“Please don’t blame yourself, Dr. Braddock,” Dr. Carmichael continued. “There are many physicians in much larger cities who have seen dozens of these cases and have had no more success than you have. This requires specialized training. Dr. Arthur Hurst’s work in Britain has been nothing short of remarkable, and I believe that he’s found a system that works. Once I examine the patient, I’ll have a better idea of what we’re dealing with here.”
“We haven’t told him that you’re coming. But then, he isn’t speaking to any of us right now,” Susannah said.
They gave him a brief update of what had happened since Riley got home and the incident at Tilly’s. He continued his careful note-taking, nodding from time to time.
“What rank did he achieve in the army?”
“Sergeant—we were so proud…”
“There are several factors at work here—it sounds like we have our work cut out for us.”
• • •
Riley lay in the bed above Jessica’s office, staring at the ceiling. He had counted the number of narrow boards overhead, from wall to wall. There were sixty-three of them and one was slightly warped. He looked down his front from his shoulders. Someone had put him in hospital pajamas and there was a table with a pitcher and a glass beside the bed. The window was dressed in plain white curtains and had a shade on it pulled down to half-mast, but he could see it was raining outside. He’d had lots of time to study this room. Twice it had crossed his mind to escape, but both times he came to the same conclusion: he had nowhere to go. He had no money, no horse—Kuitan had been taken back to the farm—and no clothes. He was captive here without shackles.
His memory of being discovered in the blacksmith shop was fuzzy. In fact, many of the events of that day were fuzzy. He knew just three things for certain: he was not married to Susannah, she was married to Tanner Grenfell, and Grenfell, of all people, was the one who had found him.
Now he was just plain angry; even though Susannah had tried to talk to him, he hadn’t responded. But she said that even though they were no longer legally married, she had known from the moment she learned he was coming home that she must choose between Grenfell and him. He wasn’t sure he wanted any part of that. If he could remember what their life had been like before, maybe it would make a difference. He’d been lied to and now he wondered what else she was withholding from him.
From downstairs, he heard the low hum of voices and wondered what was going on now, and how long he would be kept here. Then he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and shifted his gaze to the door, wary and on guard. More than one person was out there. They lingered on the other side in the hallway, and finally someone tapped on his door.
“Riley?” It was Jessica’s voice.
He maintained his silence. The knob turned and he narrowed his eyes. Who was out there?
The door creaked open and he saw Jessica and Susannah. Behind them was a man, a stranger in an expensive suit. Riley lay in the bed staring at them. “Riley, this is Dr. Douglas Carmichael. He’s here to help you with your amnesia.”
He gave them a withering look and once again turned toward the wall. “Yippee.” He couldn’t get over the bizarre feeling of everyone knowing him and yet being unable to grasp one single thing from his past. In his heart, he resented them for that. They lived in a world they’d always known, and he’d been forced into it, forced to accept it and fit in. His only hope since he’d learned he’d be coming here was that he had a wife who knew him, a familiar face from an old photograph to hang on to. And he had clung to it like a drowning man clutched a snag in a churning river.
“Mr. Braddock, it’s nice to meet you.”
Hah, he was meeting the back of Riley’s head, and that was all the man would get from him.
“I understand your apprehension. You’ve traveled a hard road these past few years. But if you’ll give me some time and your attention, I think I can make things easier for you.”
Riley sighed, still facing away, and the sarcasm in his voice was unmistakable. “Really.”
“Yes, if you’ll meet me halfway and let me try. I came from Portland especially to see you.”
His anger smoldering beneath the surface flared to life like a match. It made him forget to keep his face to the wall. “Can you erase the lies my wife and family told me?” He turned over and sat up against the pillows. “‘Oh, we’re so glad to see you, it’s a miracle.’ And that gnarled gargoyle who is my father, a stranger to me, telling people I saved thirty-two men so he can bask in my supposed glory and cadge free drinks at the soda fountain?” He put critical emphasis on this insult.
Dr. Carmichael’s brows rose and he glanced at the women, who wore helpless, apologetic expressions.
“The elder Mr. Braddock is somewhat—colorful,” Jessica said, groping for an explanation.
“Colorful! A baboon’s ass is colorful. That old man is a rotting tooth on two legs.”
Jess turned away, and Susannah could see that she was doing her best to choke down a bubble of laughter at the graphic and accurate image Riley had created. But Susannah was mortified.
“Riley!” Susannah gasped, a furious blush rising from her neck to her forehead. “Doctor, really, I must apologize—”
Riley’s right hand began opening and closing where it rested on the mattress, but she was so accustomed to the action, she barely noticed. Carmichael, however, paid close attention.
“Don’t apologize for me. You don’t speak for me. Not one of you does.”
The doctor turned to Jessica and Susannah. “Ladies, perhaps this would be a good time to step out.”
“Yes, I think you’re—” Jessica began.
Riley shouted, “Why? They know about all of this. They saw it from the beginning.”
Susannah could hardly believe what she saw or heard. This was not Riley Braddock, not the man she remembered nor the one who had come home two months earlier. He had been reticent and uncertain. The enraged man in the bed was yet another person, a frightening man who would hold nothing in check. And worst of all, she had a miserable feeling that he was partly justified.
Suddenly, Riley sat up and reached forward with his right hand, grasping for the same thing he always reached for—a thing only he could see, and only a buried memory recognized. “Whip! Come on!”
Rather than seeming alarmed, Dr. Carmichael stood with one arm crossed, supporting his elbow as he considered this display with his thumb tapping against his mouth. When the fit passed and Riley fell back against the pillows, he approached the bed.
“Sergeant Braddock!” the doctor said in a commanding voice.
Riley snapped up again. “Sir!”
Susannah stared, her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“Sergeant Braddock, report your location!”
“The Argonne Forest. We’re taking heavy artillery fire!” His eyes were wide open, as always during one of these events. “Gas! Oh, Jesus God, gas again!” Abject fear was plain in the sound of his voice. He made a fumbling motion at his chest and went through the process of putting on an invisible gas mask.
Susannah watched him, spellbound, with chills flying down her back. Jessica looked like Susannah thought she herself must appear.
“Whip!” Riley screamed. “The sons of bitches gassed Whip! Don’t you worry, Fournier, I won’t leave you out here!” He started dragging at something. It all looked familiar but now there seemed to be a story to go with Riley’s pantomime. Suddenly he collapsed, wearing a puzzled expression. “Cherry bark and almond,” he muttered. “Cherry…almond.”
And then he slipped away from consciousness and into whatever private hell his mind took him to.
• • •
Jessica and Susannah were sent downstairs before Dr. Carmichael hypnotized Riley. Under normal circumstances, he’d said, Jess could have stayed but she was a family member and too close to the situation. They waited in her office, listening to the muffled talk and Riley’s occasionally ra
ised voice from the second floor. Shaken, they sat like two mannequins, not moving, not talking.
At last they heard Carmichael coming down and were so anxious to discover his findings, they both tried to squeeze through the doorway to Jessica’s office at the same time. Susannah turned sideways to break up the jam and they met him at the bottom of the steps.
He looked at them with raised brows and a sigh. “Well, I think I’ve discovered the answers to the mysteries you’ve been dealing with in Mr. Braddock.” He gestured them back to Jess’s office.
They walked in and took their seats.
“I imagine you realized that gripping and reaching tic had to do with trying to save someone.”
“Yes, but who? It’s never been clear.”
“Under hypnosis, I discovered the person’s identity. A man named Remy Whipperton Fournier III was a soldier from Louisiana who was in Mr. Braddock’s platoon. They were friends and he was generally known to his comrades as Whip or Whippy.”
Susannah sat back in her chair, the side of her index fingertip pressed to her lower lip. “Whip is a person? He was killed?”
“Yes. Apparently their outfit was caught in No Man’s Land in the Argonne Forest when they encountered a combination of German shelling and a gas attack. They’d managed to entrench themselves but Fournier was lagging behind. He wasn’t able to put on his gas mask before it overtook him, and Mr. Braddock refused to leave him out there to be used for target practice by the Germans, as he put it. He jumped out of the shallow pit and ran to get him. He said he’d rather that Fournier die with his own men than by himself. It seems that he was still alive when Mr. Braddock reached him, but he was blinded by the gas and not able to breathe. Poison gas—well, it’s a brutal way to die. It blisters all tissues, inside and out, and causes hemorrhaging.”
Jessica reached for her handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
“So in what were probably his death throes, Fournier grabbed onto the first thing he felt in his hand—Mr. Braddock’s identification tags. In the process, Mr. Braddock was shot in the leg and received that graze on his temple. When Fournier’s body was collected, the tags were still clutched in his hand. Mr. Braddock assumed he’d be able to tell the ambulance drivers who he was, but the ambulance was shelled. So presumably, the army believed they’d recovered the body of Riley Braddock. Fournier had given away his own tags to, um, a young lady as a keepsake several days earlier. Of course, this explains why Mr. Braddock had no identity of his own when he was taken in by the French farm woman who rescued him, and there were no survivors in the ambulance besides him.”
“He told you all this?” Susannah asked.
“Under hypnosis, yes. You’d be surprised by the memories our minds tuck away, events that we have long forgotten. Or think we have. They are there, hiding in the darker corners. His experiences were too much for his mind to endure, so to protect itself it produced his state of amnesia. I would imagine that somewhere in France a grave holds Fournier with Sergeant Riley Braddock’s name carved on the headstone. Certainly, there’s no telling if Fournier’s family knows what became of him. The army didn’t.”
“Doctor, what was he talking about when he mentioned cherry and almond?” Jess asked.
“Oh,” he turned to Susannah. “He said that after he was shot and before he lost consciousness, instead of smelling the charcoal in his gas mask, he smelled you, Mrs. Grenfell. He said you wear a fragrance of cherry and almond.”
Susannah looked at the floor and clamped her lip between her teeth, trying to stop its quivering, but it was no use. Her voice shook as well. “I—I use Jergens lotion. That’s how it smells.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “H-how is he now?”
“I gave him a sedative to sleep. I think he’ll be much improved, but we still have some work to do. I believe there’s a lot of resentment that he has been forced to live in a world that he just doesn’t know. And he’s still quite, well, angry that he wasn’t told about your remarriage sooner.”
Stricken by what sounded like criticism, Susannah was about to begin explaining herself when Jessica looked at her and jumped in. “Honestly, Dr. Carmichael, as I said, we didn’t know how to handle this situation. We didn’t know which would be worse—the truth as Riley remembered it or the truth as it is now.”
He held up a hand. “Ladies, please understand that I’m not placing blame on anyone. This is a highly unusual circumstance, and it’s something he’ll have to come to terms with. Persuasion and dietary treatment are also part of the recovery. I’m fairly confident I can get him back to a better level of functionality. Ninety percent of Dr. Hurst’s patients have been cured in one session. Still, each patient is different. I am not a sorcerer who can cast a spell and make Mr. Braddock’s problems disappear. I believe this will take longer but I’m very optimistic.” He assembled his papers and put them in his briefcase. “I’ll be staying in town for at least a couple of days. I believe you said there’s a hotel?”
“You’re welcome to use the apartment upstairs, Doctor, if you’d like. It’s just across the hall from the patient room. I’ll be going home at the end of the day. There’s a café across the street, and if you tell Mae Rumsteadt, the owner, that you need a special diet for Riley, I know she’ll help with that.”
“Thank you very much. I’d like that. I’ll also be able to keep a closer eye on Mr. Braddock.”
• • •
Dr. Carmichael stayed for three days to work with Riley. Susannah had thought his enthusiasm for Riley’s recovery was a bit too optimistic. But the fourth day after his hypnosis treatment, Riley came down the stairs in Jessica’s clinic. She heard his footsteps and went to meet him. He was bathed, combed, and dressed in a pale-blue band-collar shirt and black wool pants. His face looked haggard but she suspected that hers did too.
She had come into town with Jess to see him, if he would agree to it. Now, except for the limp and his cane, at first glance she would have sworn this was the man she’d married, the husband she’d known before the war. Tentatively, she smiled at him, so glad to see him without that haunted look in his eyes that had lurked there since the day he’d arrived in Powell Springs. Until yesterday, he’d seemed like someone caught in a twilight between sleep and wakefulness, when all the demons come out.
He gave her a small smile in return.
“How are you feeling, Riley?” Oddly self-conscious, she smoothed her hands over her skirt and folded her arms across her chest.
His shrug was rueful. “A little better now. Still a stranger but one with a better memory. Dr. Carmichael said that my past will become clearer with time. Right now, it’s like remembering a dream—vivid, but not exactly real.”
She looked up into his face, so familiar to her, if a bit careworn, a bit older. And of course, there was that scar on his temple that was still pink after two years. What must he have looked like when he was first injured? “I can’t imagine what a strange feeling it must be. I—I want to apologize again for not explaining everything to you when you came home. We just weren’t sure—”
He held up a hand. “I know, and maybe you were right. But we can’t change that. We can only go on from here. And I guess I have some apologizing to do myself for what happened at Tilly’s.”
Susannah wondered where going “on from here” would lead them. “I had Granny Mae send over breakfast for you. I’ve been keeping it warm on Jessica’s stove in the back. She’s out on a house call—old Mr. Matthews’s arthritis has pretty much left him housebound.”
“Sure. Breakfast.”
She led the way to the back of the office where Jess had a worktable and her surgery. His memory might have returned but his gait was the same. She could hear him behind her. “Dr. Carmichael went down to the depot to buy his ticket back to Portland. Here, come and sit down.” She took the plates from the stove and put them on a tray with silver and a napkin. “There’s oatmeal and toast, some canned peaches, and coffee.”
The fragrance of the meal was tempting
to Riley. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a decent meal since that day in Tilly’s. He sat on the stool she pointed to and let Susannah serve him. He didn’t want the role of invalid, but the past few days had been exhausting. The hangover alone from the whiskey he’d drunk in the blacksmith shop could have brought a horse to its knees. He’d had nothing stronger than wine in the last few years, and then only when Véronique could get it. But at Tilly’s when that idiot drunk Winks Lamont had stumbled in and shot off his mouth, it felt as if an electrical storm had erupted in his head. Learning that he was not married to Susannah when he’d believed he was had turned his thoughts into incoherent chaos. And he realized now, the reeking mess that was Winks had seemed familiar because that was what life in the trenches had smelled like: mildew, dirty clothes, unwashed bodies, rot, manure, death.
“You were wearing a blue dress the night I met you at the grange dance. I remember it had a row of ruffles or something around the neck.”
Susannah lowered herself into a hard wooden chair that stood against the wall and stared at him. “You remember that?”
He smiled. “Yes, for some reason. I thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. I think you’d had some hard times.”
She raised her brows and looked at a knob on a drawer. “I had. My brother and father were killed in a logging accident in the woods.”
“A steam donkey exploded and they were standing too close.”
“That’s right, too!” she said, now truly amazed. “Maybe Dr. Carmichael is right. He said the mind tucks away all sorts of memories in a kind of mental storage.”
“It’s all I can remember about your past.”
“Still, that’s pretty surprising.”
“Tell me more about yourself.” He took a bite of toast.
She sighed quietly. “I was twelve when that happened. I still had my mother but we weren’t very close, and I couldn’t begin to fill the empty places they left for her. She never said anything, but I felt her resentment in a hundred little ways. Why couldn’t it have been you instead of them? At least that’s how it felt to me. We had no way to pay the mortgage on our property so we went to live with my aunt and uncle. They had to feed and clothe us, and they weren’t too happy about that.”
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