by P J Parrish
She stared at the pill for a moment and then threw it into the grass. Sleep . . . she had been so afraid to go to sleep, believing that if she did, the man would be there. But now she knew that he wasn’t someone she had imagined.
Back in the room, she had heard his voice. And when she opened her eyes for that one second she had seen him, or just a blur of him, a tall dark-haired man, standing by the door.
I’m Alex Tobias.
The name had meant nothing to her but she knew his voice.
I’m Alex Tobias. That’s my wife.
Wife?
Yes. She knew that now. He was her husband. And he had hurt her.
The terrible crushing pressure in her chest was back, and she could feel the panic rising up again. She tried to pull in a deep breath, but it made her feel like her ribs were on fire.
Why had she run from the room? Why was she afraid of him? Had he thrown her from a car? Had she jumped? There was nothing in her memory to explain it, but the only thing she knew was that she had to get away from him.
But he’s my husband.
She looked down at the diamond ring on her left hand.
Blood . . . she was bleeding. The top of her hand was bleeding. She clasped her right hand over it and shut her eyes.
More memories tumbling around in her head, coming back now in a quick flashback. The sting as she pulled the IV needle from her hand. The spinning of the room as she swung her feet over the bed. Finding the black dress hanging in the closet and putting it on. No shoes . . . the doctor had told her she’d had no shoes when she came to the hospital so she had found a pair of white slippers in the nightstand and put them on. There was also a comb, a toothbrush, and a tiny tube of toothpaste in the drawer. She put them in a plastic bag and left the room. Blurred figures far down the hall. And in the opposite direction, just a few feet away, the red exit sign.
Then . . .
Flap-flap-flap. The sound of her slippers hitting the floor had seemed so loud to her ears. She pushed through the exit door and into a stairwell. Down two flights and through another door. In the empty hallway, she looked down at the colored lines on the floor and chose the red one. It led her through a maze of narrow hallways filled with steel food carts and empty gurneys. She passed a few people, keeping her head down, and then she was out, out into the ambulance bay.
She opened her eyes now and looked down at her hand.
The bleeding had stopped. And her head felt a little clearer. She had to get moving.
But where?
Away from the hospital. Away from him.
Clutching the plastic bag, she pushed up from the bench. There was a traffic light ahead and she made her way to it, ending up on a busy four-lane street. Across the street, she could make out a cluster of four buildings, one with a peaked roof that made her think it was a church. She crossed the street.
Yes, it was a church. Maybe they would help her?
She went up the steps and tugged on the doors. Locked. She turned back toward the street. The low slant of the sun told her it was maybe four or five. It would be dark soon. She had to make a plan.
The building next to the church had a sign in the window: ST. ANNE’S THRIFT SHOP. Shoes . . . she could buy shoes there, and other clothes. But not without money. She would need money to get away.
There was a vacant building next to the thrift shop and she trudged past it. Then she stopped, looking up at the neon sign on the last building.
NATIONAL PAWN.
She looked down at the ring on her left hand and pushed open the door.
The inside of the pawnshop registered in her head as a blur of color and shapes. Shelves crammed with silver coffee sets, bronze horses, porcelain dolls, suitcases, knives, gold clocks, and guitars hanging from the ceiling. And a long glass counter that ran the length of the narrow room, filled with jewelry and coins. There was music playing, something so very familiar, something about a woman named Eleanor who kept her face in a jar. But she couldn’t pull the name of the group from her memory.
The large bald man behind the counter watched her as she approached.
She shut her eyes, fighting back another wave of nausea.
“You okay, lady?”
She opened her eyes and nodded. She twisted the ring off her hand and held it out. “What can you give me for this?”
“Pawn or sell?”
“Sell.”
He took the ring, gave her another long look, then reached below the counter and pulled out a small metal gadget, using it to peer at the ring. He looked up at her.
“I need to take this in the back and test it, okay?”
What choice did she have? She had to trust him. She nodded and he left. The music filled the emptiness and she realized it was the Beatles. It made her feel better somehow.
Then, suddenly, she saw herself. At first the image in the mirror behind the counter didn’t even register, but with a brush of her hand through her hair she realized she was looking at herself.
Her reflection was in soft focus, but she could see lank blonde hair, and a sleeveless black dress encasing a tall, slender body. She leaned over the counter, trying to see her face more clearly.
“This is a ten-carat diamond.”
She took a step back from the counter at the sound of the voice. The big bald man was coming out from the back room, holding up the ring between two meaty fingers. A woman came out after him, a tiny leather-skinned thing with frizzed red hair, wearing jeans and a pink halter top.
“What can you give me for it?” she asked.
The man set the ring on the counter. “I’m guessing this is worth about two hundred thousand.”
She was stunned into silence.
“Our normal rate is fifteen percent of that.”
She couldn’t do the math. She had a sudden weird stab of memory that whispered she had never been good at math.
“I can give you thirty grand for it,” the man said.
She had been staring at the ring, and now her eyes shot to the bald man. He wasn’t smiling.
“All right,” she said.
Now he smiled. “Okay, just give me your driver’s license and we’ll do the paperwork.”
“License?”
He had been digging for something beneath the counter but now he stopped and looked up at her.
“I don’t have a license,” she said.
His face went to stone. “Then we don’t have a deal.”
She could feel the redheaded woman’s eyes on her but didn’t look back.
“I’ll take less,” she said.
“Lady, this ring could be hot—”
“Twenty. I’ll take twenty thousand,” she said.
The bald man shook his head slowly.
“Please,” she said.
“No can do.”
She felt tears threaten but for some reason she didn’t want to let this man see her cry.
“Give her the money, Frank.”
The redheaded woman had pushed forward.
“Tracy, you know I can’t—”
“I said give her the money.”
“You want me to lose my fucking license?”
“Go get the goddamn money, Frank. And none of this lowball bullshit. Give her forty grand.”
The bald man swore under his breath and trudged off. The redheaded woman watched him go, then reached below the counter and came up with a clipboard and pen.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
She hesitated. “Amelia.”
The redheaded woman looked up, her small green eyes scrutinizing Amelia’s face, hair, and the black dress. “Look, I can make up a license number and address for you, but I need a last name to put on here.”
I’m Alex Tobias. That’s my wife.
“Brody,” she said.
Amelia hesitated and pressed her thumb onto the pad, then onto the form.
“Sign here.”
She took the pen and signed the form. The bald man returned, a big stack of bills in his hand. He slapped the money on the counter with a glare, and then disappeared again into the back room.
The redhead watched him go and turned back to face Amelia. “You got something to put this in?” she asked.
“This is all I have.”
The redhead eyed the plastic hospital bag and then turned to the shelves behind her. She pulled a brown leather duffel down and brought it back to the counter. “Here, take this.”
As Amelia stared at the bag, something clicked in her head—a sudden vision of Louis Vuitton luggage stacked on an airport cart. And the trill of a foreign language. Italian?
“I don’t need something this expensive. Do you have something else?” she asked.
“Take it. It’s a fake, so it’s no good to me,” the redhead said.
Amelia unzipped the duffel and put the plastic hospital bag and the money inside. When she looked up, the redheaded woman was slumped back against the shelves, arms folded, staring at her again.
“Thank you,” Amelia said softly.
The redheaded woman nodded. “Can I give you some advice?”
Amelia waited.
“Don’t let no man ever knock you around again.”
Amelia nodded slowly, picked up the duffel, and started toward the door.
“Hey, wait a sec.”
She stopped and looked back.
The redheaded woman was holding out a pair of scissors. “You’d better get rid of that,” she said, nodding toward Amelia’s wrist.
She looked down at the white hospital band and went back to the counter. The redheaded woman cut off the band and stared at the name “Jane Doe” on it. When she looked up, her mouth was set in a hard line but her eyes were soft.
“Good luck, Amelia Brody,” she said.
CHAPTER FOUR
The smell was pungent—mothballs, dust, dime-store perfume, and a faint trace of body odor—and it was so familiar that Amelia was certain she had surely been inside a thrift store before. But she couldn’t remember, and she was a woman who wore Chanel dresses, wasn’t she?
She ignored the stare of the woman behind the counter and headed straight for the racks of women’s clothing.
Jeans . . . she needed some jeans. What size did she wear? She didn’t know. So she pulled out different pairs of blue jeans and held them up against her hips. Every pair she tried was too short until she decided to try the men’s racks where she found a pair of Levi’s. As she headed to the dressing room, she grabbed a faded blue oxford shirt and a floppy canvas hat.
In the hot cramped dressing room, she peeled off the black dress. When she turned to the mirror, she froze.
Back in the pawnshop she had seen only a soft-focus image of her face. But now, standing close to the full-length mirror, she saw herself clearly for the first time.
Naked. All angles and sharpness. Thin. Long legs, narrow hips. Small high breasts below a sharp shelf of collarbone. There were long, raw scrapes on both her arms and ugly purple bruises crossing her chest.
Dr. Haskins’s words came back to her. You’re a little on the thin side.
And then other words, but she didn’t have the faintest idea who had said them to her—I need to see your bones—words that had made her cry.
She leaned closer and stared at her face.
It was a mosaic of yellow and blue bruises framed by long hanks of oily blonde hair. A large piece of gauze was taped to her chin. She reached up to touch her swollen lip.
An image came suddenly into her head. A painting hanging on a white wall—was it Picasso?—a woman’s face chopped into shards of color.
“Hello?”
She jumped at the sound of the voice outside the dressing room curtain.
“Are you almost done in there? We’re getting ready to close now.”
“Yes . . . yes! I’ll be out in a minute,” she called. She turned away from the mirror and pulled on the jeans and shirt. The black dress was crumpled on the floor and as she picked it up, she saw the back was streaked with dried mud.
Rain . . . it had been raining, she remembered suddenly. But where had she been and what had happened?
No time to think about it now. She had to get out of there.
Outside the dressing room, she paused to stuff her hair up into the canvas hat. After a stop in the shoe racks to find a pair of black flats, she went up to the counter.
The woman looked at her over the top of her glasses but said nothing as she rang up the clothes, shoes, and hat.
“That’s twenty-two fifty,” she said.
Amelia started to pull two twenties from the Vuitton duffel and then paused. “Wait, do you sell glasses?”
“No,” the woman said. “But folks donate their old ones. They’re over there.”
The wire basket at the end of the counter held a tangle of frames. Amelia tried on ten pairs before she finally found the big purple plastic frames that allowed her to read the small print on the NO RETURNS sign behind the counter.
“Can you throw this away for me, please?” Amelia asked her, holding out the balled-up black dress.
The woman shook out the dress, pausing when she saw the label. “Is this real or a knockoff?”
Amelia had been rolling up the sleeves of the oxford shirt, and it took her a moment to come back to the woman. “What?”
“Is this real Chanel?”
“Yes, it’s real.”
“I’ll take it in trade for your clothes.”
Amelia’s head was starting to pound again. She managed a nod and headed to the door. She heard the woman lock it behind her, and then the lights in the thrift shop went out. The sun was gone now, and a stiff breeze was moving in, bringing the biting zing of a coming rain. A whining sound made her look up, and she watched a commercial jet circle and make its descent, disappearing into the darkness somewhere nearby. She looked across the street at the huge beige hospital. Silhouettes moved against the yellow windows on the upper floors.
For a moment she wanted nothing more than to go back inside the hospital and crawl into her bed, to feel the cool gentle press of the nurse’s hand on her forehead.
She was tired, so very very tired. And for the first time she could remember, she felt the scrape of hunger in her belly. But the voice in her head was clear, so clear this time it was almost like hearing her own voice.
Get away from here. Get away from him.
She looked to her left. A gas station’s lights beckoned. She could at least get a candy bar or something there.
Inside the station she bought Aleve, a bottle of water, a chicken sandwich wrapped in plastic, and an apple. At the last moment she grabbed a newspaper from the rack near the counter. She was heading out the door, newspaper tucked under her arm, biting into the apple, when she saw the police car pull up.
The cop got out and came toward her. She froze, fumbling with the plastic bag. Surely they were looking for her by now, maybe called the police. But they would be looking for a blonde woman in a black cocktail dress. She pulled the canvas hat down harder on her head and held her hand over the gauze on her chin as she passed the cop.
“Ma’am?”
She turned.
“You drop this?” He was holding out a newspaper.
She went to him and took the paper. “Thank you,” she said.
She could feel his eyes on her as she walked away. A horn blared, and she jumped. She was standing in the glare of headlights.
“Jesus, lady! Watch it!”
> A man was leaning out from behind the wheel of a taxi.
She looked back at the gas station. The cop was standing at the door staring at her. She tossed the apple in the trash, jerked open the taxi’s back door and got in, struggling with the duffel.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“I gotta gas up first,” the driver said.
“Please. I need to go. Now.”
He leaned over the seat to look at her. Then with a glance at the cop, he put the taxi in gear and pulled out into traffic. She turned in the seat, but when she saw the cop wasn’t following, she sank back into the sticky plastic and closed her eyes.
The driver rolled up the windows and turned on the air. It flowed cold over her bare forearms, raising goose bumps. Maybe she should have bought a sweater back at the thrift shop, she thought.
“Where to?”
Amelia pushed the purple glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. “I . . . where are we now?”
“Andrews heading north.”
Andrews? It meant nothing. No one had even told her what city she was in. The whine of the jet came back to her. The airport was somewhere near here. She could get a flight out. But that was impossible without ID. A train? Rent a car? No, there was no way to do any of that if you couldn’t prove who you were.
She sat forward in the seat. “Is there a bus station here?”
“What kind of bus?”
An animal . . . a bus with a running dog on the side. She had been on a bus like that before, and she had a flash of memory of seeing cornfields flying by outside the window. “Greyhound,” she said.
The taxi crossed a drawbridge and entered a downtown area, and Amelia tried to find something that would strike a chord in her memory. A towering blue glass riverfront condo, an old Woolworth’s converted into a nightclub, office buildings and banks, a big boxy library fronted by a small park filled with homeless men. The taxi turned left onto a busy street and the names flashed by—Starbucks, Subway, Whole Foods Market—signposts for everywhere and nowhere.
The newspaper . . .