he grabbed the bottle of Bushmills and made his way into the house he and Colleen had planned together.
JO HAD BEEN SHAKEN by the angry words flung at her by the bartender. She was half-afraid to meet him outside as he suggested. The pub was surrounded by forest. No one except a kid on a bicycle knew she’d come here looking for Garret Logan. How could she trust that surly, muscular bartender not to hurt her?
Still, those people might be her only lead, her only way to sort out the past. She was unnerved by his behavior, but even more so by her own uncharacteristic request for sarsaparilla.
As Jo hovered near the bar, undecided about leaving or staying in case the man came back, she sensed a bigger wall of hostility surrounding a second man who’d emerged from the pub’s back room. He carried a broom, a mop and a bucket. After pausing to check if the two guys seated at the bar needed anything else, he bent to the chore of cleaning up the mess left by the first bartender. If this was the Brian the other man had mentioned, he wasn’t familiar to her either.
The two men, both quite good-looking with dark hair and coffee-brown eyes, shared a familial resemblance. Plus, they were the rudest people Jo had ever encountered. Her ego still smarted from the first man saying they had a score to settle. The only scores she knew anything about were musical scores.
She supposed she could’ve explained her situation. She could’ve admitted her past was a blank. But a psychologist she’d briefly seen had cautioned her to be careful whom she confided in before she knew just how the person was linked to her past. The therapist said sometimes too much honesty allowed unscrupulous people to take advantage. She cited cases where men—especially—had claimed past romantic relationships with fugue victims, then cleaned out their bank accounts. And her mother, too, had urged Jo to be wary because she was so vulnerable.
Not that Jo had money. What she did have, apparently, was some kind of history connecting her to this town. Already she’d experienced the anxiety that accompanied flashes of déjà vu. And, yes, she definitely felt vulnerable. The bartender had also called her Colleen. Jo didn’t know what to believe.
Glancing around the pub, she felt as though she’d seen the paintings and photographs hanging on thewalls before. It was creepy, like walking into a stranger’s dream.
Still unsure if she should wait for the first bartender to return, Jo crossed to a doorway shielded by strings of green crystal beads. She parted the tinkling strands and peered into a vacant room—and was flooded with images of a wedding. Or perhaps bits and pieces of several wedding receptions. The mental pictures were so clear they made her gasp and blink.
She started to step into the room, but was blocked by a man’s arm. Jo fought the barrier momentarily, because she didn’t want to lose the moment. The blip—the wedding scene—was accompanied by raucous laughter, clinking glassware and the sounds of loud fiddle music.
Not Jo’s kind of music—not Tchaikovsky, Schumann or Beethoven—but folk songs. How was it she recognized the bluegrass sounds when her mother refused to let anything other than classical music be played in their home?
Checking her forward motion, Jo dropped her chin and gripped her head. Briefly, she recalled one of her hospital nurses bringing her a CD of country instrumentals. Her mother had pitched a fit and snapped the CD in half. “Trash,” Sharon spat, as she tossed the broken pieces in a wastebasket.
“This room is off-limits,” the man growled. “Haven’t you hurt Garret enough? He’s finally getting his life back. I can’t control who comes and goes in this town, but it is my call as to who gets served in Logan’s.” For a brief moment he relaxed his gruff stance. “Forget whatever’s brought you back to town, Colleen. Believe me, there’s nothing left for you here.”
Overcome by unexplained dizziness made worse by the man’s intense brown gaze, Jo decided she’d had quite enough Southern hospitality for one day. “I wasn’t planning on stealing the family jewels,” she said, gritting her teeth. “I came here hoping to speak to Garret Logan. But it’s clear you people have never learned basic good manners.” Not waiting to see what, if any, effect her outburst had, she turned and stalked off. She couldn’t get out of the building fast enough.
Outside in the fresh air it took several minutes to calm her nerves. The odd moment she experienced in the pub could only be a glimpse into her past. Mildred at the café and both bartenders seemed sure they knew her. They called her Colleen, the name in the highschool yearbooks and on the award certificates she’d found in the cedar box. Her father’s cedar box.
It was frightening to think about who she might have been. What could she have done to spark such negative reactions?
Jo’s inclination was to climb in her car and get out of this burg where it was abundantly clear she wasn’t wanted. It would be easy to take Jerrold’s advice and leave buried what her mother had taken such pains to hide.
But that would be cowardly. Jo had fought back from the brink of death, the doctors said. Whatever she was, she wasn’t a coward.
And yet her hand shook as she switched on the ignition. Probably because of the second bartender’s barely veiled threat that there was nothing for her in White Oak Valley. It was disturbing to think she might have committed a sin here so awful that after a long absence she’d still be persona non grata.
Slowly releasing the brake, Jo cast a final look at the pub before stepping on the gas. Was she crazy for wanting explanations?
No! Anyone who’d ever lived without memories would know it left a person feeling incomplete. Surely it was better to step up and face whatever crime she’d committed as a teenager. All sorts of possibilities chased through Jo’s mind, from the simple to the really drastic. Nothing seemed to click.
As she drove aimlessly around town, Jo recalled the past her mother had drilled into her after she’d emerged from the coma. She recalled how panicky she’d felt when no memories would come. No wonder she’d accepted the stories her mother had spun. In pain, recovering from multiple surgeries, why would she question any of it? And the pieces fit, especially after her doctors agreed to let Sharon bring Jo’s violin to her bedside. The realization that she remembered how to play had eased her initial panic. She realized now, belatedly, that was the biggest factor as to why she swallowed everything her mother had told her.
Except, how much was fact and how much fiction? The staff at the conservatory welcomed her with open arms after she’d healed enough to attend classes. That year and later, instructors often spoke in glowing terms of her first auditions. And Jerrold had signed on as her sponsor prior to the accident. So her talent, at least, was real.
But when had her parents left White Oak Valley, and why?
That was the million-dollar question Jo needed to answer. And she wasn’t going back to Boston until she had. She remembered passing a resort hotel on one of her swings through town. Circling back, Jo was relieved to see only a handful of cars in the lot. Her bank account was healthy enough to allow her to stay a few weeks.
She parked and went inside. To the left of an empty lobby, a dark-haired woman not much older than Jo stood behind the check-in counter. Her badge said Trish Collier.
“I’d like a room, please.” Jo smiled as she slid a credit card from her wallet. “Three nights to start. Possibly more. I’m not sure how long my business in White Oak Valley will take.”
“Sorry,” the clerk said. “We’re full up,” she added, turning away to sort through a pile of registration slips.
Jo
