Yesterday Lost

by Lorena McCourtney

  After Jace left, Katy turned out the lights and went outside to sit on the deck. The house was silent. Mrs. L., after peeking into the living room to say she had a headache, had already gone to bed. The boards in the deck still held the warmth of the day, pleasant against Katy’s bare feet in the sweet coolness of the night. The crickets still sang their insistent chorus, punctuated by the deep croaks of frogs, but she wasn’t thinking about the “cricket” puzzle tonight. She gazed up at the stars without really seeing their spangled radiance, her thoughts turned inward.

  One part of her soared joyously with Jace’s declaration of love. She clasped it to her heart and danced with it. But another part peered behind the statement with cynical doubt. Was he in love with her? Or was this some calculated attempt to distract her, to put her off guard?

  Off guard from what?

  She rose restlessly from the chair and leaned against the wooden railing, hands clasped. Okay, no more tiptoeing around. Time to face these insidious little doubts and suspicions squarely.

  It all went back, of course, to the nagging doubt about her real identity, that maybe she wasn’t Kat Cavanaugh. A different past life was like a blank television screen; she had nothing but those shadowy figures to fill it. But the danger, if there was danger, wasn’t in the blank screen of that other life. The danger was here, tied to an unanswerable question: if she wasn’t Kat Cavanaugh, where was the real Kat?

  The fact that another Kat, if she existed, hadn’t been heard from in all these months definitely suggested that something had happened to her. It wasn’t logical that she’d simply abandoned the ranch and other financial assets and disappeared indefinitely.

  Which brought “fiancé” Barry into the picture.

  He had motive to kill the real Kat for dumping him both personally and professionally, and, in a flash of anger that certainly made violence appear possible, he’d threatened to do it to Kat back in New York. He’d lied to Katy and tried to deceive her about what had happened in New York. He had much to gain if an accidental substitute became the real Kat and stepped into her modeling and fiancée shoes. He had much to lose if the substitute remembered she was someone else. And danger of discovery that he’d murdered the real Kat could be averted if the substitute conveniently died while everyone thought she was the real Kat.

  Yes, she had reason to believe Barry posed a real threat. But he was three thousand miles away, and he couldn’t hurt her from there. He’d had nothing to do with what had almost happened on the trip to Redding.

  Jace, however, was right here.

  But there was no reason to be suspicious of Jace! It was unfair to be suspicious of Jace. Jace loved her. She loved him.

  Yet he had been so astonished that first time she called him when she was flat on her back on the bedroom floor. As astonished as if he were hearing from someone who’d come back from the dead. Which, if he knew the real Kat was dead, would certainly have been how it would have felt to him.

  He’d explained his reaction, of course: surprise that Kat would call him after the ugly scene they’d had. But was that enough to justify the intensity of his astonishment at the call?

  But why would Jace have killed Kat? Was fury over her refusal to go through with the land deal enough to make him snap? Or could there have been something more? That wine stain on the bedroom carpet. . .

  Like an arrow shot to the far side of a primitive battle, Katy’s mind suddenly jumped to a different perspective from what Jace had told her about that night.

  Suppose Kat hadn’t tried to seduce Jace there in the bedroom. Suppose it was the other way around. Jace trying to seduce Kat, or even trying to force himself on her. Now Katy saw a vision shockingly different from the one Jace had painted for her.

  Kat rejecting Jace, desperately flinging the wine at him to drive him off, Jace reacting in violent fury! The same savage fury he’d shown with that bully in Redding. Her heart hammered, and her hands clenched the rail until her fingers cramped.

  Then her perspective somersaulted again, and she swallowed in relief. No, that couldn’t have happened.

  It couldn’t have happened because Mrs. L. had driven Kat into Redding, and Kat was alive and well then, which was at least several days after the bedroom scene. And Barry’s visit had also occurred after the bedroom incident. Which brought her back to the probability that if something had happened to the real Kat, Barry, not Jace, had been involved.

  Unless Jace had followed and done something to Kat after Mrs. L. dropped her off in Redding.

  She shivered with another startling vision: Jace furtively stealing through the woods with Kat’s body hanging over his shoulder, the necklace snagging on a bush, glittering unnoticed in a patch of moonlight.

  She abandoned that appalling vision, rejecting it almost fiercely. She loved Jace. He was the only secure haven she had, her place of refuge. Jace couldn’t be a murderer.

  Why not? The question rose with cynical detachment. Did her love make him innocent? No. Did Christian faith, or a profession of Christian faith, even a multitude of good works, make commitment of a crime impossible? No. Just read the newspapers, she thought grimly.

  Then there was Joe. Faithful, loyal Joe. Yesterday’s mishap could have been the accident it appeared to be. But what if Joe knew Jace had killed the real Kat? What if he saw the danger of the substitute Kat’s memory returning? What if he saw a way to protect Jace by getting rid of that substitute before anyone knew she wasn’t the real thing? Jace might even have suggested that a helpful little accident would be much appreciated.

  Joe’s words echoed in her head: I guess I’d do most anything for Jace.

  She rubbed her forehead, the sullen squeeze of a headache clamping around her temples. It was all so complicated, so confusing. So terrifying. She turned her face up to the stars, closing her eyes to look inside and inspect that word.

  Yes. Terrifying.

  Terrifying because she was in love with Jace but couldn’t trust him.

  An all-encompassing feeling of aloneness infiltrated her as she stood there under the bloodless, distant glitter of the stars. The aloneness seeped through her skin and into her bones and surrounded her heart. No one to talk to, no one to confide in, no one she could ask, Am I imagining things, seeing monsters and villains where none exist? Am I just a little crazy? No one to comfort or guide or cherish her. Alone. Alone.

  Except for God.

  No, that was really crazy thinking. To God, if he existed, people like her were just blobs he could shove around and manipulate. Or stomp on.

  She determinedly dismissed the thoughts about aloneness. She wasn’t alone. She could talk to Mrs. L, who was always full of helpful common sense. She could even talk to Evan, who, being at a distance from the situation, might have a more objective perspective on it.

  Or she could substitute action for talk, action that could force everything into the open.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She couldn’t get away from the house for several days. Her abraded knees and bruises made walking uncomfortable. Redding’s sizzling heat had followed them to the mountains. And Jace always seemed to have her under observation.

  He cloaked the surveillance in solicitous concern. He called after breakfast to ask how she was feeling. He dashed over on his lunch hour to bring her a Christian novel. He called again before dinner. But before he could suggest coming over later, she said she had to spend the evening on the computer answering letters from her mother’s fans.

  The following afternoon, on his way to take the boys back to the river for a cooling dip, he stopped in and invited her to come along. When she said no, he lightly grumbled, “For a woman who says she’s falling in love, you suddenly seem awfully busy. What comes next, that old cliché, ‘Sorry, I have to wash my hair tonight’?”

  She skirted both the falling-in-love comment and the crack about hair washing. “I still feel a little achy.”

  “Sure. I understand.” Now he sou
nded remorseful, guilty for complaining. “I’m still kicking myself for everything that happened on the Redding trip.”

  He leaned forward as if he wanted to kiss her, and she wanted to be kissed. She wanted to fling herself into his arms and feel secure and cherished and safe. She didn’t want to think what she was thinking, that a noisy, crowded river outing would be an ideal place for a never-to-be-detected “accident.” She didn’t want to think that cold-blooded self-protection about what she might do or what she might remember could be the motive behind his show of solicitous concern.

  This was Jace, she reminded herself. Jace looking at her with affection and caring. Jace with no phony airs or pretenses. His denim shirt with the sleeves hacked off at the shoulders hung open above equally disreputable looking jeans. His new straw hat slanted at a jaunty angle across his forehead, and his smile was so sweetly devastating that her heart did foolish things. One explosive burst of temper didn’t make him a murderer!

  Yet the iron trap of suspicion wouldn’t release her, and she simply said stiffly, “Well, have fun.”

  He waved from the pickup as he followed the boys into the rutted lane through the trees, and she waved back. Yet even as she waved, that aloneness, that empty feeling of nowhere to turn for help or reassurance, invaded her again.

  She thought about taking her suspicions to Mrs. L., but the housekeeper still wasn’t feeling up to par. “A touch of summer blahs,” she called it disparagingly, and Katy didn’t want to upset her further with these wild speculations. Because they were wild. And irrational and incredible. She should simply bury them and forget any thought that she might not be the real Kat “Katy” Cavanaugh.

  “Why don’t you take some time off?” Katy suggested to Mrs. L. at breakfast the next day, concerned because the housekeeper’s puffy eyes looked as if they’d barely closed all night. “How long has it been since you’ve had a vacation? You could go visit Evan.”

  “No, no, I belong here. I’ll be fine. And you need someone here to look after you,” the housekeeper scolded lightly. “Every time you get out of my sight something disastrous seems to happen to you.”

  True, Katy thought ruefully. But she didn’t abandon her just hatched plan.

  ***

  Two mornings later, with the predicted temperature for the day down a few degrees, she slipped out of bed before Mrs. L. was up. She packed a lunch and a plastic bottle of water in the backpack and left a note saying she was going for a hike. She carefully didn’t say where she was going, but she added a cheery P.S. Don’t worry. I’ll stay away from the river, and I won’t get lost. I’m taking a compass.

  She’d found the compass in her father’s workshop. She had no idea how to make practical use of it, but perhaps it would reassure Mrs. L. that she knew what she was doing. Not being in a panic this time, she figured she could find her way simply by being careful.

  She was also, although she didn’t mention it in the note, carrying a short-handled shovel.

  She had already decided she could eliminate the woods to the right of the meadow, the area Jace and the boys crossed when going to the river. She’d found the necklace to the left of the meadow, so that was most likely where the body, if there was a body, was buried.

  She entered the woods approximately where she’d come out on the road the other time, pausing briefly to glance back at the school. Jace was undoubtedly up, but he surely wouldn’t be watching her this early in the morning, would he? Of course not. She’d never so much as hinted to him that she might try to search the woods. Yet she couldn’t escape the feeling that he’d been keeping track of her the last few days. Joe had been over too, bringing Mrs. L. a box of candy he’d gotten for her in Redding and staying longer than usual to watch TV with her on the small kitchen set.

  She shook off the someone-is-watching-you feeling and plunged into the thick woods. Her first thought had been simply to locate the spot where she’d found the necklace, but on reflection she’d realized she needed to expand the search. The necklace could have been torn off when the killer set the body down while he dug a hole, but it also could have been lost while the body was being carried through the woods.

  She started with a brisk sense of organization and efficiency. She would head toward the river, staying parallel with the meadow. At the river – well, not quite to the river, she decided with a shudder, surely no need to go that far – she would turn and work her way back. With that system she could search the entire woods in an orderly series of back and forth sweeps.

  She pushed determinedly through the trees and brush, eyes prowling all sides for any sign of a mound or depression, anything out of the ordinary that might indicate the ground had been disturbed at some time.

  If the purpose of this excursion into the woods were not so gruesome, she would have enjoyed it. The shade was cool even though summer heat had dried the leaves and needles to a crackle underfoot. There was the bright flash of a bluejay, the chatter of a squirrel, nature slowly sculpting a ragged stump into a silvery work of art. Moss covered a shaded upthrust of rock in green velvet. A pile of fresh sawdust at the end of an old log puzzled her until she saw ants carrying out a speck at a time as they industriously excavated the interior. A faintly mysterious though not unpleasant scent of the endless process of fallen leaves and needles changing to become one with the earth beneath. On a practical basis, she was better dressed this time, in long pants and lightweight but long-sleeved shirt, so she didn’t get scratched every time she moved.

  Keeping to a set distance from the meadow was not easy. The heavy brush and uneven ground combined to force her into a zigzag course, but the compass did, at least, keep her from going in circles. When she was close enough to the river that the sound of rushing rapids prickled her skin, she made a ninety-degree turn, followed that course for what she thought was another fifty feet, and started back the direction from which she had come.

  Here, deeper in the woods, the going got rougher, her plan for methodical search further sabotaged by natural obstacles. Rocks, some small enough to get into her shoes, others large enough to force detour. Brush, sometimes so dense she had to use the shovel to batter her way through it. Blackberry vines slyly creeping under clothes and snagging her skin. A slither of sinuous movement at her feet potently reminding her to watch her step for snakes. She tumbled into a shallow basin concealed by brush and lay there, breathing shallowly as she listened to the small creaks and rustles and squeaks of the forest. Or maybe they weren’t all innocent sounds of the forest! She looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see a face staring at her through the tangled branches.

  Get a grip, she told herself fiercely. This is just a sunny day in the woods, not the Twilight Zone.

  She crawled out of the basin and struggled on, aware that her search system certainly didn’t provide a visual inspection of every square foot. Once she came on the spot she thought could be where she’d found the necklace, though now the gooey mud was dried to a mosaic of cracks curling at the edges. Nearby a suspicious looking mound made her heart pound, but a cautious probe with the shovel revealed it was only the decayed remains of a fallen log.

  Doggedly she kept on. She found another spot of dried mud, and it, too, could have been where she’d found the necklace. She ate her lunch, rested, and struggled on. A doe and fawn jumped up almost at her feet, their liquid, startled eyes momentarily meeting her equally startled gaze. She was in low but rough hills now, always going up or down, perhaps even off her own property. Once she fought her way up to an exposed outcropping of rock, thinking she could better orient herself if she could see the house or school. But all she saw was more forest, the treetops below her bird-perch viewpoint thick and green and spiky, the sharp outlines lost as the forest rolled in mountain waves to soft blue silhouettes in the distance.

  The aloneness hit her again. She could plunge off this rock, tumble into some hidden niche beneath the treetops, and be lost forever.

  The foolish futility of
all this struck her then, and she almost laughed at the insolence of this search. Did she think she could rush out like some child looking for Easter eggs and instantly uncover incriminating evidence to expose a killer? There could be a dozen bodies buried out here, even a hundred, and she’d never find them.

  She gave up the search then. Using the compass, she thought she was headed directly for the house, but several hours later she found herself still several miles away from it on the road she and Mrs. L. had taken on their ill-fated excursion into the mountains. The sun had set by the time she dragged into the driveway. Jace’s pickup spun up beside her before she reached the door.

  “Katy, where have you been? I called, and Mrs. L. told me you weren’t back from a hike yet.” He looked both concerned and angry. “What were you doing?”

  Looking for a body. Finding a body would have proved murder. But not finding one didn’t prove a body didn’t exist out there somewhere.

  He eyed the shovel. “You were digging?”

  She’d almost forgotten she was carrying the shovel. It seemed like an attached extension of her weary arm now. “I thought maybe there could be Indian artifacts or something. Arrowheads,” she improvised.

  It was a limp excuse, and they both knew it, but all he said was, “Then I hope you didn’t find any, because digging them up in illegal.”

  Inside, he started to jump on Mrs. L. for not calling him earlier, but Katy cut him off. “Everything turned out fine, so no need to make a federal case out of it, okay? I just want something to eat, a shower, and a good night’s sleep.”

  ***

  She did sleep, but she woke early the next morning, already restless. She padded barefoot to the living room and stared across the road at the Damascus dormitory. Jace was in there somewhere. Jace, sweet, caring, in love with her, wanting to share his Lord with her? Or Jace, wily, deceptive, a dangerous murderer hiding behind noble dedication to Christian standards?

  Maybe what she needed was to get away from here, she thought suddenly. Go off somewhere to think and wait out her memory return.