my eyes and blew my nose.
“His name is Greg Eastman.”
Dr. Royce fixed his gaze on me as he said the name. If he expected some reaction, a ray of light to dawn, I disappointed him. Not to mention my own sorry disappointment. The name meant absolutely nothing to me.
“Who is he? How…How does he know me?”
“He’s a private investigator.” A faint smile curved the psychiatrist’s lips. “He recognized you from the photo you ran in the paper.”
I started to smile, too. “He recognized me? Then…then my face isn’t…I haven’t…changed….”
“Not enough for him not to recognize you.”
There was something I didn’t understand. “Are you saying he wasn’t sure, at first? Is that why he’s waited…?”
“No. He told me he was out of town when your photo ran in the paper, but his secretary had, as a matter of practice, clipped it out and filed it in his Missing Persons folder. The minute he saw it…” Dr. Royce paused for a moment. “He knew it was you.”
I waited, as if suspended, for him to tell me who I was. I will never forget that wait. A part of me felt it was interminable; another part of me was afraid for it to conclude. Discovering my identity could be as frightening as not knowing it at all.
When Dr. Royce finally spoke, there was such solemnity in his voice that the hairs on my forearms literally stood on end. “He says your name is Deborah Steele.”
I stared at him blankly, not knowing what to say to this announcement, how to react. It was the strangest sensation. I suddenly went numb all over.
“Deborah.” I tried the name out for the first time. It sounded as foreign and removed from me as the name Katherine—as any name I might have pulled out of a hat.
My hand was shaking so, I only barely managed to set my coffee cup down on the table. “Is he sure?”
“Naturally, he wants to see you in person, but…I think he’s pretty certain. He knew you. Quite well, he says. He knew…that you painted.”
My eyes widened.
“And he brought along a photograph.”
“Of…her?” I couldn’t think of her as me.
Not yet. It was all too unreal. I wasn’t even sure I wouldn’t wake up any moment and find out this was all some wild, impossible dream.
“The similarities are striking.”
I sensed he was holding something back. “And the differences? Are they striking, too?”
It was the only time I ever saw Dr. Royce blush. “Naturally…there are some differences. The nose and jawline…” His voice trailed off.
I had a feeling there were more profound differences, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear what they were. “This private detective—Greg Eastman—you say he knew me.”
Dr. Royce leaned forward a little. I braced myself. As it turned out I needed bracing.
“He’s not merely a private investigator. He’s a close friend of…your husband.” He exhaled a breath. “Nicholas Steele.”
Husband? My heart began to pound and a line of perspiration broke out across my brow. I could feel the color drain from my face. I must have looked ghastly, because Dr. Royce’s expression became etched with concern.
“It’s a lot to take in. Don’t expect to do it all at once,” he cautioned in that comforting voice he used whenever I became overly agitated.
“Husband?” This time I said the word aloud, but it still didn’t sound real. Or possible. I looked at my bare ring finger. Had I worn a wedding band before the attack? Had it been stolen, along with everything else I had on me? But, I didn’t feel…married. I felt so…detached. I stared incredulously at Dr. Royce. “You say his name is…Nicholas Steele?”
He was watching me closely. “Does it sound familiar to you?”
I started to shake my head, but then I stopped abruptly, my heartbeat accelerating. “I…don’t know. It does…ring a bell. I…I think I’ve heard the name…before.”
Could this be that first chink in the armor? If it was, I would have expected to see some sign of pleasure in the doctor’s face. I didn’t. If anything, his expression took on amore somber cast. I was crestfallen.
“Nicholas Steele is a writer,” he said gently. “His novels are bestsellers. You might have seen some of his books here at the hospital or seen an ad for one of them in a newspaper.” He paused. “On the other hand, it is possible you may—”
I shook my head then. “No,” I said, cutting him off. “I must have seen his name on a book or in the newspaper. It certainly doesn’t conjure up any images.”
“Maybe that’s just as well.”
As soon as the words had slipped out of his mouth, I could see that he regretted them.
He smiled awkwardly. “I only meant…He writes horror novels.”
By this point my head was swimming. How could I, the victim of a horror so traumatic I’d erased it and everything that came before it from my mind, be the wife of a famous—for all I knew, infamous—writer of ghoulish deeds? It was utterly perverse and incredible. I had to be dreaming—an insane nightmare.
“You don’t believe this, do you? You don’t think I’m the wife of a man…like that?”
Dr. Royce donned a fatherly expression. “Like what? Just because he writes horror stories doesn’t mean—”
“I can’t even imagine reading a horror novel. I can’t believe I…I ever did.”
“Wives aren’t required to be fans of their husbands’ work.”
“You think I’m Deborah?”
“I talked with Mr. Eastman for close to two hours. He was very candid, and he gave me a great number of details that I must say sounded credible.” He hesitated, and my body tensed. “He also told me that Nicholas Steele lives in a small town about three hours north of here. Sinclair. It’s in the Catskill Mountains.”
I finally understood his remark back in the O.T. room when he was looking at my landscape. “I wasn’t painting any particular mountain. I…I couldn’t have been.”
“Not on a conscious level,” he went on, in an almost-chatty tone. I knew he was trying to calm me down, but even he had to know that wasn’t a likely prospect. Still, though my head was spinning with it all, I tried to concentrate on his words.
“Mr. Eastman has a getaway cottage up in Sinclair,” Dr. Royce was saying. But I wanted to hear about Nicholas Steele, this writer of horror stories, this man who was supposedly my husband. Or did I?
“Eastman spends most weekends and summers there. He’s known
