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Helen paused to reflect. “She was a little nervous. Now I understand why. You know, I liked her. And the child, well, those eyes do look like yours and Andrew’s.”
“I need to know where I was all that time,” Hugh said. “With such a gap in my self-knowledge, any decision I make about the future might be flawed.”
“What? A great and mighty doctor, admit to weakness?” teased Helen. “While I recover from my shock, please excuse me to see to a patient.”
“By all means.” Amused, Hugh picked up a chart and went to examine a little boy who’d twisted his ankle.
Musings about the past dogged him for the rest of the day. He needed to find out for sure where he’d been while he was missing.
And he wanted to see Meg Avery again.
His common sense told him to wait until the DNA results came back. That she might be a trickster, or a nutcase.
Still, he had no plans for the weekend. The palatial Hollywood Hills home he shared with his mother and with Andrew’s family would be empty tomorrow.
Andrew and his wife, Cindi, were taking their children to their vacation cottage in Redondo Beach. Grace Menton, who headed a charitable committee that was sponsoring a dinner and evening at the opera, planned to work hard behind the scenes at that event.
Hugh would be alone. What harm could it do to drive by Mercy Canyon and see where Meg and Dana Avery lived?
Hugh could almost hear his brother warning of possible legal entanglements. There was no need to announce his presence or get involved in any way, however.
As he finished his notes for the evening, he knew he was going to make the trip. If nothing else, it might help him get this woman out of his system.
“NO, I’M NOT SURE it’s him. I mean, I was sure at first, but every day I wonder if I wasn’t imagining the resemblance,” Meg admitted as she awaited her turn at the bowling alley on Saturday.
“It sure looked like Joe in the picture,” said Rosa Mendez, blowing the steam off her cup of coffee. In her early forties, she maintained a trim figure in shorts and a sleeveless blouse.
“Well, I’ve got an old picture of me that looks like Dolly Parton,” said Judy Hartman. Away from work, she wore her long blond hair full and curly, with the help of regular visits to Rosa’s beauty salon. “That doesn’t mean I can sing.”
“That doctor isn’t Joe,” Ramon said from his seat at the scoring table. “Come on. Some big-shot pediatrician worked at the cafe for a year and a half? I don’t believe it.”
“Anybody notice I just got a spare?” asked Sam Hartman, rejoining them.
“Way to go!” cheered Ramon.
As on most Saturdays, the group of friends had met at 11:00 a.m. at Mercy Lanes, next to the Back Door Cafe. The Hartmans were the best players, but everyone enjoyed the fun and the companionship.
The youngsters with them—the Hartmans’ sixteen-year-old son and the Mendezes’ three kids, who ranged from seventeen to twenty-one—formed their own group a few lanes away. Otherwise, the alley was empty except for a cluster of people around the videogames in back.
“If you’re not sure it’s him, what are you going to do?” Judy asked Meg.
“She’s going to play. It’s her turn.” Sam reached for his soft drink.
Glad to escape Judy’s question, Meg hurried to retrieve her ball. She didn’t know what she was going to do about Hugh Menton. She almost hoped the DNA test came back negative so she wouldn’t have to decide.
Life without Joe had settled into a comfortable if sometimes lonely pattern. She enjoyed times like today, when she could chitchat and bowl while Dana played at their next-door neighbor’s trailer.
If Hugh did turn out to be Joe, he might disrupt her entire existence. While he wasn’t likely to claim Meg as his wife, he might insist on spending time with Dana. Maybe even want her to live with him.
Grimly, she stared at the lane in front of her. No way would she give up her daughter! Angrily, Meg rolled the ball.
With a whump, it hit the gutter. Whistles and catcalls erupted behind her.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, girl!” called Rosa.
Darn. The man was messing with her bowling game. When the ball came back, Meg focused, started forward and rolled again.
Clean and sure, the ball flew down the lane and smashed into the pins. With a clatter, they shot in all directions. Of the few that remained, several wobbled and dropped at the last minute, leaving two standing.
“Too bad you didn’t get your act together the first time,” Ramon said as she returned. “You could have hit a spare.”
“They’re too far apart,” Meg said. “I’d never have made it.”
“That’s your problem, Meg,” advised Sam as his wife went to bowl. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”
“Don’t mention credit.” She shuddered. No matter how hard she tried to pay down her charge card, the balance always hovered near her limit. The mobile home park fee, food and baby-sitting ate most of her income.
“I’ll tell you what,” Rosa said. “I’ll give you a freebie. Come by the salon this afternoon and I’ll cut your hair. It’ll look cute.”
Rosa had been itching to get her hands on Meg’s mane for years. Without her bushy hair, though, Meg wouldn’t feel like herself. “No, thanks. I’m taking Dana swimming.”
The local community center pool cost a dollar per person, with kids under five free. It was one of the few treats they could afford.
Judy hit a strike, and whooped with delight at besting her husband this round. After that, the players concentrated on their games, and Meg finished with a respectable score.
She felt better by the time she left. Life in Mercy Canyon was safe and solid.
Even if he turned out to be Joe, Hugh Menton might never appreciate this town as he once had. Heck, he’d probably never bother to visit here.
Meg didn’t care. She knew where she belonged, and nothing could change that.
TO REACH Mercy Canyon, Hugh drove his luxury sedan on narrow, winding back roads. He hadn’t believed two-lane highways existed anymore in the age of carpool lanes and ever-wider freeways.
For a long stretch after he left the tightly packed developments of the coastal zone, he saw only a few isolated shacks and passed a mere handful of cars. Urban sprawl hadn’t reached this part of San Diego County.
In September, the height of the dry season, a scattering of dusty trees drooped in a rocky canyon filled with dry grasses and flowers. The area didn’t look familiar. Had he truly lived here for a year and a half?
As he descended from a slope, a sign alerted Hugh that he was entering the town of Mercy Canyon. He didn’t see anything until he rounded a rock outcropping and suddenly, below him, spread the community where he might have spent his lost months. Wanting time to collect his impressions, he stopped the car on the shoulder.
From this rise, he made out clusters of stores, an elementary school, a church, a couple of modest-size light-industrial buildings and numerous houses. There was a trailer park at the far end of town.
Hoping the scents would jog his memory, Hugh rolled down the window. Hot air blasted into his airconditioned cocoon.
As he’d expected, it carried the smells of eucalyptus and desert plants. For a split second, he remembered coming out of a cool building into the same heated air.
He was emerging from a church with a woman at his side. People lined the walkway, blowing soap bubbles. Could it be his own wedding?
Although Hugh had come here in search of the past, this possibility disturbed him. It was alarming to think that he might really have been a different person and lived a different life for so many months.
He knew of course that he’d been somewhere during his absence. Yet couldn’t the time have passed, as his family wanted to believe, in a succession of meaningless days of panhandling and sleeping in shelters?
On the other hand, before he was released from the hospital, Hugh’s doctor had remarked on what good shape he was in, aside from the head injury. He hadn’t been starving on the streets.
Maybe Meg’s story was true. He might be a husband and father. Hugh’s breath caught in his throat. So much for the rationalization that he could drive by Mercy Canyon and leave without seeing the Averys.
He’d brought Meg’s address. He could see the park distantly from here, neat rows of mobile homes glinting in the sunlight.
At the prospect of visiting what might be his old home, a twinge of fear ran through Hugh. What was he afraid of, that he would stumble into an unpleasant trap of his own making? Or that he would discover he’d once lived in paradise and couldn’t go back again?
There was no sense in delaying the inevitable. After rolling up the window, he turned on the ignition and started forward.
Chapter Four
Halfway through the town of Mercy Canyon, Hugh got a prickly sensation down his back. He knew this place as if from a dream.
The strip mall to one side of the road looked like a thousand others in Southern California. Yet he felt a twinge of recognition as he parked in front of a coffee shop called the Back Door Cafe.
Handwritten specials and flyers for local school fundraisers plastered the window, while the interior was hidden behind a lopsided Venetian blind. A thought came to him: The slats always pull crookedly. You’d think they’d have fixed them by now.
To one side sat a bowling alley. On the other, a bilingual video store featured posters of newly released films in Spanish and English.
At the end of the mall lay a salon called Rosa’s Beauty Spot. Oddly, he knew that Rosa was married to the owner of the video store.
He had been here before.
Hugh sat in his car, staring at the cafe. He’d had flashes of memory before, but none had ever been tied to a particular place. The clatter of dishes in a restaurant, the cry of a baby, the scent of old-fashioned perfume would snatch him momentarily from his reality, and then drop him right back into it.
His heart raced with an emotion akin to fear. There was no reason for alarm, yet it disturbed him to realize that he might be about to confront an unknown part of himself.
Most likely, he’d psyched himself to believe he’d once worked here because of what Meg had said, Hugh thought sternly. Annoyed at himself for indulging in useless worry, he got out, crossed the walkway and pushed open the cafe door.
The smell of coffee and frying hamburgers greeted him, familiar as a friend’s face. Still, who hadn’t smelled coffee and hamburgers before?
To his left stretched a counter where a grizzled man in a cowboy hat sat drinking coffee. To his right lay a row of booths, one of which held a family of four. In the back, past an open archway, sunlight from side windows streamed into a large room filled with tables and booths.
“Can I help you?” A young Hispanic man behind the counter regarded Hugh with impersonal friendliness that rapidly changed to confusion. “Say, man, you look familiar.”
“Have you worked here long?”
“About a year.” The fellow was no older than twenty, Hugh guessed. “I’m the assistant manager, Miguel Mendez.” He extended his hand.
Hugh shook it. “I’m Dr. Hugh Menton.” He hadn’t meant to throw in his title, but it slipped out.
“You’re a doctor?”
“Pediatrician.” Hugh decided to risk another question. “Does Meg Avery work here?”
“Sure.”
A tall, blond waitress came out of the kitchen hefting a tray of burgers, fries and drinks. When she saw Hugh, she stopped dead.
“Doggone you, Joe Avery!” she said. “What do you mean disappearing and then turning up like this? Does Meg know you’re here?”
“I thought you looked familiar,” Miguel said. “What’s this doctor business, man?”
Hugh wondered if he’d fallen asleep. This felt like one of those dreams in which he found himself on stage, expected to enact a role he hadn’t learned. Or in an operating room, about to perform surgery on an organ he’d never heard of.
“You think I look like Joe Avery?” he asked.
“Do I think you look like him?” The woman uttered an unladylike snort. “Come on, Joe, I worked with you for a year and a half.”
“You served me coffee every morning,” confirmed the grizzled man at the counter. “So you became a doctor? That’s pretty smart.”
“You can’t become a doctor in two years,” said Miguel. “I don’t think so, anyway.”
“Sam!” yelled the waitress. “Get out here right now!”
Through the swinging door barreled a large, beefy man wearing a white apron and holding a fire extinguisher. “What’s going on?”
“You can put that away. There’s no fire, just a prodigal son,” said his wife.
His wife. Her name’s Julie…no, Judy. Hugh stared at them both. He knew these people, or half knew them.
“Do you recognize me?” he asked.
“Joe Avery! I’ll be doggoned!” Sam frowned as he studied Hugh. “You got a new scar on your forehead. Where’d that come from?”
“I hit my head on the side of a building, so the police tell me,” he said.
“Get this. Joe told Miguel he’s a doctor,” Judy said.
“According to Meg, he is a doctor, remember?” Sam said. “You saw the clipping.”
“Doctors don’t serve coffee in restaurants,” said the grizzled man. “Although one time when you spilled some on my hand, you bandaged it real nice. I’m Vinnie Vesputo. Remember me?”
“I wish I did,” Hugh said.
The mother in the booth waved her hand. “Could we have our food, please?”
“Sorry!” Judy carried the tray to them.
“Would you mind showing us some ID?” Sam asked Hugh. “It might make things a little clearer.”
“Yeah. I’m kind of confused,” Miguel said.
“You’re not the only one.” Hugh took out his wallet and showed them the driver’s license. Judy came over and scrutinized it, finally shrugging as she absorbed the fact that he was indeed Hugh Menton, M.D. “I’ve got a year and a half missing from my past. To walk in here and meet people who know me feels strange.”
“You don’t recognize us?” Sam sounded hurt. “Not at all?”
This was a good man, Hugh knew. A man who’d helped him when he was hurt. “You took care of me at one point, didn’t you?”
“Hauled you back from Oceanside like a drowned rat and held your job until you got over your pneumonia,” he said. “So that really was you that Meg went to see in Los Angeles?”
“It was indeed.”
“Quite a shock for both of you, huh?”
“You might say that. In fact, you could definitely say that.” Hugh was surprised at how easily he fell into conversation with Sam. Although superficially they had nothing in common, he liked the fellow.
More people entered the cafe, and Judy went to show them to a table. At Sam’s gesture, Hugh followed him through swinging doors into the kitchen.
Metallic counters and sinks gleamed on both sides of the narrow room. Through a slim horizontal opening, they could see the counter area.
“We can talk better in here. Besides, I’ve got work to do,” Sam said. “Have a seat, Doc.”
Hugh perched on a stool. “Tell me about myself. What I was like.”
“Incompetent, at first.” Sam lifted a metal basket of French fries from boiling fat, let it drain and set it under a warmer. “But careful. Man, the first time you made coffee, it was like you were measuring it for a science experiment.”
“So that’s where I learned to make coffee.” Hugh had startled his office staff one morning when he arrived early by taking care of that task for the first time. He’d been puzzled when he discovered that he knew instinctively what to do.
“After a while, you loosened up,” Sam said. “Cracked jokes. Sneaked in beer when we were working late. Talked me into driving all the way to San Diego to look at a panda in the zoo. You were the first guy I ever met who’s as crazy as I am.”
“Me?” Crazy was not an adjective anyone would apply to the cautious Hugh Menton.
Hugh had kept his nose to the grindstone through medical school, conscious of the need to live up to his legendary father’s reputation and to Andrew’s excellent record. Looking back, he supposed the other students had found his perfectionism annoying.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider coming back?” Sam asked wistfully. “Miguel’s a nice kid but he ought to go to college. Besides, he’s not very interesting to talk to.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Hugh said. “Although I appreciate the offer.”
“You’re really a doctor?” Sam persisted. “It’s not just some mail-order Ph.D.?”
“U.C.L.A. Medical School,” Hugh said. “With a residency in pediatrics.”
“How’d you end up as Joe Avery, anyway?” Sam asked.
Hugh explained about the capsized boat, Rick’s death and how he’d apparently washed ashore. “I suppose it happened right when the real Joe Avery fell off the pier,” he said.
“So he must be dead?” Sam asked.
“My brother says that, shortly after I disappeared, he was contacted about an unidentified drowning victim in Oceanside. Of course, it wasn’t me, and by then Joe was no longer considered missing. Yesterday, I called the police to suggest they compare the DNA to that of the real Joe Avery.”
“I’m glad. The guy deserves to rest in peace.” Sam removed some hamburger patties from a freezer.
Hugh’s original plan to view the town and slip away unnoticed would be impossible now that he’d been recognized. Besides, he was in no hurry to leave. “Is Meg working today?”
“Not till tonight. She took Dana to the community pool,” Sam said. “How are things between you two, anyway?”
“Unsettled.”
“Meg’s a good woman. You should…” The cook broke off as his wife thrust an order at him through the narrow aperture.
It was an informal setup, Hugh noted, based on his observation of coffee shops he’d patronized over the years. “You ought to enlarge that window and put in some warmers so you could set the trays there. Buy one of those round holders that she could clip the orders to.”
“Yeah, like you never said that before!” Sam shook his head. “I guess you don’t remember saying it, do you?”
“I’m afraid not,” Hugh said. “Whatever advice I gave you, I’m sure it was right on target.”
“Man, you haven’t changed! Still as cocky as ever.”
They grinned at each other. A strange but pleasant sensation rippled through Hugh. A sense of belonging.
He gave himself a mental shake. “I’d like to find Meg. Where’s the pool she took Dana to?”
“Go two blocks south and turn right on Arroyo Grande,” Sam said.
“Thanks.” A few minutes later, Hugh was on his way.
DANA HAD MADE a new friend in the wading pool, a little boy with a plastic boat. They spent half an hour pretend-racing it from side to side, weaving between the other children.
Meg sunbathed in her bikini. Although she occasionally greeted an old friend en route to the larger pool nearby, she felt very much alone. In the kiddie section, most of the moms were accompanied by their husbands, except for one young woman who’d come with her mother.
Keeping a cautious eye on Dana, Meg leaned back in the plastic lounge chair and imagined how Corinne O’Flaherty would have doted on a granddaughter.
Thinking of her mother was like picturing two entirely different people. One warm and loving, full of fun. The second alternating between deep depression and intense irritability.
Her father’s bouts with alcohol hadn’t made life any easier. Since his recovery, however, Meg had forgiven him and they’d grown close these last few years.
Tim refused even to speak to the man. He understood that their mother had been a victim of mental illness, but he couldn’t extend the same forgiveness to the father who’d abandoned them.
Meg wished Tim could find a woman to make him as happy as Joe Avery had made her. Once he was a father himself, maybe he would soften toward the man who now deeply regretted having failed them. She knew how much she’d matured after experiencing true intimacy with Joe.
Looking up, she squinted against the glare of sunlight. That man walking toward her sure did resemble her husband. It must be a trick of the light, or of her longing.
He had the same graceful stride, straight shoulders and strong arms. The same boyish crease in one cheek that, as always, set her heart pounding.
Despite his modesty, Joe had always had a magnetic presence, and now she noticed how women’s heads swiveled to follow him. With an electric jolt, Meg realized it was Hugh Menton.
She straightened on her chaise longue. “What are you doing here?”
He pulled over a plastic chair, checked to make sure it was dry and sat down. Although tailored slacks and a crisp short-sleeved shirt might seem overdressed at a pool, it was the other people who looked underdressed by comparison.
“I dropped by to see the town,” he said. “I thought it might jog some memories.”
“Remember anything yet?”
Instead of answering, Hugh glanced toward the wading pool. “I could spot Dana a mile away. That hair is amazing.”
As always, mention of her daughter made Meg smile. “She comes by it naturally.” She shook back her own frizzy cloud until it tickled her shoulders.
“So I see.” Hugh regarded her warmly. “I like your hair loose that way.”
His appreciation quivered through her. How like Joe to talk about her hair when she was sitting here in a bikini! Unlike most men, he was too much of a gentleman to comment on how the rest of her looked.
That didn’t mean he was unaware of her. Sensitized to him as always, Meg noted his speeded-up intake of breath. In response, heat thrilled through her.
She missed him physically as well as emotionally. Missed the hungry probing of his mouth and the way he gently but firmly took command when they made love.
Yet this man remembered none of that. Even if he once had been her husband, he was a stranger now.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “Does any of this seem familiar?”
“I went by the restaurant.” He relaxed as the breeze ruffled his sandy hair. “Saw Sam and Judy. I’m not sure whether I recognize them or I was responding to suggestion.”
There he went again, using high-flown language. “I guess you mean that I put ideas in your head.”
“That’s right. Not that I’m implying you did it on purpose.”
“Two years is a long time for you to be in the dark,” she said. “Can’t your doctors do anything about this amnesia business?”
“The brain is incredibly complicated and still not fully understood.” Hugh watched as Dana and her new friend splashed each other playfully. “My neurologist can’t say why I’ve recovered everything from before my accident but lost that year and a half. He thinks it might be because I reinjured the same area of the brain.”
“So the time you spent here could be gone permanently?” Meg asked. “Erased like an old videotape?”
He shot her a startled glance. “That’s a good simile.”
“A good what?”
“Figure of speech,” he said. “The answer is, I was beginning to fear it might be gone forever, but visiting the restaurant today stirred something. Either memories or false memories. Not entirely false, though, I don’t think.”
Meg had seen a story on TV about people so gullible that they could be persuaded to remember things that had never happened. She supposed that was what he meant by false memories, but surely that wasn’t the case with Hugh.
There was another question she ached to ask. A dangerous question, but this seemed as good a time as any. “Joe—Hugh—is there someone else? Another woman in your life?”
“No. Ever since I got back, I knew there was something missing. Until I figured it out, I wasn’t ready to start a new relationship,” he said.
Hugh had missed her. A tiny hope lit within Meg.
Maybe he couldn’t go back to being the same Joe she’d known, but if he loved her, he might move to Mercy Canyon and practice medicine here. Their lives could continue pretty much as planned.
The security she’d longed for since she was small might still be possible. To have a loving husband here where she belonged, surrounded by old friends, and to have her daughter grow up in such a safe environment, was all Meg wanted.