could feel it cracking. She’d held on so long—or at least it seemed so long—but now she could feel that branch she’d gripped when the world dropped out from under her begin to crack. “I don’t remember. Anything. I don’t—” Her voice began to hitch. She took her hands off the bag in her lap to press them to her face. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who I am.” And then she was weeping the words into her hands. “I don’t know who I am.”
Cade had a lot of experience with hysterical women. He’d grown up with females who used flowing tears and gulping sobs as the answer to anything from a broken nail to a broken marriage. So he rose from his desk, armed himself with a box of tissues and crouched in front of her.
“Here now, sweetheart. Don’t worry. It’s going to be just fine.” With gentle expertise, he mopped at her face as he spoke. He patted her hand, stroked her hair, studied her swimming eyes.
“I’m sorry. I can’t—”
“Just cry it out,” he told her. “You’ll feel better for it.” Rising, he went into the closet-size bathroom and poured her a paper cup of water.
When she had a lapful of damp tissues and three crushed paper cups, she let out a little jerky sigh. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I do feel better.” Her cheeks pinkened a bit with embarrassment as she gathered up the tissues and mangled cups. Cade took them from her, dumped them in the wastebasket, then rested a hip on the corner of his desk.
“You want to tell me about it now?”
She nodded, then linked her fingers and began to twist them together. “I— There isn’t that much to tell. I just don’t remember anything. Who I am, what I do, where I’m from. Friends, family. Nothing.” Her breath caught again, and she released it slowly. “Nothing,” she repeated.
It was a dream come true, he thought, the beautiful woman without a past coming out of the rain and into his office. He flicked a glance at the bag she still held in her lap. They’d get to that in a minute. “Why don’t you tell me the first thing you do remember?”
“I woke up in a room—a little hotel on Sixteenth Street.” Letting her head rest back against the chair, she closed her eyes and tried to bring things into focus. “Even that’s unclear. I was curled up on the bed, and there was a chair propped under the doorknob. It was raining. I could hear the rain. I was groggy and disoriented, but my heart was pounding so hard, as if I’d wakened from a nightmare. I still had my shoes on. I remember wondering why I’d gone to bed with my shoes on. The room was dim and stuffy. All the windows were closed. I was so tired, logy, so I went into the bathroom to splash water on my face.”
Now she opened her eyes, looked into his. “I saw my face in the mirror. This ugly little mirror with black splotches where it needed to be resilvered. And it meant nothing to me. The face.” She lifted a hand, ran it over her cheek, her jaw. “My face meant nothing to me. I couldn’t remember the name that went with the face, or the thoughts or the plans or the past. I didn’t know how I’d gotten to that horrid room. I looked through the drawers and the closet, but there was nothing. No clothes. I was afraid to stay there, but I didn’t know where to go.”
“The bag? Was that all you had with you?”
“Yes.” Her hand clutched at the straps again. “No purse, no wallet, no keys. This was in my pocket.” She reached into the pocket of her jacket and took out a small scrap of notepaper.
Cade took it from her, skimmed the quick scrawling writing.
Bailey, Sat at 7, right? MJ
“I don’t know what it means. I saw a newspaper. Today’s Friday.”
“Mmm. Write it down,” Cade said, handing her a pad and pen.
“What?”
“Write down what it says on the note.”
“Oh.” Gnawing her lip again, she complied.
Though he didn’t have to compare the two to come to his conclusions, he took the pad from her, set it and the note side by side. “Well, you’re not M.J., so I’d say you’re Bailey.”
She blinked, swallowed. “What?”
“From the look of M.J.’s writing, he or she’s a lefty. You’re right-handed. You’ve got neat, simple penmanship, M.J.’s got an impatient scrawl. The note was in your pocket. Odds are you’re Bailey.”
“Bailey.” She tried to absorb the name, the hope of it, the feel and taste of identity. But it was dry and unfamiliar. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means we have something to call you, and someplace to start. Tell me what you did next.”
Distracted she blinked at him. “Oh, I… There was a phone book in the room. I looked up detective agencies.”
“Why’d you pick mine?”
“The name. It sounded strong.” She managed her first smile, and though it was weak, it was there. “I started to call, but then I thought I might get put off, and if I just showed up… So I waited in the room until it was office hours, then I walked for a little while, then I got a cab. And here I am.”
“Why didn’t you go to a hospital? Call a doctor?”
“I thought about it.” She looked down at her hands. “I just didn’t.”
She was leaving out big chunks, he mused. Going around his desk, he opened a drawer, pulled out a candy bar. “You didn’t say anything about stopping for breakfast.” He watched her study the candy he offered with puzzlement and what appeared to be amusement. “This’ll hold you until we can do better.”
“Thank you.” With neat, precise movements, she unwrapped the chocolate bar. Maybe part of the fluttering in her stomach was hunger. “Mr. Parris, I may have people worried about me. Family, friends. I may have a child. I don’t know.” Her eyes deepened, fixed on a point over his shoulder. “I don’t think I do. I can’t believe anyone could forget her own child. But people may be worried, wondering what happened to me. Why I didn’t come home last night.”
“You could have gone to the police.”
“I didn’t want to go to the police.” This time, her voice was clipped, definite. “Not until… No, I don’t want to involve the police.” She wiped her fingers on a fresh tissue, then began to tear it into strips. “Someone may be looking for me who isn’t a friend, who isn’t family. Who isn’t concerned with my well-being. I don’t know why I feel that way, I only know I’m afraid. It’s more than just not remembering. But I can’t understand anything, any of it, until I know who I am.”
Maybe it was those big, soft, moist eyes staring up at him, or the damsel-in-distress nerves of her restless hands. Either way, he couldn’t resist showing off, just a little.
“I can tell you a few things already. You’re an intelligent woman, early-to-mid-twenties. You have a good eye for color and style, and enough of a bankroll to indulge it with Italian shoes and silk suits. You’re neat, probably organized. You prefer the understated to the obvious. Since you don’t evade well, I’d say you’re an equally poor liar. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, you think things through. You don’t panic easily. And you like chocolate.”
