Forget Me Not: A Novel (Crossroads Crisis Center) (8 page)

“She doesn’t remember.”

“Convenient.”
Another scam
.

“Not really.”

“Excuse me?”

“Have you ever not known who you were or had your life be a mystery to you?” Peggy asked. “It’s many things, arouses a riot of emotions, Ben, but nothing about it is convenient.”

Shame burned through him. He had no right to be cold and callous. No matter what he’d been through or lost, this woman could be the real
thing. Her experience and injuries could be real too. It was possible. Not probable, but possible. And until he knew otherwise, he should at least be civil. Well, as close to civil as a cynical man could get.

“You’re right, of course. But she’s claiming to be Susan.”

“Not exactly. According to Mel, when the woman arrived, she wasn’t claiming to be anyone. She was asking if anyone knew her—because of the card. Then she saw Susan’s painting and things changed.”

His heart twisted. “Do they resemble each other that much?”

“Honestly, with all the bruises and swelling it’s hard to tell. But she must think so. Even with my telling her I saw Susan at the crime scene and in her—um, after she passed, the woman still doubted she wasn’t Susan.” Peggy paused, then added, “I understand it, Ben. She believes what she’s seeing with her own eyes, and what she sees is that she’s Susan.”

“Susan is dead, and we both know it.” The truth hollowed his chest, and its bleak emptiness stretched and filled every crevice, smothering everything good.

“Yes, but this isn’t about what we know. It’s about this woman and what she knows. And I have to say, there’s too much odd in so many similarities. We can’t just blow this off. We know that too.”

Peggy had one of her funny feelings. She didn’t have to say it; she’d hinted, and after three years of experience with her, that hint was enough. Maybe the woman wasn’t crazy or a con artist. Maybe she could provide the one piece of evidence or information that would lead him to Susan and Christopher’s killers.

Don’t dare to hope it, Ben. Don’t dare
.

He couldn’t, wouldn’t. But neither could he close that door without looking through it. “When Harvey’s finished, conference this.” Ben made a judgment call he could tolerate. “I want to see her myself.”

“Okay. Good. It’ll be probably another half hour. I’ve given Detective Jeff Meyers the report, but he’s waiting for the docs to finish to see her himself.”

“She’s agreed to talk with him?”

“The docs haven’t agreed to it yet. Right now, he’s just asking for an eyes-on look.”

“Fine, I’ll wait for that. I want Harvey and Lisa to sit in.”

“You’re coming in to the center?” Surprise riddled her tone.

“No. Computer conference.”

“You could come down. Frankly, I could use the help. There’s been a terrorist attack at a mall in Mobile. We nearly had a catastrophe that would rival 9/11. Fortunately, someone at Homeland Security put the pieces together, and they nearly got the mall evacuated in time. Minimal casualties but a lot of shaken-up people.”

“Terrorist attack?”

“It’s all over the news. Some group called NINA is taking responsibility,” Peggy said. “Emergency Management is asking us for help. They’re short on counselors.”

“Don’t even ask.” He didn’t counsel anymore. He didn’t go to the center anymore. Not since Susan and Christopher …

“Computer conference it is, then.” Peggy sighed. “I’ll set it up.”

Somewhere deep inside, the hope that this would lead to something that revealed the truth flickered to life.

Ben snuffed it out.

He’d follow through. He’d always follow through. But his days of being suckered into hoping he wouldn’t just hit another dead end were over.

He cradled the phone and pressed his hands over his eyes. A man could only survive that hard a fall so many times.

By nine thirty Sunday morning, the adrenaline surge that kept Susan’s pain minimal subsided. Every conceivable part of her body ached. But at least she had the comfort of knowing she suffered no permanent physical damage—and, while being attacked had been a violation, she was spared that type of violation women most fear.

She felt safe at the crisis center; at least, she had until Dr. Harper and Dr. Talbot and Peggy Crane brought her into this sterile conference room and some guy no one bothered to introduce appeared on a computer screen placed at the far end of the long table. He came out glaring at her, and he still hadn’t stopped.

He appeared to be in his early thirties, and he was indisputably a handsome man with black hair, gray eyes, and a strong, angular face that was far more interesting than perfect. The only thing that wrecked his appeal was the bitterness etched into its every line.

The glare and that bitterness warned this wasn’t going to be pleasant, and right now she just didn’t need the added stress of being subjected to another hostile man. As it was, she felt half a beat from jumping out of her skin.

Be patient with him
.

She stilled. Digested.
Yes, Lord
. She whispered that response in her mind. When what she’d done dawned on her, she inwardly gasped.
God?

No response. And yet she knew it had been. Here, now, God was with her.

Her heart beat fast, hard in her chest.
Be patient with him
, He’d said. Determined to try, she rubbed her gold cross necklace for comfort.

Dressed in olive green Dockers and a golf shirt, Dr. Talbot leaned
forward and folded his hands on the conference table. His gold watch glinted in the strong overhead light and reflected in the table’s sheen. “Ben, thank you for joining us. Shall I brief you?”

So Mystery Man’s name was Ben. She sat up a little straighter. Did he work here too?

“No, thanks, Harvey.” On the screen Ben kept his gaze fixated on Susan. “You brief me.”

Definitely not pleasant.
Why?
“Excuse me?” She hiked her chin. “Not to be rude, but I don’t even know you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Peggy said. “Totally my fault, Susan. Benjamin Brandt owns Crossroads Crisis Center. He used to be a counselor here.”

Susan Brandt’s relative? He didn’t look at her like a husband or a brother, and she wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Peggy swiped her bobbed hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear, and looked from Susan to her boss. “Ben, Dr. Talbot—”

“Can relax a moment.” Ben tipped his chin toward Susan. “Go ahead.”

His arrogance wasn’t at all becoming. “I’m the victim, Mr. Brandt. I don’t believe I work for you, and from my lack of familiarity with your processes, I’m guessing I’m not a psychiatrist either. So I have no idea what you want to know.”

Unless he was chiseled from stone, the man had to know her nerves were ready to snap, and aggression wouldn’t help. She didn’t deserve it any more than she’d deserved to be carjacked. “I don’t know how to brief you.”

Dr. Talbot seemed disturbed by her response. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps it would be better—”

Ben lifted a hand and Dr. Talbot fell silent.

Ben looked straight at her. “Since you arrived, everyone at my table
has been trying to help you. I’m not asking for a medical briefing. I just want to hear what you have to say.” His voice went tight. “I’d appreciate your answering me because I asked.”

Be patient with him
.

Help from his staff didn’t absolve him from offering others common courtesy and respect. The urge to tell him so burned in her throat, but he had eased up a bit, so he was making an attempt not to be obnoxious. Still, she didn’t want to be patient; she wanted to blister his ears.

But she couldn’t do it. She trusted God more than herself. He had His reasons … and so must the people at the table. Not one of them had challenged Ben Brandt. Odd, because they all had been protective of her. When she’d talked to that police detective, Peggy insisted on being in the room, and both Dr. Talbot and Dr. Harper asked if she was sure she was up to talking with him.

So if God was telling her to be patient with Ben and these people weren’t challenging the man, more had to be going on here than met the eye. She didn’t understand it, and she didn’t much like it. Reading Ben the riot act would alleviate a lot of her stress, but rolling it all together left her with a choice to make.

Whom did she follow? Her will or His?

Swallowing a groan of dissent, she made her call. She’d walk in faith. God understood all of this, and He’d make His reasons clear to her in His own time.

Shifting on her seat, she hoped that clarity would come sooner rather than later, though she’d rather not relive last night’s events for the fourth time this morning.

Without the massive doses of adrenaline surging through her now as they had been then, this retelling proved the most difficult. Someone wanted her dead.
Dead
. And seeing skepticism written all over Benjamin
Brandt’s face didn’t help a thing. Oh, he tried to hide it, but it was there, and it took its toll. Why did he have to fight himself not to be confrontational with her? She’d done nothing to him.

The back of her nose burned, her eyes stung, and her voice repeatedly cracked, grating and ragged and as raw as she felt inside. The effort was draining, but she kept pushing, relaying everything she remembered from before arriving at his center.

She finished, rubbed her arms, and willed herself to calm down. “I assume you know what’s happened since I’ve been here and I don’t have to repeat that too.”

“Thank you, I do. I’ve been briefed on all that.”

His expression had grown more sober as she’d spoken, yet something subtle she couldn’t pinpoint shifted in him. Maybe he realized his attitude was unfair, or that he’d come across hard, though she doubted it. And, gauging by his grim expression, it would take reaching for the stars to think she’d touched his compassion and his anger was directed at her attackers. So what was that shift in him? What did it mean?

No sense in speculating on it. Yet she couldn’t seem to help herself. Whatever it was, it chiseled away her resentment until it nearly disappeared. That made no sense whatsoever—at least, not to her.

“You’ve been very open, and I appreciate it,” Ben said. “I have only one question—curiosity, really.” His tone sounded as stiff as his broad shoulders looked. “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

Oh, she’d really rather not answer that. How could she make him understand something she didn’t understand herself? “I was afraid to go to the police.” She slid her gaze down to the table and focused on its sheen.

“Why? Are they looking for you for something? What did you do?”

She worried her lip with her teeth, wrung her hands in her lap. “That’s an absurd question to ask someone who has swiss cheese for memory.”

Be patient with him
.

I’m trying. Could You make him a little less suspicious of me?

No answer.

She squeezed her eyes closed and sighed. “I’m sorry. That was rude, Mr. Brandt, and I shouldn’t have said it.” She wished she could have said she shouldn’t have even thought it, but she was a mere mortal, and that would be asking too much.

“I don’t want an apology.” He frowned. “I want an answer to my question.”

Her resentment returned with a vengeance. She worked to leash it before she said or did something else she would have to apologize for—in her current state, she doubted she could do it twice. The words hung up in her throat. She had to force them out.

“I would if I could, but I can’t tell you why I didn’t go to the police because I don’t know why. That’s the truth. When Clyde Parker told me where I was, it scared me. It-it shook me down to my shoes.” That worried her more than she let him or anyone else see.

“Then I found that business card for Crossroads in my pants pocket and saw ‘Susan’ written on it. That’s when I remembered the abductor calling me ‘Susan.’ I thought maybe someone here would know me.”

“You’re sure you have no idea why being in Seagrove Village frightens you?”

“Swiss cheese, remember?” She tapped her temple. “I don’t know a better way to describe it. Some memories are there, and some just are not. Why I’m afraid of this place is not. So, no,” she said, feeling foolish, “I don’t know why.”

“He’s not trying to be a jerk,” Peggy whispered from behind her hand. “He was married to Susan.”

Well, that handy bit of information explained a lot. He hadn’t looked at her like a husband or brother because he wasn’t her husband or brother. Yet with her looking so much like his dead wife, this interview had to be tough on him too.

When she’d come into the conference room, she believed she was
this
Susan—the one who belonged here. But after meeting Ben, she knew for fact she didn’t belong, and she certainly wasn’t the Susan who had been married to him. She might not know who she was, but she could never be married to a man who had practiced being hard and bitter and angry long enough to perfect it.

I don’t belong here
.

Where did she belong? Did she have a family? Was she married?

Am I married?
Instinctively she looked to her left hand. No ring. No telltale white band of skin. But that wasn’t proof of anything—there were a thousand reasons people didn’t wear wedding bands anymore—but disappointment pressed down on her. Seeing a ring or even a thin strip of white skin would have made her feel less isolated and alone. Not knowing herself felt awful. No one else knowing her felt even worse. What kind of woman was she? Wasn’t she worth
somebody
at least knowing?