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  Was this tenuous, confused feeling the way she had felt, if she was Kat Cavanaugh, months ago when she left the ranch? Had she fled because she was frightened and uncertain then too?

  But if she went away now, where would she go? Back to New York to revive her career?

  No, she didn’t want to be any closer to Barry than she was right now!

  Chapter Twenty

  “Barry!”

  He turned from an observation of Mt. Shasta when she opened the front door. He smiled as confidently as if he were arriving with an engraved invitation in hand. “Hi, Kat.”

  His white shorts and open-throated, white cotton shirt looked cool and crisp in spite of the heat, as if he were ready to step onto the tennis courts of some expensive country club. Katy didn’t invite him in even though he squinted at her through a blinding blaze of sun.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Is that any way to greet your fiancé?” he chided.

  “You’re not my fiancé!”

  He tilted his head as if considering disputing that but opted for a winning smile instead. “I still want to be.”

  She remembered what her former roommate had said about his professional problems. “The agency is in trouble so you’re coming on bended knee to—”

  “Kat,” he interrupted, his tone reproachful.

  “Katy!” she corrected sharply, even as she felt a twinge of guilt for her rudeness.

  “Your memory is still incomplete?”

  She considered the delicately phrased question, wary about revealing any more to him about the shadows in her head than she had already unwisely done. Had he come to probe her brain to see what dangerous possibilities lurked there? Or to make sure she didn’t live long enough to remember she wasn’t Kat Cavanaugh? Or was he quite innocent, believing she really was Kat and was here simply for the reason he stated, to win her back?

  Alone, she thought in dismay as her thoughts wavered like some out-of-kilter scale. Alone with her suspicions of everyone.

  She finally answered the question obliquely. “I still don’t remember you.”

  “Then let’s do a better job of what we didn’t do very well the last time I was here, getting reacquainted.” He lifted his hands appealingly. “Can’t I come in? I think this deck is melting the soles of my shoes.”

  Reluctantly she stood back to let him enter. Mrs. L. peered out from the kitchen to see who the visitor was. An indecipherable flurry of emotions chased across her face, always tired-looking these days, but she ducked back into the kitchen without speaking.

  Katy sat on the white leather sofa. She tucked her legs under her in a position that forced Barry, if he wanted to talk to her, to sit across from, not beside her. She finally tossed a neutral question into the awkward silence. “Have you seen any of my former roommates lately?”

  “I heard Stephanie was leaving modeling to get married to a dentist and moving to New Jersey. She’ll probably be bored to tears there, but at least she’ll have good teeth.” He came up with more gossip, and even though Katy couldn’t help but laugh at the tartly amusing anecdotes, her tension and wariness remained on red alert.

  After an hour or so, Mrs. L. came to the doorway with a frowning, I-need-to-talk-to-you look on her face. Katy excused herself and followed Mrs. L. to the kitchen.

  “What’s he doing here? Mrs. L. demanded in a whisper. “How long is he staying?”

  “I don’t know. To both questions,” Katy whispered back.

  “I think you should get rid of him!”

  The urgency of Mrs. L.’s whisper surprised Katy. “But I thought you liked him. The other time he was here, you even thought my going back to New York with him was a good idea.”

  Mrs. L. shook her head. “He’s too smooth, too polished. Like glass pretending to be a diamond.”

  Katy trusted Mrs. L.’s instincts. They also matched her own. She’d felt much safer when Barry was three thousand miles away in New York.

  And yet, if they were both wrong about Barry, if it was Jace she really had to fear, she could be safer with Barry here.

  When she returned to the sofa, Barry gave a theatrical sigh and slapped his palms against his thighs. “You were discussing me, weren’t you? And you’re going to make me drive all the way back to Yreka to get a motel for the night.”

  Her decision came impulsively. “No, you can stay here.”

  Immediately, as if afraid she might change her mind, he dashed out to get his suitcase. They had a pleasant dinner, although Mrs. L. served it with less than her usual hospitality.

  “What’s the matter with her?” Barry whispered as she whisked away his plate without giving him a chance for seconds on the baked chicken. “She acts as if she thinks I might take an ax to both of you in your beds.”

  Katy assumed the comment was meant to be humorous, but she was too tense to be amused. Especially on this subject. “She hasn’t been feeling well lately.”

  The phone rang just after they’d finished the peach shortcake. Katy suggested Barry take his coffee to the living room, and she answered the phone in the kitchen, out of his presence.

  “I was thinking we might take a drive up in the mountains this evening, but I see a car in your driveway.” Jace was obviously fishing for information. Acting like a jealous boyfriend? Or something darker and more dangerous?

  “Barry’s here.”

  “Were you expecting him?” Jace sounded surprised.

  “No.”

  “What does he want?”

  She hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

  “I’ll come over and run him off, if you’d like.”

  The half-teasing, half-serious offer should have made her feel better, but all it did was send her throat muscles into a spasm, as if a web were tightening around her neck. Whom could she trust?

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she finally managed to say lightly.

  “I love you, Katy,” he said huskily. “Keep that in mind too.”

  Do you? Or was this just another cog in the wheel of some deadly plan?

  “And the Lord loves you too. You can call on either of us, both of us, whenever you’re in need. You have my phone number, and you don’t need one to get to God.”

  She hung up without saying good-bye, half angry. His gullible boys might fall for that glib phone-number bit about God, but she didn’t.

  In spite of Barry’s attempt to be charismatic and entertaining, the evening plummeted downhill. Several times, even as he smiled, Katy saw anger flash in his eyes when she avoided his touch and failed to respond to his determined efforts to charm her. Finally, at what she suspected was much earlier than a New York bedtime, he headed for the stairs.

  With a foot on the bottom rung he turned and asked, “Is there someone else, Kat?”

  She automatically started to correct the name, then let it go. There was something so nearly wistful about the question that she couldn’t be heartlessly rude. “Yes, there is, but—” She hesitated then, on the brink of pouring out all her doubts and fears about Jace and her own identity.

  “The religious fanatic from across the road?” Barry’s sudden smile was more like a sneer. “I guess I’m not surprised. Even before you disappeared, I figured you had the hots for him.”

  He turned his back on her, and Katy could only gasp at the crude statement and how wrong she had been in thinking him “wistful.” And how close she had come to making another mistake in confiding in him.

  For the first time ever, she carefully locked her bedroom door.

  ***

  She fell into a restless, sheet-twisting sleep. After an hour, she woke and instantly jumped up to check the door. The room felt airless and stuffy, but she didn’t want to risk the vulnerability of an open window. Barry’s coarse comment still made her skin feel slimy. She paced around the bed, avoiding the stain on the carpet even though she couldn’t see it in the dark. Mrs. L. had tried again to get it out, and the wine/
blood color was less intense now, but, as if it were insidiously stalking her, had spread to cover a larger area. It made her wonder again, had Jace lied to her about that night?

  She went back to bed. Woke again. Now 2:30 a.m. The pit of the night. Sunset long gone, sunrise only a distant hope. She lay there rigidly, wondering if something specific had wakened her. The giveaway creak in the hallway outside her door? A hand stealthily seeking the doorknob? She listened for long, taut moments, but no sounds materialized. A light flared at her window. Fire? A forest ranger had stopped by the other day, warning that the woods were tinder dry now.

  She yanked the drapes open, almost expecting to see flames crackling in the trees, but the light was only a car on the road, its headlights flashing against her window as if it had briefly angled toward the driveway before speeding on by. One of the marijuana “farmers” Mrs. L. said lived hidden in the mountains? Maybe a drug agent after the farmers?

  She left the drape open after the taillights disappeared, feeling less closed-in with a dim glow of starlight filtering into the room. She returned to bed but didn’t lie down. Instead she clasped her arms around her bent legs and rested her head on her knees. A shiver rippled through her. Why should she shiver? The room wasn’t cold.

  She shivered again. Methodically, more to distract herself than anything, she analyzed the cause. Apprehension? Nerves? Fear? Yes, to all. Fear of what? Barry. Jace. That she was Kat Cavanaugh. That she wasn’t Kat Cavanaugh. That her memory might never return. That her memory would return.

  And then she knew she was dodging the real issue, because the shiver was above all a desperate cry of inescapable aloneness.

  Alone. Alone. Alone. She tried to halt the relentless parade of words, but the drumbeat marched on. Alone. Alone.

  No! Not alone.

  She flicked the switch on the lamp and reluctantly reached for the Bible on the floor, where she’d scornfully tossed it one night.

  Okay, Lord, if you’re here, show me I’m not alone, she challenged.

  Her fingers rippled the pages as if guided by some unerring force in her subconscious. Deuteronomy. Her forefinger raced back and forth across the lines like some wild animal dashing for the security of its lair. Chapter 33. Her eyes jumped ahead of her finger as if they knew exactly where to look. Verse 27. The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

  The everlasting arms. Holding her. Protecting her. Giving her refuge. Not just for this life but for all eternity.

  She held the book close to her chest. Was that true?

  She closed her eyes and looked inward. If she accepted this, would the dark pit in her mind open to reveal her past and who she was and why she knew where to look for these words? She waited, but not even a shadow stirred. Yet from somewhere came guidance to a sweet Psalm. She ran her finger over the words. God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble.

  A promise added to the vow of Deuteronomy, that he was not only refuge but strength. And with a broken-dam acknowledgment of her own utter helplessness, her own barren aloneness, she finally let herself enter that refuge and lean on that strength, draw from it, let it fill body and spirit like a life-giving transfusion. She roamed other verses, each one an inexplicable combination of the wonderfully fresh and new, yet also familiar, as if she were walking into rooms she had known and loved before. Coming home.

  Home. She let the Bible rest against her knees and stared off into space. Home. Because she’d been here before.

  Not here in this house, but here in this home place of the heart and spirit. With Jesus as her Savior and Lord. With his eternal Word as her foundation and life guide.

  She knew this, yet she had turned her back on him, rejected and abandoned him. And resentfully thought he had abandoned and forgotten her too. Her fingers flew through the Bible again, the order of the books like rungs on a familiar stairway. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, yes, there it was, Isaiah. Oh, yes, Isaiah 49! But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.” “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne. Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”

  Yes, she had forgotten him. Why? Why? Had she forgotten everything in some rebellious determination to forget and thrust the Lord out of her life? Or did he have to take her memory away in order to bring her back to him because she had earlier rejected him? Because, no matter what she accused, he had never forgotten her. He had faithfully led her full circle, back into the security of his love. Jace had said it that first time she went to the river with him and the boys. He doesn’t give up on us even if we give up on him. He’s working in our lives whether or not we recognize it at the time.

  Jace.

  Jace the believer or Jace the deceiver?

  At this moment not even Jace and the conflicts between her love and suspicion of him mattered because words from the Psalm, like a circling dove, gently floated down to rest on her soul.

  Be still and know that I am God.

  And Katy was still and knew that he was God, and she was alone no more.

  ***

  She woke and, as always, immediately peered hopefully within her mind. No change. The dark pit was as closed and sealed as always. But she was changed, wonderfully new, gloriously different! She sat up and stretched.

  Different in her body, aware that the lifeblood coursing through her upraised arms and outstretched legs was a sweet gift from God. That sight of sunlight streaming through the window and dust motes dancing in its beam, that sound of songbirds trilling outside the window and the raucous squawk of crows circling the garden were also his gifts.

  Different in her heart, anger and rebellion and resentment toward the Lord melted away. Glorious knowledge that Jesus was her Saviour and she had come home to him.

  Home.

  Even in her joy, this morning that word sent questions rippling through her. Because these changes were a coming home; she knew it. She wasn’t coming to the Lord for the very first time. So what did that mean? Her actions and the life she’d lived said she had not been a believer before she disappeared from the ranch. Had she made a decision for Christ, then abandoned it for some unknown reason, all in the space of those few months before Mrs. L. identified her at a hospital in Oregon?

  But those questions, of course, assumed she was Kat “Katy” Cavanaugh.

  And if she wasn’t Katy, if crickets and computers and a nagging feeling of something left undone came from another life, another past. . .

  A tap on the door startled her. Barry? An instant fight-or-flight jolt of adrenaline made her grab the lamp as a weapon. Then she relaxed. Not alone. Never alone. “Yes?” she said, her tone normal.

  “Sweetie, are you okay?” Mrs. L. sounded anxious.

  Katy picked up the clock. Almost nine-thirty! She never slept this late. No wonder Mrs. L. was concerned. Now she could smell the tantalizing aroma of cinnamon rolls and coffee. “I’m getting up right now.” She swung her legs to the floor. “Is Barry up yet?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know. The car was gone when I got up. I thought perhaps he just went out for an early drive, but I peeked in his room, and all his things are gone too.”

  Katy hastily showered and dressed in shorts and a tank top. In spite of brilliant sunshine on the bedroom side of the house, the breakfast-nook window revealed swollen clouds over the mountains in the opposite direction, as if building toward a thunderstorm later in the day.

  “He didn’t leave a note?” Katy asked as Mrs. L. placed scrambled eggs and a fragrant, plate-sized cinnamon roll in front of her.

  “No, but good riddance, I’d say.” Mrs. L. dismissed Barry with a righteous sniff and untied her apron. “I’m more worried about Maggie. I haven’t seen her since yesterday afternoon. I’m going out to look for her. Once before she got caught in a tree, and Joe had to rescue her.”

&
nbsp; “I’ll come help.”

  “No, no, you finish your breakfast.” She patted Katy’s shoulder. “I’m probably fussing over nothing. But you know how much those silly cats mean to me.”

  Katy finished the roll and helped herself to half of another and more coffee. She wasn’t overly concerned about Maggie. The cats led a busy life roaming their territory, and the big orange cat was probably just curled up somewhere sleeping off a night of heavy mouse hunting.

  She pinched off pieces of the roll, absentmindedly savoring the rich cinnamon taste as she considered Barry’s unexpected departure. She was relieved that he had left without making some unpleasant scene, but she was vaguely uneasy anyway. Had he really gone home to New York, or was he up to something devious?

  Yet she couldn’t devote much energy even to that disturbing question. She was too full of this joyous homecoming of the heart, the glorious knowledge that Christ had loved her before, that he’d loved her through whatever had driven her away from her faith, that he loved her still and always would. He’d gone to the cross for her!

  She brought the Bible from her bedroom and, over another cup of coffee, browsed the pages with more satisfaction than if she were in some enormous mall with treasures free for the taking. Because what material treasures could compare with these nuggets of wisdom and enlightenment, these promises of love and salvation?

  She was deep in Luke: Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. She was pleasurably lost in those words, reminding her again that she had never been forgotten, when shouts penetrated her consciousness. Mrs. L. ran through the back door.

  “Katy, Katy, I’ve been yelling and screaming!”

  Katy jumped up, alarmed by Mrs. L.’s frantic panting and crimson face. “Calm down. What’s wrong?”

  The housekeeper patted her chest as if her pounding heart threatened to burst through her rib cage. “It’s Maggie! She’s stranded up in a tree and too scared to come down.” Mrs. L. ran out of breath and sagged against the kitchen counter. “Oh, Katy, the branch is right next to the river, and I’m so afraid she’s going to fall in and drown.”