A Forever Christmas

Chapter Four

She shifted her eyes from one man to the other and then back again, hoping for something. A glimmer of a memory, an elusive flash of recognition, anything.

But there was nothing. Not so much as a hint of a hint.

“When is my memory going to come back?” she asked the doctor.

Right now, she felt like an empty vessel. She had no memories to access, no thoughts to fill her head. Nothing but a vast wasteland stretched before her, leading nowhere, involving nothing. The loneliness of that was almost unbearable.

“That’s hard to say,” he told her honestly. “It varies from person to person. You could remember everything in a few hours, or—”

“Or?” she prompted, battling back an ever-growing sense of desperation. Was it purely due to her wanting to remember?

Or did it involve something she wanted to forget? She just didn’t know.

“Or you could never remember. But that’s rather rare,” he added.

“But it does happen,” she pressed, not wanting him to sugarcoat anything.

She did her best to find a way to brace herself for never getting beyond this moment right now, and yet how could she since she had nothing to draw upon?

“Rarely,” Gabe emphasized, speaking up. He noticed the look that Dan gave him. Probably wondering where I got my medical degree, Gabe thought. But he just couldn’t let that devastated expression on her face continue. “No point in dwelling on possible worst-case scenarios. If it turns out to be that way, you’ve gained nothing by making yourself miserable,” he explained. “And if it doesn’t, well, then you’ve wasted a lot of precious time anticipating something that turned out not to happen.”

A pragmatic thought rose to the fore—was she like that at heart? Or did this reaction just naturally evolve from her form of resignation? Again, nothing answered her silent query.

“From where I’m standing,” she told Gabe, “looks to me like I’ve got nothing but time to waste.”

“You’re not going to be wasting time,” Gabe told the blonde cheerfully. “You’re coming with me, remember? To Pine Ridge Memorial to see what they have to say about all this.”

It felt as if her head was spinning around in endless circles and she just wasn’t making any headway. Both Gabe and the doctor seemed to be nice, but were they? And why were they so willing to go out of their way for her like this?

“Do I know either one of you?” she asked, looking from one face to another again.

But her reaction to either man was just the same as it had been a moment earlier. Neither one looked the least bit familiar, woke up nothing in her depleted memory banks.

“No, you don’t,” Dan answered for both of them.

Even in her present limited state, she knew that just didn’t make any sense. “Then why are you doing this? Why are you taking me to a hospital in another town?”

“Because there is no hospital here,” Dan replied matter-of-factly.

“Because you need help,” Gabe told her almost at the same time.

It still didn’t make sense to her. “And that’s enough?” she questioned, puzzled.

Something told her that she wasn’t accustomed to selfless people. That everyone was always out for their own special interests.

“It is for me,” Gabe told her. “And for the doc,” he added, nodding at the other man.

Damn but the way this woman looked at him made him want to leap tall buildings in a single bound and change the course of mighty rivers, just like the comic-book hero of long ago. The very thought worried him. And yet, he couldn’t quite make himself back off. Couldn’t just turn her over to either Alma or Joe.

This woman was his responsibility. His to help.

“Let’s go,” he urged the woman, putting his hand lightly to the small of her back. A thought occurred to him before they’d gone two steps. “Unless you’d like to get something to eat first?” he suddenly suggested. He looked over his shoulder at Dan to see if the doctor had any objections about the slight delay in getting to the hospital. “Would it make any difference if she got a bite to eat first before going to the hospital for those tests you ordered?”

During his exam, Dan had already checked her eyes extensively, using a probing light to determine the condition of her optic nerves. As a result, he was satisfied that there was no imminent danger, no swelling as far as he could see.

“I didn’t detect anything that needed immediate attention,” Dan told both of them.

Gabe had his answer and was pleased Dan sided with him. “All right, then, why don’t we get you something to eat at Miss Joan’s and then we’ll be on our way.” It wasn’t a suggestion so much as a plan.

“Miss Joan’s?” she repeated, confused. Everything sounded like a huge mystery, a question mark to her, and she’d already become weary of the blanks that she kept drawing.

The older woman had always been known to one and all as “Miss Joan.” “Miss Joan owns the only diner in town. Best food you’ve ever had,” he promised her.

“How would I know?” she answered, raising and lowering her shoulders in a vague, careless shrug. After all, she had nothing to compare it to. She might as well have lived in a cave these last—how old was she, anyway? Something else that she didn’t know, she thought, frustrated.

“Trust me, it is,” Gabe easily assured her as he ushered the woman out the door. Turning, he called out, “Thanks, Doc.”

She took her cue from that, turning her head as well and calling out, “Yes, thank you.”

With a quick wave, Dan turned back to go inside the clinic just as he saw two of his patients heading toward the building.

Trust me.

That was what the tall, dark-haired cowboy had just said. Why did that make her uneasy? Did she know him, after all? Was he not trustworthy?

Or was this uneasy feeling generated by someone else? Someone who she couldn’t summon up in her defunct memory?

She stopped just as he brought her back to the passenger’s side of his truck.

Gabe noted the tension in her shoulders. “Something wrong?”

“Other than everything being a perfect blank?” she asked him. It was hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“Other than that,” he allowed with a slight nod of his head.

Okay, he asked for it, she thought. “You said ‘trust me.’”

He was still waiting. “Yes?” Did the phrase have any special significance to her?

“Can I?” she asked bluntly, adding, “Should I?”

“Yes and yes,” Gabe answered easily. “Ask anyone, they’ll tell you the same thing. You can trust me.”

The testimony of strangers didn’t mean anything to her. “But I don’t know anyone,” she said quietly as she got in.

“True,” he allowed, getting in on his side. “But you’re going to find that, in this world, you’ve got to let yourself trust someone. Otherwise, life gets too hard. Too lonely.”

It already was too lonely, she thought.

Suddenly a shiver danced over her, coming from regions unknown. As she tried not to let it shimmy down her spine, she heard herself asking, “But what if it’s the wrong someone? What if I trust the wrong person?”

What if I have already?

Gabe paused, his hand on the ignition key, and looked at her, trying to discern what was behind her question.

“Did you?” he asked. “Did you trust the wrong person?” Were things beginning to fall together—albeit haphazardly—for her? Or was she just tossing out questions, trying to see if anything stuck?

She pressed her lips together as tears of frustration suddenly gathered in her eyes.

Was that only frustration, or was there more to it than that? She didn’t know and she was already so sick of that phrase floating through her head.

She didn’t know.

Would she ever know? Would she ever know anything about anything?

The uncertainty was driving her crazy.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly again. “But something feels that way,” she found herself admitting.

Gabe merely nodded. This time, he turned on the engine. It rumbled to life.

“It’ll come to you,” he promised. “All of it. When you least expect it.”

She slanted a glance at him. Was he talking down to her? Or was there experience on which to base his answer?

“How do you know?” she finally challenged, not wanting to come across like a simpleton, secretly hoping to be convinced.

“I just do,” Gabe said easily. He smiled at her. “It’s called faith.”

Did she have that? Did she have any faith? she wondered. She hoped so. She needed something to hang on to, she thought in desperation. So, for now, maybe it would be faith.

Faith in the man who was sitting beside her. A man who, though she really didn’t remember it, apparently had saved her life.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll have faith.”

Her answer surprised him, but he made a point of not showing her that.

“Good.”

He’d wanted to insert her name here, except that there was no name to use. She hadn’t had any sort of identification on her—no driver’s license, no social security card, no well-creased love letter addressed to her hidden in the pocket of her black dress.

And if there had been any form of ID in the vehicle, most likely it was now burned to a crisp—as she almost was.

“I need something to call you,” he told her. Even as he said it, he began going through possible names and rapidly discarding them for one reason or another. And then he had it. Just like that. “I know, how about Angel?”

“Angel?” she repeated, testing it out on her ear. Like everything else, it didn’t seem familiar, but she liked the sound of it. “Why Angel?”

“Because you look like one,” he answered simply. “At least, like one of the angels I used to picture when I was a kid,” he told her with an affable grin.

“Angel,” she said again, and then nodded. It had a nice ring to it. “All right. I guess you can call me that.”

“Just until you remember your real name,” he emphasized. Although he had a hunch it wasn’t going to be as good as “Angel.”

She looked at him, wishing she could believe what he’d just said. Why was it so easy for him and so hard for her?

“You really think I will?” she asked him.

There wasn’t so much as a second’s hesitation on his part. He saw no point in trying to hedge or qualify his words. This woman didn’t need hesitation. She needed someone to believe for her until she could believe for herself.

“Yes, I really think you will. Hey,” he spoke up with enthusiasm, “that’s nice.”

She looked around, but saw nothing unusual and had no idea what he was referring to. “What is?” she finally asked.

Easing to a stop at the light, he took the opportunity to look at her again. “You just smiled.”

She wasn’t aware of doing that. “I did?”

Even as she asked, she ran her fingertips along her lips to see if they were curving. And they were. She took solace in that and grew momentarily hopeful.

“You did,” he confirmed. “You should do that more often,” Gabe encouraged. “It lights up your whole face. Like an angel’s,” he added with a wink.

Something fluttered in her stomach when he did that. It mystified her even as she found herself enjoying it.

She had no idea what to make of any of it.

The diner was just beyond the next stop sign.

“Well, we’re here,” he told her, coming to a stop in one of the diner’s designated parking spaces.

“Where’s ‘here’?” she asked, cocking her head as she peered through the windshield.

“Miss Joan’s diner,” he told her, unbuckling his seat belt and getting out.

Rather than head straight for the diner’s door, Gabe rounded the hood of his vehicle and opened the door on Angel’s side. He offered her his arm and stood waiting to help her out.

Though her memory continued to be a complete devastating blank, some distant instinct whispered that this wasn’t what she was accustomed to. That having someone open the door for her and help her out of a vehicle was a completely new experience for her.

What a very strange thing to catch her attention, she thought, walking through the door of the diner as Gabe held it open for her.

Unlike the bone-chilling temperature outside, the inside of the diner embraced her with warmth the moment Gabe closed the door behind him.

Warmth and the scent of—

Fried chicken?

Angel stopped moving toward the counter for a moment, stunned by what was, she realized, her first fragment of a memory.

Gabe was immediately at her side, looking to see what had caught her attention. Nothing out of the ordinary popped up. But, he realized, that was his ordinary. It might not be hers.

“What’s wrong?” Gabe asked. The expression on her face was difficult to place.

Angel turned toward him and said, “Fried chicken. I smell fried chicken.”

There was mounting excitement in her voice, the way there might have been in the voice of the fifteenth century Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon the moment he realized that he’d stumbled across the long-missing Fountain of Youth in Florida.

“That’s because that’s the special of the day,” Miss Joan informed her, calling out the information from her place behind the counter.

In the past few months, Miss Joan had finally broken down and married the man who’d been courting her for longer than anyone could remember. But, wedding or no wedding, everyone still called her Miss Joan. And Joan Randall Monroe definitely would not have had it any other way.

“C’mon over here, darlin’,” she called, beckoning Angel over to her. “Pull up a stool and rest yourself. I’ll bring you a plate of chicken that’ll make you swear you’ve died and gone to heaven.” She paused a second before heading to the kitchen. “White or dark?” Miss Joan asked.

Angel looked at the still-attractive strawberry blonde blankly. “Excuse me?”

“What’s your preference, darlin’?” Miss Joan rephrased her question. “Do you like white meat or dark meat better?”

Angel blew out an edgy breath. Even that was a mystery to her. What kind of a woman didn’t know if she liked white meat or dark meat?

“I don’t know,” she answered unhappily.

As if not knowing was perfectly plausible, Miss Joan never missed a beat. “Then I’ll bring you both.” But before leaving, her almost-violet eyes shifted toward Gabe. “And you, handsome? What’ll you have?”

“Dark,” he said with finality. “And if you don’t mind, make both to go.”

Miss Joan looked from Gabe to the young woman beside him and then shook her head, as if mystified at the way any mind under fifty worked. “A little cold to be having a picnic, isn’t it?”

“No, no picnic,” he told her. “We’re on our way to Pine Ridge.”

Gabe thought nothing of sharing that sort of information with Miss Joan. Everyone did. Besides, the woman had a way of finding things out whether or not she was directly told. This just wound up saving time for both of them.

“Nothing wrong, I hope,” Miss Joan said sympathetically. No one went to Pine Ridge unless it was to utilize the services of the hospital located in that town.

This time Gabe decided to just leave a vague response to her query but it was Angel who spoke up. “I don’t know who I am.”

To their surprise, Miss Joan took the response in stride. She merely nodded and chuckled. “A lot of that going around, darlin’,” she assured Angel. “Don’t let it worry you.”

The woman probably meant something of the ordinary variety, Angel thought, like a person trying to “find” themselves. She wished that was her problem instead of the one she faced.

“No, I don’t remember anything.”

Miss Joan thought of the memories that crowded her brain, as well as a couple in particular that had, until her recent marriage, haunted her nights.

An enigmatic smile played on her thin lips. “Sometimes, honey, it’s better that way.”

That same strange chill slid down Angel’s back, as if in response—and agreement—to what the outgoing woman had just said.

Now what did that mean? Angel couldn’t help wondering.