A Hard Man to Forget (20 page)

He sounded so broken a hard lump formed in her throat. She pressed
her hand to his chest. His muscles jerked beneath her palm, but he
didn’t move.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s kind of you to say—"

“Kindness has nothing to do with it. I mean it.”

“You mean it now. But you can’t know that. You don’t
even know who you are. You don’t remember exactly what you were
thinking when you made the decision to walk away the first time. As
soon as you do, as soon as you remember how bad you must have thought
it was, you could be bolting for that door.”

Her first instinct was to deny his words. But she knew how false they
would sound. “You’re right. I don’t know what
happened in the past or what I felt back then. All I know is what I
feel right now. And right now, I don’t want to give up just
yet.”

“And when your memory returns?”

“I hope it never does,” she said rashly.

He snorted. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do.” And she did. Remembering was suddenly far less
important than convincing him to believe her, especially when all the
memories she had left to uncover seemed to be things she was better
off having forgotten.

She stared up at him. “Promise me something.”

“What?” he asked, wary.

“Promise you won’t give up on us just yet. Not until we
know the whole truth. There’s more going on here than we know.
I may not know everything, but neither do you.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. She held her breath,
hoping he’d give her that much.

“All right,” he agreed, and she could breathe again. “I
won’t withdraw into my brooding just yet.”

His tone was teasing. Laura somehow mustered a smile. She knew the
promise didn’t mean much. There was still to much distrust and
hurt between them for promises to hold up under too much scrutiny.
The way things were going, she would take whatever reassurance she
could get.

“We will figure this out,” she told him. “Together.”

“Together,” he echoed, his voice subdued. She couldn’t
tell what he was thinking. More than ever, she wanted to know. “Do
you still want to go see Coombs now?”

“Why don’t we call him?” Laura suggested. “It
seems like we’re asking for trouble every time we venture out
of this room.”

His mouth quirked at the edges. “You have a point. I’m
sure he hasn’t found anything, but I’ll give him a call.”

“Do you want to tell him what Patsy told me?”

He shot her a pointed glance. “Do you?”

“Not really. At least not until we know more.”

“Not to mention he could still arrest you for faking your
death.”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” she admitted ruefully.
“But beyond that, we don’t know who she left with, which
is what we really need to know.”

“Don’t you mean ‘I’?”

She hesitated. He was right. It now seemed more likely than ever that
she was Meredith. His wife. But even if that was the case, she wasn’t
really comfortable with the idea of assuming her old identity. She
didn’t remember being that woman. What she did know, she didn’t
like. She still felt like Laura, the woman who’d been born in
that alley two years ago, the woman who couldn’t imagine ever
being willing to walk away from this man.

“Do you mind if we stick with Laura for the time being? I’m
having some trouble rationalizing the old me and the new me.”

He paused, then nodded slowly. “You’re right. You don’t
seem like her anymore. You look the same, but you’re a new
person.”

The grudging acceptance in his voice gave her more hope than his
earlier promise. If he could learn to accept her for who she was now,
not for who she had been, they might actually have a chance of
forming a lasting relationship, putting the past behind them.

Either way, she’d told him the truth when she said she wasn’t
going anywhere. The old her might have run away.

The new one was fully prepared to stay and fight.

“COOMBS HAS NOTHING.” Simon hung up the phone. “No
surprise there.”

He turned around to find her seated cross-legged on the bedspread.
She had all the notebooks and papers she’d already been over
three times open again. “Do you really think you’re going
to find something you didn’t before?”

“You never know. Now we know something we didn’t, so we
have a better idea of what to look for.”

The stubbornness in her voice drew a small smile to his lips. She
really had changed. Her experiences over the last few years had
turned her into a different person.

That didn’t change who she had been though, and as much as she
might want to forget that, he couldn’t.

Her brow furrowed as she pored over the documents in her hands. He
surveyed her silently, taking in the sight of her as though every
second might be the last. For all he knew, it just might be.

He felt no sense of vindication that he’d finally been proven
right. After all the years of knowing that she couldn’t have
killed herself, that she must have walked away, it should have given
him some satisfaction. In the end, he’d known her better than
all those friends and neighbors who insisted she never could have
faked her death.

Instead, there was only stark disappointment, and it was all because
of the woman sitting in front of him. After being sure all those
years, she’d opened the possibility that maybe there was some
other explanation, that she hadn’t willingly walked out of his
life. No matter what he told her to her face, deep down, he’d
started to believe that maybe she hadn’t done that to him.
Maybe she was an innocent victim. More than anything, he’d
wanted to believe that.

Which was why it was that much more disappointing to have his initial
beliefs confirmed.

He knew better than to believe any promises she made now. She didn’t
remember anything that had happened. Sooner or later, she would, and
she’d walk away again. It was inevitable. Any woman desperate
enough to fake her own death to get away from her husband wasn’t
going to stick around for a second time. If he had any kind of
survival instinct, he would make her leave before she could do that
to him again.

But if there was one thing he couldn’t do with this woman, now
more than ever, it was let her go.

She looked up, her eyes widening, as though surprised to see him
still standing next to the phone. “So we’re back to the
question, who would she have left with?”

He noted her use of the third-person pronoun with a wry smile, but
let it go unmentioned. “Believe me, I’ve asked myself
that question countless times over the last three years. I thought
she might have gone with someone, but I couldn’t figure out who
that could be.”

“You didn’t have any guesses?”

Simon crossed the room to lower himself into a chair. “The only
man she saw on a daily basis that I knew of was her therapist. He did
eventually relocate, but that was at least six months later, long
after she was gone.”

“That’s too bad. If we could speak to him, maybe he would
have some idea of who she was seeing.”

“It couldn’t have been anyone local. It would have been
noticed if anyone in town had left at the same time she disappeared.”

“Who does that leave?”

“I don’t know. She so seldom left the house. The only
place she could have met someone was down at the lake.”

Her brow furrowed. “The lake?”

“There are some houses on the far side that out-of-towners rent
for the summer. They’re far enough away that I seldom see them,
but I thought that she could have wandered down that far or someone
could have come around to our side and they could have met.” He
frowned, remembering.

“What is it?”

“There was one thing. One of the houses that summer was rented
by a single guy by the name of Tom Johnson. I only met him once. I
think he said he was a lawyer. He actually was gone a few weeks
before Meredith’s disappearance, but I was clutching at straws
at that point. I thought he might have come back for her or
something.”

“Did you look into the possibility?”

He nodded. “I had a private investigator check out all the
people who rented houses that summer just in case, including Johnson.
He was the only one the P.I. couldn’t track down.”

“Why not? Didn’t he have to fill out some kind of
application or give references to rent the house?”

“I don’t think so. As I recall, he paid with a cashier’s
check, the full amount in advance. All the P.I. had to go on was his
signature on the rental agreement. Neither the owner of the house or
I knew enough about him to make finding him any easier. Tom Johnson’s
not exactly an uncommon name. The P.I. tracked down a few Tom
Johnsons, but none of them was the right one. We didn’t even
know if Tom was his first name or a middle name he went by, or if he
was even from California.”

“So he disappeared off the face of the map.”

“Pretty much. At the time it seemed like a long shot anyway.
Like I said, he left at least three weeks before Meredith did, so I
let it drop. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have.”

“What were you going to do? Track down every man with the first
or middle name Tom and the last name Johnson in the entire country
until you found the right one?”

He shrugged. “I was willing to do stranger things to find you.”

“As I know from personal experience.”

An embarrassed heat climbed into his face. The more he thought about
it, the more ridiculous his actions seemed. “I’m sorry.”

“I know. Just don’t make a habit out of it.”

“I won’t.”

“So what else can you tell me about this Tom Johnson? What did
he look like?”

“All I remember is, he had blond hair. Blue eyes. Jock type.”

The description was vague enough he didn’t expect anything to
come of it. To his surprise, Laura frowned.

“What is it?” Simon pressed.

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “It’s just
that when you said that, the first person I thought of was my friend
Jason in Harrisville.”

He couldn’t keep from frowning. He remembered the name all too
well. This Jason was the person she’d called yesterday. “Who
is he?”

“He’s an attorney with a small practice in Harrisville.
He does have blond hair and blue eyes, but we can’t possibly be
talking about the same person.”

“What do you know about this Jason?”

“Simon, I’m telling you it can’t be him.”

“Humor me.”

Laura sighed. “He moved to Harrisville a few months before I
did. I think that’s how we became such good friends. He didn’t
really know anyone else in town, and obviously, I didn’t.”

“Why did he move there?”

“He’d gotten divorced and he needed a change. Harrisville
is a good place to start over. I know that better than anyone.”

“Did he ever show you pictures of his wife?”

“No,” she said with exaggerated patience. “I
imagine most divorced men don’t keep pictures of their
ex-wives. Why?”

“So you don’t know if she really existed?”

“Why would he lie about something like that?”

“For sympathy. To give you something in common, both being all
alone.”

“We really need to work on your view of people. Jason’s
not like that. There are a lot of lawyers out there with blond hair
and blue eyes. Isn’t it a little far-fetched to think they
could be the same person?”

“No more far-fetched than anything else that’s happened.
Besides, I think it’s safe to say he’s the only
blond-haired, blue-eyed lawyer who knew you were here with me this
weekend.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The person you called Saturday morning. It was him, wasn’t
it? I remember you saying his name. Jason.”

“I didn’t tell him where I was. I didn’t know where
I was.”

“Does he have caller ID?”

Her eyes widened, giving him the answer before she said it.
“Probably.”

“So he would have known where you were. Who you were with.”

“And come here to attack me? Why?”

“For coming back here? For being here with me? If you left with
him, that couldn’t have made him happy.”

“If I left with him, why wouldn’t he have identified me
after the attack?”

“What if he was the one who attacked you? What if you realized
you made a mistake and wanted to get away from him? He could have
attacked you in a rage, and when you woke up without your memory, he
befriended you all over again.”

She shuddered. “That’s sick.”

“I think it’s safe to say that the person who attacked
you two years ago, as well as in the last two days, is pretty sick.”

She swallowed hard. “If Jason is this Tom Johnson, he would
have had to change his name, create a whole new identity—"

“He had a whole year between the time he disappeared from here
and when he reappeared in Harrisville. That’s more than enough
time to construct a new identity. Or he could have had them ready
ahead of time, if he intended for the two of you to pick up as other
people.”

“I think you’ve read a few too many of those thrillers
you have on your bookshelves at home. You’re very good at
concocting these elaborate stories.”

“It’s part of my job,” he pointed out. “What
do you think? Is it possible?”

“I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like the Jason I
know.”

“Tell me about him then. What kind of relationship do you
have?”

“He’s a friend.”

“Nothing more?”

“No.” She sighed. “Although he has made it clear
he’d like to be.”

“I’m not surprised. He’s been waiting two years.”

“Being interested in me doesn’t make him a criminal.”

“You’re right. But wouldn’t it be better if we
found out for sure?”

“What do you mean?”

“I remember what this guy looks like. I think I would recognize
him if he was the same person.”

“You want to meet Jason?”

“Can you think of a better way? If it’s not him, he’s
probably not involved. If it is him, that’s a pretty damning
coincidence, don’t you think?”