didn’t know what I was going to do. Fortunately, Chris happened to drive by and recognized I needed help. He took me to the hospital, who in turn sent me to another hospital in Wick where they came up with the traumatic amnesia diagnosis.”
Ironic how those memories were crystal clear. From the moment she’d found herself on that road till now, everything that had happened was indelibly imprinted on her brain.
“I don’t understand.” Thomas looked more confused than ever, and she suspected she knew why. “If you were at the hospital, why didn’t they...”
“Look into the missing persons reports?”
“Surely you knew people were looking for you. Surely your friend, Chris, knew?”
“We did.”
“Then...why?”
She paused. When he heard the answer, he wasn’t going to be happy.
“I asked them not to.”
His eyes doubled in size. “What?”
“I didn’t want to be located. Not straight away, anyway.”
“For crying out—” His fist pounded the table with a bang so loud it could be heard on the other side of the room. The noise brought Chris to the end of the bar.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“It’s okay,” she replied. Collier’s reaction could have been worse. Having flung himself back in his seat, he was washing his hands up and down his face. When he finally lowered them, there was no hiding the angry confusion darkening his eyes.
“Why the hell not?” He spoke through a clenched jaw, clearly trying to hold his temper.
“Because I needed time. To figure out what was going on. To see if my memory came back on its own.”
“I see.” It was hard to decide which was more restrained, his body or his voice. Both were being held tight. “And it never occurred to you that there might be other people whose lives were affected? Who were mourning you?”
“Of course it occurred to me,” she snapped. Though maybe not as much as it should have, she thought guiltily. “But put yourself in my shoes. I couldn’t remember anything—not my name, not how I got hurt. Meanwhile, the doctors are telling me I suffered some kind of horrible trauma. For all I knew, the people I left behind were the cause of that trauma.”
Thomas hissed as though slapped. “I would never...”
“I—” Know, she almost said. Even though instinct said the thought was on target, she held back. “I didn’t remember you.”
“You could have looked. Your disappearance was all over the news, the internet.”
“Have you seen where we are? We’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s not as if we’re in a breaking news zone. I looked for missing persons in Scotland and nothing came up. Which only made me more convinced I might be running away.
“Anyway, I asked Chris and Jessica if it would be okay for me to stay here while I got my head together, and they were kind enough to oblige. I’ve been living upstairs above the restaurant for the past four months.”
“Four months? Dear God.” Giving an anguished sigh, he dragged his fingers through his hair, leaving the slick black locks standing on end.
Guilt turned in her stomach. Maybe she should have forced herself to look harder, but the truth was she’d been scared of what she might find out about her past and about herself. When Chris found her, the single thought in her head, besides fear, had been the words I’m sorry. She’d carried with her a shadow of indefinable guilt that made her wonder if she’d made some kind of horrible mistake.
Now that same shadow had her wanting to run her fingers through his hair and ease his frustration.
“Linus has been dealing with the soap factory since the end of October,” he muttered. “October! We could have brought you home weeks ago. Maddie could have...”
“Maddie?”
Her heart seized up. Maddie was the name she’d chosen when Chris had asked what he should call her. The name had sprung to her tongue without a second thought. It couldn’t be a coincidence Collier was using the same name. “Who is Maddie?”
He turned his face and looked her in the eye. Son of gun if she didn’t hold her breath at the seriousness in his expression. “Maddie,” he said, “is our daughter.”
Rosalind squeaked. She had a daughter? A little girl?
Stunned, she stood up and walked to the window on the back wall, the one next to the set of deer antlers. Chris liked to tell people the giant horns were from a reindeer, but it was embellishment for business’s sake. Scotland didn’t have reindeer outside of Cairngorms. One of the weird facts she seemed to simply know.
She knew about reindeer but not about her own child. Might as well stomp on her heart this moment. It had never occurred to her she might have children.
Oh, sure, she would feel a pull whenever a young child came in to the restaurant, but she assumed every woman of childbearing years experienced the same yearning. She’d never dreamed there was someone out there with half her DNA.
“Would you like to see a photograph?” Thomas asked.
“Yes, please.” Spinning around, she leaned against the windowsill and waited for him to come to her. In case this was a trick, she didn’t want to sound too eager. Although gushing the word please didn’t exactly exude calm.
Nor did Collier’s expression exude deceit.
Rosalind’s hands shook as he handed her the phone. She was beautiful. A pudgy-cheeked angel with brown bobbed hair and Collier’s eyes. The photo showed her standing on a rock in a flower garden in a sunflower-print dress. Her little arms were stretched high over her head, pointing toward the sky.
“Maddie.” Her fingers stroked the screen.
“I took this on her birthday last August.”
Rosalind let out a gasp. She’d missed her daughter’s birthday? “How...how old is she?”
“Five.”
A five-year-old daughter. “I didn’t know,” she said, as if saying the words aloud would chase away the guilt.
What kind of mother forgets her own child? She swiped left through the photo gallery, discovering there was picture after picture of the little girl. Laughing. Posing with a stuffed dog. Feeding pigeons in the park. And then...
She found a photo of her and the girl together.
Taken when neither were paying attention to the camera, they were kneeling in front of a Christmas tree. The little girl, Maddie, had a box on her lap, while she, Rosalind, was reaching around her to straighten the bow. Longing grabbed at Rosalind’s chest.
“I’ve tried
