“I’ll be seeing you around,” he said, before driving off and splashing her liberally with mud and water. His last words echoed unpleasantly as she stood there, and for a moment she considered running.
But where would she run to? They hadn’t passed another house or a car for miles; she was out in the middle of nowhere, and the rain was like tiny pellets of ice pelting against her skin. She’d been running away when they found her. Maybe it was time to stop running. Time to face the truth, no matter how unpleasant it might be.
She moved toward the back door of the house with an instinct she didn’t stop to consider, her head held low against the driving rain. Pulling at the knocker, she huddled under the tiny porch roof. There was no answer.
She knocked again, this time more loudly. The strain of the day, the wetness of her clothes and the pain in her head were all joining to make her furiously angry with a fate and a husband who had put her in such a miserable situation. She stared out at the rain-soaked landscape, sorely tempted to take off into the late afternoon downpour, never to be heard from again. But cowardice and discomfort were too much for her, she thought bitterly, and feeling like a fool she turned back and knocked one last time. “The hell with it,” she muttered, as she pushed open the door and stumbled in.
It took her a moment to get her bearings. The interior was warm and dark, with the scent of lemon oil and wood smoke in the air, and there wasn’t a sound other than the steady tick of a grandfather dock gracing the stone-floored hallway. Her high-heeled shoes were wet and slippery, and she kicked them off with a sigh of relief before moving down the strange hallway in her damp stocking feet. Her total lack of recognition should have disturbed her. They had told her this was her home—she had no choice but to take their word for it. For the time being all she wanted was to find someplace warm and sit down.
She found her haven at the end of the ball—a warm, cozy living room with a fire crackling in the fieldstone fireplace, sending out delicious waves of heat. There was no one in sight, and for the first time she thought to announce her presence.
“Hello!” she called out, softly at first. Then, gaining courage, she shouted louder. “Is anyone home?” There was no answer, just the hiss and pop of the fire. Sighing, she sank down in one of the overstuffed armchairs by the fire and took stock of her surroundings.
She’d never been here before, she told herself incredulously. If she had, how could she have forgotten it, how could she ever have left it? Even with the gloom of the lashing rain outside, it was surely the most beautiful room she’d ever seen in her life. The walls were of an old and mellow oak paneling, the ceiling low and comforting, with shelves of books all around. The furniture around her was old, a wonderful mix of antiques and overstuffed comfort. To her right was a gateleg table with a Chinese porcelain bowl of fresh flowers on it; across the room was a Chippendale highboy that made her ache with covetousness. And yet there was no need for envy, she realized suddenly. This was her home.
She lost track of the time, staring absently into the fire. It could have been five minutes, or an hour, before she became aware of her damp, uncomfortable condition. Her silk suit was ruined, and her entire body felt clammy and stiff despite the warmth of the fire. She decided then she couldn’t wait any longer for her phantom husband—she simply had to get into more comfortable clothing.
Making her way into the back hall, she turned on the lights against the late afternoon gloom. It was an eerie feeling, wandering around this vast, strange yet familiar house. At any moment she expected some stranger to pop out of a hidden doorway, to denounce her as an imposter.
But no one appeared. She climbed slowly up the curved wooden staircase with its lovely oak planks polished to a mirror shine. At the top she stopped in confusion. There were six or seven doors leading from the long, narrow hallway, and the passage itself took a sharp turn and went down two steps into another section. She had no idea which was her room.
She explored slowly, noisily, so as to alert any possible inhabitants. But all the room were deserted. Four of the bedrooms woe apparently occupied, three were just as obviously guest rooms.
It was hard to decide which room could have been hers. The first contained clothes rather like the ones she was wearing: elegant, expensive, sophisticated and very uncomfortable looking. Yet they simply weren’t the sort of thing that the young woman in the mirror would really want to wear, especially at her age.
But the other bedroom’s closet revealed even less likely apparel. In it were dresses belonging to an obviously elegant, well-dressed matron of indeterminate age, wearing a stylishly stout size 24.
She wandered back into the other bedroom, with no choice but to accept the fact that everything was fitting in with the unattractive picture she was building of Mrs. Winters. While the other bedrooms had beautiful old flooring covered sparingly with antique hooked rugs, hers was awash with puffy white wall-to-wall carpeting. The other rooms boasted lovely old furniture, with gleaming woods lovingly tended. Her room had a matched set of expensive ugly modern furniture, all chrome and glass at screaming odds with the lines of the old room. The drapes and bedspread were satin, and the entire effect was one of tasteless opulence. She sat down at the mirrored dressing table and stared at herself over the rows of silver-topped bottles of perfumes and creams. That slightly tanned creature with the splash of freckles across her nose didn’t belong in this room, did she? Somehow she had the uneasy feeling that she did.
She got up quickly, with an air of decision. Before she could begin to fathom what was going on, she needed a shower and clean, dry clothes. Searching through the many drawers of the ugly-elegant dresser, she finally discovered one pair of ancient and faded jeans among all the silk. There was a warm turtleneck and a heavy cotton sweater stuck at the back of the drawer, and she carted them into the bathroom, stripping off her clothes as she went The discarded suit went into the trash can. Never again would she wear one—those suits symbolized what surely must have been the most awful day of her life. If there were any worse in the lost past, she didn’t want to remember them.
It wasn’t until she was scrubbing her hair that realization struck her. She had gone straight to the bathroom without a moment’s hesitation. She had known where it was.
Trembling slightly, she rinsed her hair and stepped out of the shower, no longer able to deny that she had been there before. No longer could she clutch at straws, hoping they’d mistaken her for someone else. She’d just wrecked that theory by coming straight to the pink-and-white bathroom that matched the fussy tastes of the sybaritic bedroom.
She dressed quickly in the chill air, toweling her long hair dry. She grabbed a pair of heavy wool socks before she ran back down to the living room and that cozy fire, the only warm room in this vast house, it seemed. It must be the stone walls, she thought. Or perhaps her husband was a miser, or an energy freak. The temperature seemed a little extreme, even for that, but then, the lady of the pink-and-white bedroom was nothing if not pampered. Maybe the creature she used to be couldn’t survive those temperatures, but the new woman she was determined to become could grin and bear it.
Her hair was almost completely dry when she heard the back door slam. It took all her self-control not to jump up in panic, and she forced herself to stay still. Her elderly husband couldn’t be bothered to drive to the hospital to pick her up. Well, he could at least make his way into the living room. She was damned if she was going to go to him.
She leaned back, trying to still the sudden panicked racing of her heart. Her life was about to change. She knew it, with a bleak, desperate certainty. She heard a noise by the entrance, and she looked up, a deceptively cool expression on her face.
Three
It wasn’t who, or what, she’d been steeling herself for. A giant black animal ambled into the room. He stared at her from large, mournful eyes, and from the recesses of her memory she came up with a name. He was a Newfoundland dog, large and friendly. Though the look he gave her was just a bit wary.
“Hello, boy,” she said softly, holding out a hand for him to snuffle. He lumbered over, his dark eyes suspicious, and with great caution he allowed her to pat his massive, leonine head, going so far as to honor her with a lick from his large and lolling tongue.
“So you’re back.” A high-pitched voice, soft and unfriendly, came from the door of the room, and she jumped guiltily. He was an indistinct, shadowy figure in the half light of the doorway, and she felt no pang of recognition. An older man. He could only be her husband.
She couldn’t imagine what to say to him, so she was silent. He moved into the room, his paunchy figure staggering slightly, his receding chin thrust out aggressively. He was middle-aged and flabby, with a few strands of orangeish hair combed carefully over his shiny pink scalp, and his mouth had a petulant, spoiled look about it. The nurse must have had a decidedly odd sense of humor to consider this man handsome.
His eyes were small and shrewd and light-colored in his puffy red face, looking as if they could see through all her pretenses. She had no pretenses, she wanted to cry. But she never cried, she thought, staring at him silently.
“What’s this new act, Molly?” he said, lounging with what he obviously considered a lazy grace in one of the comfortable, overstuffed armchairs. She hoped, perversely, that it was still damp from her sojourn in it. “This country girl look isn’t quite your style, is it? You’ve always been more Neiman Marcus than Eddie Bauer. Maybe you’re hoping to appease Patrick with your newfound docility. It won’t wash, my dear, I promise you that.” There was an ill-concealed malice in his slurred voice, combined with an odd wariness on his part, a watchfulness just under the slightly drunken surface.
She edged closer to the fire, away from him. “Patrick?” she questioned innocently. Her name was Molly, then. Not bad. At least it was better than Mary Magdalene.
“Oh, come off it. You needn’t play games with your old pal Willy. Haven’t I always been on your side?”
