Shadow Lake

“No. She should sleep for a while. I’m hoping her son is found and I will have good news for her by the time she wakes up.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Walker said, studying the doctor again. Since his wife’s death, Doc Brubaker had been trying to find a doctor for the town. Few doctors wanted to live in such an isolated town, let alone make so little money and work such long hours. Along with being on call for the town, the local doctor saw to the small nursing home facility attached to the hospital.

Doc hired young interns for the summer months to give him a break, but none of them had shown any interest in staying once the first snowflake fell.

Walker knew Brubaker had talked about retiring even before his wife had died. He figured it wouldn’t be long and Shadow Lake would be without a doctor. “You all right?”

Doc opened his eyes, seeming surprised by the question, then uncertain as he glanced toward the darkness beyond the windows. “It couldn’t have been a suicide attempt. Not if the boy was in the car with her.”

Obviously the doc didn’t read the papers. Not having any children of his own, Doc Brubaker had no concept of what parents could do to their children.

Walker stood and noticed he’d left a puddle of rainwater on the floor in front of the chair where he’d been sitting.

“Don’t worry about it,” Doc said, following his gaze. “I’ll get someone to clean it up. Find the boy. I don’t want to tell that young woman that her son is out there in that lake.”

BRUBAKER CLOSED HIS EYES as Walker left. Sheila would come for him when he was needed.

But he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a decent night’s sleep. Well, he thought ruefully, it wouldn’t be long and he’d get plenty of rest.

He got up and made another pot of coffee. It was going to be a long night and making the coffee gave him something to do. Not that it could take his mind off the woman down the hall. He was worried about her. The cold of the lake had caused heart rhythm disturbance. Sheila had said the woman seemed delirious when she’d been found, suffering from hypothermia.

But he suspected that was the least of it. He’d seen a look in Anna Collins’s eyes that had been painfully familiar.

He hated to think how many times he’d seen that look in his patients’ eyes over the years. More recently, he’d seen it in his wife’s. Defeat. Surrender. A lack of will to live.

With Gladys it had been the pain and knowing what the future held for her. He squeezed his eyes shut remembering the feel of his wife’s hand in his as she met his eyes that final night.

He shoved away the memory and considered the woman down the hall, bothered by the fact that she couldn’t be more than thirty. He realized he could have had a daughter her age if Gladys had been able to carry the baby they’d conceived to term.

Another painful memory to be shoved to the far corner of his heart.

He wondered what had happened to the woman down the hall that had put that look in her eyes.

Most patients were surprised to wake up in a hospital. She hadn’t appeared to be. He could only assume it was because she’d been in a hospital, not that long ago, from what he would guess had been a severe head injury given the sizable older scar that ran from her forehead up into her scalp.

And now she had a cut and goose egg on her temple from her car accident tonight, along with water in her lungs.

He could only guess what this woman had been through. Or what she’d been doing on the lake road this time of year, late at night in a rainstorm. He just hoped she’d been alone in the car, and confused due to her two recent head traumas.

Brubaker couldn’t stand the thought of what it would do to the woman if her son had been in that car.

WHEN ANNA OPENED HER EYES, she found a man about her age slumped in the chair next to her bed. Her heart began to pound as she saw that he wore the blue uniform of a cop.

He had removed his hat. It now dangled from the fingers of his left hand. His dark hair was too long at the nape and his features were rough, his nose obviously having been broken more than once. And, even though his eyes were closed and his breathing deep in sleep, there was a scowl on his face.

Blinking in confusion, she touched her temple and found a small bandage. A mixture of fear and hope filled her as her fingers quickly rushed to touch her forehead, praying that the horrible scar wouldn’t be there.

It was. Tears sprang to her eyes, all hope gone that this was the first time she’d awakened in a hospital, leaving her body like a ghost, her mind and heart again in agony.

As quietly as possible, she turned toward the window, not wanting to rouse the police officer. She’d awakened before with a policeman next to her hospital bed. It had been the worst news of her life. She couldn’t imagine how it could be worse this time.

Daylight spilled through the large first-floor window. Beyond the rain-streaked glass, clouds hung in the pines. Past them, she could see more pine trees and what appeared to be rocky cliffs rising out of the rainy mist.

She had no idea where she was. All she knew for certain was that she’d never seen this place before.

She closed her eyes. Earlier she’d fought the bottomless sleep of the dead, thinking there was hope.

Now she knew better and gladly welcomed oblivion.

“Mrs. Collins?”

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Mrs. Collins, I know you’re awake.”

She slowly parted her eyelids to find the cop had walked around the bed and was now standing over her. She hadn’t heard him and suspected he’d wanted it that way.

As she looked up into his face, the warm brown eyes startled her. They didn’t go with the hard leanness of his face.

“I’m Shadow Lake Police Officer D.C. Walker. I need to ask you a few questions.”

She tried to remain calm as she watched him take a small notebook from his breast pocket, pluck a pencil from behind his ear and pull the chair closer to her bed.

He flipped to a page in the notebook and squinted down at it as if he couldn’t read his own writing. “Your name is Anna Collins?”

She nodded, then realized her mistake. “No. Drake. It’s Anna Drake.”

He frowned. “You told the doctor it was Collins and your in-car emergency service has the car’s primary driver listed as Anna Collins.” His attention went to her ring finger and the large diamond next to her gold wedding band.

“I was Anna Collins. I’m only recently divorced. I just haven’t taken off the ring yet or changed my name on the car.” She felt her face flame and cringed at the way she sounded. Pathetic. And still wearing the ring. A woman unwilling to accept reality. That was her.

The cop looked as if he would doubt anything she told him after this. “I understand your car went off the road last night and into the lake?”

She felt a jolt. “Is that what happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

She started to shake her head but stopped herself. Any movement caused excruciating pain. She ran the tip of her finger along the scar from her forehead into her hair, then retraced the line as she had a habit of doing whenever she was trying to remember.

“No, I do remember being in the lake.” She shuddered as she had a flash of memory—water rising over the hood of the Cadillac.

He studied her, then asked, “Who was in the car with you?”

She swallowed and straightened the covers. “No one.”

“What about your son? You told the doctor your son was in the car with you.”

Her throat closed. “I was confused. He wasn’t in the car.” She touched the old scar again then, realizing what she was doing, quickly brushed her bangs back down over it and curled her hands together in her lap to keep them from shaking.