Yesterday Lost Page 8

  “There’ll be log trucks going by in the morning. We’ll just have to wait until one comes by to help us.” She determinedly ignored how many long, chilly hours separated now from then. “It’s going to be cold and uncomfortable sitting here all night, but I’m sure we’re in no real danger.”

  “A couple of years ago a hunter was badly mauled by a bear up here somewhere.” Mrs. L.’s voice was small and scared. “And a bear with cubs is the most dangerous kind.” She didn’t have to remind Katy about the mother bear and cubs they’d seen.

  “But we aren’t out here doing something to annoy the wildlife.” Katy tried to sound amused rather than frightened by Mrs.L.’s dire bear story. She had the feeling that Mrs. L. might give in to hysterics if Katy let her own fear show.

  “Neither was he. He was just in his tent, sleeping. And I’ve heard that there are hidden marijuana patches way out here in the mountains, and the people who grow them don’t take kindly to strangers poking around.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to be mistaken for marijuana-patch pirates or drug agents,” Katy said lightly. “We look like just what we are, two women in a car that slid off the road.”

  Two vulnerable, helpless women in an expensive, open convertible that might be worth stealing even in its present awkward condition. Murder had been committed for less.

  A veil of silence settled around them again. Except that now small, furtive sounds filtered through the veil. Gurgles and hisses of the cooling engine. Unidentified rustles in the dark wall of forest beyond the ditch. A strange bird call. A bat swooped down from above, and Mrs. L. shrieked and waved her arms wildly around her ducked head.

  “Please, Mrs. L., we have to remain calm—”

  Which was not going to be easy, Katy realized grimly, as light flared around the bend in the road, and headlights bore down on them out of the darkness. Then her hopes rose. Jace? Jace roaring up like a knight who’d traded his white horse for a four-wheel-drive pickup that could pull them out?

  No. A van, pulling up close, then backing away and angling to target the blinding blaze of headlights directly in their eyes. Behind the glare the large, dark shadow of a man stepped down from the driver’s seat. And two more shadowy figures climbed out the opposite door.

  Chapter Eight

  “Lenore?”

  “Joe? Is that you, Joe?” Mrs. L. called eagerly.

  Katy shaded her eyes against the blinding glare. One of the dark silhouettes knelt to peer under the car. Mac, the chaplain from the Damascus school, she realized as the light caught his face. And then a voice spoke almost over her head.

  “Are you hurt?”

  She twisted in the seat to peer up at Jace looming over her side of the tilted car. Relief and gratitude that he was here washed over her, yet her next thought was resentment that here she was in another predicament needing his help.

  “I think I’m okay. But I can’t get out.”

  “We’ll get you out.” Jace’s voice gritted rough and angry even as he offered reassurance. “But didn’t it occur to you that in your condition you shouldn’t be out chasing around in the mountains after dark?”

  “We didn’t plan to be out after dark! But a deer jumped in front of the car and—”

  He cut off her explanation. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  By that time Joe had helped Mrs. L. climb out of the car and was now tucking a coat around her shoulders. With rather less gallantry, Jace tossed a coat to Katy and let her struggle into it herself.

  The three men held a conference in the headlights of the van. Then Joe went around to the rear of the van and returned with a chain. Jace scooted into the ditch and fastened the chain to something under the car. Mac turned the van around, backed up to the convertible and Jace slid under the steering wheel beside Katy. A few moments later, pulled by the van, the convertible lunged up out of the ditch like a bucking bronc. Jace braked it to a smooth stop inches from the van.

  As promised, he had gotten her out of the predicament.

  He rode in the open convertible on the way home because someone had to be at the steering wheel while the car was being towed. Mac drove the van, Mrs. L. snuggled up against Joe, and Katy huddled under the coat.

  At the house, the engine still wouldn’t start, so the three men pushed the convertible into the garage. Joe said he’d take a look at it in a day or two. Katy offered pie and coffee if the men wanted to come in and warm up. Jace looked half frozen, and she guiltily realized it was his coat she’d worn on the drive home. Mac declined the offer for coffee, saying he needed to talk to one of the boys before bedtime. He jogged back to the school on foot, but Joe and Jace followed the women inside. Mrs. L. served the pie and coffee and then disappeared to take a hot bath.

  “You take the van and go on home,” Jace said casually to Joe after they finished the pie. “I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

  Joe left by the back door. Jace looked at Katy. She wrapped her hands around the coffee mug.

  “We went on a little afternoon picnic,” she said defensively. Then, because she couldn’t help being curious, she added, “How did you happen to come out there?”

  “When I didn’t see lights on here after dark I came over to check and found the garage door open. I went back and asked if anyone had seen the convertible leave, and a couple of the boys said it had headed toward the mountains. I figured we’d better run out and take a look.”

  “We appreciate that.” Katy did appreciate the concern, but the fact that she had to acknowledge that he’d again dashed to her rescue kept a stiffness in her voice. “Thank you.”

  She braced herself for criticism, but instead Jace asked, “You really made that pie?”

  “Yes.”

  Joe had earlier praised the pie as if it were some blue-ribbon accomplishment, but if she expected glowing praise from Jace, she was mistaken. He simply studied her across the breakfast nook for so long that she drew fidgety circles with the coffee cup on the table. She was still wearing the ribboned hat, but it felt like scant protection against his appraisal, as if he could see right through to skimpy blond tufts and scars and layers of road dust, perhaps even smell onion breath. But when he spoke she realized that it was not physical shortcomings he was assessing.

  “Another change,” he said with a reflective tilt of head. “First you turn up with this new Bible knowledge. You change your mind about the boys using the river. You tone down the makeup. And now you come up with this sudden inclination toward pie-making domesticity.”

  Katy glanced up sharply at the odd listing. On the surface it sounded grudgingly complimentary, yet skepticism ran like a dark undercurrent beneath the words. She didn’t understand. Why should he be skeptical, almost as if he suspected she were faking the very qualities he seemed to admire? She wasn’t faking anything. If she was different now, it was genuine change caused by what had happened to her.

  Almost angrily she snapped, “The doctor said there might be personality changes after—”

  She broke off, instantly realizing from his sudden alertness that she’d carelessly leaped in the wrong direction. “After my accident,” she finished lamely. She glanced at the owl-shaped clock on the kitchen wall. “Look, I’m really tired and dirty and—”

  Jace didn’t let her get by with that plea. He instantly pounced on the imprecise statement about an accident. “Why would a doctor think an accident might cause personality changes?” When she didn’t respond, he leaned forward, forearms on the table, and relentlessly dug deeper. “Are you talking about a surgical doctor or a psychiatrist?”

  “What difference does it make?” she fired back. “There’s nothing wrong with seeing a psychiatrist.”

  “Of course not. I just want to understand. Have you had special treatments of some kind, Katy? Electroshock, perhaps, or drugs?”

  “No! I just broke my leg and had scalp injuries that needed staples.”

  “And you changed,” he stated f
latly. Then he leaned back and gave her another appraisal, this time with a hard ruthlessness in those hazel eyes. “Unless this is all some elaborate pretense, of course.”

  “Pretense?” she repeated, bafflement now overlaying her agitation.

  “Maybe this is all some complicated game you’re playing to amuse yourself while your leg heals. Or perhaps you decided to get in a bit of real-life acting practice before you storm Hollywood? So you give yourself a real acting challenge, turning the old spiteful Kat into sweet, virtuous, domestic Katy. And that’s quite a stretch, isn’t it?”

  The sarcasm was so harsh and the accusation so startling that Katy gasped. Suddenly she remembered back to when she’d first called him for help when she was trapped under the chest of drawers in the bedroom, and how he’d suspiciously asked if the call was “some kind of trick.” That had puzzled her then, and it still did. And being virtuous and domestic was acting?

  “Oh, come on, don’t looked so shocked and innocent. Ever since you came back you’ve acted as if that night never happened.”

  “What night?” Katy asked in dismay.

  “Now you’re going to pretend you don’t even remember it? C’mon, Kat,” he scoffed. “You call me up with some song and dance about a prowler trying to get in the house, and when I get over here there’s no prowler, just you in a sheer black nightie, scented candles in the bedroom, two glasses of wine. Oh, that’s good, Kat, very good, very realistic with the appalled, horrified look, as if you don’t remember.”

  “I don’t!” Katy cried. “I don’t remember anything about this. I don’t remember anything about you or my folks or this house or my life!”

  They stared at each other over the now cold coffee.

  His eyes narrowed. “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”

  She lifted her chin and stared at him defiantly. Okay, she’d revealed her secret, which she hadn’t intended to do. But it was out now, and she didn’t really care.

  “I mean the time before I woke up in a hospital in Oregon is a blank. Lost. Gone. I have . . . not exactly memories, but knowledge about a lot of the everyday things of life. I can read and write and do math. I know trivia. What the relationship is between characters on TV shows. That Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood are popular singers. That the Space Needle is in Seattle, and California has earthquakes. But until Mrs. L saw my photo in a newspaper and showed up to identify me, I didn’t know a thing about me. And I can’t even imagine myself doing what you say I did!”

  “Amnesia?” he said slowly, doubtfully, as if he were examining the word like a flawed piece of machinery. “I’ve heard of it, everybody has. But I’m not sure I’ve ever believed it actually happens in real life.”

  “Believe it,” Katy muttered.

  “And the doctor said personality changes sometimes occur with amnesia?”

  Katy nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anyone else about this. Mrs. L. and I discussed it and agreed that people are often judgmental and unkind about mental problems. I think she’s more concerned than I am, but there’s really no need for anyone to know. The doctor said that in time I should recover.” She hesitated and then had to add truthfully, “Probably.”

  “But not necessarily?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “This was all caused by an accident?”

  She sketched the details of what she knew about being found injured on the Oregon beach without identification. “I have no idea how I got there. About three months earlier, perhaps shortly after the . . . bedroom scene you mentioned, I’d told Mrs. L. I wanted to get away and think for a while, and she took me into Redding to meet a friend or friends. I never contacted her after that. Although, since I’d told her to have my roommates ship all my belongings out here, I must not have intended to return to New York.”

  “And you have no idea where you were or what you were doing during those three months?” He sounded more perplexed that skeptical now.

  “I have no memory of where I was or what I was doing during my entire life.”

  He covered her hand with his, his face troubled. “Katy, I’m sorry.”

  Whether he was offering sympathy for her problems or an apology for his rough words, she was uncertain. She pulled her hand away. “Apparently you can fill me in on some of my activities. Exactly what was our relationship before this night I called you about a prowler?”

  “Katy, I don’t think we need to go into any of this now.”

  “Yes,” she said firmly, “I think we do.”

  He got up and added fresh coffee to both their cups as if stalling for time.

  She smiled wryly. “You don’t need to gloss it over. I want to know exactly what kind of person I really am. How long have we known each other?”

  “We met when your folks invited me over for dinner a couple years ago when you were here visiting. You were very charming. A little flirty. But I didn’t see it as any special interest in me. It was just the way you were: see a reasonably attractive male and you automatically went into make-a-conquest mode.”

  “And did I make a conquest?”

  “I saw you as beautiful and vivacious and charming. You could make a man feel as if he were the only person in the room.” He paused reflectively. “The only person in the universe. You were also as shallow as a smear of lipstick.”

  She’d asked for honesty. She was getting it.

  “But you were pretty broken up when your parents were killed. I was the one who called you right after the plane crash. And while you were here and seemed so lost and bewildered, we talked about my Christian faith and how it related to death.”

  “And?”

  “You listened, but afterwards you just shrugged it all off. You said that you thought this life was all we had, that you intended to grab all you could in it, and I was a fool for throwing my life away on a bunch of delinquents out here in the sticks.”

  “Oh, Jace,” Katy murmured, appalled. She still felt a surge of hostility at the thought of any personal relationship with God for herself, obviously a holdover from the old Kat, but she certainly couldn’t deny the value of what he was doing with the boys.

  “You weren’t really antagonistic toward the Lord. You simply dismissed everything I said as a foolish myth, something like the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. You didn’t stay long then, but by the time you came back three or four months ago, the estate was settled and you were ready to sell the ranch.”

  “And I went back on my parents’ plan to donate half of it to Damascus.”

  He frowned slightly. “You remember that?”

  “No, I don’t. Mrs. L. told me. She’s been giving me a crash course in my past. Kat Cavanaugh 101, you might call it. Although, so far, I’m afraid I’m flunking. Anyway, when you then wanted to buy the land, I turned you down?”

  “Not only turned me down, you laughed at the offer. Although I must say you laughed at it quite charmingly. You teased that I ought to let you talk to some of our sponsors, that you’d bet you could lure some very generous donations out of them.”

  Katy felt color flow into her face at the self-centered confidence in her own seductive powers implied by those words. “You and I were still on friendly terms at that time?”

  “More or less. You had me over for dinner a couple of times, and once you went horseback riding with me and the boys. Another time you came over for a wiener roast. But you were rather piqued because I didn’t give you the kind of attention you usually received from men. Eventually, after I turned down several of your suggestions, including spending a skiing weekend together, I think you began to look on me as a challenge.”

  “Challenge?”

  “You were obviously accustomed to winding any man you wanted around your little finger. When I didn’t ‘wind’ properly, you turned up the heat. You made it plain you were interested in a relationship of a more intimate nature.”

  The faint color in Katy’s cheeks blazed to a full emba
rrassed blush now. “I tried to get you to marry me?”

  He laughed without humor. “Marriage? Oh, no. Marrying a guy running a Christian school in the sticks was definitely not one of your goals in life. But you apparently found me attractive enough for a temporary fling while you were here. So you set up the prowler phone call with the idea that not even straight-laced Jace Foster could resist that on-the-spot bedroom opportunity when it was offered. When I did resist, you turned furious. You hurled a glass of wine at me, screamed that I was something less than a man, and told me to get out. The next day you called up and announced that if I or anyone else from Damascus ever came on the place again, you’d call the sheriff and have us charged with trespassing.”

  Katy didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to believe what he said, but she couldn’t doubt it. There was also proof in that wine-dark stain she saw every day on the bedroom carpet. She could understand now why he’d been so astonished, even angry, when she called for help, and she understood, too, why he wanted her change of mind about crossing the property in writing.

  She swallowed and finally murmured, “You’ve been very kind, after all that.” She lifted her gaze and tried to smile. “The good Christian attitude, turn the other cheek?”

  “I believe in that Christian philosophy, although I sometimes have a struggle with it in practice,” he admitted. “I really had to grit my teeth to come over here the day you called me. But since then. . . You are different now, Katy.”

  He reached across the table and with a fingertip tilted her chin so their eyes met. “I was so worried when I realized you were still out there in the mountains.”

  “You, worried about me?” She tried to smile and keep her voice light, but both smile and voice wobbled.

  “Yes.”

  Slowly and deliberately he leaned across the open space between them and kissed her. Katy had no specific memory of kisses, but secondhand knowledge of her past told her she’d been kissed, and the feeling was not totally unfamiliar. Yet at the same time where was a sparkling, first-kiss newness to the feel of his lips on hers, a heady blend of honey and spice, sensitivity and ardency. Or was it that she’d simply never known a kiss like this? The caring and sweet tenderness and gentle passion of this kiss curled around her heart. A physical glow drifted through her body, and an emotional warmth infiltrated her mind and the vulnerable emptiness of her heart. For the first time within her short memory she felt as if she were where she belonged. A little shyly, she returned the kiss, her hand creeping up to wrap around the back of his neck.