Yesterday Lost Read online

  Katy felt almost limp with the effort and disappointment, but the lunch continued pleasantly with talk about Damascus and the activities of the two women during the week here in Yreka. They asked curious questions about the life of a New York model, and Katy used secondhand information acquired from Barry to answer them. And she could answer in the affirmative one question put to her: yes, she knew Cindy Crawford. Barry had said so. Of course, she didn’t admit that she couldn’t now remember knowing the supermodel. The lunch ended with the two women’s encouragement for Katy to come to Sunday services again, and she promised she would.

  On the way home Katy thought with frustration of that brief moment when an elusive something had almost emerged from the dark pit, with it the same shivery tingle she’d felt at the mention of crickets. Although probably none of it meant anything, she decided ruefully. Crickets and computers were hardly a logical or meaningful combination. And what did either have to do with the life of a sophisticated New York model?

  ***

  Back home, Katy wondered if Jace had tried to call while she and Mrs. L. were gone. They didn’t have an answering system. One of her father’s small peculiarities was that he hated them and wouldn’t use one. She could have a system set up now, of course. Not that she was deluged with phone calls even when she was home.

  She made a cherry cobbler and fidgeted restlessly after dinner, uneasy that she hadn’t heard from Jace all week. She was tempted to call him, but decided instead to complete the call to Dr. Fisher that she’d started to make when Barry was at the ranch. The doctor was delighted to hear from her, pleased that a date had been set for removal of the cast, sympathetic that in spite of Katy’s tantalizing reaction to crickets and computers, no real memories had surfaced from the dark pit of lost yesterdays. The phone rang again immediately after Katy hung up, and she reached for it eagerly, hoping the caller was Jace.

  The male voice was unfamiliar, however, and it asked for Mrs. Lennox.

  “Just a moment. I’ll get her.”

  “Wait. Is this Kat . . . Katy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Katy! This is Evan. Mrs. Lennox’s son.” He hesitated and then added a little awkwardly, “I hope you don’t mind, but Mom told me about your amnesia. I’ve thought about calling to talk to you, but I know you can’t remember me, and I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  Katy dropped to the edge of the bed, appreciating his consideration for her feelings. It was also nice, she thought wryly, to talk to a man who didn’t greet her with “Kat?” in an incredulous tone of disbelief. “I don’t know what I’d do without your mother. She’s been my Rock of Gibraltar here.”

  “She is that, isn’t she? Can I do anything to help?” She liked his voice, deeply masculine but warm and concerned.

  “Yes. Talk to me,” she said impulsively. Wasn’t it said that sometimes old people got fuzzy about the present but could remember far in the past with unclouded clarity? Maybe that was the way to attack her amnesia, with someone who’d shared her childhood memories as a child himself. She stretched out on the bed, free leg bent. “Tell me about when we were kids together.”

  “Well, let’s see.” He laughed, a chuckle as husky and pleasant as his voice. She remembered seeing snapshots of the two of them together, she tall and skinny, he, even though he was a couple of years older, shorter and more solid, with sturdy legs and a tousle of curly blond hair. “Do you want to hear about the nice things, such as the time we made sticky-sweet Mother’s Day cards? Or about all the mischief we got into together, like the time we splattered the kitchen with globs of chocolate and strawberry in an ice-cream fight?”

  “We didn’t!”

  “Oh, yes, we did. A fight which, I might add, you won. For a girl, you had a really wicked overhand throw,” he teased. “Not that winning did you any good. We were both sentenced to clean up the mess.”

  He went on, telling her of other escapades they’d shared, how he’d helped her with math and she’d helped him with boring history stuff, how they’d learned to swim together, how good her parents always were to him. “That was before your mother started writing her children’s books, but she always made up these wonderful bedtime stories for us. They always treated me as if I were a member of the family, not just the housekeeper’s son.”

  “It sounds as if we had a wonderful childhood together.” And as if, as a child, she was a nicer person then than she’d grown up to be.

  “But you don’t remember any of it?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. Evan, do you remember anything about crickets from when we were kids?” she asked impulsively.

  “Crickets? No, I don’t think so. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just felt odd the first time I heard the word, as if maybe it had some special meaning for me.’

  “You hated bugs and creepy-crawly things, so I was always teasing you with them, of course. I remember putting some kind of bug in your bed once, maybe a cricket, and you ran out screaming like a banshee.”

  Katy laughed. “I hope I got back at you some way.”

  “I don’t remember how just now, but I’m sure you did.”

  “Are you planning to come up to visit your mother soon?” She wished he would. Talking with him felt like a warm link with the past.

  “Nothing definite planned right now, but I do a lot of traveling for the company, so you never know.”

  “Your mother says you work too hard. She wishes you’d settle down with a nice girl and provide her with some grandchildren.” Even though she couldn’t remember him, she felt old-friends comfortable with him, free to say something teasingly personal like that.

  He laughed companionably. “Don’t you start on me about that too! Do you remember— No, of course you don’t. I’m sorry. But you and I had kind of a thing going for a while when we were in high school. Mom wasn’t working for your folks by then, and you and I went to different schools, but we hung out together anyway. I had this big, bad motorcycle and a black leather jacket, and you liked to roar around with me.” He laughed again. “But I guess we both outgrew that adolescent foolishness.”

  They talked a little longer, and then Katy put the phone down and went to tell Mrs. L. that Evan was on the line. Mrs. L. was meticulously cleaning the stove after a minor spill while cooking dinner, and she looked a little flustered as she dropped the scouring pad.

  “Oh, my, I usually call him. It isn’t up to you to be answering phone calls for me.”

  “He can call anytime,” Katy assured her. “We had a wonderful chat about old times. I loved talking with him. And he’s certainly welcome to come visit anytime.”

  After Mrs. L. finished talking with Evan, a thought, perhaps aroused by Evan’s reference to her mother’s storytelling, occurred to Katy. “Mrs. L. how did my mother write her books?”

  “How? Why, I don’t know, Sweetie. I guess she just had this wonderful imagination.”

  “No, I mean how physically. Longhand? Typewriter? Computer?”

  “Oh, how. At first she wrote every word in pen on a yellow legal pad, but she switched to a computer several years ago. It’s upstairs in her studio.”

  “I’m going up there!”

  “Oh, Katy, you could so easily fall on the stairs—”

  “Not the way I’m going to do it.”

  Katy hobbled to the foot of the stairs, handed her crutches to Mrs. L. and plunked herself down on the third step. Then, using her hands and one good leg, she scooted her bottom upwards step by step, a method that was effective if somewhat lacking in grace and elegance. She’d probably have figured out how to do this earlier, but getting upstairs hadn’t seemed important until now. Now she wanted to get her hands on that computer.

  Yet once she was seated at the computer, with her leg awkwardly propped to one side, no magic revelations about how to use it came to her. She tentatively pushed a couple of control buttons, but the dead screen showed only a faint reflection of her own face
.

  “Maybe it’s unplugged,” Mrs. L. suggested.

  Katy laughed delightedly. Of course! Computers 101. Always make sure the computer is plugged in before you panic and call the repairman.

  Mrs. L. got down on her hands and knees and fumbled with the cord. A tiny bulb on the surge protector glowed red, and the machine itself whispered small internal noises, as if gently waking after a long hibernation. Then color sprang to the screen, and Katy’s fingers felt an odd little tingle of excitement.

  “Should there be an instruction manual somewhere. Mavis would never throw something like that away if she had one.” Mrs. L. peered into drawers but didn’t come up with anything. She shook her head. “I’m going back to my kitchen now. No one is ever going to convince me that computers aren’t just some sort of electronic voodoo.”

  “I think sometimes there’s a password to open them.” Was there? How did she know that?

  How to operate the computer didn’t come back to Katy in a glorious rush of expertise, but after tentatively pressing keys and sliding the mouse around, she began to feel a definite sense of familiarity. But maybe her vague memory about passwords was wrong, because she didn’t seem to need one here. Or maybe her mother had simply felt a password wasn’t necessary.

  She stumbled into a game of solitaire, found a colorful array of graphics and a travel guide, and got chastised with a couple of error messages. Oh, and there was Microsoft Word, with a long menu of file names. Katy selected one that matched the name of one of her mother’s books, and there, direct from her mother’s imagination to the computer screen, was the story of how red-haired LuAnn conquered the monsters in her closet.

  She wandered further, feeling more confident with each changing flash of the screen. She found character and plot ideas, research notes, all making Katy feel closer than ever before to this mother she couldn’t remember. Her father had used the computer, too, because there were letters to firms with which he did business, fiery missives to politicians with whom he disagreed, a complaint to the Forest Service about over-logging. She got into an e-mail system and found communication between her mother and people at a publishing company. Oh, and here were financial records, neatly kept current daily. Until stopping with abrupt finality one day last summer.

  Katy was ready to shut the computer off then, suddenly tired and a little depressed, but one more item caught her eye. It was a letter written to her parents’ lawyer outlining several changes they wanted in their wills. Most were simply to clarify Katy’s position in regard to contracts her father had with various companies, but Mrs. L. was also mentioned. The name didn’t surprise Katy, but the amount of the bequest did: $100,000. She stared at the number, puzzled. That certainly didn’t jibe with the very modest sum Mrs. L. had available in her checking account when she made a partial payment on Katy’s hospital bill and which she’d said was an inheritance from Katy’s parents.

  Katy felt gratified knowing her parents had intended to be generous with Mrs. L., and perhaps Mrs. L. had most of the money securely tucked away in an investment account somewhere. But was it possible this letter had not been sent before her parents’ deaths, and Mrs. L. thus hadn’t received the amount of inheritance they intended her to have?

  After shutting off the computer, Katy slid her crutches down the stairs and cautiously made her own slower, bottom-sliding descent to the main floor. Mrs. L. had gone to her room, but a crack of light showed beneath the door.

  Mrs. L. opened the door when Katy knocked, and Katy realized she’d never seen inside the room before. It was a homey clutter of plants, piles of quilting squares, sewing machine, stacks of magazines and tiny TV, with the cats sprawled on the bed. Framed photos and a bulletin board of smaller snapshots covered most of one wall.

  “That’s my Evan, of course,” Mrs. L. said proudly when she saw Katy looking at the photos. “Would you like to come in and see?”

  The wall held a lifetime of Evan: Evan cherubic as a sturdy blond boy, smoldering and rebellious as a long-haired teenager, impressively handsome as an adult standing beside a gleaming, low-slung car.

  Mrs. L. pointed to an eight-by-ten photo of Evan, formally attired in a dark suit, shaking hands at a podium with an older man. “That’s when he won a company award for setting up the most new franchises. And these are when he was on vacation in Hawaii.” She unpinned several snapshots from the bulletin board and handed them to Katy.

  Evan was impressively muscular in swim trunks, superbly athletic on a surfboard, mischievously sexy leaning against a palm tree with a flowered lei around his neck. “No wonder you’re so proud of him,” Katy said honestly. She smiled. “Would it be rude to say he’s gorgeous?”

  Mrs. L.’s beaming smile said that wouldn’t be rude at all. “Oh, and this one!” She pointed to another photo. “It’s you and Evan when you were children, playing in a wading pool together.”

  It was a photo Katy had seen before in one of the family albums. Katy posing prettily, already showing her height, sturdy-bodied Evan industriously scooping up water with a pail. Probably getting ready to dump it on her, Katy thought with a smile.

  “Does it bring anything back to you?” Mrs. L. sounded wistful.

  Katy shook her head regretfully as she handed back the snapshots and returned to the reason she’d knocked. “I was wandering around in the computer files.”

  “You figured out how to run it, then?”

  “Unlikely as it seems, using a computer almost felt familiar.”

  “After you went up to the studio, I remembered that your mother showed you how to work it one time when you were here. You spent a lot of time on it, as I recall.”

  “That probably explains why it felt so familiar. Anyway, in one of the files I found some information that indicated you should have received a fairly generous sum from my parents’ estate.”

  “Oh, I did! Very generous.”

  “Forgive me, I don’t mean to pry.” Katy paused, embarrassed because she was prying. “But earlier you seemed, well, a little strapped financially.”

  Mrs. L. stopped short in the act of pinning the snapshots on the bulletin board, and for one uneasy moment Katy thought she was going to retort that her finances were none of Katy’s business. Instead, Mrs. L. put her fingertips together and looked embarrassed herself.

  “I know Thornton and Mavis left the money to me in the will because they wanted me to be secure financially if anything happened to them. But shortly after their deaths I learned my elder aunt Cora, my only living relative besides Evan, desperately needed an organ transplant. It was considered an experimental procedure, so Medicare wouldn’t pay for it, and, well, I couldn’t just let her die without trying to help.” Mrs. L. twisted her fingers together nervously.

  “Did the transplant save her?”

  Mrs. L. shook her head regretfully. “She died anyway.”

  “But you’d have felt even worse if you hadn’t tried to help her. You’re a remarkable woman, Mrs. L., and I’m proud of your generosity. And if you’re ever in a financial squeeze, you let me know, okay?”

  “You’re a wonderful girl, Katy. I wish—” Mrs. L. broke off, evidently further embarrassed at whatever it was she wished, and Katy gave her a quick hug. If she couldn’t have her own mother, Mrs. L. was surely the next best.

  The phone was ringing when Katy reached her bedroom. She picked it up eagerly.

  “Hi, Katy.”

  Yes! “Hi, Jace.” She knew she sounded eager and breathless and didn’t care.

  “I know it’s late, but if I whine and groan and plead will you take pity on me and invite me over for a cup of coffee?”

  Katy laughed. “Save the whining and groaning for another occasion. You’re invited. For coffee and cherry cobbler to go with it.”

  “You’ve been playing domestic goddess again?” he teased.

  “More or less. Actually, I’ve kind of been at loose ends the last few days.” She hesitated. “I’ve wondered if
perhaps you were annoyed or angry with me.”

  “Because I haven’t been over or called? Oh, Katy, no! Nothing like that.” His response was gratifyingly quick and positive. “I’ve been gone all week. I’ll explain when I come over, okay?”

  “I’ll unlock the front door, so just come on in when you get here.”

  Katy had barely unlocked the door and started a fresh pot of coffee when she heard the front door open. She couldn’t run to meet him, but she knew she would if she weren’t encumbered with cast and crutches. She also knew her joy at seeing him was as obvious as any run when she let the crutches clatter to the floor and lifted her arms to encircle his neck.

  He wrapped his arms around her in a big bear hug, and with a singing heart she knew he was as glad to see her as she was to see him.

  “I’ve missed you, Katy,” he said huskily against her hair, his breath warm on her ear.

  She leaned back within the solid circle of his arms and studied each detail of his face as if it had been years rather than a few days. Gold flecks in his hazel eyes glowed with unconditional gladness to see her, warm smile, wonderfully imperfect little crook to his nose. But he also looked tired, she realized. She lifted a hand and smoothed the faint shadow of dark whiskers on his jaw with her fingertips.

  “Are you telling me I need a shave before I can kiss you?” he teased.

  In answer to that she rose on her tiptoes and kissed him, the kiss deepening as he responded with a rough sound in his throat. When he finally lifted his head, he grinned. “Maybe I’ll have to go away more often if I get this kind of welcome home,” he said huskily.

  “Jace, where have you been? You didn’t tell me you were going anywhere.” She touched his jaw again, liking the roughness of masculine bristle against her fingertips.

  He kissed her again, more lightly this time, and then slumped wearily onto the bench of the breakfast nook. “I didn’t know I was going until the last minute. And then everything was so hectic down there.”