Heavenly Stranger

by Tina Wainscott

  It drove him crazy wondering what he was like. He hoped he was a good guy, though he knew he sometimes had a short temper. And there was that feeling…

  He wondered if he had a woman like Maddie who hadn’t given up on him. Did anyone love him that much? The fierce look in her eyes sent an ache spiraling through him. Had he loved anyone that passionately?

  He ran his hand through his hair and pulled it tight in frustration. The secrets of his life were locked away in his mind like a treasure chest at the bottom of the ocean. Fear squeezed his chest as he saw the locks rusting away. What if the memories never returned? He dove back into his work to keep the panic at bay.

  Near the end of the day, he’d completed the hull form. He was starting to get hungry, and thinking of the canned mac and cheese on the sailboat wasn’t doing much to pique his interest.

  “Hello?” a woman’s voice called out.

  Oh, no, not again. Five women had come by on one pretense or another to check him out. Well, except for Maddie, who had only baffled him until her sister had cleared it up.

  The woman who stood smiling up at him was in her fifties, he’d guess. She had strawberry blonde curls that fell to her shoulders and wore big glasses that magnified her eyes.

  She smiled. “You must be Chase. I’m Marion Danbury. Baby’s mom.”

  Another family member telling him to dispel Maddie’s fantasies?

  She studied him for a moment, then gave him a shy smile. “Baby thinks you’re an angel.”

  He decided to play dumb. “She does?”

  Marion nodded. “You’re not an angel, are you?”

  “No.” He climbed down from the scaffolding and wiped his hands on his shorts. Then, out of respect, he pulled his shirt back on. “Definitely not.”

  “Baby’s been through a lot this last year. Losing her husband shattered her like a piece of glass, and she hasn’t been the same since. Wayne—that’s her husband, was her husband—he made this promise that he’d send an angel to heal her broken heart so she could go on with her life. She’s convinced you’re it.”

  “I know what you’re going to say, and I’ll take care of it.”

  “You will?” She clasped her hands together as though he’d granted her some wish. “All I’m asking is that you just play along with her, maybe say a few words of wisdom. What’ll it hurt?”

  “Wait a minute. You want me to play along? Pretend I’m this angel?”

  “Yes!” she said, clapping her hands together in delight.

  “I can’t. For one thing, I don’t know how an angel’s supposed to act.”

  Marion waved her hand. “Neither does she. She almost died when she was a child, and she thought she saw an angel in the hospital. We thought it was probably a visiting doctor checking in on her, but we didn’t see any harm in letting her believe it was an angel. And there’s no harm in letting her believe you’re one either. It’s wonderful of you to do this. She’s my sugar baby, you know, and she needs to be happy again. You can do that for her. Thank you.” And then she left.

  Great. He’d just agreed to be Maddie’s angel.

  Chase thought about Maddie all night. His thoughts drifted to what she’d gone through losing her husband right in front of her, holding him while he died. She was obviously well-loved, though if her nickname were any indication, maybe too much.

  It was probably pretty easy to over-love Maddie. She was small and fragile looking. Cute. Maybe he could do her one favor and help her to stop believing in all this stuff. Tough love and all that.

  He set his small cooler on the deck, then climbed out. Stocked with a day’s supply of Dr. Pepper, he was ready to tackle the C-Flex. Another thing that mystified him was that he knew C-Flex was fiberglass sheeting with rods of fiberglass-reinforced plastic alternating with bundles of fiberglass rovings. When Barnie had asked if he’d worked with it before, Chase had instinctively answered yes, and could picture the striped, flexible material.

  Dew had settled over everything, though the early morning sun was already warming the air. He stepped over the slippery spot on the ramp and headed to the warehouse. The large doors were already open, and the boat was waiting for him.

  So was Maddie.

  The lack of annoyance at that surprised him; the thrum of anticipation surging through him surprised him more. Especially considering that, if he had anything to do with it, he wouldn’t see her hanging around anymore.

  Barnie was sitting next to the hull form sipping a cup of coffee. Chase wondered if the man owned a brush; his wavy hair sprung out in all directions. Yet the hair, even the scruffy look, suited him somehow.

  “Morning,” Chase said, training his eyes away from Maddie, who looked like a waif wearing a pastel jumpsuit, leather boat shoes and a wide grin. She was sitting on one of the sawhorses, knees pulled up.

  Barnie raised his coffee cup in greeting. “Maddie here’s going to help you with the C-Flex.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t need any help.”

  “Stuff can be a pain handling it by yourself. Take the help. I’m going to the marina to see about instrumentation. Then got to talk to your father about a knock in the truck’s engine. Holler if you need anything.”

  They watched Barnie maneuver down the pathway by the docks.

  “I was surprised he was up,” Maddie said, jumping to her feet. “You never know with him.”

  “He says he alternates four hours of sleep and wakefulness all day,” Chase said.

  “Yep, for years. And don’t ask him to eat with you. He’s got a thing about people seeing him eat. He’s always been a private person. So, what do you need me to do?”

  Her enthusiasm almost made him smile, but he quelled the urge. “You ever work on a boat before?”

  “No, but I’m a fast learner.”

  “What do you do? For a living, I mean.”

  “I used to help Wayne out at the marina, or help out at the Society—the Humane Society. Sometimes I’d help at the nursery around the corner.”

  Chase set his cooler down. “You’re just the little helper, aren’t you? Didn’t you have a real job?”

  “No. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do, and after I married Wayne, I liked being able to help him whenever he needed me.”

  “Didn’t he want you to get a real job?”

  Her smile was bittersweet. “He liked me with him. Not that he told me what to do. He just said he liked me around, so I…stayed around.”

  “Didn’t you ever want to be a responsible adult?”

  She gave him a lopsided shrug. “Not really.”

  She was so naïve, he almost wanted to play along and be her angel. He wanted to make her smile and heal her broken heart. But then the sensible side took over and shook sense into him.

  “Look, Maddie, I’m not an angel. Your husband didn’t send me. I’m an ordinary guy here to build a boat, and then I’m gone.”

  Shock stole over her expression. “Who told you?”

  “It doesn’t mat—”

  “Colleen.” She stomped her foot and sent sawdust spiraling upward. “Damn her.” Her face was red when she met his gaze again. “You might not know it, but you are my angel.”

  Those words curled through him in a strange way. Had he ever wanted to be someone’s angel? “Because of some double rainbow.”

  Outrage played over her expression again, but she regained control. “The day Wayne left, he looked beyond me and saw an angel. I saw a double rainbow. For a year there hasn’t been a double rainbow, and Friday when I came out here, there it was, and it ended at you.”

  “And if you’d been standing a few yards to the left, it would have ended over the Dumpster. It was a coincidence. Here’s what I think, Maddie. All your life you were babied and coddled, and then you married a guy who took over where everyone else left off.” He hated the way the hopeful expression on her face faded to a sober one. “Wayne might have been a great guy, but he didn’t do you any favors promising you some angel. You can’t go a
round relying on other people, including your family, to come save you.”

  She had shored up her shoulders, and that luscious mouth of hers thinned into a firm line. “My family has stood by me through the toughest of times. Sometimes they were the only reason I hung on. That’s what family is for, to hold you up when you can’t stand on your own.”

  For a moment he was distracted by thoughts of his own family, whoever they were. “What have you done for yourself to move on?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve waited patiently for my angel.”

  “Depended on someone else to fix your problems. I don’t know you that well, but I can guess that after your husband died, you moved back home and buried yourself in your family’s bosom. I’ll bet your mom does every little thing for you, and nobody makes you do anything you don’t want to do, including grow up. Let me tell you something: When it comes down to it, you only have yourself to depend on.” He exhaled softly. “And even then, you get let down.”

  “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to work.”

  He moved close enough to smell her sweet perfume. Close enough to make her look up at him. “If I were your angel, what would you want me to do? Say, poor baby, how awful that this has happened to you, it isn’t fair, and we’re going to make everything all right? Should I tell you that we promise nothing bad will ever happen again? Should I kiss you and make it all better?”

  She stiffened with every word. Her big, hazel eyes filled with pain, and then she wrenched away from him. He steeled himself against the way the shine in her eyes stabbed his insides. She took a deep breath, and when he thought she might tell him off, she turned and walked away. And still he felt the overwhelming urge to call her back and apologize, even when this was what he wanted. It was for the best. Especially considering he’d wanted to follow through on that threat to kiss her.

  He consoled himself with thoughts about doing the right thing as he wrestled with the coil of C-Flex. Had he ever felt this particular kind of remorse? This softness for a woman? It seemed even more unfamiliar than the concept of family and home.

  Lucky for him, Maddie was a runner. If she’d been a fighter, well, he’d be done for. As easy as it had been for him to abstain from any kind of attachment these last couple months, Maddie had gotten to him.

  When he changed the station on the radio, Don Henley was singing about coming back to the land of the living. Most of the songs he heard sounded familiar, but they brought back no sliver of memory. Not even of whether he’d liked it or not. He stripped off his shirt and flung it over one of the sawhorses. He was tired of feeling disconnected from the world. From his identity.

  Chase worked with the unwieldy material and the box of ice picks for an hour, stopping only to sip on his Dr. Pepper or slide a handful of ice over his skin. If he wasn’t thinking about that look on Maddie’s face just before she’d walked away, he was thinking about the kind of person who might harshly tell a woman to get over her husband’s death when he didn’t even know her.

  “I want to know who you think you are to talk to me like that,” a familiar voice demanded from behind him.

  He was sure he couldn’t actually be glad she’d come back. He turned to find her standing there, arms defiantly crossed. And as wordy as he’d been earlier, all he could think to say in response was, “Pardon?”

  She pushed her hair back from her face and stepped closer. “Who do you think you are to tell me how I should live my life?”

  “I don’t know who I am.” It had just come out, and the way he’d said it in a near-whisper, with a sober look on his face, he knew he couldn’t take it back or make it sound like a smart-assed response.

  Maddie looked at him, her mouth going silent for a moment. She knew that he’d meant it, but she couldn’t quite believe what his words meant, so she took a moment to digest it. He tried to turn his attention back to work, but he couldn’t tune her out, standing there beside him, figuring him out.

  “You don’t know who you are,” she said, not a question really, yet colored with disbelief just the same.

  “Of course, I do.” He’d intended to make it a strong statement, but his voice had given out at the end. He repeated it just to make it sound truer, but again, those last words faltered. An ache throbbed in the center of his chest as he stared at the wood and felt her hand on his arm. He’d kept his secret and his distance for so long that he thought he was invincible. The ache said otherwise, said he needed to tell her, only her, but he didn’t know why.

  “Chase…who are you?”

  He still didn’t look at her, instead focusing on his hand braced against the hull of the boat. “I don’t know.” She tugged on his arm, forcing him to look at her. He didn’t like the hopeful look on her face. “I’m not your angel.”

  “But you don’t know for sure.”

  “I think I’d know that kind of thing, Maddie.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “They found me floating in the ocean, clinging to a raft. When they threw me a life preserver, I didn’t even respond, though they said I was awake. They had to send a guy in after me. I don’t remember any of that.” The ache lessened with each word he spoke, though he hadn’t intended to tell her much. “What I remember is waking up to find all these people staring down at me talking in a language I didn’t understand. I thought they’d stolen my mind.” He wasn’t looking at Maddie directly, but at her shoulder. “It took a few days to remember things about life, what things were called, but that’s where it ended.”

  “That must have been terrifying.”

  He didn’t want to remember how scary it had been. “I learned about amnesia and memory, and I think I was in a massive dissociative state when they pulled me out of the ocean. Maybe the trauma of being knocked out of a boat, drifting for days, and believing I was going to die caused me to dissociate. That’s supposed to be a sideways slippage from consciousness. I lost my episodic memory. One of the five types of memory,” he added at her blank look. “I lost the story of my life, all the events that shaped me.”

  She still had her hand on his arm, and she’d been squeezing slightly as he’d talked. That’s why he’d spilled so much, he realized. Her touch was soft and warm, compassionate.

  “How did you get back here?” she asked.

  “I was part of a shipment to New York.”

  “How’d you get back in? Or did you turn yourself in to the authorities?”

  Those were the questions he’d grappled with during the seventeen-day journey back to the United States. “I decided not to go to the authorities. If they couldn’t determine who I was, I wasn’t sure what they’d do with me. I didn’t want them to hold me against my will.” Or put him in a psychiatric ward. He kept getting glimmers of something being very, very wrong that worried him. Had he done something wrong? Or maybe disappeared on purpose?

  “And I didn’t want to get into how I’d ended up where I was. I figured I’d come from the East Coast, and if I traveled long enough, someplace would trigger my memories.” At least she was asking normal questions.

  “How do you know your name is Chase?”

  “I wore a watch with the name engraved on back.” When she looked at the cheap plastic watch he wore, he added, “I had to sell it.”

  She looked at the hull beside them, at the ice pick he held in his hand. “But you know boats.”

  He knew his smile was tainted with frustration. “That’s the annoying thing about memory. I know things, like how to build a boat. I can read navigational charts, and I feel more comfortable on a boat than off it. I know I like rice covered with hot sauce and relish…” Maddie wrinkled her nose at that one. “and I like Dr. Pepper. But not one thing that’ll help me remember who I am.” He found himself wanting a drink, too. Like that ache that foretold the need to share his story with someone, that was the ache he felt for a drink. But he couldn’t afford to waste precious money on liquor, so he didn’t. “Look, I’d better get back to work. I told
you that because…I want you to understand I’m not who you want me to be.” He started unrolling another section of C-Flex.

  “If you think you’re from the East Coast, why are you here?”

  “I needed the money.”

  He didn’t like the look on her face. It was that irrational expression. “The guy who saw you reading the Help Wanted section. Did he look like this?” She pulled a picture out of her pocket and held it up.

  He studied the picture, more curious about the man who had claimed Maddie’s heart so completely than to compare. “I didn’t get a good look at the guy.” Though the guy did vaguely look like Wayne. Those doe eyes glistened, and her face flushed pink. “Maddie, it wasn’t him. This guy was flesh and blood, just like us.”

  He wasn’t even going to mention that after the guy continued down the docks, Chase looked back at the paper and realized he hadn’t had the Help Wanted section open. He was sure there was a logical explanation.

  “Don’t you see? It’s perfect! You don’t know who you are, you were found in the ocean as though dropped from the heavens, and Wayne sent you to me.”

  “I’m not an angel.”

  She still had that glowing look, and worse, she was grinning at him. “Maybe you don’t know you’re an angel.”

  He spread his arms out. “Do I look like an angel to you?”

  Her gaze drifted down his neck, over his bare chest and jeans that were uncomfortably tight. “Angels can look sexy—” Her eyes widened. “I didn’t mean sexy like that kind of sexy. I meant…they can look like anyone. Even you.”

  He let out an exasperated sigh, despite the compliment. Before he could think twice about it, he did something he hoped would dispel the notion for good. He kissed her.

  It wasn’t dramatic, no tongues were involved, but he ran his mouth over hers for a long minute. Her surprised squeak echoed in his head, but he mostly focused on the way her mouth felt beneath his, incredibly soft and tasted sweet.

  Her hands had pushed against his shoulders when he’d taken her by surprise, and then stilled against him. Now she pushed again and backed away, her eyes wide. “Wha…why…you’re not supposed to do that! You’re supposed to listen to me, tell me everything’s going to be all right, and then make it so.”