“I’M NOT SURE you’d recognize big parts of town even if you hadn’t lost your memory,” Colin said. “Twelve years is a long time.”
Transfixed by the quiet rumble of his voice, Nell clung to her phone. She’d silenced it earlier when she went to her book club, but hated the idea of missing a call from him. She had become so hungry for his calls, she felt pathetic. How embarrassing if he ever knew she had put his photo on her refrigerator door where she could see it when she paced through her small apartment talking to him. This call had started with him wishing her happy birthday—Maddie’s birthday. She was still reeling from knowing when she was really born. The fact that he’d remembered and wanted to call today of all days had brought her close to tears.
“I checked the town out online,” she told him. “To see if anything looked familiar.”
“Did it?”
“Maybe the river. And...and a park.” She had started breathing hard when she looked at those pictures.
“There are only two large parks within city limits.” A new thread in his voice was hard to single out and identify. Compassion? Pity? “Angel Butte and River Park, which combines a couple of picnic areas, a playground, a boat landing for canoes and kayaks, and maybe fifteen acres of old ponderosa forest.”
The always-hovering panic clutched at her throat. “That’s where you found my bike.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t know why her hands were shaking. Whatever happened was a long time ago. Of course she knew it was that park. And didn’t she want answers?
I don’t know. No. Maybe.
She focused on his face in the newspaper photo she could have seen clearly even with her eyes closed. Those watchful, penetrating eyes made her feel safe.
Which didn’t mean she wanted to talk about this anymore.
“You’ve never said where you grew up.” He had promised—hadn’t he?—to let her get to know him so that she could trust him. He’d been keeping that promise, although in their four previous conversations he had mostly told her about his job and some of his frustrations. Otherwise, they’d talked about unimportant things. Their plans for Thanksgiving, the way they celebrated holidays in general, national politics, music, movie and book tastes. It had occurred to her they’d had the kind of conversations that newly dating couples had.
“I grew up right here,” he said simply. “If I didn’t think of Angel Butte as home, I’d have looked for another job a long time ago.”
“But you said your sister is here in Seattle.”
He was silent for a moment, making her wonder if this were more personal than he wanted to get.
He promised, she told herself stubbornly.
“My parents divorced when I was sixteen and Cait was only ten. My mother has moved around some. Cait ended up going to Whitman College, and she’s now in grad school at the UW.”
Nell nodded; she’d finished her B.A. at the University of Washington, which also had one of the nation’s top graduate programs in library and information science. She had been saving, but the idea of not being able to work more than part-time for the two years it would take her to earn her master’s degree made her cautious.
“The divorce was bitter,” he said, before she could ask an innocuous question, like what his sister was studying. “I didn’t see much of them after that.”
He’d closed up, as if he were reluctant to betray emotion.
“Why?” she asked, then flushed with shame. “I’m sorry. That’s really nosy of me. I can tell you don’t want to talk about it, and it really isn’t any of my business.”
“That’s not true, Nell. I want us to be friends. The fact that I know so much about you has got to make you uneasy. I’ve been hoping we can find a better balance.”
Uneasy? What a weak word to describe this complex brew. It bubbled in her chest, sometimes barely simmering, sometimes reaching a furious boil that splattered her painfully and threatened to overflow.
He didn’t wait for her to respond. Instead, he went on.
“I haven’t spoken to my mother in, oh, seven or eight years and not often before that. I hated my father, and she chose to take my sister but not me when she left.”
“You hated your father?” And he had lost his mother, too.
“He abused my mother and beat me. I...tried to protect her, and most of all Cait, but it wasn’t always possible. I was as big as he was by the time I was fourteen or fifteen, and I quit taking it. We fought, sometimes physically. Punched holes in the walls, threw furniture. I suspect that, by the time my mother worked up the nerve to leave him, she associated me with the violence as much as she did Dad.”
“So she saved herself and not you.”
“That’s what she did,” he said flatly. “I forgave her in one way, because she did save Cait, too.”
“I can’t imagine abandoning my own child.”
She could hear him breathing. Somehow she wasn’t surprised when he managed a wry chuckle. “By that age I was hairy, six feet tall, uncommunicative and angry all the time. Probably didn’t bear much resemblance to her little boy.”
“Still.” Nell pictured boys she’d gotten to know at SafeHold. Rebellious, obscene, angry and, yes, violent, but also bewildered—the vulnerable boys still visible beneath the troubled teenagers.
“Still,” Colin echoed, and she heard that same bewilderment in his voice, although she doubted he was aware of it.
“I’m surprised you didn’t run away.”
“Crossed my mind, but I was too proud. I vowed never to back down. If he beat me bloody every day, I wasn’t going to surrender one iota of defiance and hate.” Colin was all man now, sardonic and almost amused at the idiot boy who had set himself up for such brutality. “Kept my vow, too.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Finally left for college—none too soon—at Portland State University. Started out thinking I was pre-law, but after a few courses in criminal justice, I was sucked in. The couple of times cops came to our house, I saw that Dad was intimidated by them. I guess there’s nothing subtle about my choice.”
Nell found herself smiling. “No.”
“Fortunately, I got over the swaggering ‘I am armed and more powerful than you’ phase quickly. I hadn’t been home in four years. I’m sure I took the job in Angel Butte because I wanted to face down the monster from my childhood, but...”
Nell didn’t say anything, only waited for him to think through how much he wanted to share, or perhaps choose the right words to describe how he had felt.
“While I was gone I’d grown, or he’d shrunk, I was never sure which. No surprise, he was a heavy drinker and was showing the effects by that time. He owned a tavern when I was growing up, but he’d lost it. Angel Butte was changing, brew pubs were already hot and his place was dimly lit, unwelcoming to women, homey only to intolerant sons of bitches like him. Business declined and he had to give up. Ended up bartending for someone else—finally lost that job, too. He was a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer four years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Nell said simply.
“Don’t be. I’m sorriest that Cait and I are strangers. She’s the one part of my family I’d have liked to keep.”
Nell had an unsettling thought. “She must have been close in age to me.”
Was she wrong in hearing an undertone to this silence?
“She is,” he agreed at last.
“I wonder if we knew each other. If we were ever in a class together.”
“That...never occurred to me. I suppose you might have been.” He sounded a little disturbed at the idea.
Nell’s pulse quickened. “She might have recognized me, if we’d happened to run into each other.”
“From when you were ten years old? I doubt it.”
“I’d have been safer if I’d moved farther away. I told myself I didn’t know where I was from, but...” She tried to reach for calm, even though this touched on the fear that had always lived inside her: What if someone recognizes me? “I suppose I wasn’t very brave. I was running away but clinging to the familiar at the same time.”
“Most kids who run away get hauled home. The ones who don’t often stay on the streets. They don’t go to college, build a solid life for themselves. If they manage to find that kind of security, they don’t reach out to help kids as lost as they were. Don’t tell me you weren’t brave, Nell.” His voice roughened at the end, making it hard for her to form a rebuttal.
“Don’t make me out to be more than I am,” she said at last. “I did things...”
“Yeah.” Now she heard a tenderness she had no defense against. “I know you must have. Fifteen years old and afraid to turn to any adult? How much choice did you have?”
Did he really understand what she’d been trying to tell him? Nell couldn’t tell, and lost the courage to elaborate. She didn’t even know if it mattered. Maybe it didn’t matter what she had done. Maddie Dubeau was the one he longed to bring home, not Nell Smith. She couldn’t afford to let herself forget that.
“I should go,” she said. “I’m working in the morning.”
“I suppose I should get to bed, too. I’ve probably dumped enough on you for one night anyway.”
“You didn’t dump. I asked.” She hesitated, then closed her eyes. “Thank you. For telling me all that. It helps, knowing your life hasn’t been trouble-free, either. Which means I’m not nearly as good a person as you’re trying to make me out to be. I should wish you had a perfect childhood with a loving family, and you made all that up to convince me we were, I don’t know, fellow travelers.”
He laughed. Really laughed, rich and deep. “I’m not trying to fit you for a halo, Nell.”
“I’m not an angel. Don’t call me that.”
She was as shocked at her sharpness as he must have been.
“I won’t,” he said after a discernible pause. “It didn’t occur to me.” He was soothing her again, much as he had that night he frightened her in the parking lot. Using his voice to convince her he was harmless, that he would never hurt her.
She wondered if his mother had been afraid of him.
Breathing fast again, she said, “I really have to go.”
“Would it help if I came back to Seattle, so we could talk face-to-face?”
Yes. Oh, yes. Please. As her lips formed the words, her eyes stung. She was torn between a desperate desire to see him again and terror that was just as strong. His willingness to let her take their conversations at her own pace had been the reassurance she’d needed. If he had pushed too hard, insisted on trying to delve into her memories, or had shown up unexpectedly, she would have known she couldn’t trust him.
“No,” she made herself say. “I like talking to you, but...”
“All right, Nell. I promised. No pressure. I just find...” He hesitated. “I’d like to see your face, that’s all.”
Her shakiness wasn’t only about panic now. She wanted to see his face, too.
“You’ve been really patient.” He had been. “Given me a huge amount of time. There must be a million things you’d rather be doing.”
“No.” The certainty in his voice was rock-solid. “There is nothing I want more than to help you feel ready to come home.”
Would she ever feel ready?
A sound slipped out that might have been a laugh.
No. Facing her past would be harder than anything she’d done since she escaped from the trunk of the car and shivered her way through that cold night, not knowing who or where she was, only that she didn’t dare go back.
But Nell knew again that if she didn’t reclaim the part of her that was Maddie she would be continuing to live only half a life. Now that she knew she was also Maddie, now that she’d seen pictures of her parents and even the house where she’d grown up, she couldn’t block out the past the way she had.
“I think,” she heard herself say in a voice that shook, “I might come to Angel Butte.”
“Home.”
“I don’t know if it’s home. Nothing I do remember makes me think it is. But maybe...maybe whatever or whoever I was running away from will have shrunk like your dad did. I want to find out there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.”
He said some things—how glad he was she had made the decision, how gutsy he thought she was—but most important he renewed his promise not to tell anyone about her, not to warn a soul that she was coming.
One of the things he said shook her a little because he delivered it so thoughtfully. “It might be interesting to see how people react to your reappearance.”
“I have to get time off from work,” she said. “I’ll let you know.”
After they’d said good-night and ended the call, Nell discovered she was sitting on the kitchen floor, very close to the corner, her back to the cupboard, her knees drawn up tight.
“Gutsy,” she said aloud, and laughed until she cried.
* * *
TOO ANTSY TO sit behind his desk, Colin killed an hour watching the SWAT team train, went by a house where an ugly domestic scene had occurred the night before and finally simply drove the streets of his town.
He wasn’t fit company right now. Knowing Nell was on her way worked like the most powerful shot of caffeine he’d ever had. His heart kept racing and occasionally thudding out of sequence. It felt like Christmas morning when he was young, before his father’s drinking and temper tainted every family occasion. A couple of times he caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror and discovered he was grinning like a fool.
Not something he wanted anyone to catch him doing. If he’d hung around the station, he might have come face-to-face with Duane. Usually Colin prided himself on his ability to hide what he was thinking. He doubted he’d succeed today, especially with a man who knew him well.
Yesterday he’d been okay, even though he’d known Nell was planning to leave after she got off work. He’d made it home before he started envisioning her car like an electronic blip on his mental screen. Leaving heavy downtown Seattle traffic. Hitting Tacoma. An empty stretch, then Olympia. Had she reached Chehalis yet? He wondered if she’d made reservations at a Portland hotel, or had waited to spot one at a freeway exit and gambled on vacancies.
“I know I could make the drive in one day,” she had told him, “but I’d rather it be daylight when I get there.”
He didn’t blame her. Given that she would be arriving on the first of December, she was nervous about driving on snowy roads and would rather cross the Cascades in the morning when she was fresh. Colin had checked weather reports last night and again first thing this morning. It sounded as if Highway 26 had been plowed where it climbed high by Mount Hood. He hoped she’d stop for coffee and even lunch rather than pressing on.
At lunchtime, he finally called his assistant and told her he was taking half a day. As useless as he was, he might as well make his absence official.
Just after one, Nell called.
“I’m on the outskirts.” She sounded tense. “You’re right, I wouldn’t have recognized a thing. There’s a Walmart here.”
“Walmart is everywhere. And yes, we have a half mile stretch filled with chain stores and restaurants, pretty much like every other city in America.”
“Did you make a reservation for me?”
“Why don’t you meet me at my house?” he suggested. “I’m there now.”
Her hesitation was brief. He gave her directions and paced while waiting, one ear cocked for the sound of a car in his driveway.
He had the front door open before she came to a stop. She drove a peanut of a car—a Ford Focus, the one she’d backed right up to in the parking lot at the library.
As if he gave a damn. Part of him couldn’t believe she was here. But the driver’s side door opened, and there she was, just as he remembered her from the library, unmistakably Maddie Dubeau. Her warm brown eyes were wary, but the young Maddie hadn’t looked on the world with much faith, either.
Seeing her this time was different, though. He’d felt a punch that evening at the library because, damn, he’d found Maddie. But getting to know her during their long phone conversations had complicated his thinking. The woman he was looking at now wasn’t Maddie grown up. She was a woman named Nell, who had amazing cheekbones, legs a mile long and a build he thought was a little short-waisted to make up for those legs. He was surprised by her lush mouth, something that either had changed since she was a teenager, or hadn’t shown in those photos because she kept her lips pressed together so tightly.
He was attracted to her. Nonplussed, Colin did his best to shut it down. She’s Maddie Dubeau. This isn’t personal.
It was all he could do not to wince at the inner jeering. Still, the lecture had worked to an extent. Maddie. She was Maddie.
“You made it.” Despite the evidence before his eyes, he still fought a disbelief that mixed with his newly confused feelings.
She made a face at him. “I swear my knuckles were white driving over the pass by Mount Hood.”
“Wasn’t it plowed?”
“Yes, but it was still icy and there were snowbanks to each side so I couldn’t even pull over and let drivers by who wanted to go faster.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You could have flown in.”
“No, I’ll need my car.” She turned to look around her. “This is really nice. I pictured you in town.”
“I wanted privacy.” He only had an acre, but that was enough. His chalet-style house was built on a ridge of exposed lava and shielded by ponderosa pines younger and smaller than those in the park. He’d encouraged native growth, too. One of his jobs growing up had been mowing the lawn. He could live without ever mowing again.
“Come on in,” he said. “Coffee is ready.”
When she stepped inside his house, her eyes widened. “It’s beautiful.”
Outside, he had thought she’d been pretending to be interested. Now she didn’t look as if she were faking it anymore. Nell’s scrutiny made him self-conscious and Colin glanced around. “I haven’t done much decorating.”
“With that fireplace and those windows, it doesn’t need much.”
The river-rock fireplace had sold him on the house, though the vast expanses of glass hadn’t hurt even though he had known they would raise his heating bill substantially. The view from here looked northwest, toward a spine of mountains. It even caught a snippet of Mount Bachelor.
The floors were broad planks of chestnut. Low built-in bookcases formed a long seat beneath one wall of windows. The ceiling-high river rock took up most of another wall, with an ancient slab of wood inset as a mantel. He’d hung a Navajo rug above it instead of a painting.
Nell disappeared to use the bathroom while he poured the coffee in the kitchen that opened to the huge living room. When she reappeared, he saw the stress on her face that she’d been trying to hide.
She added both cream and sugar to her mug, then perched on a stool at the breakfast bar. Colin sipped his own coffee and watched her.
“My parents have a house right on the river.”
“I know. You remember it?”
“Not exactly.” She stirred, gazing into her coffee as if seeking patterns in tea leaves instead. “I looked them up online, then used Google Earth to see the house. I guess I’ve retained enough fragments that the house didn’t surprise me.”
“It’s not far from the park.”
“So it makes sense that I was cutting through on my way to wherever I was going.”
“Yes. Except that it was dark and you hadn’t told your parents you were going anywhere.”
Her eyes, strangely blind-looking, met his. “Are you sure about that?”
“No. But if they were lying, they’re good at it.”
“You saw them? That night?”
“Yeah, I did. The detective who was initially taking the lead asked me to accompany him when he went to talk to them. Of course we hoped it would turn out you’d made it home on your own. That you’d bumped your head, your mom or dad had taken you to the E.R.” He paused, remembering. “Instead, they were both home. They didn’t believe you’d gone anywhere. Your father went out to the garage to see if your bike was there, your mother went upstairs to your bedroom. I remember when she rushed back down, I saw your brother standing at the top of the stairs looking scared.”
“Did you talk to him?” She was focused intently on him.
Colin shook his head. “Later, I’m sure detectives did. That night we were finding out whether you were home or if they’d heard from you. Letting them know about the bike and the blood.”
She touched the side of her head. “My hair was matted with blood. It was all over my shirt. I’d puked, too, in the trunk. I was a mess.”
“I don’t suppose you saw a doctor.”
“I didn’t dare.” Her brief smile didn’t fool him into thinking she was happy thinking about this. “I have a scar. Sort of a ridge. Probably because I didn’t get stitches or maybe my skull was fractured and it knit funny. Not that it matters, since it’s hidden by my hair.”
“Let me see it.”
She looked startled; it had come out sounding more implacable than he’d intended. “Um...” She reached up and sifted through her hair. “It’s right here.”
Colin circled the end of the counter, standing close enough to her he could slide his own fingers into her shiny brown hair until he felt the thickened ridge of a lengthy scar. He traced it end to end, feeling rage rising in his chest, but other emotions, too. Her head was tipped to one side to give him the best access, but she watched his face sidelong. He could see how fine-pored her skin was. The curve of eyelashes was something he’d never noticed on a woman before. Her hair was fine, almost childlike in texture, and having it slip through his fingers as he gently withdrew his hand was a more sensual experience than he’d intended. A scent he suspected was uniquely hers made his nostrils flare, too. He couldn’t easily identify the herbs, but thought there was a hint of mint. And beneath it, woman.
He smoothed her hair behind her ear, saw that his fingers had a faint tremor and withdrew his hand sharply. He retreated around the breakfast bar again, leaning a hip against it so that she couldn’t see the way his body had responded to the closeness.
Maddie, he told himself desperately.
“I don’t suppose you saw the gas station where you made the great escape.” He said that as much to refocus himself as because he wanted to know.
So much emotion swirled in her eyes, he knew the answer even before she spoke. He almost regretted asking.
“Yes. I...watched for it. It wasn’t that far north, between Redmond and Madras. It’s awfully dry out there, but there is an orchard and a vineyard somebody is irrigating. I can show you where it is, if you care.”
He nodded. “Eventually. Not right now. I’m sorry, Nell. That must have been rough.”
Her smile was wry. “I told myself it was like visiting the hospital where you were born. I’m different from most people, though, because I remember.”
“You cut your own umbilical cord.”
“Exactly.” Cradling her mug in both hands, she inhaled, then sipped. Hiding behind it, he thought. When she reemerged, her expression was merely inquiring. “Did you find a place for me to stay?”
He tensed. She might hate this idea, but his instincts told him to keep her close. Having taken a leave of absence from the library, she was free to stay for a couple of weeks to a month, at least. “I made a reservation in case you insist,” he said. “But I have a better idea.”
Her wariness became more pronounced.
“There’s a small apartment above my garage. Bedroom, bath, tiny kitchenette. It’s been empty since I bought the house. I’d feel better if you stayed here, at least until we’re sure nobody is disturbed by your reappearance.”
Her eyes searched his. “You really think somebody might be?”
“I have no idea,” he said truthfully. “We don’t even know if you were being kidnapped, say for ransom, or the driver of that car thought you were dead and was heading somewhere to dump your body. The fact that you were so convinced it wasn’t safe to come home is the part that unsettles me. If you knew the person who attacked you...” He shrugged.
Nell bent her head, once again hiding, this time behind fine brown hair that fell forward. Colin waited, not taking his eyes off her.
“If only I remembered,” she said in a small voice.
“The trouble is, even if memories start coming back, that particular one may not. After head trauma, people often forget the event that caused it and frequently the day leading up to it.”
“I remembered something on the way here.”
His gaze sharpened.
“Nothing important. It was going through Bend and seeing the signs for the turnoff to Mount Bachelor. I knew suddenly that my family skied. I didn’t really enjoy it because I was always cold and I wasn’t very good. I think my brother raced.”
Colin nodded. “He did. I searched old newspapers after I saw you in Seattle. I wanted to get more of a sense of your family.”
“Felix.” With the tentative way she said the name, Colin could tell she was trying it on her tongue. As if she hadn’t said it aloud before.
“Have you met him?” she asked.
Colin shook his head. “Your parents kept him out of the public eye. He never appeared at press conferences. After that first night, I never saw him again.”
She nodded.
“Would you like to see the apartment?”
On her nod, he took the key from the hook in a cupboard and led her across the frozen, crunchy ground to the detached garage with a peaked roof that echoed the roofline of the main house. The locked door opened to the foot of a staircase that was enclosed and a little claustrophobic. Better than an exterior staircase that would have been treacherous in winter.
Being optimistic, he’d turned the heat on a couple of hours ago to take the chill out of the air. The apartment was pretty bare-bones—he winced at that description. Livable, though, with a double bed, dresser, small table and pair of chairs. He had gone so far as to stock the kitchenette with extra dishes and pans and even a minimum of silverware from the house.
“It was unfinished up here when I bought the house,” he said, looking around.
“Have you ever rented it out?”
Colin shook his head. “No. I guess, in the back of my mind, I thought...”
Understanding softened Nell’s face. “That Cait might want to come home.”
Startled, he turned his head to meet her eyes. There wasn’t another person alive who could have guessed why creating this apartment had mattered to him. He’d revealed one hell of a lot of himself to her, and she’d done some reading between the lines, too.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “At least I thought I should have someplace for her, if she ever needed me.”
That sounded asinine even to him. By the time he had bought this house and had the dormer added and the apartment finished, his sister had been twenty-four years old. An adult. Long past thinking of her big brother as a refuge, assuming she ever had. He’d held on to his delusion too long, he thought now—and not for the first time. But today, his chest had lightened at the idea of Nell staying here. At being able to look out his bedroom window at night and see a light up here.
At being able to provide her with a refuge.
“If you really mean your offer...” Nell’s brown eyes shimmered as if tears threatened.
“I do. I’d be happiest if you would.”
She took a big breath and swallowed. “Then I’d love to. I’ll try not to...to lean on you too much, but knowing you’re there makes me feel a lot less scared.”
“I’m the one who talked you into taking a chance and coming home.” He let the leash he’d been keeping on his intensity slide, hoping it wouldn’t scare her. “I’m asking you to let me support you. Having you here...” He shook his head, unable to find adequate words. “It’s amazing.” He sounded a little hoarse. “The fact that you trust me, that means a lot to me, Nell.” Enough already. Ease up, he told himself. He tried for a friendly smile. “I’d like it if you’d have dinner with me. I already have some chicken marinating—I didn’t figure a restaurant would appeal much.”
“No.” While tremulous, her smile was real. “I don’t want to be recognized until I’ve seen my parents, at least. And since you recognized me so easily, other people probably will, too.”
“You’d be likeliest to catch your parents home in the evening,” he pointed out.
She nodded. “I thought...tonight. I’m here. It would be silly to hide out for the next twenty-four hours.”
Colin smiled at her. “Will you let me come with you?”
“A truly gutsy woman would say no.” Even her eyes smiled this time. “Me, I’d be grateful if you would.”
“Good.” He backed onto the landing. “Let me haul your bags up.”
“Oh, I can...”
“Settle in,” he told her. “You’ll need to look around and tell me what I forgot. Maybe take a nap.”
“I can plan my strategy.”
“You can do that, too.”
A minute later, when she popped the rear door to her hatchback, he reached for the larger of the two suitcases.
Elation rose from the incredulity.
Maddie Dubeau was home.