Yesterday Lost Page 15

  The crowd cheered. Katy waited until Jace was back on the perch, then dusted her hands with a smug air of success. But before she turned away, she grinned and recklessly blew him a kiss.

  A few minutes later Mac’s voice calling everyone to eat came over the loudspeaker, and he offered a prayer of blessing and thanks. Boys from the school lined up behind a long table decorated in red, white, and blue to serve the food. Little Ramsey grinned at Katy and handpicked a special piece of American-flag cake with a star on it for her. She and Mrs. L. found empty places at a picnic table and dove into what Katy instinctively thought of as perfect Fourth-of-July food: barbecued chicken, potato salad, baked beans, and coleslaw.

  She was just finishing her second piece of chicken when Jace plopped down beside her with a full plate of his own, and Joe joined Mrs. L. on the opposite side of the picnic table.

  “Traitor,” Jace muttered. “Who’d have thought you could hit the target like that? Those boys dunked me so many times I could have passed for a prune, and then you came along and did it too.”

  He’d donned a denim shirt, and it hung open over his hard-muscled chest. His dark hair fell with boyish abandon across his face. He looked rugged and carefree and teasingly handsome, not a prune wrinkle in sight.

  Later, as the summer dusk deepened, Jace brought a blanket to spread on the grass. Joe, who seemed to know a little about everything, disappeared around the barn to set off the fireworks. The first rocket exploded in a blaze of fiery red twinkled with silver, and a fantastic display of color and light followed. Glittering skyfalls of rainbow colors, explosions shooting out of explosions so one sunburst became three, galaxy swirls of sparkling silver, shooting stars of gold, sky-fountains of flaming color. Booming and squealing and whistling rockets, then echoes of appreciative oohs and aahs from the crowd. Katy sat with her back against Jace’s chest, secure within the curve of his arms, excited but dreamy. And never happier.

  A stationary display of the Stars and Stripes ignited in a final blaze of glory, and everyone stood as the grand strains of the national anthem poured from the sound system.

  Immediately afterward the crowd stirred toward departure, companionable groups breaking up, saying good-byes, people calling to Jace that it was the best celebration ever. A general drift toward the parking area began as people hurried to beat the rush of traffic.

  But Katy didn’t move. She just stood there, muscles frozen. A blinding afterglow lingered in her eyes, a blaze of incandescent color and light that dizzied and dazzled her. But that wasn’t what held her rigid, eyes wide open but unseeing. It was the shadows.

  Shadows playing across a landscape of light somewhere inside her head. Dark figures, two of them. No, three! One smaller than the other two, three figures moving gently, almost in slow motion. She closed her eyes, straining to focus on the dark silhouettes hovering somewhere between her eyelids and that bottomless pit in her mind. Come out where I can see you! She commanded them fiercely. Then, pleadingly, Please! One figure turned a featureless face to her, as if it were about to speak.

  “Katy! Katy! Are you all right?”

  Katy blinked and looked up into Jace’s concerned face. She shook her head dazedly to clear both eyes and mind, as if for a few moments she had wandered somewhere outside this earthly dimension. “I guess the fireworks just blinded me for a moment.”

  An acrid scent of burned-out fireworks hung in the air. Headlights streamed out of the parking area, and red taillights flickered on the road. The shadows within her head were gone now, the dark pit closed again. But they were the beginning of a memory, Katy thought fiercely. For the first time, she’d had the real beginning of a memory!

  Mrs. L. touched her arm. “Katy?” She also sounded worried.

  “You tried to do too much today,” Jace said sternly. “Sit down again. We’ll wait for the traffic to clear out. What happened?”

  She sank back to the blanket, but she didn’t want to talk about this just yet, as if talking might destroy this tenuous connection with the past. She closed her eyes again, desperately willing the shadowy silhouettes to return, and Jace’s arm tightened around her as if he knew she was struggling with something.

  The traffic had thinned by the time Joe came out from behind the barn. Road dust hung heavy in the air. Katy stumbled to her feet.

  “I’m okay. Mrs. L. and I can make it home alone.”

  “No way,” Jace said with don’t-argue-with-me finality. He wrapped an arm around Katy’s shoulders. Joe fell into step with Mrs. L. behind them, and they all walked across the road together.

  At the house, Katy would have preferred to retreat to her room immediately, but Mrs. L. invited the men in for coffee. Jace and Joe sat at the breakfast nook rehashing the celebration, and Katy cut pie while Mrs. L. poured coffee. At the table she didn’t join the conversation, and finally Jace commented.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Katy? You seem so quiet.”

  She swallowed. “After the flag display blazed, my eyes felt strange, and then something happened.”

  “Happened?” Jace repeated, and they all eyed her alertly.

  “I saw these . . . shadows.” Katy covered her eyes with her hands, desperately trying to re-create the moment. “Shadows of people, three people, inside my head. They were just silhouettes, so I couldn’t tell who they were, but I know, I know, they were a memory trying to break through.”

  Katy pulled her hands away from her eyes and looked around at the three silent faces staring at her. No questions, no encouragement, nothing! Just those wide-eyed stares.

  Katy managed a shaky laugh. “Why are you all looking at me as if I’d just sprouted another head?” She suddenly slapped her palm against the table, almost angry. “Don’t you want me to remember?”

  Another stretched-out moment of silence, with Jace and Joe and Mrs. L. poised like a trio of divers before a deadly plunge down a cliff, until finally Jace hunched forward and curled his hand around hers.

  “Of course we want you to remember, Katy. It’s just that—” He hesitated as if embarrassed about his true feelings. His glance flicked to the other faces now focused on him. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I guess I’m afraid that if your memory comes back, you’ll turn into the old Kat. And I’ve become rather fond of the new one.”

  Katy touched her throat. Would that happen? Would she become the old self-centered, greedy, vindictive Kat again? She glanced at Mrs. L., who shook her head a little helplessly.

  “I’m sorry, Katy,” Mrs. L. said. “I do want you to remember! It’s terrible not to know your own past. And yet, since the accident, you’ve been so much more like the sweet little girl you used to be and less like the sophisticated, ambitious woman you became.” She, too, sounded embarrassed and guilty for feeling that way. “But you know how hard I’ve tried to help you remember!”

  “Yes, I know.” Katy again tried to smile. “I guess if it comes to a vote, the old Kat just doesn’t get re-elected to office.”

  Mrs. L. patted Katy’s hand. “We just want what’s best for you, Sweetie. I think I know what you’re remembering. It was a Fourth-of-July celebration your folks took you to when you were just a little girl. I wasn’t there because I’d gone to visit a relative, but later you went on and on about the flag that burst into explosion and fire. So seeing something similar tonight must have triggered your memory.”

  Katy squeezed her eyes shut again. “But there were three figures, and one was smaller.”

  Mrs. L. beamed. “Yes, that’s exactly right! And the third one was my Evan. Your folks offered to keep him over the holiday, and you all went to that Fourth-of-July celebration together!”

  Jace looked at his watch. “I’d better get back to the dorm. My turn to do bed check tonight. Walk me to the door, Katy?”

  At the door, Katy stepped outside with him, where the star-filled night glowed with an endless glory that the temporary brilliance of exploding fireworks could never mat
ch. Jace put his arms around her.

  “Maybe what I’m really afraid of is that if your memory returns, you’ll also remember that you’re in love with Barry.”

  “I don’t think so.” But she didn’t know so, and she searched his dark eyes helplessly. Now she felt poised on the brink of plunging down that cliff herself. Would everything change if her memory returned?

  His mouth dipped to hers, the kiss almost fierce, as if he desperately wanted to blot out any intruding memories that might come between them. Then the kiss turned gentler, sweeter, and when he lifted his mouth he still held her close.

  “Don’t change, Katy,” he whispered. “Please don’t change.”

  ***

  On Saturday, Jace left on his trip to Texas to persuade the computer company to donate the new equipment the school needed. He took Ramsey and another boy along as living examples of the work Damascus was doing.

  Katy knew Jace wouldn’t approve, but she didn’t go to Sunday services in the chapel that week. Instead she packed a sandwich, an orange, and a bottle of flavored tea in a backpack she found in the garage. Today she was going to take an actual hike, and she had a special destination in mind. She scribbled a note to Mrs. L, who was sewing in her room, guiltily dodging explaining her plans in person because she knew the housekeeper would disapprove and fuss at her.

  Jitters ruffled her nerves as she started across the meadow of waving grass behind the house. She determinedly soothed them. Jace never allowed the boys in the dangerous downstream area of white-water rapids, but there was no real danger for her. The river was not, after all, going to reach out and snatch her like some hungry beast.

  And she had to try this. Last night, in that floating twilight between awake and sleep, the shadows had returned. Three shadows, sharp in dark silhouette but mysteriously featureless. Tantalizingly they flickered across the background of her mind, the small one sometimes blithely twirling and dancing. Within her mind she chased them, desperately calling to them. They seemed unaware of her existence, but they melted into the dark pit if she got too close. And somehow, no matter what Mrs. L. said, she wasn’t convinced that they were her parents and Evan at some long-ago 4th of July celebration.

  Lying sleepless long after the shadows disappeared, she had worked out this plan. Her past had vanished in the wild surf of an Oregon beach. Making herself confront a similar wild-water danger here might be a way to jolt that past to life, to change those flickering shadows into real faces.

  Now she resolutely forced herself to ignore her apprehension and concentrate on the glorious summer day. Lush scents of meadow grass and blooming wildflowers, the tickle of grass on her bare legs, the soft call of an unseen quail. A yellow-and-black butterfly danced to silent music; a hawk circled effortlessly on an updraft of summer air; an iridescent hummingbird hovered over a flower. All so gloriously, serenely beautiful. The cats followed for a while, but they didn’t like the tall grass. Eventually they sat down, meowing in melodramatic protest as she continued on. Laughing, she turned and shooed them homeward.

  A few minutes later she stopped short when she stepped onto a harder, firmer-footed area of the meadow. What was this? Here, in a broad line arrowing in both directions, the grass grew only sparsely, as if at one time the ground had been scraped clean. At one end, something on the ground fluttered gently in the breeze, and near the flutter sunlight glinted on something metallic.

  Puzzled, she walked in that direction, then stopped short again as understanding claw-clutched her stomach.

  In theory she’d known this was out here, but this wasn’t theory; this was agonizingly real. This was the crude airstrip where her father’s plane had failed on takeoff. The thing gently billowing and fluttering was an old windsock, the pole to which it was attached fallen to the ground. This was where panic and terror had overtaken her parents, where they had plunged back to earth and died. And that metallic strip. . .

  She whirled, heart pounding, feet poised to race for the haven of the house. Death suddenly felt so near, a cold fingertip on her spine, an eerie whisper in her ear.

  She grabbed the straps of the backpack to steady herself and forced her feet to rivet to the ground. Yes, she was upset, she acknowledged, grabbing a deep breath to fight a disorienting dizziness. Coming without warning upon the scene of her parents’ death, even seeing a scrap of their crashed plane, was a shocker. But she would not abandon her plan.

  She rested a minute and then, ignoring the wobble in her legs, stepped off the blurred edge of the abandoned runway and strode purposefully toward the river.

  Only a narrow strip of trees bordered the river here, where the meadow came almost to a point, with angled lines of deep forest on either side. But the growth was brushy and thick, and Katy ducked and squirmed to get through it, wishing she’d worn something that offered more protection than shorts. A blackberry bramble ripped the back of her hand, and she paused to catch her breath and rub the painful scratch. She couldn’t see the river clearly, but a flicker of silvery white water gleamed through the thick branches, and the roaring water seemed to vibrate the very earth beneath her feet.

  Katy forced herself to plunge ahead. She was closer to the water than she’d thought, she realized a moment later when the ground disappeared in a dropoff no more than a footstep ahead. She stopped short, then edged forward, holding a branch for support. Without warning the dirt crumbled beneath her. She screamed, and the rough branch burned her hand as her feet plunged into the hole. More dirt gave way as she frantically back-scrabbled to safety. Holding the branch with both hands, she peered downward, her gaze riveted on the dark water swirling ominously beneath the tangle of roots undercut by rushing current.

  Don’t panic, she commanded herself fiercely. Everything’s okay. This was what she had come for, to rattle her subconscious into giving up its secrets. Determinedly she lifted her gaze to the river.

  The untamed beauty took her breath away. Roaring white water surged around boulders as large as cars, crashed with raw fury into dark, sharp rocks, avalanched over a plateau of bedrock. Slick hollows of green water swooped over hidden ambushes, then erupted into the savage froth of standing waves endlessly battling to climb upriver. Whirlpools and upsurges appeared and disappeared as if some deadly game played beneath the surface. Here the river’s fury bleached the deep color of the water in the calm area upstream to a pale tinge of green beneath the turbulent white water. A rainbow quivered over one falling spray, delicately lovely against the raging chaos below, and misty droplets drifted and clung to Katy’s face. And beneath the roar of river came the ominous gurgle of water flowing beneath the undercut bank.

  She clutched the branch more tightly. Yes, oh, so beautiful. But also treacherous and violent and savage, not just a rapids but a seething, boiling trap of death. She remembered Jace saying he’d foolishly ridden a kayak through here once, but he’d never do it again.

  Something large and dark churning in the water caught her gaze. A log, swept down from somewhere upstream, whirling and plunging through the rocks like some terrified creature. Momentarily it caught on a rock, quivering as water pressure battered it from both ends. Then one side won and flipped the log on end, as if it were no more than a stick of kindling. Katy suddenly felt the chill spike of personal threat, as if the river was demonstrating what it could do to her. Then, in a final warning, a swirling whirlpool sucked the log under, swallowing it whole. And it didn’t come up again.

  Okay, so the river could swallow a log, she granted, resolutely battling a raw panic threatening to engulf her. But it couldn’t get her! She was safe here.

  Then, like some unseen monster opening its mouth under her and slyly mocking her claim of safety, the earth gave way beneath her feet again. The branch snapped when her full weight hit it. Legs sliding into dissolving earth, treacherous suck of dark water only inches below. . .

  Frantically she clawed at anything she could reach – brush, brambles, rocks. She scrabbled upward, the
exposed roots snagging her feet and legs like live tentacles. She screamed and kicked, never minding the rip and tear of skin and flesh. She was on her belly now, then scrambling, fighting to her feet, stumbling, running, tearing blindly through the brush, caring about nothing except getting away from the water. Because she’d been wrong. It could reach out and snatch her!

  Her wild flight didn’t end until minutes later when her injured leg gave way and sent her sprawling on the ground. She simply lay there, painful stitch in her side, too weak to run or struggle further.

  Lord, please!

  Finally, when the sharp stitch dulled to a soreness beneath her ribs, she slowly sat up. Then she was confused. Where was she? If she’d been thinking straight, she’d have run toward the open meadow, but she hadn’t done that. Instead, already upset by the shock of her parents’ death scene, then panicked by the hungry clutch of the river, she’d blindly plunged deep into the undergrowth of the forest. Now the sky was only a jigsaw puzzle of blue among tangled branches overhead, and the ground oozed an unpleasant scent of dampness and decay, as if the sun never reached here. She wrinkled her nose and wiped her hands on her shorts to rid them of the dark, gooey mud all around her.

  She started to stand, but a glitter of something caught on a nearby bush stopped her. On her knees she cautiously picked the thing out of the stickery bush.

  She stretched it between her hands, astonished. It was a gold chain, broken, with a heavy, astrological-design medallion hanging from it. How had it gotten way out here? And who did it belong to?

  Bracing herself on the trunk of a nearby tree, she struggled to her feet. She still felt weak but no longer panicky. Her terrified flight even seemed melodramatic and foolish now. She took a moment to look within her mind. Were the shadows there, awakened to reveal faces and identities, as she had hoped? No. Nothing.