by Sylvie Kurtz
“No.”
“Two sets of eyes can cover ground twice as fast.”
“No.”
It was her turn to be silent as they, each on one side, pushed in the stakes to anchor the tent. She wiped the rain from her face and looked up at him. “Have you had supper yet?”
“No.”
“Any chance you can start that grill?” she asked, jerking her chin in the direction of the concrete contraption at the campsite’s edge.
“Got charcoal?”
“Charcoal and a couple of steaks.”
She handed him a bag of charcoal, then lifted a Styrofoam cooler from the trunk of her car and placed it on the ground near the concrete grill. One more trip to the car, then she stood shielding him with a red-and-white golf umbrella as he bent over the grill. As he removed the grate, the rain pattered around them harder.
She twirled the umbrella in her hand, blurring the red and white into a swoosh. “I’ve got a story to tell you.”
“I don’t want to hear about Chance Conover. He’s not real.” He walked away from the dry circle to a nearby trio of pines and snapped off squaw wood.
“It’s not about him. It’s about me.”
That wasn’t much better. He didn’t want to care for her any more than he did now. But he didn’t say anything and she took his silence as a green light to start talking.
“My mother fell in love when she was seventeen. His name was Earl Truman Douglass the Third. He was from Houston, working a summer job out in the oil fields. She called him a blue-eyed devil on her good days, a son of a bitch on her bad. I never knew his real name until after she died and you helped me find him.
“She fell for him hard, let him sweet-talk her into believing he loved her, too. She gave him everything—her heart, her body, her soul.”
Chance dropped the wood into the concrete nest.
“Then she got pregnant.”
Before he could search for matches, she handed him a box and a stack of restaurant paper napkins. The river flowed. The rain fell. The gloom of the gray sky seemed to permeate everything around them.
“His parents decided that Earl had pulled their strings once too often and insisted he take responsibility for his actions. They forced him to marry my mother. She thought she had it made.”
He concentrated on his task, on striking the match, on watching the napkins catch and spread the flame. When the kindling was burning well, he added charcoal.
“But marriage only made things worse. Earl found Patsy’s changing body repugnant. He couldn’t bear to touch her anymore and satisfied his passion elsewhere. And though she was disappointed, Patsy accepted Earl’s behavior. At least she had social standing and security. Something that wasn’t hers waitressing at the family diner in Gabenburg.”
Without missing a beat, Taryn handed him the umbrella and went to the car. She came back with a roll of foil, handed it to him, then took back the umbrella. He scrunched a ball of foil in his hands and scrubbed the grate.
“Then Earl died one night. Plowed his car right into a utility pole. He was drunk and he wasn’t alone. A woman died right along with him.”
The fire was going well. He was running out of things to do. He wanted to hide from the sadness of her story, but couldn’t move away, so he fiddled with the kindling, with the coals, with the grate.
“Barbara couldn’t get over her son’s death and blamed it on Patsy. If Patsy had been able to hold on to her man, her son would still be alive. She turned them out, Patsy and her two-year-old kid, and refused to acknowledge them. Patsy was forced to run home, her tail between her legs. Her father had just died a few months before. Her mother was still a mess. There was nothing else for Patsy to do but take over the running of her parents’ diner. She grew into a bitter woman.”
What happened to you? he wanted to ask, but didn’t want to know, didn’t want to weave another invisible thread between them.
“Patsy didn’t want her daughter to become any man’s fool, so she kept a tight rein on her. Dates weren’t allowed, parties forbidden, friends discouraged. She kept her too busy working to have a social life of any kind.”
Taryn handed him the umbrella once more. Over his shoulder he watched her dig into the car’s trunk and come back with two potatoes. “Think the coals are hot enough?”
“Should be.”
She wrapped foil around each potato. He placed them on the coals.
“As careful as Patsy was to protect her daughter,” Taryn continued, “nothing could save her from the real world.” She crouched beside him. Their shoulders touched. The contact felt good. He didn’t move away.
She picked up a wet stick and stirred the rusty pine needles at their feet. “One night as we were closing, a man came in, ordered a meal, then instead of paying the check, he asked for the day’s receipts. I was about to comply when Patsy grabbed the money and told the man to get lost. He insisted. She argued. He pulled a gun and shot her.”
Her hands shook at the memory. She flung the stick into the fire. It hissed. She wrung her hands as if that could crush the unpleasantness. Tears sprang into her eyes and flowed freely down her cheeks. Chance wanted to hold her, but found himself cemented into place.
“I couldn’t do anything except watch the shock cross her face, the blood flower on her chest. I was standing so close, droplets sprayed all over me. I couldn’t get the smell of gunpowder and blood off me for weeks. I’d scrub and scrub and scrub and still I’d see the blood freckles on my skin. I’d smell that smell. And every time I’d close my eyes, I’d see Mama fall.”
She shivered. He took the umbrella from her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. She leaned her head against his shoulder.
“I think I screamed. I don’t remember really. It was all slow-motion, but kind of unreal, too. I was reaching for her and I saw the man’s gun turn toward me. I remember thinking I was dead. Next thing I knew, the man was on the floor moaning and someone was holding me.”
The fire glowed orange in front of them. The umbrella was a cocoon around them. His throat was tight.
“This deputy—who I had seen but never talked to—didn’t let me go. He saw me through all the questions. He saw me through the trial when the gunman’s lawyer was trying to make it look as if my mother’s murder was my fault. He helped look for my father and put that missing part of me to rest. He saw me through all the horror and never asked for anything in return.”
She looked up at him, the blue of her eyes soft and watery.
“I fell in love with this man and came to trust him with mind, body and soul.”
Him. She meant him. And he couldn’t remember a second of the story she was telling him. His hand fell from her shoulder. She took it into hers and twined their fingers together. A knot. Her white fingers woven with his sun-burnished ones.
“I love you, Chance. You stuck by me when it would have been easier to leave. You showed me the way home. You showed me how to love. I can’t go home and let you face whatever you’re going to find alone. We’re a team. I’ve got to stay.”
Feeling mired in the bog of his memories, in the town’s cold reception, in the warmth of Taryn’s presence, Chance yearned for an anchor. That was what she was offering him, what she’d offered him every day since he’d woken up with his mind a blank slate save for the nightmare.
All the blood she’d already experienced, all the blood in the frantic video playing itself in his mind told him she should leave. If she stayed, she would get hurt.
“I don’t know what I’m going to find.”
“Whatever it is, we can handle it together like we’ve done for the past ten years.”
Determination shone bright in her eyes. She would stick by his side like a scuba tank on a dive. She wouldn’t leave him unless he cut the line between them.
He stood up and walked to stand at the edge of the riverbank.
The river ran strong, undulating in black and gray snakes, reflecting a slate sky. The race of it rumbled a warn
ing. He didn’t feel better with his back to her, with distance between them. He felt confused and lost. All he knew were the memories playing on an endless loop every time he closed his eyes. All he knew was the drive to find the facts to blow the nightmare apart. For now that was all he could handle.
“I killed someone.”
She shot up and once again shielded him from the rain, from the water. “No, not you. It’s not in your nature. The man I know could never kill. Not without a good reason.”
“But I’m not the man you know. I’m not Chance Conover. I don’t know who I am.”
“It doesn’t matter. Whoever you are, you didn’t kill.”
He closed his eyes and let the loop play. “There’s a girl with long blond hair. There’s blood in the water. A gash on her head. Her eyes look dead. Through the water’s surface, I can see my face, my hands holding her down, drowning her.”
Taryn touched his cheek. “Look at me.”
He ground his teeth and opened his eyes. True blue met the terror rumbling through him. “How can you see from the victim’s point of view? It doesn’t make sense. It’s not real, Chance.”
He’d told himself the same thing time and again, but the pictures didn’t change. He viewed the murder over and over, saw his face, his hands through the water’s silver-red surface.
“I want you to be safe,” he said. From what I did. From me. From what I could do. “I don’t want you to pay for my mistakes.”
“You stood by me. I’ll stand by you.”
A strange kind of silence filled the woods. With the rain stopped, he was more aware than ever that they were alone. He suddenly wished for the noise of other campers, for the blare of a radio, for the growl of a motorboat on the water. For something, anything, to shatter the singular aching need in his chest.
He reached for her, pressed her head against his chest, placed a kiss on her soft brown hair. Her arms wrapped around his waist. Her sigh sank into him, trailing a deep sense of satisfaction.
He was walking the edge again. Getting to know her, to like her, was a mistake. Needing her like this could not be good.
But what else could he do? If she wasn’t going to go home where she’d be safe, it was up to him to see that no harm came to her. If he kept her by his side, then he could at least see the danger coming and deflect it.
“It’s like someone took a picture and ripped it up,” he said, not knowing quite why he was so suddenly willing to share the abomination crowding his mind. A last-ditch effort to repulse her? “Then threw all the shreds up in the air. Except this picture has sounds and smells and feelings and it keeps moving. I kill her over and over again.”
“It’s the feelings that scare you.”
“I don’t want you hurt.”
“We’ll get the whole picture, Chance.”
But what would they find when they exposed the truth?
Chapter Six
“We should get going.”
Taryn hadn’t slept well. The plink plink plink of bugs hitting the side of the tent and Chance’s restless rustling had kept time with the river’s thunder and left her staring at the dark. An owl had planted himself overhead and entertained them for what seemed an eternity. Then a faraway coyote had taken over and barked and howled. At dawn, the repeat and repeat of a chuck-will’s-widow had started a chorus of birdcalls and squawks. The hard ground hadn’t helped much.
Neither did the nausea.
This morning, the queasiness seemed stronger than any day before. Every slight movement seemed to make her stomach pitch and heave. While Chance had been out to the shower house, she’d inched her way to the cooler in the trunk of her car and nibbled half a dozen saltines to settle the morning sickness. She hadn’t heard him return and the sound of his voice nearly undid the good the crackers had done.
There had to be a way to cut to the heart of things and get her life back to where it belonged in Gabenburg.
“I think we ought to ask a few questions around town before we go all the way to Lufkin.” She stuffed the crackers back into the trunk and took out the cooler. At the picnic table by the grill, she got out some ham and cheese for a sandwich that would have to pass as breakfast. “Why drive all the way over there, if we can get what we need here?”
Chance turned from the pickup where he was stowing his towel and toiletry bag. His gaze assessed her. She hoped she didn’t look as green as she felt. If he started worrying about her, things would drag on for too long.
“You said the sheriff warned us to get out of town.”
Taryn considered her answer carefully as she piled ham onto the bread. “He told me I had a day.”
“Do you think he’s the type of man who’s going to split hairs like that?”
Probably not. But she really didn’t feel up to a drive to Lufkin when home was pulling on her so strongly. What she wouldn’t give to have everything back the way it was. Chance. Her marriage. Her home. Everything. “Now that we have a possible name, we’ll be done before he gets wind we’re even there.”
She offered Chance a sandwich. He accepted the food without really looking at it. His piercing gaze reminded her of the looks he used to give her after her mother’s murder as he was trying to judge how strong she was, how much she could take before falling apart. Those looks had made her feel safe then; now they unnerved her.
“I’ll go and you can stay here and rest,” he said. “You didn’t get much sleep last night.”
And now, just like then, he was ready to play the role of protector. She gave a small smile. You and me against the world. Did he remember, or was the action one of instinct by a male toward a female? “Neither did you.”
“The sheriff warned me off, not you. I don’t want my troubles to visit you.”
They already have. She contemplated a couple of slices of bread and decided against the ham and cheese. Maybe they could stop for ginger ale before they left for Lufkin. “He warned both of us off. Where you go, I go. I really think we can find the answers here and go on back home.”
He came closer, put his sandwich down on top of the cooler and stuck both his hands in his jeans pockets. His gaze was narrow and his expression blank. “Did you ever stop to consider that the picture I see may be real?”
“You didn’t kill anybody.” There were many things about this Chance she didn’t understand, but on this point she was certain. A man’s basic nature remained true. “It would take a mighty good reason for you to take anyone’s life. You won’t even let me kill spiders in the house. You insist on shooing them outside.”
He shook his head. The sunlight ribboned blue highlights in his black hair still wet from the shower. “This isn’t the same thing.”
She rose from her seat at the picnic table and faced him. The shadows beneath his eyes gave them a haunted look. The only way to get him to change his mind was to show him proof. “I think we should give the library another try.”
“The newspaper records were destroyed.”
“There are other ways. Remember when you helped me look for my father?” His eyes clouded and the tendon along his jaw tightened. No, he didn’t. That was the whole point. She sighed and looked away at the flowing river. “I’m sorry.”
Their search then hadn’t ended on a positive note. Barbara Douglass had served her tea, then politely told her never to come back. This time it had to be different. She loved Chance. She hadn’t known Barbara enough to let her grandmother’s rejection truly crush her.
“Why are you so all fired up to stay in Ashbrook?”
“I want you to find your answers as soon as you can. Then I want us to go home.”
His hand rested lazily against her neck. The tender touch shivered delight all through her body. With his thumb, he turned her chin until his dark gaze could drill into hers. She swallowed hard, wishing to see something warmer, more intimate in his eyes.
“You might not like the answers,” he said.
The feel of him this close made it so easy to get distrac
ted. She wanted to lean her head onto his chest, let his arms gather around her and hold her, make herself believe everything would be all right. But she also didn’t want to make things harder for Chance than they already were. She wouldn’t be weak or pathetic. She would be as strong for him as he’d been for her.
She broke the contact, swept up the leftover bread and stuffed it in the cooler. “You’re determined to think the worst, aren’t you?”
“I’m trying to stay realistic.”
“Realistic is that this town has the answers,” she said as she put away the ham and cheese. “Realistic is that we can find them. Realistic is that the sooner we find them, the sooner we can go on with our lives.”
“I’d feel better if you stayed here where you can be safe.”
“I’d feel better if you came back home with me.” She looked up at him. “I guess neither of us are going to get our way.”
She held up his uneaten sandwich. “Want this?”
He shook his head.
She wrapped the sandwich and put it away, then picked up the cooler and headed toward the car. He intercepted her, took the cooler from her and stowed it in the back of his truck. “Then we’d best get out of here and get this business out of the way. We’ll take the truck.”
They drove in silence, Taryn as close to the door as she could manage without feeling as if she was going to fall out. He was a stranger, this Chance. The smiles she knew and loved were no longer part of his silent vocabulary. The tender kisses, the hungry touches, were locked away in an unreachable part of his mind.
Yet, the single-mindedness of his purpose was familiar. Chance stuck to things and saw them done right. His protectiveness was familiar, too.
But not the deliberate remoteness, not this wrong belief he had purposefully caused anyone harm. Chance protected—always had. That was his true nature.
A couple of days, she told herself as the loblolly pines flickered by her window, and everything would be back to normal. He would have his identity. He would have his answers. They would go back home, and she could tell him about the baby.
