She was about to turn into the house, having decided to wait out the rain there until Joe would be free, when Pike looked beyond Joe and pointed in her direction. Joe glanced around, and seeing her, turned his horse over to Pike and started toward her.
As he neared, the image came of him walking into the house, splattered with mud from head to toe, a broad grin on his face, and him teasing about chewing alligator jerky. She'd wanted to kiss him then, and had. She still imagined the smoky taste of his tongue. He'd joked and called her darlin, and sugah, and she'd told him she was glad to have him home. But that wouldn't happen now. Things were different. She had no idea what to expect from him, but she would demand an explanation as to why he excluded her when making a decision about custody.
When he reached the stairs leading to the porch, she turned into the house to avoid the awkwardness of whether they should hug or kiss or show any sign of affection, then she backed against one of the kitchen cabinets, folded her arms, and waited while Joe took off his boots and slicker. He stepped into the house in his stocking feet. His mud-splattered appearance was similar to the time before, but this time he wasn't smiling, and he made no move toward her.
She stared at him, finding everything awkward, the rigid way he stood with his hands curled at his sides, her stiff, immobile stance with her arms tightly folded, two people who'd created a child, uncertain what to do because a family of strangers she knew to be her parents had effectively accomplished their goal of busting up a relationship they considered unsuitable.
To break the strained silence, she said, "Why did you do it?"
Joe's eyes sharpened with awareness. "I take it your parents received my response."
"Yes, and I don't understand why you're trying to take full custody," Anne said, her heart pounding so hard she felt shaky, but furious enough to disregard it. "You had no right doing that. You know I wouldn't wander off with Joey."
"Your wanderin' off has nothin' to do with it," Joe said. "I did it because I won't have Joey raised by people who'll poison him against me and my family." He stayed where he was, making no attempt to close the gap between them, a clear message where she stood with him now.
Anne unfolded her arms and lashed a hand out as she said in an agitated voice, "You still didn't have to exclude me! You could have asked for joint custody."
"Which would give you the right to take Joey and move away, maybe return to live with your friend. But I'm fightin' your rich and powerful family. Havin' sole custody gives me power too, at least over my son, and even though I'd have sole custody legally, you'd have it in principle because I'd never keep you from him anytime you'd want to be with him."
Anne glared at Joe. "Except being with him every day and night as your wife."
"It's pointless to talk about bein' my wife when you don't even know why you loved me in the first place."
"Then tell me why I did. Help me remember. Give me something to go on."
Joe looked at her, broodingly. "I can't tell you why, sugah, because I don’t know myself. It never made sense."
His endearment caught Anne off guard. She hadn't expected it now, even though he'd told her the week before he loved her and always would, but just didn't know if he could marry her. But until her memory returned she'd have no way of convincing him, or herself, she'd be happy with him for a lifetime.
Exasperated with the whole custody-guardianship mess and the people who'd created it, she said in a terse voice, "In the meantime, I'm living in a memory vacuum and have strangers trying to take my son, including you. I was warned when I was in New Orleans not to go to the authorities because they could take my baby and put him in foster care, but I trusted you, and even came home with you because you convinced me you loved me and I loved you too and we planned to marry, and now you're also taking my son from me."
Joe let out a weary sigh. "I'm not takin' him from you. I'm takin' him from your parents."
"That's not the way I see it. You still should've given me joint custody. If I was willing to defy my parents to run off and marry you, you should've reasoned that I'd have the backbone to not let them poison Joey's mind against you."
"I'm not willin' to take that chance," Joe said in a tone that told her he would not back down, not even for his sugah, his darlin', the only woman he'd ever love, so he'd claimed.
Which made her fighting mad. "Meanwhile, I'm caught in a battle between you and my parents over who'll take Joey from me when I'm the one who should have him!" she cried, her voice rising with her vexation, but she was angry and frustrated that everyone seemed to be running her life but her.
"And I'm his father and I want sole custody until your memory returns," Joe fired back.
Anne looked at the stubborn set to his jaw and the iron resolve in his eyes and knew she couldn’t win this battle. "And then what?"
"I don't know because without your memory even you don't know if you could be happy with me. Seein' that place where you grew up, I keep sayin' to myself, maybe you only thought you loved me. Maybe the reason you kept putting off marryin' me was because you'd have to scale down to Cajun standards."
"You always have to throw in the social angle," Anne said.
Joe looked at her with a start. "Why did you say that?"
"I don't know. It just came out."
"Those were the exact words you used when we were arguing just before you left for the conference. You must be remembering the argument."
Anne couldn't deny there was something familiar about the words. "Maybe my memory's coming back some, but I don't remember the argument. As for scaling down, I was living in an apartment in Lafayette when the flood came, so obviously I had no problem with that."
Joe sucked in a long breath and let it out slowly, and said in a low, calm voice, "If it's not about our social divide then you come up with a reason why you kept putting off marryin' me even when you were five months pregnant and hiding it from your parents by staying away."
"I can't, so it seems we've reached an impasse." Having nothing more to add, and exhausted from trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of her past when she had no image to guide her, she swept open the door and stepped onto the porch, anxious to be away from Joe, where her thoughts would not be jumbled because of his presence and she could try to figure out a course of action to regain control of her life, and her son.
Before she could put on her boots and rain slicker, Joe took her arm to stop her, and said, "It's fixin' to pour down rain. Stay here till it passes."
Anne jerked her arm free and shrugged into her slicker. "I survived a flood. A little rain won't hurt."
Joe glared at her. "Don't be so stubborn. Go inside. I've got to help my brothers round up stock and string up fence wire, but when I get back we'll talk."
"I don't need to talk," Anne said, while tugging on a boot. "Like you, I need to think." Turning from him she rushed down the stairs and never looked back. She was beginning to believe the reason she kept putting off marrying him had more to do with not being tied to a man who'd run her life than it did with social divides, but even that didn't ring true. Joe didn't come across as an overbearing man, and he had a legal right, if not a moral one, to take his son away from her very controlling parents.
Struck with an overwhelming need to dig into her memory bank and pull out the thousands of moments she'd spent with Joe and come to know the love she once felt, she headed toward the trail to the bayou. It was ludicrous going there now, with the sky about to open up, but she felt more desperate than ever to have this veil of murkiness lifted, and being where she and Joe spent countless hours together could be the key to a spontaneous recovery.
By the time she found the opening in the woods and started down the trail to the bayou, the first droplets of rain began pattering against the interwoven canopy of trees above, so she pulled the hood of the slicker up, shielding her head against the rain. Before long, she arrived at the bayou, and standing on the old pier, she scanned the top branches of the cypress on the opposite bank, hoping
to see the hawk, but the tree was vacant.
Catching sight of movement in her peripheral vision she looked off, and to her surprise, saw a hawk flying toward the cypress. On approaching the tree, it lowered its tail, gave several flaps of its wings, and landed on a horizontal limb. She waited a few minutes for the hawk to settle, then lifting her face to the rain, she cupped her hands around her mouth and called out, "Tannerin."
The hawk eyed her, curiously, but gave no sign of recognition, continuing to sit on the limb while watching from his high-up perch. Although Anne couldn't be sure the hawk was Tannerin, she assumed it was because it was sitting in the tree Joe pointed out as Tannerin's perch tree. It bothered her that the hawk didn't seem to recognize her though…
Tannerin's aloof at times, seeming to know when I have strips of raw meat with me because he ignores me when I don't bring them.
Anne's words came to her, words she'd written in her hawk diary, though the words came from recall, not from reading the diary. She felt a rush of adrenaline, realizing her mind was opening up, maybe not a spontaneous recovery, but the snatches of memory coming to her were more frequent now. Still, her past with Joe remained frustratingly inaccessible.
"Tannerin," she called again, hoping to elicit a response, to which the hawk proceeded to preen its feathers, seeming unperturbed by her presence or by the drenching rain.
She could see his talons gripping the limb, and in an instant, she felt those talons on her arm, not piercing the skin because she was wearing a jacket…
Tannerin sat on my arm today. He landed a few feet from me like he always does, but instead of tossing the strip of beef to him I held it up, like a mouse dangling from my fingers, and the next thing I knew he was on my arm. It was only for an instant though and he was off with the strip of meat…
She remembered writing those exact words in her diary. She even remembered the day she wrote them because she'd been waiting for Joe to meet her and he told her he could be late, so she'd brought her diary, along with some strips of beef. It had also been a cold blustery day, the reason she'd worn the jacket. Another snatch of memory retrieved.
And another little spurt of adrenaline.
Feeling a renewed sense of connection with Tannerin, something she hadn't felt until now, she called to him once more, and to her surprise, he left his perch and landed within twenty feet of her. Holding his piercing gaze, she said, "Tannerin, I've come back. Do you remember me?" Tannerin cocked his head in acknowledgement.
It was all coming back now. Images of walking along the bayou trail and Tannerin moving from tree to tree while watching her from across the bayou, no doubt hoping she'd have some meat for him. And their games. They'd play a kind of hide and seek where she'd put meat under a section of bark or a big maple leaf, and he'd go to two or three locations searching for it. But she had no meat this time, so Tannerin had no reason to stay with her. Yet, he didn't fly off, just remained where he was, but presently he began preening his feathers.
For some time, she watched him preening, but after a while her gaze drifted downward to the surface of the water and she became absorbed by the action of the sparkling droplets of rain speckling the surface, tiny points of water sending tinier points in perfect circles around each glittering drop, until she became mesmerized by the scene.
As she stared at the replication of thousands of scintillating circles, her eyelids became heavy, her breathing slowed, her muscles relaxed, and her senses sharpened until the plinkety-plink of droplets became a symphony of thousands of tiny bells, and the air became filled with the sweet pungent zing of ozone and the musty mingling of plant life.
But as she became more deeply engrossed in the sounds and scents around her, she gradually became consumed with the sensation of water rising and flowing over banks and spreading into fields and farms until everything around was inundated with water. Her mind sharpened as images began to come—floodwaters covering roads and farmlands along the banks of bayous, a farmhouse surrounded by murky floodwater, its front door half-visible, a truck submerged up to its windows, cars traveling along one lane of the highway, the other lane closed as floodwater covered portions of it.
She knew where she was, the highway between Raceland and Morgan City, and she was in a car with Joyce Frye, returning from a conference in New Orleans. They wanted to stop for the night in Raceland but there were no accommodations and the town was in chaos, with homes partially submerged in muddy water, and prison inmates in yellow rain slickers and orange jumpsuits unloading sand bags from a truck, and cars moving through flooded streets, leaving wakes behind.
When they left Raceland and continued toward Morgan City, Joe contacted her on her cell phone and she assured him they were okay and they'd stop wherever they could. But then the blackened clouds that had been building gave way, releasing a torrent of rain that quickly became a wall of water, converting everything into disoriented confusion.
Darkness began to close around her, and the road vanished beneath rushing water, and she felt the car moving sideways and slipping down an embankment. Then nothing. The slate was blank… Until that almost other-worldly awareness of wakening as if from a trance and finding herself in a homeless shelter, not knowing who she was or where she came from.
Standing on the pier with rainwater running down her face, it was as if she were hanging in limbo somewhere between heaven and earth, until she realized she was no longer in limbo. She knew who she was. And she knew who Joe was. He was the man who filled her with joy, and love, the man she'd met secretly in the place where she now stood. Yet, there were still memory gaps to fill, one being that she felt even more strongly that there had been a reason why she kept postponing their marriage. But her frustration of the past six months was lessened because even though all her memory had not returned, she knew it would in the near future, that the first real barrier into her past had opened and other memories would soon follow.
With that realization, tingling sensations began running down her arms and legs, and she could feel happiness exploding out of her like beams of light. Recollections of the flood might forever scar her with dark, dank memories, but the door to her past was finally opening.
She'd lost track of time and had no idea how long she'd been on the pier, but she wanted to share her joy with Joe, even if all her memories with him had not yet surfaced.
On the chance that he hadn't left with his brothers, she hurriedly made her way along the trail, but once outside the woods she was disappointed to look in the distance and see Joe and his brothers galloping across a wide expanse of prairie and heading toward the marshland.
Pragmatically, she decided it was for the best. She still had the custody issue with Joe. She also had issues with her parents who were no longer strangers, although there were gaps to fill with them too, but at least she had a sense of who they were—her mother, the peace keeper, and her father… Yes, she definitely had a sense of who he was.
Already the old hostility was again festering.
On her return to her parent's house she felt a sense of empowerment. She'd no longer be everyone's puppet, dancing on the ends of their strings because she had no past to guide her. She also felt certain that her parent's attempt to gain legal guardianship of Joey would fail, not because her memory was coming back but because Joe clearly had everything in his favor, and the only way she could hope to get joint custody would be to join her father in fighting Joe, which would mean abandoning her longtime battle in support of Joe and his Cajun heritage. Alternatively, she could convince Joe to marry her.
Little vignettes of them together began to surface. Going with him to pirogue races where he'd sometimes participate. Dancing with him at fais-do-dos. Attending Le Tournoi in Ville Platte, an event where participants, dressed like knights, ran their horses at break-neck speeds around a quarter-mile circular track while carrying long slender lances which they put through iron rings. But most of all, she remembered those special times with him in the solitude of her apartment, or s
pending a day with him down at the marshes, or at a get-away town on the Gulf Coast, away from watching eyes that could reveal their relationship to her family.
She'd loved him deeply then, and she loved him still, but before she could convince him of her love she had to convince him that the house he bought and fixed up for her was the house she wanted to live in, with him. for the rest of her life. But she also had to know why she kept putting off marrying him, because if they married for Joey's sake, she could ultimately end up in a marriage she'd live to regret.
CHAPTER 13
While Joe, Ace and Pike were making their way back to the ranch after rounding up cattle and repairing the fence, Pike maneuvered his horse alongside Joe's, and said, "I take it from the way Anne stormed off earlier today that the Harrisons got your response to their petition."
"They did," Joe replied.
"So, what's the story? You seemed pretty sure you'd win custody so I'm assuming Anne didn’t come over to set the wedding date."
"There won't be a wedding until she gets her memory back. Even then, things are pretty much up in the air."
"Because of the custody battle?" Pike asked.
"Because of a lot of things." Joe didn't want to get into what those things were because he didn't want to hash this over with his brothers right now. Things with Anne were unsettled and he wasn't ready for the entire family to weigh in, which they would. It was a Cajun given. Nor did he want to chance turning his family against Anne. He loved her and always would and couldn't imagine being with any other woman, but he was raised in a church that taught that the sacrament of marriage produced one person from two, inseparable from each other, a position he felt strongly in his heart. He wasn't questioning his ability to keep his vows. He'd be true to Anne no matter what life would throw at them. Anne was the one he questioned. She could make vows in all sincerity, and later on down the road become discontent because their lifestyles were poles apart, and that wouldn't change with the exchange of vows.
Tall Dark Stranger (Cajun Cowboys Book 1) Page 15
