. He truly did. And so he kept my secret.” She couldn’t look Kira in the eyes. “I’m sorry, Kira.”

  “It’s all right, Mom.”

  “Is it?”

  Kira went to her mother, leaned down and kissed her cheek. “It is. I’m all right, and I love you. And I forgive you.”

  “So did your father,” her mom said, sniffling.

  “I’m glad to know that.” She ran a hand over her mogther’s sable hair, not a gray strand in sight. “So what’s in the envelope?”

  “Everything your father could dig up about the man who… the man I had an affair with.” She lowered her head, her eyes. “I’ve never forgiven myself. My only consolation is that it gave me my daughter. A daughter I love, no matter how she wears her hair, or who she marries, for that matter.”

  Sighing, Kira bent to pick up the envelope. “Maybe it’s time you forgive yoursel
f for one ancient mistake, Mom. It was twenty-six years ago, after all.”

  “Twenty-seven.” Her mother drew a deep breath, sighed. “I love you. I haven’t been trying to remake you, Kira, I’ve been trying to give you room to remake yourself. Those memories of the bombing… the memory of losing your father, I honestly thought you might be better off without them. I believed in my heart that if it was better for you to remember, you would. And that if you didn’t, maybe there was reason.” She opened her arms and Kira went into them, accepting the hug, returning it. Something in her heart opened, maybe healed.

  And she felt something. She felt love for her mother and it was very real, very deep. She felt grief for her father, filling her heart as if with tears, until they felt like they were overflowing, filling her, leaking out her eyes. Her emotions were apparently up and running again.

  Her tears wet her mother’s hair. It was up, all big on top with swirls cascading around her face. She stepped back and looked at her. “You look beautiful today, Mom,” she said.

  Her mother cupped her cheek. “So do you, baby.”

  She sniffled. “Can you tell me one more thing?” Her mother nodded. “What were Dad and Marshall doing with Peter and me in Africa?”

  Abby Shanahan frowned so hard her brows touched. “Marshall? Honey, Marshall wasn’t in Africa with you.”

  “But… he was. I remember, he was there.”

  “No, baby. No. Your dad was there because he had some sort of business with Peter. But not Marshall. We never met Marshall until I hired him to help with the wedding.” She ran a hand across Kira’s hair. “Are you sure you’re okay, honey?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

  But her memory was unfolding in her mind again. Hands, strong hands, rolling her gently off her father’s silent chest, then cradling her upper body, and lifting her and kissing her face, and whispering no, no, no, over and over again. A teardrop fell from his cheek to hers. She’d felt it. It was real.

  Marshall had been there.

  #

  Kira stood in her bedroom, gazing out the window to the back lawn and garden sprawling below. The memory flashes had kept coming all morning, frustrating pieces of a mosaic, more of them missing than found. She saw bodies entwined. Hers and Marshall's. She saw their lips mating. She saw laughter and smiles and dark, intense looks filled with hidden meaning passing between them. And she felt a heat in her blood and a yearning in her heart that she didn't remember feeling ever before. Or maybe those feelings were memories, too.

  There were no memories of Peter, or barely any, and when there were, they didn’t hold any emotion— no passion, nothing but interest.

  Now, on the back lawn, folding chairs were set up. A string quartet was warming up, and people were arriving, mingling, talking. The guests were all dressed in black or white or both, as per her mother's instructions. Peter was there, already dressed in his tux, talking with men she didn't really know. His best man, his groomsmen. She'd met them, of course. Maybe she'd known them before. She hadn't cared enough to ask. She didn't care now.

  And yet something told her she should.

  Marshall was down there, too. He wore a tux and a headset and moved around the lawn. Her heart sped up as she watched him. Brisk, efficient, watchful. He had a way of moving that mesmerized her. It was powerful and yet graceful. Why hadn't she noticed before? Or had she?

  Not like this, she hadn't. There were shivers dancing up and down her nape and a shaky, unsteady hitch in her breathing. And she didn't need a fully functioning memory to recognize animal attraction for what it was. She wanted Marshall Waters.

  And she was pretty sure she'd had him.

  But the feelings were so much more than just that. Her soul wanted him, too.

  God, what would her mother think if she knew that she'd been cheating on her fiancé with a wedding planner while on a trip to celebrate her engagement? What a giant mess this was. Why the hell had Marshall let her mother hire him? He wasn't the one without a memory.

  There was more to all this. There had to be. She felt it, floating just beneath the surface. Trying to pluck it out was like bobbing for apples. The moment she tried to latch on, the memories sank deeper, just out of reach.

  There was a tap on her bedroom door. She turned, frowning. It wasn't her mother—she was milling around in the crowd, playing the perfect hostess. Hell, she wasn't playing it; she was it.

  The tap was repeated. "It's Anita. Do you need anything?”

  Kira opened the door, not bothering to hide the two outfits hanging side by side from a pair of hooks on the wall. Not from Anita. Anita wouldn't rat her out. Some part of her she’d forgotten assured her of that and she decided to trust it.

  "They'll be ready for you soon," Anita said, and then she blinked, looking Kira up and down. "You're not dressed."

  ''Haven't quite decided what I'm going to wear." Kira gave a nod toward the outfits on the wall.

  The housekeeper followed her gaze and sucked in a breath.

  But the bride-to-be just stood there and studied the beautiful bridal gown, its poufy demi sleeves and hoop skirt like something a Disney princess would wear.

  Beside it, arranged on another set of hangers, were a pair of black leather leggings, a white tank top, and a leather jacket. On the hook beside those, there were holsters and guns. She’d thought having them out where she could see them might jiggle something loose.

  It certainly seemed to be jiggling something in the housekeeper.

  "You know about all this, don’t you, Anita?"

  "About all what? What's going on?" Anita blinked the look of panic off her face and donned an expression like the most innocent woodland creature in the forest. At the same time, she probed Kira’s eyes so hard if felt like she was trying to see insider her head.

  “I decided to go through those trunks last night. You said you supervised moving my stuff here. What was I doing with all these weapons?”

  "Look, I just did what your mother asked me to do. She said to bring your things, so I brought your things.”

  “Did she see them? My mother? Did she know what was in those trunks?”

  “I didn’t see any reason to upset her.” Anita paced to the window to pull back the curtains and look outside. “Are you starting to get your memory back? Is that what all this is about?"

  "Maybe. A little. Bits and pieces. But I don't know what those pieces mean." She was glad the other woman’s back was to her just then as she asked the next question. "Has there been—have I been—involved with anyone? Besides Peter?"

  Turning slowly, Anita couldn’t hide the worry in her eyes. "You're getting cold feet, aren't you? You're thinking about calling off the wedding."

  Lowering her head, Kira nodded. "Yeah. I am."

  "You can't do that, Kira. You can't. Just.... Wait here. Don’t do anything, just wait.” Then she turned and headed for the door. But she paused there and said, “Put on the dress. Just try it on and see how you feel then. Okay? I’ll be back.” Then she hurried from the room.

  Hell, it didn't matter what the housekeeper thought of her decision, anyway, Kira thought. She had to do what was right for her.

  She crossed the room, eyed the clothes, and with a sigh, reached for the white dress, overcome with the urge to put it on, if only to solidify in her mind how very wrong the whole idea of marrying Peter really was.

  She put the dress on. Even added the little glittering tiara and the layers of veils. Then she looked into the mirror and started to laugh. And then she laughed harder. She laughed until tears pooled in her eyes and her sides hurt. Wiping her eyes with her fingers, she shook her head at the mirror and muttered, “This is just not happening."

  Chapter 6

  "We've got trouble."

  The wedding planner tilted his head to one side when the female voice came through his earpiece. Moving a few yards away from the crowd of happy wedding guests, he spoke in the direction of his lapel pin. "What is it?"

  "S
he's starting to remember. I think she's going to call off the wedding."

  He thought every cell in his body smiled. God, it felt like it, and he’d be damned if he could keep the relief and joy from showing on his face. Good thing he was standing away from the guests, or they would think he’d just won the lottery.

  "We've got to do something,” she went on. “We can't make the arrest until the reception. Peter’s connection isn’t coming until then. Mr. White’s the real goal here. We have to stick to the plan. If Kira calls off the wedding, it's going to ruin everything."

  He took a deep breath and nodded. This wasn’t cause for celebration. Well, it was, but not until after the takedown. And while he hated letting Kira go through with the nuptials, it wasn't as if the marriage license she'd been issued was a real one. The vows wouldn't be valid. But damn, it had been killing him to watch her moving forward with all this and knowing she believed it was real.

  Killing him.

  Still, he had to stick with the plan. Peter Nelson would be taken into custody after the ceremony, when his connection arrived. That connection was the true target. Known only as Mr. White, he was a mercenary in the worst sense of the word. His drug trade funded his militia, providing weapons and training for an army whose allegiance was only to him. He hired them out to the highest bidder and shared generously in the lucrative profits. Money engendered loyalty.

  White, whoever he was, wasn’t due to arrive until the reception, according to the chatter they’d picked up. It was rare he’d do that much, but Peter was an important cog in White’s machine, making this the opportunity of a lifetime.

  His own job right now was to await Mr. White’s arrival, ensure he was who they thought he was, (no one even knew what he looked like,) and then give the signal for the troops to move in.

  Things had to move forward just as planned.

  "Wait a minute," the voice on the radio said. "Wait, I think we're okay. She's coming out."

  "She's going through with it?" Those words sucked the joy right out of him.