Dark Tides. Celia Ashley

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СКАЧАТЬ nodded.

      “Amnesia is a fascinating condition,” she went on. “Not to you, I’m sure, but it’s odd what the brain might pick and choose in terms of recollection. I’m thinking in the most severe cases, you wouldn’t be able to walk or communicate or even pick up that glass, but I could be wrong.”

      Mulling over her words as he took several sips from the glass, he welcomed the slightly acidic burn in his throat. He set the glass down. “So you’re saying I’m not too bad off, even though I can’t remember a single goddamn thing except my name?”

      “But that’s not exactly true, is it?” Her gaze held his until she rose and stepped away from the table, leaving to answer a distant knock on another door. He clutched the glass of juice in both hands on the tabletop, staring past to a series of lines scratched into the table’s wooden surface. Not random, but seeming to spell out a word, a word he couldn’t focus on as he thought about what she had said. How did she know? How did she know about the jumble of thoughts he held inside this fragile bubble in his mind?

      “Caleb Hunter?” a deep voice said. “I’m Dr. Redecker, and I hear you may need my help.”

      Caleb spun on the chair to face the man standing between him and the interior kitchen door with a vague hope the man’s face would be familiar. The gray hair, heavy countenance, and steady blue gaze meant nothing to him. This total lack of recollection made him understand something else, something he hadn’t understood earlier. When looking into the eyes of the woman in whose kitchen he sat, he didn’t see a stranger.

      Chapter 2

      Meg observed the doctor’s examination of the man in her kitchen as he conducted a series of clinical tests for concussion, examined him for further injury, checked his vitals, and palpitated his abdomen and other areas for tenderness. Caleb Hunter tolerated the process with an appearance of strained patience, looking as though he wanted to be left alone. What Meg wanted was an assurance he wasn’t going to die.

      When he had completed his exam, Dr. Redecker stepped back, looking Caleb in the eye. “You don’t show general confusion, just a specific lack of recall. There is a difference. You are battered and bruised, but not broken, although your head injury may be more than I can determine from my examination here. I would suggest a trip to the hospital—”

      “No.”

      “Young man—”

      “No, thank you,” Caleb said.

      “Then I have done what I can,” Dr. Redecker muttered, closing his medical bag. “Rest your brain. That is no joke. No reading, no computer, no television, no work.”

      Caleb frowned.

      “I guess that last goes without saying until you remember more details of your life,” the doctor continued. “I will say nothing of this visit to anyone, but I strongly urge you to contact the police. They may be able to help you. If your symptoms worsen, you must go to the hospital. In the meantime, rest, and I will check on you in a few days’ time.”

      Caleb lifted his head. “Rest where?”

      “A hospital bed would be most appropriate. Since you have refused that advice, I can only say I don’t know.”

      Shaking and releasing Caleb’s hand, Dr. Redecker turned to head in Meg’s direction.

      “Let me get my checkbook,” she said to him, pushing off from the counter.

      He waved a hand in dismissal. “I’ll forward the bill. When he remembers who he is, he can pay. The shelter still operates at the far side of town. Maybe you can take him there.”

      Meg nodded, thanking the doctor again before walking him to the front door. Upon her return, Caleb had not moved except to turn his head once more in the direction of the window. She studied his profile, the curve of his eyelid down to the crow’s feet at the corner, the length of lash, dark and thick, the purpled line of his jaw, the slight arch of his nose as if it might have been broken at some point in his past. This was what she did, studied faces and drew them, painted them, fit them into illustrations in such a manner as to depict emotion and action. She saw none of that in his face at the moment, only an inability to move and a reverberating emptiness.

      “Caleb.”

      He turned slowly at the sound of his name, recalled from the echoing void.

      “You can stay here for a few days.”

      He shook his head. “I don’t—”

      “Yes,” she said. “There is a guest room you can use. I have a lock on my bedroom door. I’m not worried.”

      “But maybe you should be.”

      Meg narrowed her eyes in study of the earnestness of his expression. “Why?”

      “I don’t know. It seems sensible, though.”

      “And yet…”

      “And yet what?” he said with a deepening of the furrows on his brow.

      “And yet I know things sometimes. I’m not worried.”

      Crossing the kitchen, Meg headed for the back stairs to the floor above. She paused to pick up a book off the lowest step and clutched it against her breast.

      “But you don’t know me,” he said.

      Looking back, she found him seated in the same position, hands between his thighs, watching her.

      “I told you I don’t,” she answered.

      “And I have to believe that.”

      “What choice do you have?”

      He conceded the validity of her question with a flicker of his gaze. “Do you often dream of people you don’t know?” he asked, the tone and phrasing of the query harsh. Meg frowned.

      “I’m sorry,” he went on, “but I don’t think I’m mistaken in believing that dreaming of someone, then having them turn up on your doorstep, or at the very least the beach leading to your doorstep, is not a usual occurrence.”

      “I dream a lot.”

      “Of people you don’t know,” he persisted.

      “Of many things.”

      “And these things you dream of come true? In some way, they come to pass?”

      “Sometimes,” she said, “yes, they do.”

      “Why do you think that is?”

      For someone so befuddled by lapses in memory, his intellectual functioning did not seem impaired. Meg tightened her grip on the book, the edge of the cover pressing into her fingers. She drew a deep breath and then another.

      “I wish to God I knew,” she said. “It’s hard when you don’t know which of the things you see will happen and which will not. You end up jumping at shadows, trying to foresee everything, then you ignore it all, hoping it’s meaningless, unable to recognize the СКАЧАТЬ