She'll Never Know

by Hunter Morgan

  She turned to go when she heard his voice from down the dark hall that led off the dining room.

  "Then, Mom, don't offer it," she heard him say, irritation in his voice. It was the first time Jillian had ever heard him annoyed. Granted, she had only known him a little more than twenty-four hours, but it added an interesting note to his personality. Even the happy-go-lucky Ty could get annoyed by his mother.

  "I'm just saying, a woman her age—"

  Jillian stiffened. They were talking about her.

  "Her age?" Ty snapped. "I told you, she doesn't even know how old she is."

  "Son, you can very well look at her and tell she's not still in college. She's a grown woman, for heaven's sake!"

  "And I'm what? A Hostess Ho Ho?"

  "Don't use that smart-ass tone with me. You do what you want."

  "I will," he injected.

  Jillian rested her hand on the handle of the French door. She knew it was wrong to eavesdrop. It didn't matter that the conversation was about her; it was private between Ty and his mother. It wasn't any of her business.

  She didn't move.

  "I'm just telling you to be careful. Women her age shouldn't be interested in young men like you. It's suspicious, that's all."

  "You think she's going to take advantage of me, Mom? What, take my money? I've got forty-two bucks in the bank, a 1958 motorcycle and a big, fat student loan to my name." His voice grew closer. They were coming down the hall toward the kitchen. "Wait, I know! You're afraid she's going to take advantage of me sexually. Is that it? Steal my virginity from me—"

  "Ty Addison—"

  Jillian opened the door and slipped out into the semi-darkness. Her heart was pounding. She knew she shouldn't have come.

  "Did you have some of my ribs, Jill?" Dick Addison asked her, approaching from the dark shadow of the grill.

  She pressed her lips together, trying to keep it together. Feeling scared and silly at the same time. "Yes... yes, I did. Thanks so much. They were delicious," she said shakily. "It was all delicious."

  The door opened behind her and Ty appeared at her side, her savior wearing wraparound sunglasses in the dark. "Ready to go?" he said under his breath.

  She nodded.

  "Ty, did you meet Nathan?" Dick Addison asked. "He's new on the block. An engineer at the plant."

  Ty lifted a hand to the balding man standing beside his father. "Nice to meet you. I gotta go, Dad. Take Jillian home." He walked off, and she followed him.

  Ty didn't say anything as they cut through the breeze-way and walked down the driveway to his motorcycle.

  He handed her the helmet. "Sorry, I didn't mean to let Dad corner you like that. Mom needed me to get some more ice out of the garage. She has a bad back and—"

  * * *

  The Bloodsucker stood in the breezeway, beer in hand, and watched Ty Addison walk Jillian down the sidewalk. He drew his tongue over the smooth, cool lip of the bottle, enjoying the pleasure of the moment—the taste of the beer, the feel of the breeze on the hot July night against the back of his neck, the sight of the lovely amnesia victim....

  The moment he saw her, he had known they were meant to be together. She was quiet, but kind. She had the personality of a person who had been through a war and survived, coming out a better person for it. He'd seen it happen in war movies. Vietnam, Desert Storm. She was a true heroine.

  The Bloodsucker could only imagine the strength that had to be running through Jillian Deere's blood. He let his eyes drift shut, almost intoxicated by the thought.

  Then he felt that hardness in his pants that plagued him. He knew what Granny thought about that. Knew the punishment. He squirmed, shoving her from his thoughts. It seemed as if she was there more these days than she used to be, and he didn't like it. Didn't like her interference.

  The Bloodsucker saw Jillian and Ty halt beside the motorcycle. They were talking too quietly for him to hear, but he wished desperately that he could. He wished he could be a part of that intimate conversation. A part of her life. He had so many things to talk to her about. So many things he needed her to understand.

  She turned her head toward him, almost as if sensing he was there, and he quickly lowered his head, reaching out to fondle the leaves of a potted plant on a stand beside him. The light was out on the breezeway, and a streetlight illuminated Ty and the bike and Jillian. The Bloodsucker knew she couldn't see him, but still... Out of the corner of his eye, he stole one more look at her lovely face and then headed back toward the party, whistling beneath his breath.

  * * *

  Jillian glanced in the direction of the house, feeling a little weird, almost as if someone was watching them or listening in on their conversation. Paranoia. Just part of the recuperation, she reminded herself. She turned her attention back to Ty. "Ty, I heard what she said about me," Jillian interrupted.

  He ran his fingers through his blond hair. "I heard the dining room door open when we were in the utility room. I was afraid it might have been you. Look—"

  "It's okay, Ty." She tucked the helmet under her arm. "I mean, she's probably right. I am too old for you."

  "Says who?" he demanded.

  She shrugged. "I don't know. Society, I suppose."

  "Then screw society." He swung a fist in the air. "I like you, Jillian, and I think you like me. What anyone else thinks is really irrelevant, isn't it?"

  She looked off into the dark toward the house. She could still faintly hear the voices, the music. She looked back at Ty. "I don't know what I think." She sighed. "How can I?" There was a catch in her voice. "I don't know who I am, Ty."

  He took a step toward her and slipped his arm around her waist. "So let me you help you find out," he said quietly.

  She met his gaze. This time she let him kiss her without hesitation. It was long and slow and ended too soon.

  "Come on," he murmured in her ear. "Let me take you home."

  The sound of the motorcycle prevented any more conversation until they reached the beach cottage. There, he parked the bike, took her hand, and strolled in silence with her up the wooden walk. At the front porch, she slid down onto the step, moving over to make room beside her for him.

  They were quiet for a long time. Then he slid his arm around her waist and turned to her, forcing her to look at him eye to eye. "Is it really that weird for you, me being younger?" he asked, pushing his glasses up on his head.

  She pressed her lips together, thinking carefully. "Not as weird as I'm thinking it should be."

  He grinned.

  "But Ty. Don't you see my hesitation here? What if I'm married?"

  He lifted her left hand and let it fall on her knee. "You said yourself, no ring."

  "I know." She groaned. "But what if..." She didn't finish the sentence because she wasn't sure what she wanted to say.

  "You're not married. If you were, he'd have found you weeks ago."

  She knew he was right, but the idea that she really had no one still hurt a little. Somewhere in the back of her mind she'd been clinging to at least the possibility that someone out there loved her and was desperately searching for her.

  "Look," Ty said. "This is the way I see it. You have two choices. You can attempt to find out who you were and try to step right back into that life, or..." He hesitated. "You can make a new life for yourself. You can be who you want to be."

  He made it sound so simple. Like the entire world was hers for the taking. Kind of like the world was when you were twenty-three and had a lifetime ahead of you.

  "I don't know, Ty."

  He kissed her cheek. "I know. It's got to be scary as hell. So let me hang out with you for a few days. A few weeks. Let me help you."

  His offer was so genuine, so heartfelt, that a lump rose in her throat and she felt tears sting the backs of her eyelids. She closed her eyes and let him kiss her again. This time she slid her arms around his shoulders and kissed him back.

  Ty drew his lips along the sensitive skin above her T-shirt at her c
ollar bone and she sighed. She met his next kiss open-mouthed, hungry for the intensity of his feelings. His joy of life. Ty brought his hand up beneath one of her breasts, and she allowed herself a soft moan.

  Suddenly the hair stood up on the back of Jillian's neck, and she looked up.

  "What's the matter?" Ty murmured, planting little, fleeting kisses along her jawline.

  Jillian stared into the darkness in the direction of the beach. Only a pale quarter moon hung in the sky, casting very little light. She couldn't see anything. Anyone. But she could sense something.

  "There's someone out there," she whispered. Her heart was beating fast, but not for the same reason it had been moments before.

  Ty let go of her and stood up, looking in the same direction. "Where?"

  She rose, gripping the railing. "I... I'm not sure."

  He glanced at her. "You saw someone?"

  Jillian didn't want to admit the truth. Didn't want him to think she was a nut job. "Maybe." She chewed on her inner lip. "I don't know."

  "I don't see anyone." He stood on his tiptoes on the top step. "There's not even anyone on the beach."

  "Let's go inside." She went up the porch steps and fiddled in her pocket for the key as she held the screen door open with her hip. When she tried to unlock the inner wooden door with its glass windowpanes, she couldn't. The old lock could be temperamental.

  Ty walked up behind her. She could smell the summer sun on his tanned skin. His presence calmed her.

  "Let me." He reached over her shoulder, took the key from her trembling hand, and unlocked the door on the first try.

  Inside, Jillian flipped on lights and pulled the shades down within an inch of the windowsills so that air could still pass through the open windows but, hopefully, no one could see inside.

  Ty just stood at the door while she moved from window to window.

  "You probably should go," she said. "I had a nice evening, but—"

  "The mood's kind of shot at this point," he finished for her. His smile was lopsided. "That's okay." He leaned forward to kiss her a quick good-bye. "You sure you're going to be all right here alone?"

  "I'm fine. There's no one out there." She opened the door to let him out. "I was just being, I don't know. Paranoid." She chuckled.

  "If you want, I can stay. Sack out on your couch." He hooked his thumb in the direction of the chintz print furniture.

  She managed a lopsided grin similar to his. "Good try, but no go." She pushed him playfully out the door. "Go home before I let you strip me naked on the front porch and make crazy, mad love to me."

  He laughed with her. On the bottom step of the porch, he turned and looked up. "I think you should stay the whole month. Take advantage of the good deal here." He motioned to the house. "Give you some time to figure out what you want to do."

  She nodded. He was right. Whoever had tried to kill her couldn't possibly find her here. How could they when she herself hadn't known this was where she was going?

  "I just might do that. But if I do, I need to find a job. I'm not sure how long my money will hold out. But it needs to be mindless work. I don't think I'm ready to think yet."

  "Albany Beach has plenty of jobs. What do you want to do?"

  She opened arms. She had no clue.

  "Check the boardwalk tomorrow. There's always someone advertising for help. Scooping ice cream is a pretty mindless job. It would give you time to think."

  "I'll do that." She gave a wave. "'Night. And thanks again for the evening."

  He raised his hand in his usual hippy salute and disappeared around the side of the house. Neither said anything about seeing each other again, but she knew he'd be back.

  Inside, Jillian locked the door. Leaving her flip-flops there, she grabbed a glass of ice water and went down the hall. Changing into a sleep shirt, she climbed into bed to read. By eleven she was sleepy enough to turn out the light. In the dark, she lay beneath the sheet with the cool beach breeze ruffling the pale blue curtains, and drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  Jillian was first aware of the bed. A big bed. King size. The rumpled sheets. A bedspread kicked off the bed and onto the floor.

  The room was close. Hot. A musky redolence hung in the air the way it did just after sex.

  She trembled. She didn't want to be here.

  She heard the tick, tick, tick of a ceiling fan overhead. She felt the hot, moist air move.

  She heard laughter. Female laughter. Thick. Throaty. Full of sexual implication.

  The sound frightened her. She tried to back away. Escape. But she couldn't. She felt as if she were hovering. Floating. It was as if she was a part of the bedroom and yet not.

  Where was she? She didn't recognize the bedroom. It wasn't hers.

  Or was it?

  That was when Jillian realized she heard water running. A shower. Someone was taking a shower.

  Light spilled from a door left ajar in the corner of the room. Steam fogged the sliver of the mirror she could see inside. It reflected a silhouette. A man.

  Again, Jillian tried to back away. But she couldn't. She seemed to have no limbs. No means to escape. She was just... there....

  Then the falling water stopped suddenly. Someone had shut off the shower.

  She felt as if she were going to be sick. She was afraid. But angry. So angry...

  Then she saw him. Just a glimpse in the reflection in the steamy mirror. A man with dark, water-slicked hair. A slash of bare, muscular buttocks.

  Jillian screamed.

  * * *

  The sound woke her, and she bolted upright in bed. A scream. But whose? She grabbed her chest and felt her pounding heart.

  It was the first dream she had experienced since waking from the coma... and it had scared her half to death.

  Jillian fumbled for the bedside lamp, found the switch, and twisted it. Low-wattage light encircled the bed with a sickly yellow glow. She slid across the mattress, throwing her bare feet over the side. Despite the chilly ocean breeze coming through the window, she was bathed in sweat. Her hair stuck to her forehead and cheek. Shoving it back, she climbed out of bed and crossed the room to slam the closest window shut. Then the other.

  Still shaking, but awake now, Jillian went down the hall and closed every window in the front of the house, one by one. She pushed them down and twisted the locks. Then she double-checked the lock on the door. In the spare bedroom, where she knew she hadn't opened the windows, she checked the locks anyway. In the bathroom, she put down the toilet seat, stood on it, and checked the lock on the frosted window.

  Back in the bedroom, she dropped onto the bed and reached for the glass on the nightstand. The water was tepid now. How long had she been asleep? She checked the glowing digital clock beside the bed. Two-forty a.m. She drank it anyway.

  Her heart now beating at a semi-normal pace, Jillian lay back on the bed and stared up at the old-fashioned white tiled ceiling. That hadn't been a dream and she knew it. It was a memory. Just a shard of one. It made no sense at all. She didn't know the man. She didn't even know herself. She wasn't even sure she was actually in that room.

  She closed her eyes. It was crazy. It didn't make any sense. Of course she had been in the room. How else would she have seen it? And she had recognized it. It had to be her own bedroom.

  She rolled onto her side and drew her legs up close to her chest. She laid there for a long time trying to set her mind free, not allowing herself to think about the dream. She listened to the ocean that she could hear even with the windows closed. She thought about the cold beer she and Ty had shared and his warm kiss. At last she drifted off to sleep with the light still on.

  Chapter 4

  Mid-morning the following day, Jillian walked down the boardwalk, checking store windows in search of a "Help Wanted" sign. Despite her restless night and the frightening dream, she woke up with the idea that Ty was right. She should stay in Albany Beach a few weeks and take the time to figure out what she was doing, where she
was going. If she didn't discover her identity in the next month or so, she needed a plan beyond driving all over the country hoping to bump into someone who knew her.

  The little cottage with its haunting familiarity was as good a place as any to stay. This decision led her to her quest this morning. If she was going to stay, she needed a little income to supplement what the Amnesia Society had put in an account for her in Portsmouth. Besides, if she stayed the month, what was she going to do? Sit alone on the front porch feeling sorry for herself and wait for her memory to return?

  Jillian spotted an orange sign in a window advertising that the business was hiring and excitedly peered through the glass to see what kind of store it was. The place was just opening up, and she spotted a face familiar from the diner. Chain, the police chief's daughter's boyfriend. She wouldn't forget that name. Her gaze fell to the items displayed in the window—incense, band decals, earrings, bars and studs for body piercing. She recoiled. A head shop.

  At that moment, the young man in the Marylyn Manson T-shirt opened the door. '"Morning," he said, propping open the door with a cement block.

  She felt as if she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't. "Good morning."

  Chain thrust an "Open" flag on a pole into the bracket on the storefront, and the wind caught the fabric, whipping it over his head. "Looking for a new ring for your belly button?" he asked. "We got the best selection for twenty-five miles." His friendly demeanor didn't seem to match his appearance or the insolent man she had seen in the diner.

  She laughed, still embarrassed. "No. No I was just... window shopping. Thanks."

  He nodded, his crow-wing black hair falling forward over his face. She couldn't tell how old he was; he could have fourteen or twenty-four for all she knew. "Have a nice day," he said.

  She hurried past the door. "You, too."