Wife Without a Past

Chapter Two

The rest of the day passed slowly for Drew. He got nothing done in the way of work. Instead, he spent most of his time looking out the window at the breezy May afternoon. The brilliant sun shining through the old mottled window threw prisms of color across the floor.

He could picture the exact color of Laura’s hair in sun like this—it was the color of a copper penny, gleaming as if newly minted. And her eyes, almond shaped, were the palest of blue. Not the emerald green of Irish stereotype, but blue like the sky on a clear summer morning.

It wasn’t her, he told himself. It couldn’t have been. That’s impossible. But the truth was he found it harder to believe it wasn’t her. He’d never been one to experience hallucinations or to imagine things. And his eyesight was perfect, though he was hardly likely to assume someone was Laura, no matter how great the similarity, without some good solid detail.

He closed his stinging eyes tightly, then opened them and looked out the window again. He couldn’t stop picturing Laura in the sunny spring day. It had taken more than a year to stop thinking of her every hour of every day. Now there was a look-alike out there somewhere. It made him want to barricade himself in his house and never go out again, never take a chance on seeing that woman—whoever she was— again. He wasn’t sure he could survive another delve into that sort of grief.

He wasn’t the only one who couldn’t go through it again. His eyes fell on a picture on his desk. It was a little girl with auburn hair and blue eyes, smiling into the camera and right into his heart. Samantha, his daughter. Sam, Laura had called her. Like in Green Eggs and Ham, the Dr. Seuss book. “I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them, Sam I am.”

He could still hear Laura’s musical voice, like a ghost in the hall, reciting the words.

He remembered every word of the book even though he hadn’t picked it up since the day of the accident. She’d left it on the kitchen table after reading it to Sam at breakfast. When he’d come home that afternoon, after a tinny voice on the telephone had informed him that she’d been killed in a crash on 1-95 just over the Connecticut state line, the book had still been sitting open on the kitchen table.

For some reason, that had struck him as proof that she was coming back. It was all a bad dream, of course. Laura was coming back; she hadn’t finished reading Green Eggs and Ham to Sam. It was impossible to imagine that she wouldn’t come back and pick it up right where she’d left off. And something in his mind told him that if he just left the book there, didn’t touch it, she would come back to it.

That had only lasted a few hours, though. When he came back from the coroner’s office in Connecticut late that night, his secretary, Mindy, had already tidied up and put the book back on the bookshelf with hundreds of others. That small fact alone had clinched it for him. The spell of shock and disbelief that had suspended his grief was broken.

Laura was dead. She’d walked out on him without warning or explanation early, one February morning. That alone was baffling enough, but she hadn’t just left Drew, she’d also left their three-year-old daughter behind. She’d read the book to her, taken her to preschool and then kept on driving. It was so unlike Laura that to this day he couldn’t figure it in to his acceptance of her death.

But during those last few months, she’d done a lot of things he would have thought were unlike her. And there were insecurities, accusations, suspicions. He’d realized she was upset, but he’d had no idea she was upset enough to leave her family.

But she had. And only hours later she was pronounced dead in a hospital two hundred miles away. There was never an opportunity for explanations or restitution.

The long months had plodded by to the present. Drew’s eyes focused on the picture of Sam again. He often wondered just how much she remembered about her mother. She’d been so young when it had happened—barely three. At first she’d felt the loss constantly. It had been hell having to explain to her over and over again that, no, Mommy wasn’t coming back. Sam seemed to think that was a concept that had flexibility. Mommy wasn’t home one day but maybe the next—when she really wanted to show her a new drawing—she would be back.

Drew picked up a pen and started sketching absently on the ink blotter in front of him.

Gradually Sam’s memories seemed to have faded. Now she merely asked questions about Laura. What was she like? Was she nice? Was she pretty? Drew never knew if she’d truly bounced back and lost those young memories, or if she didn’t remember because she didn’t want to remember.

Just like Drew didn’t want to. Because remembering was too painful.

He added a couple of lines to his sketch. A cloud. He couldn’t blame Laura for leaving, though. Not entirely. He’d had a lot of time to think about it, and had realized many regrets of his own. There were too many things he should have said but didn’t. Perhaps worse, there were too many things he shouldn’t have said but did. Sometimes he felt he was as responsible for her death as the car accident had been.

If he had it to do over again, he would have done things so differently.

But he didn’t have things to do over again. That had been the hardest lesson to learn over the past year; he had to accept that she wasn’t coming back and that his regrets were useless.

Drew looked back down at what he’d been doodling. It was a very rough sketch of the children’s beach, near the Port Authority. He added a few lines to the water. Laura had always liked to go there and watch the boats come and go. He hadn’t been there in months, hadn’t even thought about it until now. Of course, he hadn’t drawn anything other than lines and angles in as long, either. He started to sketch her into the picture, then slapped the pen down on the desk. Laura was dead, and like the rest of the dead population, she was going to stay that way. He had to accept it.

Mary Shepherd fingered the ring on the street vendor’s cart. It was an Irish Claddagh ring. She knew because one of the women at the shelter had worn one when she’d arrived. She’d come in with it symbolizing attachment to a man who abused her. By the time she’d left, healed and renewed, she’d turned it to symbolize a woman alone. The ring and its meanings had always appealed to Mary in some strange way that she couldn’t quite name.

Of course, there were a lot of things Mary couldn’t quite name. Herself, not the least of them.

For a year now she’d been Mary Shepherd because she’d woken up in St. Joseph’s Memorial Hospital in Connecticut with a horrendous head wound, rope burns on her wrists and ankles and no memory of how any of it had happened. No memory of her life before. She wore no wedding ring, but her left ring finger was creased as though she’d worn a ring there for a long time and only taken it off recently. But she didn’t even know her name, much less what sort of ring she might have worn.

“Psychogenic amnesia,” the doctors had called it. Her reaction to a trauma so great she couldn’t bear to remember it. Could last a month, could last forever. There was no way to tell.

Mary’s money was on forever. Because in fifteen months she’d had no memory—good or bad, recent or distant—beyond small instinctive pulls. Like the one that had brought her to Nantucket. She had such an affinity for water that the women at the shelter where she lived and worked had teased that she was probably a navy captain in charge of hundreds of men at sea, and who wouldn’t want to forget that? But when she’d seen the pictures of Nantucket in the travel agent’s window, she’d known that she had to see it in person. It had to be Nantucket, not Cape Cod, not Bayville, but Nantucket.

So her co-workers had pooled their money and sent her north on a bus. A well-deserved rest, they called it, for the hardest worker at Sisters Anonymous.

She looked back at the ring. Turn it one way, you’re one thing. Slip it off and turn it around and you’re something else altogether. Maybe that was why it had always appealed to her. The idea that she could just turn a magic ring around and be the person she was before the accident would have been so wonderful.

Sam I am. The odd little phrase came to her, as it sometimes did, without warning or explanation. Sam I am. She’d twisted it around and analyzed it every way possible. Was her name Sam? Was there a man in her life named Sam? Did the letters stand for something else? It had even occurred to her that she might have been in the armed services, thinking of “Uncle Sam,” but none of that seemed right.

The sun glinted in her eyes from the silver in her finger. Yes, magic would be wonderful whether it was in the ring or in the air. Too bad it didn’t exist. She set the ring back in its place on the cart, looked at it for a moment and asked the vendor, “How much?”

The wizened old proprietor scratched his chin. “For you, ten dollars.”

She smiled. Most of the pieces there were marked ten dollars. “Will you take five?” He hesitated and she added, “It’s all I have and…I really want the ring.” She didn’t have a lot of money and virtually no budget for extras like this, but the magic she’d attributed to the ring didn’t seem as absurd as it should have. When she’d slipped it on her finger, she’d had the feeling that something exciting was about to happen.

“I could never resist a pretty face,” the man said, accepting her money.

She slipped the ring on and marveled at the comfortable way it settled at the base of her finger. In some small way it made her feel a little more whole. It was like another piece in the puzzle this week on Nantucket had become.

As she walked down Federal Street, she listened intently to her inner voice, trying to hear some tiny murmur of recognition, some small explanation of why it had brought her to Nantucket. But there was nothing beyond a strange feeling of comfort and safety in the quaint, winding streets and tall, narrow houses.

She stopped in front of a linen shop and looked at a children’s bunk bed in the window. Something stirred inside of her. Her eyes scanned the other objects for something else that might make her stomach do that small flip. Then she realized the feeling had come not from what she was looking, at but from the fact that someone was looking at her. Someone at her side.

She turned her head sharply and caught the eye of a tall, thin man with vivid red hair sticking straight up and out. His wide pale eyes stared at her as if she were a ghost. His mouth was agape.

For a moment, her heart pounded with terror, then she glanced at the throngs of people milling around them, and relaxed. Safety in numbers. When she looked back at him, his face was unchanged. Clearly he was just an unbalanced person, she decided.

She gave him a polite half smile, then cast her eyes down and walked farther down the sidewalk. The feeling that he was following her clung to her back like a cold, wet towel. Every once in a while she was tempted to stop at a shop window, but she kept catching glimpses of the man in the corner of her eye, following her with that comical expression of some sort of shock on his face.

A thought came to her, so absurd that she tried to dismiss it. But she couldn’t. Was it possible that he recognized her? She met his eyes but his expression didn’t change. He didn’t move to speak to her, which he surely would have if he knew her. Instead, he just stared with that weird expression.

Good Lord, did he recognize her for some dark reason? Was she on a wanted poster in the Nantucket post offices? Had she done something terrible, then returned to the scene? Was she, even now, frightening the citizens as she passed?

No! The word echoed within her like the voice of a guardian angel. She hadn’t done anything criminal, she knew it. Of course, she had no facts to back her up, no alibi for anything before awakening in the hospital, but she just knew she wasn’t wanted for any crime. The very idea was laughable.

This guy following her was just some nutcase. As soon as he looked away, Mary slipped into one door of a corner kite store, and out the other. Best to stay away from nutcases. Just before she ran down the alley to lose him, she saw him enter the store. She hesitated only for a moment to see the top of that fuzzy orange head as he milled slowly down the aisle behind a tall display shelf.

Then she ran.

The doorbell rang, startling Drew out of the work he was trying so hard to submerge himself in. Somehow he thought it would be easier to work at his home office after the shake-up of “seeing” Laura, but the truth was the only thing he could submerge himself in was thoughts of her. The doorbell rang again.

He looked up, trying for one irrational moment to place the sound, then got up from his desk and walked to the front door, stopping along the way to pick up a stuffed frog that was in his path. Sam was going to a friend’s house after preschool. The baby-sitter wasn’t planning to bring her home until after dinner.

When he opened the door, he was surprised to see Vince standing there. His flaming orange hair was in its usual state of disarray, but his skin was ghostly white, with every freckle standing out on his skin like a fleck of dark paint. Alarm zinged in his eyes.

Drew’s adrenaline surged. “What’s wrong?” The stuffed frog flattened in his grip. - “Nothing.” Vince glanced behind Drew and gestured. “Can I come in? We’ve got to talk.”

Drew’s heart accelerated. “Sure, come in.” He stepped back and led the way through to the kitchen, tossing the frog onto the sofa as they passed.

“Coffee?” Drew offered.

Vince gave a shake of his head. “How are you feeling, man? All right?”

“Fine, Vince.” A clammy feeling of trepidation crawled up Drew’s spine. “Just fine.” He knew, even though his soul rattled with incredulity, what Vince was going to tell him. After long seconds, he found his voice. “What’s up?”

Vince scraped a chair back from the table and sat heavily. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“I don’t need to sit down.” Drew leaned against the countertop and folded his arms across his throbbing chest. He studied his friend for a few moments before saying, “You saw her today, didn’t you?”

There was no need to ask who they were talking about. Vince nodded.

Drew let out a tight breath. “Tell me.”

“I’m sorry, man. When we talked before I really thought you were going nuts. I mean—” he twirled his finger outside of his temple “—Cloud Cuckoo Land, but now—”

“Where was she?”

“Federal Street. Thereabouts.”

“Did you get a good look at her?” Drew asked. “I mean a really good look?”

“Well, you know, I felt I should be subtle. I just sort of blended into the crowd and followed her. That’s how the pros do it. I saw her from three feet away. It was definitely her.”

“Did she see you?”

There was a pause. “She saw me once. But she didn’t talk to me. Didn’t even act like she knew who I was. Just gave me a polite smile then walked past and sort of hurried down the street.” Vince frowned and shook his head.

Drew’s chest felt as though it was being crushed in a vise. How long could he have this feeling before it developed into a real honest-to-God heart attack? “Where did she go?”

“That’s the other odd thing. She went into a kite store then just vanished. I followed her in, but she was gone. Like a gho…” He stopped and bit down on his lower lip.

“What time was this?” Even to his own ears, Drew sounded like Jack Webb from the TV show “Dragnet,” but he couldn’t manage more than a few direct questions.

Vince shrugged. “Just half an hour ago at the most.”

Drew raked a trembling hand through his hair and stood up. “I’ve got to go.” It was her. Logic be damned, he knew it was her.

“Whoa, buddy, better let me drive.” Vince stood, as well. “You’re in no state to get behind the wheel.”

Drew met Vince’s eyes with more impatience than he intended. “No.” He tried to soften his voice but there didn’t seem to be time. If Laura was alive and on Nantucket—hell, even if she was a ghost—he knew where she’d go eventually. “I’ve got to do this alone.” Without giving Vince a moment to respond, he turned, snatched his car keys from the table by the door and left the house.

Mary looked around at the practically empty street she’d turned onto. Even though she’d felt as if she’d been walking in circles on the tiny Nantucket streets, she knew she hadn’t been to this one before. Yet it seemed vaguely familiar, like something from a distant dream. To the right were quaint storefronts, to the left a long border of water, with boats gliding across the glassy surface. The sun was shining, a warm breeze carried the faint scent of saltwater, and in the distance the long expanse of water sparkled like jewels on blue velvet. She hadn’t felt this alive, this comfortable, in fifteen months.

Her whole life.

She knotted her sweater around her shoulders, slipped her espadrilles off and ambled down the street swinging them in her hands. The pavement was warm beneath her feet. The atmosphere was delicious. She didn’t think about where she was going, so she was surprised when she found herself on a lovely little square beach that looked out onto the ferry boats. Children ran all around her, squealing and laughing in the warm golden sand. In the summer, the beach was probably crowded with brightly colored towels and rubber floats.

She wanted to be here in the summer. She wanted to see that

An empty wooden park bench sat in front of a colorful jungle gym and Mary sat down and closed her eyes, tilting her face toward the sun. Kaleidoscope patterns played behind her closed eyelids, forming and unforming, never quite becoming memory.

She didn’t know how long she sat like that, but when she opened her eyes again, the sun had shifted its position and shadows had lengthened across the sand. There were fewer children out playing, but the light still danced warmly on her skin. She thought about getting up, but there was something so peaceful about this place that she had to breathe it in, just a little bit longer.

Then he came into view.

A man, perhaps six feet tall, with glossy chestnut hair and piercing eyes of a color she couldn’t see, was walking slowly toward her. For a crazy second, she had an impulse to call out to him. It was an irrational impulse, she mused. Like one you’d follow in a dream.

Something shivered up her spine. This isn’t a dream. He’s not going to turn into a crow and fly away. He’s coming toward me. No, he’s not, she told herself. Why would he be coming to me?

He continued his even stride toward her. As he got closer, she noticed that his deep brown eyes changed from piercing to something else. A combination of emotions mingled in his expression, each with its own unmistakable distinction. She wasn’t sure why she felt she could read them, but she was sure she could.

He stopped directly before her and stared down into her eyes for a long moment.

She pulled her sweater tighter across her shoulders and stood up, looking back at him. She thought she should say something, but she couldn’t think of one word that would have made sense. Her eyes darted to the right, where a woman lay on a blanket on the sand with two small children at her heels. A few yards away from that, a teenage boy and girl were having what looked like a young lovers’ spat.

She turned back to the stranger before her. Something about his expression was compelling, but she figured that under the circumstances she would be safer just getting away from him. She gave a polite smile and said, “Excuse me.”

She started to brush past, when he grasped her upper arm and spun her around to face him.

They were inches apart. His eyes were lined faintly with red, making him look more tragic than threatening. Mary’s breath caught in her throat, but for some reason the terror she expected didn’t reach her.

A small muscle twitched on the side of his clenched jaw, as if he were keeping some emotion in close check.

She stood frozen, mesmerized by his eyes, as he lifted his other hand to her shoulder and slowly pulled her toward him. Why wasn’t she afraid? Any reasonable person would be hightailing it out of there, but she didn’t move. The pounding of her heart felt more like excitement than fear.

His hand slipped around to her shoulder blade. The movement was hypnotic, almost as if it were familiar to her. She knew exactly what was next. She saw it coming like a locomotive but was powerless to stop it.

She didn’t want to stop it.

He pulled her to him and his mouth descended onto hers. The touch of his lips was a spark. When he deepened his kiss and she felt his tongue probe her mouth, the spark became a raging flame. With an instinct wholly unfamiliar to her, she closed her eyes and raised her hands to the back of his head, tangling her fingers in his thick, dark hair.

This was a dance her body knew, even if her mind didn’t.

She felt his shuddering breath on her skin, and her body echoed it. He ran his hands down her sides, slipped them around to her lower back and crushed her to him. Their bodies pressed together like palms in a handshake. Mary drew in a breath and released it in a sigh. His powerful embrace made her feel as if she was finally in exactly the right place.

Which was crazy, she knew, but it was also too comfortable to fight.

His mouth moved over hers, reacting to her movements in a practiced way. Everything felt right. Like the last piece clicking easily, triumphantly, into a puzzle.

Except that it wasn’t right, it was wrong. This was a stranger! She had to stop.

“Stop!” Mary pulled back with some effort “What do you think you’re doing?” Her voice was too breathy to be commanding. “That’s assault!” Maybe, but on whose part? Why did I do that?

“I thought I’d lost it when I saw you yesterday,” the man said in a husky voice that made her insides quiver. “I thought I was nuts, but it was you.”

Yesterday. What was yesterday? Had they met before? Was that why he seemed familiar? Mary concentrated and remembered. This was the man who watched her drive past in the cab. The only reason she remembered was because the way he’d looked at her had made her feel so peculiar. She’d had a crazy impulse to tell the driver to take her back so she could talk to the man. But she had nothing to say to him. Then or now.

Her eyes returned to the man before her and she found her voice. “I think you must have me confused with someone else.” There. That was a nice comfortable explanation. He wasn’t a maniac—maniacs didn’t kiss like that

Of course that didn’t explain why she’d indulged so thoroughly in the kiss.

All the emotions fell from his face except onesadness. Anyone could have identified it. His eyelids dipped and he shook his head and uttered a single low word. A name. “Laura.”

The tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Why?

“I—I’m sorry—”

“Are you real?”

“Am I real?” Where was the fear she should have felt at this strange and intense exchange? Why wasn’t she running by now? “I’m as real as you are.” She considered. “Maybe more.”

“But—the body. I saw the body.”