“Colette…” Abby leaned forward in her chair. “Isit possible when you were in California, maybe you were looking into our background?”
Colette stared at her in confusion. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
Abby and Belinda exchanged a glance. “When we were kids, we discovered adoption papers. We agreed we’d never open them, never find out which one of us might be adopted,” Belinda explained.
For a long moment Colette stared at her sisters. The memory she’d had earlier that day. “We…we made a pact beneath the dragon tree,” she said.
“That’s right,” Abby exclaimed.
“We pricked our fingers and made a vow.” The memory was once again clear and crisp in her mind. “No. I don’t think so. I wouldn’t have broken that vow. Whatever is happening now can’t have anything to do with that.” She said it with the certainty she felt in her heart.
Despite her lack of so many other memories, the vow she’d made with her sisters was one she knew she never would have broken. It had been a sacred trust between the three of them, one she couldn’t imagine breaking for any reason.
Colette roused herself from the sofa and stood. “I think I’ll take a long, hot bath.”
“If you want to lie down for a little while, I’ll wake you up for dinner,” Abby said.
Colette nodded and headed for her room. Once there she went to the crib, where Brook lay on her back, her little legs and arms moving as she softly cooed in contentment. Picking her up, Colette held her warmth against her breasts, needing this preciousmoment to usurp the dark despair she’d suffered in the root cellar.
After several long minutes of closeness, she placed Brook back in the crib, then went into the bathroom and started the water in the tub. As it filled, she stared at her reflection in the mirror.
The lump on her head seemed to have dissipated somewhat. “Who are you?” she asked her reflection. She knew her name, had flashes of memories of her life here on the ranch. But somewhere in her missing memories was the answer to who was trying to kill her.
Adoption papers. As she continued to stare at her reflection, she thought about her memory of the sister vow they had all made beneath the dragon tree so long ago.
Was it possible she’d decided to discover if she were the adopted sister? Abby told her she’d been working for a lawyer. Had he managed to dig up something about her birth that put her at risk?
She frowned. It not only made no sense, the scenario didn’t ring true. She’d never wanted to know which of them had been adopted. She couldn’t imagine any reason that would suddenly make that information important.
She touched a bruise on her forehead, imagining her memory locked directly behind it.
She had to remember. She had to remember what had happened in California, why she had run from there. She now realized with a chilling certainty that her life depended on it.
