The Mud Sisters

by Edie Claire

  It would have been a good line if she could have delivered it without her voice quavering.

  Eric moved into the kitchen. “Sorry,” he called out as the whistle muffled, then died. “Jamie looked for a second like she was going to pass out, but I think she’s all right now.”

  Teagan’s gazed turned toward the blonde sitting at her table. Jamie’s skin was pale, but each cheekbone sported an incongruous patch of red that only served to magnify her perfect bone structure. “I’m fine,” Jamie mumbled. “Just a little worn out. Your husband’s a real slave driver when it comes to this memory thing.”

  Eric appeared in the doorway. He threw Jamie an odd look that seemed half indignation, half admiration; then he hastened to Teagan’s side. “Don’t listen to her,” he said lightly. “It was her own fault she took off running—not my idea.” He pulled Teagan to him and held her tightly.

  Teagan hugged him back. He and Jamie were clearly covering something up, but the fervor of his embrace bolstered her. Whatever was going on, he would tell her the truth about it later—she was certain of that. She was also certain that right now, all he wanted was to get the hell out of Dodge.

  “I’m going to the workshop for a while,” he proclaimed, releasing her with an uncharacteristic kiss on the cheek. “Call me if you need me.” He stepped back briskly, threw Jamie a perfunctory parting wave, and disappeared into the hall.

  Teagan watched after him for a long moment, her mind racing. His embrace had been reassuring; his kiss, not so much. In fact, something about it had been distinctly disturbing. But she could not—and would not—think about that now.

  She took a deep breath and turned, slowly, back to Jamie. She hadn’t faced her erstwhile friend since learning the truth about their shared history, and that prospect had been harrowing enough without this debacle added on.

  Just don’t think about it. Any of it.

  She pulled out another chair and sat down. Jamie regarded her hostess studiously, as if trying to remind herself who she was.

  “You almost passed out?” Teagan inquired. Her voice sounded harsh. Cold. She should probably get a grip on that.

  Or not.

  Jamie’s golden eyes were swimming with emotion, and at first she seemed unable to speak. “I guess I was pretty close to it, yes,” she answered finally. Her tone was breathy and fatigued, without a trace of defensiveness.

  Its candor was unexpected. Teagan found herself taken aback.

  “I tried to jog, earlier,” Jamie continued wearily. “It was stupid, I know. It really wiped me out. Is the detective coming soon?”

  “He should be,” Teagan answered. Her eyes were locked on Jamie’s. She studied every glimmer, every nuance of expression. She was looking for guilt. All she saw was discouragement.

  She cleared her throat and regrouped.

  Innocent until proven guilty.

  “I’m glad he’s not here yet,” Teagan continued, her voice, if not all her feelings, back under control. “It’s just as well if you and I talk alone first.”

  Jamie’s face remained passive, almost disinterested. “About what?”

  Teagan continued the eye contact. “About your name. You told me it was Knight. You told Eric it was Meadows. Neither one was right. You have any explanation for that?”

  Jamie’s eyebrows rose. She blinked once, then twice. Then, to Teagan’s amazement, she burst out laughing. “Oh, my God,” she chortled, her eyes watering heavily. “No wonder nobody knows who the hell I am.”

  She chuckled until Teagan interrupted her. “So, you remember your real name now?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jamie answered with a snort. She attempted to wipe her eyes, but banged her cast against her face instead. She swore, then switched hands. When she finally looked back at Teagan, her tone was apologetic. “Sorry about that—I didn’t mean to make you mad. It wasn’t anything personal. I’ve been lying about my name since kindergarten.”

  Teagan’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

  “Because it sucks. It’s the most horrible name in the world—one kids can’t resist pronouncing the wrong way to make it crude. It made my school days a living hell. I could never understand why my mom didn’t ditch it. I sure did. I wrote it down on official papers, but anybody who didn’t have to know, I told different. I always wanted to change it legally, but I wasn’t sure how, and I was afraid it would cost too much. So whenever I could get away with it, I just lied.”

  “What was it?” Teagan asked.

  Jamie grimaced. “Fukas.”

  Teagan thought a second. “Gotcha.”

  “Meadows was what I used the most,” Jamie explained. “I liked the sound of it. That’s what everybody at Vermelli’s called me. Only the management knew otherwise, and as long as I used the right name on my bank and tax stuff, they didn’t care. I didn’t have a driver’s license or a credit card, so it wasn’t like anyone else could find out that easily.” She paused. “What name did I tell you again?”

  “Knight.”

  Jamie smiled. “You must have caught me in the middle of my Brady Bunch phase. I had a crush on Peter—Christopher Knight.”

  The feeling overtook Teagan despite her resistance. The same warm, companionable sentiment that always swamped her when she thought of Jamie the girl. Never mind the justifiably mixed feelings she had for the adult. Sitting here now, listening to a Jamie who looked twenty-six but sounded twelve confess to having been smitten with the curly haired Peter Brady, the two women could just as easily be back in the canoe, wearing mud-spattered swimsuits and swerving to avoid imaginary manatees.

  “I had a thing for Peter, too,” Teagan admitted, allowing herself a grin. “Of course, that show was so old the actor was probably forty by the time we saw it. Hopeless cable junkies, that’s what we were—at least during the school year. We probably should have been reading.”

  “Speak for yourself. I read Tiger Beat.”

  They shared a laugh, and a pang struck Teagan’s middle. Why did her relationship with Jamie have to be so blasted complicated?

  Just don’t think about it.

  Teagan straightened in her chair. She could do this. Really, she could.

  “So, tell me,” she began, trying hard to keep her voice businesslike. It was the only way she knew to discuss anything even remotely related to Eric without degenerating into a screeching harpy. “How much did you remember today? What’s the closest thing to the present you can recall?”

  Jamie’s eyes flashed disappointment. “Well, having my name come back is something, I suppose. The details are filling in. But I still can’t remember anything recent. I remember starting classes at Pitt not long after I left Vermelli’s, but that would be four or five years ago.”

  Teagan considered. “You might still be in school now, then.”

  Jamie’s brow creased. “Maybe. But I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Jamie didn’t answer. She stared into space across the table, her eyes distant. “I can’t explain it,” she said finally. “I just have this feeling that even before I wound up in the hospital, something had changed. That I was… someplace different.”

  She said no more, but the hollowness in her voice spoke volumes.

  Teagan’s natural empathy was immediate, and involuntary. “A good place, or a bad place?” she prompted.

  Moisture returned to Jamie’s eyes. She shook her head slowly. “It’s like… I’m afraid to think about it.”

  Silence descended. Teagan mulled the vague answer as Jamie made an obvious struggle to control her welling tears. She did look tired. Perhaps the day had been too much for her.

  Unfortunately, it was about to get worse.

  Now was obviously not the ideal time to remind Jamie of the assault, much less inform her of how anxious her attacker was to renew their acquaintance. But Teagan didn’t feel she had any choice. Either the news would come from her, now, or from a man Jamie barely knew in about ten minutes. “Jamie,” she began softly. “There’s so
mething you need to know. About the person who assaulted you.”

  Jamie huffed out a breath. “Sure. Why not? Lay it on me.”

  Teagan chose her words with care. “Someone who watched your story on the news sent a get-well card to the hospital, addressed to ‘The Woman from the Park.’ It was routed to me, and I opened it.”

  Jamie’s eyes showed no emotion. “Yeah? So? I don’t mind.”

  “It wasn’t really a get-well card. Someone wanted to deliver a message to you, but they didn’t want anyone else to see it. So they hid the words in the middle of a hand-written note that looked like it was coming from an elderly lady.”

  Jamie’s eyes widened. A flush of color returned to her face, and she sat up straight in the wooden chair. “What did it say?”

  Teagan hesitated. “I didn’t memorize it, and the detective came and picked it up for testing. But the gist of it made us both believe that it was written by the person who assaulted you.”

  Jamie’s expression didn’t change, but a tremor in her shoulders made the fiberglass cast bobble on the tabletop. “What did it say?” she repeated.

  “It claimed that what happened was a misunderstanding,” Teagan explained. “An accident. The individual seemed to know that you had amnesia, but suspected that you would remember him soon, and he wanted you to call him before you talked to anyone else. He said he would make it worth your while.”

  For a moment, Jamie’s body seemed frozen. Then slowly, her golden eyes began to gleam. Behind them, Teagan could see hot anger sparking up like a flame, and she found herself fighting an urge to recoil. But she managed to stay calm and silent, even as the fire grew to an inferno.

  Jamie bolted up from her seat and stood in place, one hand still in contact with the table for support, her chest heaving with uneven breaths. “So, on top of everything else, he thinks I’m stupid?!” she roared.

  Teagan remained sitting, trying hard to stay composed as she struggled with a near-nonsensical urge to laugh. Only Jamie, in the face of an attempt at murder in cold blood, could be more offended at the insult to her intelligence than to her person.

  “He’s the stupid one, Jamie,” Teagan responded evenly. “And we’re going to get the bastard. You know we will.”

  Jamie made no response. Her eyes glowed like embers as she stared straight through Teagan, the wheels in her brain seeming to spin at warp speed. “I should call him,” she said finally. “Damn, I can’t wait. I’ll tell him I’ll keep my mouth shut for oh, say… a hundred thousand in cash? We’ll set up a meeting somewhere, and the second he shows the cops will bust his ass.” A grim smile spread across her face, and her voice turned suddenly hopeful, almost childlike. “You think they’d let me keep the money?”

  Teagan could contain herself no longer. She burst out laughing.

  “What?” Jamie demanded, sounding near her usual self again. “You don’t think I’d do it? Or you don’t think I deserve the money?”

  Teagan wiped her watering eyes. Today of all days, the relief of a laugh felt amazingly good. If nothing else, it could keep her from crying.

  All at once, she knew that Jamie felt the same.

  “I know you’d set him up,” Teagan assured, playing along. “I just don’t know if you could wait for the cops to get there before you smacked him upside the head.”

  Jamie studied her with a smirk. “Beating men up is more your style, Teag. I prefer to torture them, slowly, with my superior intellect.”

  Teagan grinned. “In that case, the man is toast.”

  Jamie’s tone was steely. “A chunk of smoldering ash, baby.”

  Is the king purple, too?

  No, his body is purple, but his head is green, with fish scales.

  Teagan gave her head a shake. Connecting with Jamie could bring back the most ridiculous mental images—things that meant nothing, things she would have thought were long since forgotten. Her conscience seemed to be goading her toward the unacceptable conclusion that Jamie the girl and Jamie the sexpot were the same person. She could not divide them; she could not be nice to one and stick pins in the other. It was this Jamie, and no other, with whom she had fantasized about enchanted fish and the curse of the flipper people.

  “Teag?” Jamie asked tentatively.

  Teagan started, her mind still clouded in thought. “Yeah?”

  “Are you going to answer the door bell? Or do you want me to get it?”

  Teagan sat up. She had heard the doorbell, hadn’t she? “Someone must be at the door.”

  “A brilliant deduction,” Jamie quipped.

  “Shut up!”

  We’ll be just like real sisters.

  Teagan shook her head again. She rose.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Teagan picked at her dinner. She had no appetite. From the look of Eric’s equally untouched plate of microwaved frozen lasagna, she figured he didn’t either. She had expected they would talk over the meal, but so far, they hadn’t gotten around to it. They were both walking on eggshells.

  The detective’s visit had been brief. He had arrived looking flustered and exhausted, then took down Jamie’s real name and discussed the greeting card in an almost robotic manner. Once he had ascertained that Jamie’s returning memory still fell short of identifying her attacker, he asked no further questions.

  He did assure her that the station would run a thorough check on her ID. But he did not, Teagan noticed, promise Jamie they would share that information immediately. Rather, he admonished her not to move back to wherever she had been living before the attack—no matter what she thought she remembered—until the police had a chance to investigate the premises. He would be off-duty tomorrow, but he had left her with the name of another detective in the department to call in case of any significant developments. Otherwise she was to sit tight until he contacted her on Monday.

  Overall, it was a less than encouraging interview.

  “I hope the microwave in the apartment still works,” Teagan said idly, disengaging an unappetizing strand of orange-stained mozzarella from the tines of her fork. “Cold soup isn’t much of a meal.”

  She hadn’t been looking forward to an awkward dinner for three, and evidently Jamie hadn’t either. No sooner was the detective out the door than Jamie had begged off, pleading fatigue. She had headed to her apartment with a can of soup, a package of crackers, and a two-liter of cola, and Teagan hadn’t argued. She had been too relieved.

  “The microwave works fine,” Eric answered, his voice deadpan. “I heat coffee in it all the time.”

  Teagan set down her fork. Her husband had barely made eye contact since returning from his workshop, and she could tolerate the gnawing in her middle no longer.

  “So, tell me,” she began, taking care to keep her voice even and free of accusation, even as her pulse skyrocketed. “Did Jamie remember the time you spent together?”

  Eric’s gaze met hers only briefly. He set his fork on his plate with a clank, picked up both, and took them into the kitchen. After a brief moment that felt like twelve eternities, he returned, pulled out the chair beside Teagan and sat down.

  He laid an arm across her shoulders and entwined his fingers affectionately in her hair. “Yes, she remembers,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need me to get her life back. She needs you.”

  Teagan felt another twinge of pressure building behind her eyes. He was trying his best to make the situation easier for her. But she had hardly been doing the same, had she?

  She caught his hand in hers and planted a kiss on his workshop-roughened knuckles. “I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “When I sent you out with her this morning, I didn’t think about how awkward it could be for you.”

  “It was fine,” he said dismissively.

  He was unconvincing.

  Teagan caught his eyes. “No, it wasn’t. I’m not blind. I know I walked in on something when I came home. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  He leveled a gaze back at her. “No,” h
e said firmly. “I don’t.”

  Teagan blinked in surprise. She sat still as he rose and took her dishes away to the kitchen. When she heard sounds of the dishwasher being loaded, she got up and followed him. She stood by mutely as he collected the day’s worth of assorted tumblers, tea cups, and stray forks from the far ends of the counter and dropped them into the racks. Only when he stopped and straightened did his eyes meet hers again, and when they did, he pulled her into his arms.

  His embrace was strong and affectionate, and it should have been comforting. But for the first time she could remember, the gesture only increased her unease.

  “I don’t mean to be mysterious,” he explained, seeming to sense the tension in her. “I just don’t want to talk about it. I honestly think it would be better for everyone if we didn’t. Are you okay with that?”

  Teagan breathed in deeply. The answer was no. Ancient history was one thing, but she was not okay with him and present-day Jamie keeping present-day secrets. Not when every single thing Eric had done and said since Teagan got home only confirmed that she actually had walked in on something.

  Still wrapped in his arms, she started to answer, then stopped herself. She did the same thing two more times.

  What could she say? Either she trusted him, or she didn’t. And she did trust him. She had no doubt whatsoever that if anything physical had happened, Jamie had started it, and he had ended it. There was also not a doubt in her mind that something physical had happened.

  So what was there to ask?

  How good is she?

  Her stomach threatened to heave.

  Eric relaxed his hold, brought a hand to her chin, and lifted it. “Look at me,” he said gently.

  She complied.

  “You know you have nothing to worry about with me. You know I’m madly in love with you. Is it too much to ask for you to give me some credit and just let this thing drop?”

  Hell, yes.

  “Of course not,” she heard herself lie, “Not when it was my own stupid fault for throwing the two of you together in the first place.”