But the moment her hands were enveloped in a blessedly familiar warmth, she felt the ticklish moment evaporate. “Taylor...” she murmured thickly, holding her sister’s hands tightly in her own.
“It’s about time,” Taylor said, pulling her in for a lengthy and long-awaited hug. “Oh, honey, it’s so good to see you home.”
Allison rested her head on her sister’s shoulder and knew she wasn’t home. And she wasn’t all that certain it was really good to be there. But she felt an absolute conviction that it was pure heaven to be held in Taylor’s arms and called “honey,” again.
The man in the wire-frame glasses and neatly trimmed blond hair pulled over to the side of the road in a town not much bigger than his living room in New York. He studied the few cars parked outside a small, flea-bitten café, then pulled out a briefcase, strung a camera around his neck, ruffled his hair a bit and strolled across the street and crossed into the hot-oil-scented café and its equally redolent customers.
All eyes turned to stare at him, and he forced a Hollywood smile to his lips. “Hello, there. Mind if I snap a few pictures of this place?”
All of the seven people in the café exchanged glances.
“What do you want to take pictures of the café for?” a woman holding a coffeepot in each hand asked in a nasal twang.
He forced his grin to a broader, more friendly smile. “Oh, just scouting around.”
He set down the briefcase at an empty but uncleared table and lifted his camera. He popped the lens cap free, held the camera to his face and snapped a picture of the waitress.
He turned and snapped a couple of shots of the men sitting around two tables imperfectly pushed together.
One of them frowned. “Hey!”
The men turned, and he snapped four or five quick pictures of the shabby walls, the crooked and faded prints hanging without any seeming concept of design by single nails and a bit of wire. “By the way, can anyone tell me who owns that fifties Ford pickup parked out front?”
Three of the seven people in the café asked why he wanted to know.
He lowered his camera and turned back around to face them. “My name is Michaels. I’m part of the advance team for the picture.”
“What picture?”
He chuckled a little. “That’s a good one,” he said, nodding at the man who’d asked. He started to lift his camera again.
“What’s a good one?” another man asked.
The man with the wire-frame glasses allowed a small frown to furrow his brow and his grin to fade a little as his camera lowered. “Lubbock Dust. You know, the movie we’re making out here?”
“Somebody’s making a movie out here?” the waitress asked.
“You weren’t kidding me? You really didn’t know about the picture? I just figured everybody knew by now. We’re shooting parts of Lubbock Dust right here in Anton.”
“In Anton?” one of the men at the table exclaimed. “What on earth for?”
“Well, we looked around and couldn’t come up with anything that looked like Lubbock did about thirty years ago. But the architecture in Anton lends itself perfectly to the concept of the film.”
“We say it ‘Ant’n,’” one of the other men said. “Not ‘An-tahn.’”
The others chuckled a little. But the blond man grinned a little. “Ant’n it is. Anyway, about that Ford pickup outside...?”
“Which one?” asked one of the men, pushing to his feet to walk to the window. “They’s at least three of ‘em parked out front.”
“The red one.”
The man at the window gave a snort of laughter. “Well, it mighta been red one day. About twenty years back, I guess. Whaddya want with my pickup?”
“I want to buy it.”
The grin faded from the other man’s ruddy face. “You wanna what?”
“I want to buy it. For the film. The script calls for the star to be driving a—”
“How much?”
“Well, sir, how much would you like for it?”
“I don’t know,” the man said, too honestly. “I can’t afford to get a different pickup.”
“Well, then, what about that Mercury Cougar parked across the street?”
“Whaddya mean?”
“An even trade. My car for yours.”
“What kind of deal is this?” the man asked.
“You happen to have the exact make, model and color of truck I need for the film. I can get a new Mercury this afternoon in Lubbock. And I’m willing to bet I can find another make and model somewhere else, given time. I’d just rather not take that time. You got me?”
Five minutes later, the men from the café carried his belongings from the car to the pickup for him. He snapped their pictures a couple more times, then climbed up into the incredible filth of the cab.
He started the vehicle on the third try and backed it from its slantwise slot and headed the car not east and south as they had expected, but west. Toward another little town. One named Almost.
About halfway there, he pulled over again. He carefully removed his wire-frame glasses, tugged off the neatly trimmed blond hair and threw both bits of camouflage into a small plastic bag and stuffed them far beneath the seat of the battered truck, back in a recess already filled with empty food wrappers, beer cans and moldy pools of tobacco juice.
He stripped out of his chinos and oxford cloth shirt and pulled on a pair of stained and battered pants and a filthy shirt that sported a small brownish stain with a smaller, nearly invisible rip right beside the torn breast pocket.
He didn’t bother to hide this exchange of clothing. If anyone tried to stop him or even came along at all, he would deal with them as he had the owner of his present outfit of disgusting clothes.
He climbed back into the pickup, sweating slightly in the strangely summerlike February sun. He glanced in the mirror. His gray eyes stared back at him from under dark eyebrows. His jet black hair looked oily and lank after the hours beneath the tight wig. He ran his hand down his face, leaving a streak of black he’d acquired from his disguise hiding beneath the seat of the pickup. He didn’t try to wipe the mark away. Instead, he smeared it in, adding more.
He had a part to play, and the added grime would only make his job all the easier.
Allison must be in Almost by now, enfolded in the arms of her long abandoned family.
She remembered them, all right. No doubts about that. And because of her memories about them, he knew them also. Every single seemingly insignificant detail.
Again he suffered mixed emotions, sorrow and fury.
She would pay, all right. They would all pay.
And they would all pay very dearly.
Allison sank into one of Taylor’s rockers on the back porch, exhaustion sapping every bit of energy from her already tired body. Her leg had ached all afternoon with such unrelenting intensity that she’d finally managed to conjure a headache to countermand its incessant reminders of the need for elevation.
The unrelieved landscape seen from Taylor’s back porch didn’t soothe her jangled nerves. The sun was scarcely setting on the distant horizon, sending out a roseate glow across the sky. In New York, she thought, it would already be dark. And yet one never felt this lonely, no matter how alone.
At least not until two months ago. Since the car accident, all she’d felt was lonely. And confused.
She’d once ridden horseback across the seemingly endless expanse outside Taylor’s yard, as at home beneath the perfect dome of a sky as in her studio apartment in New York. Gazing out at those miles and miles of grass, she understood how ancient man had believed the earth flat. She had the dizzying impression that if she tried walking across that field, she would reach the end of the world and simply fall off.
She drew a deep breath, held it and let it go as if releasing it would relieve the tension of the evening. From the moment she’d pulled back from Taylor’s welcoming embrace and limped beside her to the front porch, she’d undergone a barrage of family
, old friends, acquaintances and total strangers. She’d scarcely recognized some of them, while others seemed wholly unmarked by time.
Each of them had seen her on TV, and each had a different “favorite” story she’d reported.
She remembered all the stories they recounted... except those done in the past couple of months. Those, she recognized only vaguely.
Have a good holiday, Allison.
They touched her too much, clinging to her hands, stroking her face, her hair. They had crowded her, jostled her, nudged her...and loved her.
But while all of them spoke with the soft west Texas drawl, eagerly, achingly accepting her back into their fold, every one of them—even Taylor—seemed like a stranger to her.
She didn’t need to remember the past, she needed to get a handle on the present. And yet, in Almost, the present was mutable, infinite. It stretched to the horizon beyond Taylor’s back porch, unbroken and uncontained.
Hardest of all the people to deal with that afternoon had been Aunt Sammie Jo. Susie’s mother. Her own second mother. She found she couldn’t really look at Sammie Jo. So little with a ridiculous wig on her head, a testament to her age and her fight with cancer.
She’d hugged her aunt, stood beside her with her hand clasped in that dry yet strong grasp that took her back to her childhood, and had found she couldn’t meet those blue eyes so like Susie’s. So like her own.
Thinking about the reception now, Allison knew instinctively that, unlike Daddy, Aunt Sammie Jo had never blamed her for having let Susie drive the car that horrible summer’s night that ended in such tragedy. The one who most had cause to blame her never had.
But believing herself absolved during all those lost years was different from knowing it. And when Sammie Jo had hugged her tightly, then stepped back to look up at her, Allison had averted her gaze, more than half-afraid to see her instincts confirmed.
Because she hadn’t forgiven herself? Because she hadn’t “allowed” Susie to drive? Because she’d been crying so hard over Chas, over his announcement that he was going to marry Thelma Bean, that she’d nearly crashed the car herself before Susie insisted on taking the wheel?
Her father had known the truth. She could still see his drawn face, his dark Leary eyebrows pulled together in a black frown, his eyes tortured. His fingers pressing into her palms had felt cold and had trembled slightly. “My God, Allison, whatever possessed you to allow Susie to drive the car?”
Fifteen years later, his agonized words still sounded louder in her ears and heart than the real voices of the people inside Taylor’s house. Allison closed her eyes. Unable to explain to him then why Susie had been driving, she was unable to explain now because he was gone, taken the same way Susie had been; by a sharp curve, a dip in the road and a truck where it shouldn’t have been.
She hadn’t even come home for the funeral.
The screen door squeaked a protest and alerted Allison to company. She relaxed slightly upon seeing her sister settle into the other rocker on the back porch. They sat in silence for a few moments, then Taylor said, “A bit overwhelming?”
Allison flashed a wistful smile in her sister’s direction. “Like an avalanche.” She ached to tell her about the past two months, the losses of memory, the terror of the panic attacks. She longed to be held in her sister’s loving arms and called “honey” again.
Taylor chuckled. “Steve said the scariest thing about signing on with me is that he feels like he’s marrying the whole town.”
Allison’s wistfulness shifted to a genuine humor. She liked Steve Kessler, who would soon become her brother-in-law. “He seems to take it in stride,” she said. “He doesn’t look like much fazes him.”
“No. If he can put up with the boys, he can do anything.”
Allison wondered if Taylor sensed an awkwardness between them, too. It was as if they were strangers pretending to be sisters, stage actors trying to feel their way through an impromptu role.
As if reading her mind and answering the question in a roundabout fashion, Taylor said, “And Carolyn? What do you think of her? You never met her when she was married to Craig, did you?”
Allison frowned over the questions, perhaps seeking censure in the reference to her long absence, an indictment of her studied withdrawal from her family’s concerns. “I like her, too,” she said simply. “And her husband.”
“Pete’s perfect for her,” Taylor said, and fell silent for a few seconds before continuing. “Sometimes I forget she’s not my—our—real sister.”
Allison flinched a little at her sister’s words but didn’t want to make any comment, because she deserved whatever censure Taylor may or may not have intended. Carolyn’s been more my sister than you have been.
“He reminds me a little of Craig,” Allison said.
“That’s what I said when I first met him. He doesn’t anymore.”
Allison glanced at her sister for elucidation.
“I loved Craig, you know that. But I wasn’t blind to his faults. I don’t think Pete has those flaws.”
Allison thought about her easygoing brother, his willingness to let hard work and responsibility roll off his shoulders. She remembered his winning smile, his natural charm and his lazy assurance that he would always land on his feet.
She contrasted this with the quiet former FBI agent she’d met inside, a man whose every fiber bespoke commitment and protectiveness to his new family, his wife, his two adopted daughters, even the long absent Allison.
Another of those tension-filled silences threatened to swamp them before Taylor and Allison started to speak at the same time.
“You first,” Allison said, laughing a little, more in nervousness than anything else.
She couldn’t read her sister’s expression. Too many years had passed since the days of slumber parties, wishful thinking and having to completely clean the bedroom before morning.
Taylor said softly, “I was only going to say I was surprised Chas—Doc—didn’t stop by to welcome you home.”
Chas. Someone had finally mentioned the dreaded name. Unconsciously Allison folded her hands across her empty womb, protecting that which she’d lost so very long ago. Trying ineffectually to protect herself.
“Oh?” Allison asked, unable to look at her sister, hoping that she’d made the single syllable sound distantly curious. Doc who?
Her sister chuckled. “You had such a crush on him, remember?”
Allison forced a smile to her seemingly frozen lips. She couldn’t speak and settled for an inarticulate sound. Until that moment, she’d always assumed that Taylor knew the truth, had known what had really happened the day Susie died. Now she knew otherwise. Because if Taylor had known the full details, she would never have teased Allison about having a crush on Dr. Charles Jamison.
In New York, during the past two months, she’d had to struggle every day, every second, to maintain some semblance of control on her errant memory. Here in Almost, no one cared about the immediate past; yesterday was just a touch away and tomorrow was at arm’s length in that immutable present that existed for them. Here her strange mental aberration seemed almost inconsequential. Or it would until she experienced one of her attacks.
“Well, speak of the devil...” Taylor said, pushing herself out of the rocker and gliding down the back-porch steps, her hands outstretched to the man rounding the side of the house. “Doc! I knew you’d come by.” She tilted her head toward the porch. “Look who’s home...our Allison.”
Allison tried to stand up but realized immediately that her trembling legs wouldn’t have supported her. She clutched the arms of the rocker with such intensity that she felt the wood grain through her palms and fingertips.
It seemed to take forever for Chas to turn his head to look at her. Allison felt the shock of their gazes interlocking. Her heart pounded so rapidly and painfully that she couldn’t hear what Taylor said next, though it made Chas smile a little and turn loose of her hands.
She relaxed slightly,
realizing that the feelings that were sweeping through her, though paniclike, weren’t anywhere close to the attacks that propelled her to run blindly, screaming, away from whatever prompted them. She was only suffering the normal, everyday terror of having to greet a former lover.
No big deal.
A piece of cake.
But she was still shaking like a proverbial leaf.
He had changed, of course. She tried telling herself that people’s appearances did alter in fifteen years, that she couldn’t expect him to be a kid anymore. He had to be forty-two now.
His sandy brown hair was streaked with strands of silver, and the lines on his broad, tanned face attested to his years of outdoor living and the many times he’d laughed. His lanky body had developed into what a man’s body should be, lithe, supple and lean. His height once might have been called gangly or lanky; now he was tall and broad shouldered.
“Hello, Allison,” he said.
The sound of his deep, rough voice sent a shock wave down her spine. She had once called it a burlap voice, warm and scratchy at the same time. He’d chuckled back then, a raspy, throaty sound that had lingered in her memory and now warred with the reality of hearing that raw-silk voice again.
“Chas...” she murmured, unable to do more.
The screen door creaked, and Allison jumped a little as Sammie Jo called for Taylor. “The boys want to try out their new video equipment Allison brought them, and I’ve told them they have to wait for you. Why...hello, Charles.”
Taylor made swift excuses and disappeared with their aunt into the kitchen, closing the back door firmly behind her. Shutting Allison outside in the twilight with Chas.
With the fear of a rabbit staring into the eyes of a fox, Allison cursed her own vulnerability that had been so recently and unwarrantedly thrust upon her. She watched Chas mount the few steps leading to the porch with a sense of impending doom.
He moved with a fluid, almost lazy grace. A man’s walk. He leaned against one of the porch’s four-by-four posts and shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. His broad shoulders blotted out the roseate sky.
Almost Remembered Page 3
