to her real life. She had to remember what she’d been doing. What showdown she was heading for. Who, or what, she’d been after.
The nurse looked as if she wanted to take Gemma’s clothes with her, but she left them in a neat stack on the chair. Gemma momentarily wondered if she had the strength to put them back on, distasteful as that thought was becoming. But even as she gave up the idea for the moment, Detective Tanninger reentered the room.
They eyed each other for several moments, and then he observed, “If you’re too tired, I can come back.”
“I’d like to help you. I just don’t know if I can.”
“Where do you live in Quarry?”
Gemma hesitated. “It’s a farmhouse.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“It’s coming back, but it’s not all there yet,” she said.
“Take your time.”
“A lot of homes in Quarry are farmhouses, though there aren’t as many farms anymore. It was my parents’ place, Jean and Peter LaPorte, but they’re both gone and they left it to me.”
“You live there by yourself?”
Did she? Gemma opened her mouth, thought hard, then said slowly, “Yes…”
“You think your memory difficulty is from the concussion?” he asked casually.
“What else?” she responded quickly, her pulse jumping. But she had a moment of remembrance then. A mental snapshot of herself and her mother in the front room of the farmhouse. There was another woman sitting on the edge of her seat, staring hard at Jean LaPorte. Anxious. Waiting. And all around them the cloying, sweet scent of peonies from the magenta bouquet bursting in a vase on the scarred table.
“Your memory lapse seems greater than what I would expect from a concussion,” he said. “What’s your address?”
“I don’t really want to talk anymore.” Gemma looked away.
“You can’t remember it.”
“I’ve been in some kind of accident, detective. I’m not a hundred per cent. If you have a specific question, ask it. Otherwise I don’t think I can help you any further.”
He looked at her hard. “Afraid of me finding out that you ran down a man with your car?”
Gemma stared at him in shock. “What?” she asked softly.
“The man’s unconscious, upstairs. He’s a pedophile, by the looks of what we found in his van.”
“In his van…?” she repeated faintly.
“It looks like you ran him down on purpose.”
There was no humor in his face now. It was hard and tough and an accusation hung in his dark eyes. Gemma tried to remember. She’d remembered the man’s lust. She’d felt it. She’d chased him…
Or, had she? It felt like these were someone else’s memories. Manufactured. Not real, and not hers!
“No…I don’t think so,” she denied.
“You don’t think so.”
She didn’t respond and Tanninger went on to tersely explain about the man who’d been run down at a soccer field, how he’d been driving a van filled with handcuffs and chains and ropes, how some unidentified woman had aimed her car at him and flipped him into the air, how he’d survived the attack, but just barely. As Gemma listened she understood that the detective had been plying her with questions in order to find out what she knew, if anything, about the attack. He half-believed—maybe even fully believed—that she’d been behind the wheel of the car that had attacked the man, a pedophile.
When he was finished Gemma’s head felt like it was going to explode. Is that what she’d done? Is that why she couldn’t remember?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said in a shaking voice that nevertheless rang with conviction.
Tanninger drew a breath, expanding his chest. What did it say about her, Gemma wondered, that even when he was panicking her with his questions, she could notice how tan his skin was, how good he looked in his pressed shirt and dark pants, how strong and able he seemed, like someone she could depend on.
But then she recalled, with almost a ping of remembrance, that she’d always been attracted to a man in a uniform, no matter whether they had a sense of humor or not.
Outside good old Laurelton General, Inga Selbourne had raced to her Honda compact as soon as she’d gotten off work. She was proud to be a nurse. Proud to wear the uniform. Proud to have a job—a really good job!—at the best, the only, hospital in Winslow County. She’d congratulated herself again as she’d hurriedly unlocked the door and climbed inside, and she’d been congratulating herself all the way home to the little apartment attached to the farmhouse on the outskirts of the town of Laurelton itself.
Or, was it the inskirts of Laurelton? she thought with a grin, as it was on the eastern side of the city, toward Portland.
She’d had one heck of a time getting through nursing school. Whew, those classes had been rough. She’d had to pull all-nighters more often than she cared to admit, and even then if it hadn’t been for Jarrod Benningfield and his copy of that anatomy test, she would have been screwed! Jarrod’s sister had whizzed through the semester before, and Jarrod had handed Inga the test and the answers and all she’d had to do was pretend to be his girlfriend—the pimple-faced little horror—and oh, yeah, give him a blow job or two, but she’d been through that drill enough times to know that sex was a bargaining chip, nothing more.
Luckily the shortage of nurses made it a slam-bang for her to get a job as soon as she graduated. And she was good at what she did, anyway. Really, really good. There was a hell of a lot more to caring for the sick than acing a few tests, that was for sure. Everyone told her how good she was at her job and it just swelled her with pride. It sure did.
And she’d wanted to be at Laurelton General. It was totally perfect! It wasn’t too far away from her apartment, and if she wanted some fun, it was a straight shot into Portland on Highway 26, the Sunset Highway, on that last stretch before Portland city center, and when she needed to go to her job, well, that was a cinch. She was thinking about heading into Portland tonight. Lately she’d been going to that new nightclub in the Pearl that played hot music and served Caribbean martinis. Whew, they were powerful. She’d had to take a taxi home a few times, and she’d gone home with friends a few times, too. Slept with a couple of guys she shouldn’t have. Fuck-buddies. She shrugged her small shoulders. What’cha gonna do.
As the wheels of her car ate up the miles, Inga shrugged those thoughts aside. She didn’t dwell on past mistakes or less than perfect decision-making. Life was good. She had her own place and her own life. The apartment was small: a studio with a partition. The only honest-to-goodness room was the bathroom. It at least had a real door. But the space was all hers and now, as she drove through the dark toward home, she felt a smile cross her lips despite the sudden rain that was peppering hard against her windshield.
She switched on the wipers. Jesus, what a downpour. You’d think it was
