A Season To Believe

Chapter Three

She should have seen that coming.

Jane stared at the man who had just manipulated the conversation in the exact direction she’d been trying so very hard to avoid.

“You’re good,” she said quietly.

Matt’s eyebrows rose in silent acknowledgment of her reluctant compliment. He continued to gaze into her eyes as his smile widened, increasing the depth of his single dimple.

Jane’s shoulders sagged. She knew when she’d been out-maneuvered. She should have recognized the tactics. How many times had Matt and Manny started their visits to her hospital room with a series of jokes that got her laughing too hard to worry about the news they’d brought?

Perhaps some new reporter wanted to interview the celebrated amnesiac who had miraculously escaped death, or yet another person wanted to see if she might be the female who had disappeared from their lives a month, a year, a decade ago. And somehow, because Matt and Manny got her laughing, she’d always found a way to face these people, to give them what they wanted, so she might get what she wanted—answering invasive questions from reporters in the desperate hope that someone, the right someone, would read the story, see her picture and somehow recognize her, then give her a past, a family, somewhere to belong.

And when these people showed up—the ones Jane came to think of as “searchers”—she drew upon the lighthearted moments Manny and Matt provided, to help her smile while she covered her near baldness with a wig that matched the color of the missing person du jour, managed to hold hope in her heart as she prepared to enter the room where this newest searcher waited, and told herself that surely, this time, someone would find something familiar in the features the plastic surgeon had pieced together for her.

Considering that the lower half of her face had been smashed in, her nose broken and her jaw shattered, the plastic surgeon called in to make the emergency repairs hadn’t done a bad job. Her nose was slightly crooked, her left cheekbone was not quite as prominent as the right and her jaw seemed a little too narrow. The tiny scar at the corner of her mouth and the larger one on her forehead were still noticeable, but the doctors had used the tiniest of stitches, and promised that over time they would fade to a pale white.

So, as faces went, hers didn’t seem to vary too far from the norm. In fact, it was quite generic. And perhaps this was the problem, for each time she’d met with a searcher, it seemed she had lacked that special, unique or quirky thing that would tell them that Jane was their missing wife-girlfriend-sister-daughter.

And now Matt wanted her to go through all of that all over again. She’d seen the speculative glint in his eyes when he first asked her about the memory, or flashback, or moment of insanity that had gripped her on the department store floor. The very thought that she might have begun to remember filled her with fear, excitement, dread, hope and utter confusion, an impossible mixture of emotions that now led her to glare at the man who had pushed her into the corner of her mind where this cauldron boiled.

“What difference is it to you, if, indeed, I have finally remembered some little nugget?” She didn’t give Matt a chance to respond before she went on. “The past is the past. No one claimed me, so whoever I was, I didn’t matter to anyone. For all I know, Wilcox is right. Perhaps I did try to kill myself.”

Matt leaned forward, looked hard into her eyes. “Forget Wilcox. First off, no one who had a death wish would have worked as hard on their recovery as you did. Secondly, toxicology tests revealed barbiturates in your system, which I believe indicates that someone had drugged you before placing you in that stolen car rigged to explode and sending it off that cliff. Whoever this was went to a lot of trouble not only to kill you, but to see to it that your body burned beyond recognition. I would say that whoever you were, you mattered very much to someone.”

For a moment, Jane could only stare at the very serious expression in Matt’s eyes, her mind playing his words back. This was his idea of being important to someone? The idea was so absurd that she laughed out loud.

The look on Matt’s face made her laugh harder. She held her stomach as she rocked back and forth, then pulled herself up straight and sobered, only to collapse again, this time burying her face in her hands as her mind reverberated with the ridiculousness of Matt’s statement.

A hand closed over one of Jane’s wrists. Matt’s hand, warm and strong. How many times had she fantasized back in the hospital about his touch—before she’d learned that it was typical, almost redundantly so, for victims of violent crimes to fantasize about their rescuers?

The mirth died on Jane’s lips. She looked into Matt’s eyes as she lifted her free hand to brush away a laugh-tear and took a deep breath. “Just what part of your statement,” she asked, “is supposed to encourage me to care about my past?”

Matt grimaced. “Good point. How about this. The idea that you might have begun to remember your past matters because it’s my job, my life’s work, to go after the bad guys and put them away. Recently Jack and I have had some success in that area, but none of those can make up for certain personal failures.”

Matt’s features tightened. “I wanted to find who shot Manny. As soon as I was released from the hospital, I double-checked the extensive police investigation. The only evidence is the bullet that killed him, and it doesn’t match any weapon in the system. I couldn’t even get justice in my own case. The man who almost took my life, who did rob me of a career I loved, died when my cousin Jack shot the guy before he could finish me off. I don’t equate death with justice, so that brings me to the matter of Jane Doe Number Thirteen.”

Matt stared hard into Jane’s eyes. “Hers is a case every bit as baffling and frustrating as the question of who killed Manny. Both continue to eat at me. Manny is gone, leaving no clues at the scene of the crime or in his past cases to point to someone who might have wanted him dead. You, however, are alive. And maybe, just maybe, your past is ready to speak to you. If so, I want to listen. I want a chance to find the answers to this puzzle, to get justice for at least one of the cases that means something—”

Matt broke off. His fierce expression reflected pain and bitterness. Jane blinked, stunned into silence at the sudden change in the man she had thought she knew so well.

But then, how well could she have known him? He’d been in her life a mere eight weeks before he and Manny were sent undercover. She could see now that she’d been a child at the time, at least figuratively. Without her memory, she’d had no experiences to draw on, to teach her how to behave.

And that is how Matt had seen her. After the doctors and nurses had finished poking and prodding her, he and Manny had appeared at her bedside. When she realized how disappointed the two detectives were to learn that she couldn’t answer any of their long list of questions, she’d begun to cry. The only sound in that sterile hospital room had been her sobs, until Matt whispered, “Hush, now. It’s okay,” as he gently traced a cloth down the path of her tears.

She’d pulled herself together with a shuddering sigh, opened her eyes to see that Matt had twisted his slightly damp handkerchief around his hand and pulled the ends into two rabbit ears. The makeshift puppet bobbed and weaved as a high-pitched voice, unmistakably Matt’s in origin, scolded Manny for browbeating the subject of their investigation and making her cry.

In moments she was laughing. After that, each visit from these two had made her feel stronger, even the times when they’d tried to coax her memory to life. As they included her in their teasing banter, she’d begun to feel less lost, less lonely, and discovered that although she might not have a memory, she wasn’t without intelligence and wit.

So, did that mean, she found herself asking as she studied the serious lines etched into Matt’s features, that all those jokes had been an act on Matt’s part? Or had the loss of his partner and his own brush with death woken the grim expression she’d glimpsed when he first walked into the security office a mere hour ago—the one that tightened his features now?

Or was it something about her today, that had brought out an aspect of Matt’s personality he’d previously kept hidden? Last year he would have used silly humor to coerce her into exploring the brief memory that had assaulted her. Had he dropped his mask of joviality because he recognized that now, after taking charge of her life, her education, her career, she was no longer a lost waif in need of coddling?

She would like to think so, but it really didn’t matter. She recognized a challenge when she saw one.

“All right, Matt,” Jane said softly. “You win.”

“Win what?”

Gone were the tight, fan-shaped lines that had bracketed Matt’s sharply narrowed eyes only moments before. Gone also were the deep vertical grooves that had been etched on either side of his lips. His smile wasn’t particularly wide, but his green eyes were lit with anticipation. Someone who hadn’t observed the relationship Matt had shared with his partner might wonder if he’d manufactured his earlier expression just to get her to this point.

“I did have some sort of memory,” she replied. “I warn you, though, it was a very little one. I can’t promise it will lead anywhere.”

“Of course you can’t.” He got to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“To Zoe’s. If the door to your memory is finally unlocked, she’s the one to push it open. Where’s your car?”

“Car?” Jane asked as she got to her feet.

“Yes. I parked in the lot beneath Union Square. If you’re parked somewhere else, I can drive you to your car, then follow you to Zoe’s.”

“I don’t drive. I took the bus.”

“Good.” Matt’s hand closed over Jane’s elbow, and she let him steer her toward the escalator. “That will make things much easier.”

Matt turned down the street Jane indicated and drove past a row of houses crowded next to each other. Most were some shade of off-white or tan, interspersed here and there with more boldly painted structures. Various styles were represented, from Mediterranean to English Tudor. Each rose several stories above garage doors, most with recessed ground-level entries protected by some kind of fancy iron gate.

“Nice,” he said appreciatively as he braked at a stop sign. “The Marina District has always been one of my favorite parts of San Francisco.”

When Jane did not respond to his comment, he glanced her way. She was staring straight ahead, her large smoky eyes wide and without focus.

He knew the signs. Something had frightened her. And he didn’t have to ask what it was. Her past.

He could hardly blame her. If he’d gone through the horrors Jane must have faced at the hands of whoever had gone to so much trouble to end her life, he wouldn’t be looking forward to searching that dark, shadow-filled memory, either. But he was aware, now even more than he had been when he was first assigned to her case, how important it was to pull the monsters out of the closet and defeat them.

“Jane.”

She jumped and turned to him. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring, lighthearted smile. “Do I go straight, or turn again?”

After a getting-her-bearings glance around, Jane said, “Straight. It’s the four-story gray house on the left. You can park in the driveway.”

Matt followed instructions, pulling his black Jeep up to a double garage door of the same color. By the time he switched the motor off and removed his keys from the ignition, Jane had already unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door. He got out and followed her up the curving staircase, with its ornate wrought-iron handrail. Before he could say a word, she had stopped within the arch of the second-story portico and was opening the bright pink door.

She turned as he started to follow, her eyes dark. For one moment he thought she was going to tell him she’d changed her mind, that she just wanted to leave the past alone—and then slam the door in his face. When he stepped into the foyer as a defensive tactic, however, she closed the door behind him and glanced at her watch.

“Zoe usually naps from three to three-thirty,” she said, then moved toward a pair of French doors to her left. “She should be up by now. Wait in here, while I go up and tell her what’s going on.”

Matt followed Jane into a long, narrow room. To his right, a mahogany desk sat between a pair of bookcases. On his left, golden light spilled through an arched window onto a large tobacco-colored sofa. Two chairs sat on either side of the glass-and-iron coffee table in front of the couch, one a muscular wing chair covered in brown leather, the other a curvy, dainty thing upholstered in a tapestry flower print.

“Take a seat,” Jane said. “I don’t think we’ll be long. Something tells me Zoe will be almost as excited as you to learn about what happened today.”

Matt saw Jane’s lips curve ever so slightly before she turned and left the room. The ghost of a smile was encouraging, Matt thought as he lowered himself into the leather wing chair. However, her eyes hadn’t lost that haunted expression. It was almost enough to make him think twice about making her face the past she’d worked so hard to…well, put in her past.

After all, how often did anyone get a chance to start over, with a completely clean slate? No embarrassing mistakes to make you second-guess yourself, no old opinions to try to overcome, no emotional wounds urging you to lock your heart up, where it couldn’t get tromped on again. Jane, it seemed, had taken full advantage of this freedom, had made a new life for herself, just as she’d vowed. And now here he was, stepping in to insist that she—

“Matthew?” A soft voice broke into his thoughts.

Matt got to his feet, stood and turned to greet the tall woman with the short gray hair who moved toward him.

“Ms. Zeffarelli,” he said, taking her hand into his as she reached out. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Call me Zoe, please,” she said with a smile and just the faintest hint of a French accent. “I am sorry you and I did not get to know each other better last year. But I am happy to see that you have recovered so nicely from your horrible ordeal. And now, according to our little friend here, it seems we will finally have a chance to work together.”

Matt nodded, then glanced at Jane. Her eyes no longer looked haunted. Instead her eyebrows dipped beneath the uneven fringe of her bangs in an expression he recognized as pure determination. Her eyes locked with his briefly before she turned to Zoe.

“Well,” Jane said, “I guess we’d better get down to it.”

Zoe lifted thick black eyebrows. “You are suddenly excited now, after months of insisting you want nothing to do with your past?”

Jane shook her head tightly. “Hardly. I just want to get this over with. And I assumed you’d want to work with this memory, if you can really call it that, while it’s still fresh in my mind.”

“True.” The woman nodded. “But I would prefer that you be at least a leetle bit relaxed when we attempt this thing. I suggest we all sit down and have a cup of tea, a cookie or two, and a tiny chat before we get down to business.”

A half hour later, Jane sat in the center of the overstuffed sofa, with Zoe in the delicate chair the woman had proudly rescued from a thrift shop years before, and Matt looking right at home in the leather wing chair.

Although Jane had suspected that the combination of Zoe’s strong tea and a sugar-laden sweet—make that several sugar-laden sweets—would render her even more keyed up, she was surprised to find that she was actually feeling calm. Maybe all that stomach-churning angst she’d experienced upon arriving at the house hadn’t been due to dread. Perhaps she’d simply been hungry. After all, she’d actually only ingested a bite or two of that cookie in Maxwell’s cellar, along with a few tiny sips of that eggnog coffee.

“The tea too strong, ma petite?”

Jane turned to Zoe with a smile. “It’s always too strong. But loaded with milk and sugar, it is just perfect.”

To prove her point and clear her palate of the remembered eggnog, Jane lifted her teacup and drained it of the bittersweet, milky contents. She then returned the cup to its delicate saucer and said, “In fact, I think I’d like a second cup.”

Zoe’s smile was gentle and she slowly shook her head. “I think not. I think it is now time for you to tell me what happened to you at Maxwell’s. But first, get yourself comfortable. Take a deep breath.”

As Jane leaned into the sofa cushions at her back, she glanced from Zoe to Matt. His expression was encouraging. Zoe wore a similar expression as she spoke again.

“Draw the breath deep into your belly, hold it, then release it very slowly.”

Jane nodded. She knew the routine, had followed it each time Zoe worked with her in the hospital. All to no avail. Not one hypnosis session had brought forth even the tiniest scrap of memory.

“Jane.”

Zoe’s sharp tone broke into Jane’s errant thoughts. She looked over to see that her friend was frowning.

“You are not listening to me, are you.”

Jane shook her head. “I’m sorry. Let’s try again.”

This time Jane focused carefully on every word Zoe said, followed each direction carefully. After breathing deeply several more times, she closed her eyes as she was bidden and pictured herself back in Maxwell’s Department Store. As instructed, she let herself recall the slightly perfumed air, the weight of her purse on her shoulder, the hard floor beneath the thin soles of her shoes. Then, when Zoe asked her to, Jane let her imagination put the image into motion, reaching toward the brightly colored strips of fabric draped from a metal rack sitting atop a glass counter.

“I’m examining a burgundy-and-tan plaid scarf,” she reported.

“How does it feel?”

“Soft,” Jane replied. “Cold and silky at the same time. Like the ocean.”

The moment Jane uttered that last word, the image on her closed eyelids changed. The fluorescent-lit department store was replaced by the sight of a wave curling toward her. No longer did hard flooring punish her feet. Instead, moist sand supported every arch and curve, and icy water slipped over her toes.

“I’m at the beach,” she said.

“And what do you see?”

“White foam at my feet, pale green waves breaking farther out. Beyond that, sunbeams dancing on the dark blue sea. A cloudless blue sky above. The beach.”

“Hold that image,” Zoe urged. “Relax, then see what you can make out in your peripheral vision.”

Jane did as she was asked. To her left there seemed to be nothing but foam sliding onto the damp sand. But— “I see cliffs, on my right.”

“Close, or far?”

“Far, I think. I can only see the part where the cliff juts into the sea, not where it meets the shore.”

“Do you know the name of this beach?”

Jane waited, feeling again the cold water over her toes. Nothing about the image changed. The same wave broke in exactly the same way it had a moment before, like some instant replay. No knowledge accompanied either the sensation of silky salt water or the image of curling, foaming green-blue water.

“No. I don’t,” Jane replied.

“All right,” Zoe said. “Focus on your other senses.”

As if by magic, Jane found she could suddenly smell salt—the briny scent that she knew, somehow, belonged to seaweed drying on the sand. “I smell the sea,” she said. “And I hear birds—gulls crying and screeching and…”

Jane frowned as another sound intruded. “I hear music. It’s too soft to identify the tune. It might be coming from a radio playing on the beach behind me. No. It’s coming from above me, louder now. I can almost make out the melody. It’s—”

Jane jerked straight up, her eyes flew open. Gone was the sun-sparkled water, the crashing waves, the cloudless blue sky. What she saw now was Zoe, regarding her with an expression that blended excitement with concern. The woman leaned forward in her chair.

“The song I heard was ‘Silver Bells,’” Jane said woodenly. “That was the tune playing on the department store sound system just before I harassed that salesgirl for rushing the Christmas season.”

“And that was the tune that pulled you out of that moment from the past,” Zoe said.

Every muscle in Jane’s body had constricted. Her heart was racing, her breath was shallow as she stared at Zoe. Focusing on the woman’s strong, angular features, she managed a stiff nod.

Zoe’s black eyebrows formed a worried frown. “Jane, you understand, do you not, that it was this memory that confused you so, made you think that it was not November, but May?”

“Yes.”

Jane wanted to say more, but at the moment it was all she could do keep from leaping to her feet, dashing up two flights of stairs to her attic apartment and shutting the door behind her.

“Why May?”

Matt’s question brought Jane’s attention back to him.

“Why did you think this particular sunny day was May?” he went on. “Why not July, or August? Or any other month, for that matter? This is, after all, California. Even up here in the northern regions, we have pockets of warmth all year long that draw people to the beach.”

Jane couldn’t answer. She knew only that her first thought upon hearing that music was that May was too early for Christmas tunes. She would have given that reply, if it weren’t for the strange, insidious panic now clamping her jaws shut, holding her body prisoner. She could only stare into Matt’s eyes, watch them darken as he moved from the chair to the floor next to her. Resting on one knee, he took her hands in his.

“You’re afraid, aren’t you,” he asked gently.

Jane frowned. Yes, this tension gripping her was indeed fear. What was worse, she didn’t understand what exactly had caused a memory of sea and sand to freeze her with terror. Now, crowds of people was a different matter. Add to that—

“Do you think,” Matt was asking, “that you might have been abducted from that beach? You know you’re safe now. There isn’t anything to be afraid of.”

Jane glanced at Matt’s large hands sandwiching hers. The gentle strength in his grip returned sensation to her fingers, warming them. She looked again into his eyes—eyes that promised to bring her assailant to justice, to make sure she was safe.

Oh, how she wished it were as simple as that.

A shiver broke her paralysis. She shook her head. “That memory didn’t make me afraid of whoever tried to kill me,” she finally said. “It made me afraid of the person I was.”

Chapter Four

Afraid of herself?

Matt tightened his fingers around Jane’s icy hand, and wondered what in the hell was going on in that mind of hers. Of course, uncovering what was going on in her mind—or hidden in it—had been the point of this exercise in hypnotherapy.

He was surprised at the details Zoe had managed to draw out of what had to have been the briefest of flashbacks. Perhaps, with a little time, Jane might begin to recall larger pieces of her past, giving Zoe more than the image of an unnamed beach to—

The beach. If he could find that beach, take Jane to it, perhaps revisiting the sights and sounds she recalled so briefly would open her mind to further details. However, would Jane go along with his plan, such as it was? The fear plainly etched upon her pale features said not, but he knew how to take care of that.

Cocking his head to one side, Matt squinted at her in exaggerated puzzlement. “You’re afraid of the person you were?” he asked. “What, you recall being at the beach, and suddenly worry that you might have spent your past roaming the seashore, randomly destroying sandcastles built by innocent children? That you were once an evil surfer girl bent on mowing down unsuspecting swimmers with your ten-foot board?”