Oklahoma Sunshine

by Maggie Shayne

  She sighed and let the bulging bag she was carrying slide off her shoulder, into a nearby chair. It was a quilted black and white bag, and it didn’t match her outfit.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with an easy smile. “Sunny and I are old friends. We knew each other in college.”

  “She’s never mentioned you.” He shrugged. She’d never mentioned anything about her past, though, he thought.

  “She wouldn’t have, anyway. We fell out of touch after graduation. I’m afraid I let a lot of friendships lapse, and that’s on me.” She had eyes like Bambi. Big and brown with paintbrush lashes. “Anyway, I called her last night and told her I'd be passing this way. She said I should stop and visit. When I got to her place, some folks walking by the bakery said they’d heard she was in the hospital, so I rushed right over. What happened? Did someone—?”

  “No one did anything. She fell.” It was odd she’d jump to that conclusion, “It was an accident,” he went on. Sunny hadn't mentioned a friend coming to visit. Then again, he'd pushed her right into the discussion he was so damned determined to have. No time for small talk. He was such an ass.

  “Do you think—I mean, could I see her?”

  “She’s still unconscious,” he said. “I don’t understand it. Doc Sophie doesn’t either. Her brain seems fine, the scans look like she should be awake and aware. They're calling in a neurologist.”

  Eve closed her eyes and snatched three tissues from the box on a nearby table. “Would it be okay if I just…sit with her for a few minutes?”

  There hadn't been a McIntyre male born who could stand to see a woman cry. “Yeah, sure. I’ve been doing the same, on and off. Go ahead. It’s around the corner, there, second door on the left.”

  “Thanks.”

  He watched her go. She scooped up her big bag on the way. Sunny's past had been as unknown, unmentioned, un-talked-about as if it had never happened. As if she'd been born, full-grown, in the bakery. Now, two things in one day. An ugly hate symbol inked into her skin long ago, and an old friend from college. Was that too weird to be coincidental, or was that ugly stain on Sunny’s head making him crazy?

  There was a nurse bustling around, fiddling with her tubes, taking her blood pressure, and just being an all-around pain in Sunny's backside. It was hard pretending to be unconscious when people were poking and prodding you.

  The door opened, closed, and a soft and blessedly familiar voice said, “They said I could sit with her for a few minutes.”

  Eve. Thank God.

  “I don’t see what harm it can do,” the nurse said. “Visiting hours ended hours ago, though. So just a little while, or I'll be in trouble.” The soft pad of her rubber soles moved away, the door opened and closed again. And then Eve’s hand came to Sunny’s shoulder. “We’re all alone, so if you’re awake–”

  Sunny opened her eyes. “I'm so glad to see you, Eve. They saw the tattoo. Sophie—Dr. McIntyre—she showed it to Jason!”

  “She trying to steal him from you, or something?”

  “She's his cousin," Sunny said. “It's a close family.”

  Eve leaned down and gave her a hug.

  “Love the new hair,” Sunny said, hugging back. “I've missed you.”

  “Me, too.”

  “What are we gonna do, Eve?”

  “First, we have to get you out of this hospital.”

  “I’m ready right now. Give me a ride?”

  “Not like that. People get all upset when you sign yourself out AMA. We don’t need a fuss made. So…you’re gonna wake up, and you’re gonna pretend you don’t know who you are, or who any of them are.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you don’t want to have to explain that tattoo, and it will buy us some time. You banged your head. Amnesia happens when you bang your head.”

  “On TV maybe.”

  “It’s plausible.” Eve shrugged. “And it’ll give us some time and space to get you the hell out of here.”

  Sunny closed her eyes. “I don’t want to go. I love it here, Eve. I love my life.”

  “You won’t have a life if Braxton shows up. He’s dropped off the radar, Sunny. We have no idea where he is. I was planning to contact you to warn you, but you called me first.”

  “You don’t know he’s here, though.”

  “And yet someone tipped you off that he was coming here, right after he dropped out of sight.”

  Hot tears welled up and Sunny closed her eyes to keep them in. “What if it’s a false alarm? I’ve made a good life, here. This town, my bakery. Jason. My friends. What if I give it all up for nothing?” Sunny opened her eyes, looked into Eve’s, and saw her wavering.

  “Look, we can’t skip town until they release you from the hospital anyway. I’ll snoop around and see what I can find out. Who told you your brother was coming?”

  “And ex-con ex-con.” At her friend’s frown, Sunny explained, “Ex-convict and ex-con artist. Allegedly ex, that is. He’s my friend Kiley’s dad, Jack.”

  Eve said, “Jack Kellogg,” without inflection.

  Sunny was surprised. “You know him?”

  “We’ve…crossed paths." She cleared her throat and went to look out the window. "I’ve requested a field agent from the Oklahoma City Bureau to watch your room while you’re here, just in case.”

  “You think no one’s gonna notice that?"

  “You'd rather I let your brother walk in here and kill you then?” she asked. Then, “Shhsh. Nurse.”

  Sunny closed her eyes fast, going limp, and Eve said, “Nurse, I think she might be starting to come around.” The nurse came closer, and Eve pinched her arm. Sunny moved her head on the pillow and moaned a little.

  “Dr. McIntyre was just at the desk,” the nurse said. “I’ll catch her.” And she hurried out of the room.

  Eve leaned down. “Amnesia, Sunny. Got it?”

  She nodded very slightly. “It’s ridiculous. No one will believe it.” Then she quickly added, “If I’m here overnight, make sure someone feeds my cat!”

  The door burst open and people came in, the nurse, Sophie, and then she heard Jason’s voice, and felt meaner than mean for what she was about to put the poor man through. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve any of this.

  What was wrong with her, thinking she’d left the past behind? It would never be behind her, not ever.

  “Sunny, can you hear me? Sunny?” Sophie pushed her eyelid up, and Sunny twisted her head away, then blinked rapidly. Then she looked around as if for the first time, trying to feign confusion, but when her gaze fell on Jason's, she couldn’t look away. The relief on his face was intense. But she forced her own expression to stay blank.

  Sophie said, “Do you remember what happened, Sunny?”

  She frowned, avoiding all eyes, and whispered, “Who’s Sunny?”

  Sophie was so startled she backed up a step. Then she turned to Eve and Jason, and said, “I need you two to go on back to the waiting room.”

  “No.” Jason crowded nearer the bed. He clasped Sunny’s hand and looked her right in the eyes. “You’re Sunny. You fell and hit your head, but you’re okay now. You’re okay now. Come on, Sunny.”

  “I…don’t know who you are." Her heart broke into tinier pieces with every word. "I’m sorry. I don’t…I don’t know who I am.” She sat up in the bed, Jason hurrying to help her. “I can’t…why can’t I remember anything?” she asked, sending her plea to Doc Sophie.

  “You’ve been unconscious for hours. You're just confused is all," Sophie said. Her voice was clam and level, just about as reassuring as a voice could get. "Things will fall back into place in a little while. You’re going to be all right. Just relax and give yourself time. You’re safe. You’re well. And you’re going to be okay, that’s all you need to think about right now.” Then she turned, “Jason and um…I’m sorry–”

  “Eve,” Eve said. “Come on, Jason. Let’s give the professionals some room.” She touched his shoulder from behind, but he w
as leaning over Sunny, looking her over as if he was already doubting that her amnesia was for real. But he softened his eyes, touched her face with his fingertips. “You’re gonna be okay, you hear?”

  She nodded at him while her heart shredded itself. He took a deep breath, searched her eyes one last time, probably looking for some spark of recognition in them. Finally, he turned and left the room. Eve walked out beside him, one hand on his shoulder.

  And then Sophie was back, asking her a hundred questions and shining that light into her eyes again. She tried to count to ten before answering every single one, thinking carefully before uttering a word. She hated this, hated lying to Sophie, hated lying to Jason even more.

  “Well, I never thought I’d be saying this, but she seems to have amnesia.”

  Jason looked at his cousin as if she’d lapsed into Swahili. “Amnesia? Is that even real?”

  “It’s rare, but it does happen. Look, I’d already called in a neurologist when she failed to regain consciousness for so long. She’ll be here in a couple of hours and she’ll obviously have a lot more insight into this than I do.” She squeezed his shoulder and said, “Jason, hon, you've been here all night. You need to go home. She’s not gonna miss you being here, not in this condition. Shower up, get a decent meal and a few hours of sleep. Come back after lunch and I should have some more information for you. Okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said, lowering his head and rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “Yeah, I’ll go. I gotta fill the family in anyway. The text loop is probably exploding. I had to turn it off.”

  “A hundred and some odd messages since everyone left. Everyone but her, I mean.”

  He looked over at Eve, who sat in the far corner of the waiting room tapping on her cell phone.

  She caught him looking, pocketed the phone and came over as Sophie left them.

  “What did the doctor say?"

  “Sunny has amnesia, and no I'm not making this up. It’s probably temporary. There’s a neurologist coming to examine her soon and we’ll know more then."

  "Amnesia? I didn't think that really happened."

  "Sophie says it's rare, but it happens."

  "And what do you think?"

  He opted not to answer that. "Do you have a place to stay in town, Eve?”

  “I thought I’d probably spend the night with Sunny.”

  “My brother’s saloon has rooms upstairs.” The elevator doors opened. A guy in a suit glanced at Eve as he got out, and she met his eyes for a second before stepping in.

  Jason got in and hit the G-button. The doors closed.

  “Saloon?” she asked.

  “The Long Branch. Gunsmoke-themed tourist hot spot, complete with fake shootouts and a player piano. Nothing rowdy, but it is busy. If you’d like something quieter, there’s Ida Mae Peabody’s Bed and Breakfast.”

  She smiled at him, and it lit her up. “I think The Long Branch sounds perfect. Thank you, Jason.” The elevator doors slid open, and they walked down the hall to the exit.

  “You can follow me back if you want. What are you driving?” he asked.

  She wiggled her brows at him. “A8.” She tapped her keyring and he followed the flash of the headlights, then gave a long slow whistle. “How about you?” she asked.

  “I’m in the F-250 parked cockeyed over yonder.” He nodded toward his truck. “I was in a hurry.”

  “I bet you were.” She stared at him a second, then sighed like she was sad about something, put her head down and headed for her car.

  He got behind the wheel of his pickup and gave her time to pull up behind him before leaving the parking lot.

  They gave her something to help her sleep, but she wished they hadn't. It just made her dream, and ever since she'd heard her brother's name, her dreams had become memories, buried for years, but never dead.

  It was the end of her senior year. She'd had the letter for two weeks, and had finally worked up the nerve to show him.

  He read the paper, made a disgusted face and crumpled it.

  "It's a full scholarship, Dad. They want me to pitch for State. They'll even give me extra for books and a meal plan."

  He'd been in the back yard, spray painting racial slurs on plywood squares. Plywood signs lasted longer, he said. And you could hit counter protestors with them. "Girls only go to college to get married. And no daughter of mine is gonna wind up hitched to liberal college boy."

  "Girls go to college for all kinds of things today, Dad."

  "No."

  "But I could learn a trade, help support you when you get older."

  "That's what I had a son for."

  She'd been afraid that would be his answer. She had to accept the scholarship and register before the deadline passed, and she wouldn't be eighteen until after. She needed his signature, and his permission.

  "I said no."

  She remembered the hurt of that. The disappointment. But then something else came to her, and it felt like the culmination of all those times she'd disagreed with his philosophies or his rules and squelched it to avoid the back of his hand.

  It all bubbled up in her.

  She picked up the crumpled sheets from the ground, took them back to her room, smoothed them out, and signed his name on them. She could sneak out long enough to register for classes. And she'd be eighteen by the time August rolled around and they started.

  She’d defied him for the first of time that day. She'd taken the first step toward Dave Barron's death sentence. And eventually, her own. But she hadn't known at the time just how bad her father's vengeance would be.

  Chapter 6

  Sunny’s long, tall Texan led Eve in through a set of actual swinging doors–what did they call them? Bat wings. Something like that. It was almost two, and only a few customers lingered in the bar. Jason put one hand on her upper arm, like she was too delicate to wend her way through the saloon without his help. She moved it away. “I’m good.”

  He glanced at her with puzzled eyes. Then his brows went up and he said, “Sorry.” He kept his paws to himself and walked up to the bar, but waited for her to sit first. Eve noted the saddle-shaped stool she’d have to straddle and said, “I’ll stand, thanks.”

  The bartender came over and she wondered if every man in this town had Hemsworth DNA.

  “Joey, this is Eve uh…”

  “DuVall,” she said.

  “Right. She’s a friend of Sunny’s. Eve, this is my brother, Joe.”

  “Brother,” she repeated, stretching out the word. “That explains it.”

  “Explains what?” Joey asked.

  She just shook her head and glanced at the stairs. “I’m told you have rooms up there.”

  “Sure do.” He reached under the counter for a key, and said, “The corner’s vacant. Best room in the place.”

  “Sounds above my pay grade. I just need a bed and a bathroom.”

  “It’s on the house. Sunny is family, so any friend of hers is family, too. I’m glad you’re here for her. Anything you need, you just holler.” He slid the key across the bar. “And, for you, big brother,” he added, pulling an envelope from his back pocket and passing it around to Jason. “Matilda Louise made Sunny a get-well card. Em helped with the spelling.” Then with a smile her way, he clarified. “Matilda’s my little girl. Emily’s my everything else.”

  Eve tilted her head to one side in the way she might do if a unicorn had just walked up to the bar and ordered a beer. These guys were not dicks. They were genuinely decent. Would wonders never cease?

  “Thank you. That’s…unexpected.”

  “No problem.”

  Eve took the key and headed up the stairs, and Joe called after her, “Hang a right. It’s number four.”

  She followed instructions, inserted the key, opened the door and stepped into her room, which continued the old western theme of the rest of the place. Antique washstand with pitcher and bowl, hurricane style lamps, wagon wheel light fixture and headboard. There was a second room, wit
h a Victorian settee, and a shaker hutch that probably held a TV. Lace doilies, and old tin type photos of cowboys with long mustaches and dusty chaps. There was even a framed photo collage of Big Falls from days gone by, with muddy roads and horses pulling buggies and wagons.

  “Wow. This place is something else.”

  She hadn’t been there before. All her work setting things up for Sunny had been done remotely. The internet was the greatest invention of all time, no question. She put down her bag, took out a change of clothes, her phone and her gun, and then she hit the shower.

  Not ten minutes later, someone was knocking at her door.

  “Son of a—” She finished rinsing her hair, and jumped out, stubbed her toe, grabbed a towel, and hopped on one foot to open the bathroom door and shout, “Gimme a minute!”

  Then she slammed it again, toweled off, and put on the complimentary bathrobe. It was nice, weighty like a spa robe, beige like one, too, and it had a longhorn skull and the words "The Long Branch" and "Big Falls OK" embroidered on the upper left chest.

  It got stuck on her wet arms, and she wrestled with it, tied the sash and yanked it hard. She was not smiling when she finally opened the door.

  Jack Kellogg stood on the other side, smiling down at her. “Hello, Evie. Long time, no see. Still with the FBI?”

  “Shsh!” She grabbed him by the shirt, jerked him inside, and closed the door behind him. “What the hell, Jack? How did you even know I was here?”

  “You would not believe the efficiency of the family grapevine. See, my daughter Kiley is married to Jason’s brother Rob–"

  “I’ve memorized the family tree."

  He pulled a bottle of high-end vodka from behind his back. “Look what I brought.”

  “You steal that when Bartender Joe wasn’t looking?”

  He just wiggled his brows and walked to the old hutch, opened the front to reveal a mini fridge with a big bin full of ice in a tiny freezer compartment up top, and several soft drinks down below. There were glasses right beside it.

  “I know who Sunny is,” he said. “I did time with her old man. And her brother, too, the little asshole.” He dropped ice cubes into the glasses, then he poured.