A Season To Believe

But then, how well could she have known him? He’d been in her life a mere eight weeks before he and Manny were sent undercover. She could see now that she’d been a child at the time, at least figuratively. Without her memory, she’d had no experiences to draw on, to teach her how to behave.

And that is how Matt had seen her. After the doctors and nurses had finished poking and prodding her, he and Manny had appeared at her bedside. When she realized how disappointed the two detectives were to learn that she couldn’t answer any of their long list of questions, she’d begun to cry. The only sound in that sterile hospital room had been her sobs, until Matt whispered, “Hush, now. It’s okay,” as he gently traced a cloth down the path of her tears.

She’d pulled herself together with a shuddering sigh, opened her eyes to see that Matt had twisted his slightly damp handkerchief around his hand and pulled the ends into two rabbit ears. The makeshift puppet bobbed and weaved as a high-pitched voice, unmistakably Matt’s in origin, scolded Manny for browbeating the subject of their investigation and making her cry.

In moments she was laughing. After that, each visit from these two had made her feel stronger, even the times when they’d tried to coax her memory to life. As they included her in their teasing banter, she’d begun to feel less lost, less lonely, and discovered that although she might not have a memory, she wasn’t without intelligence and wit.

So, did that mean, she found herself asking as she studied the serious lines etched into Matt’s features, that all those jokes had been an act on Matt’s part? Or had the loss of his partner and his own brush with death woken the grim expression she’d glimpsed when he first walked into the security office a mere hour ago—the one that tightened his features now?

Or was it something about her today, that had brought out an aspect of Matt’s personality he’d previously kept hidden? Last year he would have used silly humor to coerce her into exploring the brief memory that had assaulted her. Had he dropped his mask of joviality because he recognized that now, after taking charge of her life, her education, her career, she was no longer a lost waif in need of coddling?

She would like to think so, but it really didn’t matter. She recognized a challenge when she saw one.

“All right, Matt,” Jane said softly. “You win.”

“Win what?”

Gone were the tight, fan-shaped lines that had bracketed Matt’s sharply narrowed eyes only moments before. Gone also were the deep vertical grooves that had been etched on either side of his lips. His smile wasn’t particularly wide, but his green eyes were lit with anticipation. Someone who hadn’t observed the relationship Matt had shared with his partner might wonder if he’d manufactured his earlier expression just to get her to this point.

“I did have some sort of memory,” she replied. “I warn you, though, it was a very little one. I can’t promise it will lead anywhere.”

“Of course you can’t.” He got to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“To Zoe’s. If the door to your memory is finally unlocked, she’s the one to push it open. Where’s your car?”

“Car?” Jane asked as she got to her feet.

“Yes. I parked in the lot beneath Union Square. If you’re parked somewhere else, I can drive you to your car, then follow you to Zoe’s.”

“I don’t drive. I took the bus.”

“Good.” Matt’s hand closed over Jane’s elbow, and she let him steer her toward the escalator. “That will make things much easier.”

Matt turned down the street Jane indicated and drove past a row of houses crowded next to each other. Most were some shade of off-white or tan, interspersed here and there with more boldly painted structures. Various styles were represented, from Mediterranean to English Tudor. Each rose several stories above garage doors, most with recessed ground-level entries protected by some kind of fancy iron gate.

“Nice,” he said appreciatively as he braked at a stop sign. “The Marina District has always been one of my favorite parts of San Francisco.”

When Jane did not respond to his comment, he glanced her way. She was staring straight ahead, her large smoky eyes wide and without focus.

He knew the signs. Something had frightened her. And he didn’t have to ask what it was. Her past.

He could hardly blame her. If he’d gone through the horrors Jane must have faced at the hands of whoever had gone to so much trouble to end her life, he wouldn’t be looking forward to searching that dark, shadow-filled memory, either. But he was aware, now even more than he had been when he was first assigned to her case, how important it was to pull the monsters out of the closet and defeat them.

“Jane.”

She jumped and turned to him. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring, lighthearted smile. “Do I go straight, or turn again?”

After a getting-her-bearings glance around, Jane said, “Straight. It’s the four-story gray house on the left. You can park in the driveway.”

Matt followed instructions, pulling his black Jeep up to a double garage door of the same color. By the time he switched the motor off and removed his keys from the ignition, Jane had already unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door. He got out and followed her up the curving staircase, with its ornate wrought-iron handrail. Before he could say a word, she had stopped within the arch of the second-story portico and was opening the bright pink door.

She turned as he started to follow, her eyes dark. For one moment he thought she was going to tell him she’d changed her mind, that she just wanted to leave the past alone—and then slam the door in his face. When he stepped into the foyer as a defensive tactic, however, she closed the door behind him and glanced at her watch.

“Zoe usually naps from three to three-thirty,” she said, then moved toward a pair of French doors to her left. “She should be up by now. Wait in here, while I go up and tell her what’s going on.”

Matt followed Jane into a long, narrow room. To his right, a mahogany desk sat between a pair of bookcases. On his left, golden light spilled through an arched window onto a large tobacco-colored sofa. Two chairs sat on either side of the glass-and-iron coffee table in front of the couch, one a muscular wing chair covered in brown leather, the other a curvy, dainty thing upholstered in a tapestry flower print.

“Take a seat,” Jane said. “I don’t think we’ll be long. Something tells me Zoe will be almost as excited as you to learn about what happened today.”

Matt saw Jane’s lips curve ever so slightly before she turned and left the room. The ghost of a smile was encouraging, Matt thought as he lowered himself into the leather wing chair. However, her eyes hadn’t lost that haunted expression. It was almost enough to make him think twice about making her face the past she’d worked so hard to…well, put in her past.

After all, how often did anyone get a chance to start over, with a completely clean slate? No embarrassing mistakes to make you second-guess yourself, no old opinions to try to overcome, no emotional wounds urging you to lock your heart up, where it couldn’t get tromped on again. Jane, it seemed, had taken full advantage of this freedom, had made a new life for herself, just as she’d vowed. And now here he was, stepping in to insist that she—

“Matthew?” A soft voice broke into his thoughts.

Matt got to his feet, stood and turned to greet the tall woman with the short gray hair who moved toward him.

“Ms. Zeffarelli,” he said, taking her hand into his as she reached out. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Call me Zoe, please,” she said with a smile and just the faintest hint of a French accent. “I am sorry you and I did not get to know each other better last year. But I am happy to see that you have recovered so nicely from your horrible ordeal. And now, according to our little friend here, it seems we will finally have a chance to work together.”

Matt nodded, then glanced at Jane. Her eyes no longer looked haunted. Instead her eyebrows dipped beneath the uneven fringe of her bangs in an expression he recognized as pure determination. Her eyes locked with his briefly before she turned to Zoe.

“Well,” Jane said, “I guess we’d better get down to it.”

Zoe lifted thick black eyebrows. “You are suddenly excited now, after months of insisting you want nothing to do with your past?”

Jane shook her head tightly. “Hardly. I just want to get this over with. And I assumed you’d want to work with this memory, if you can really call it that, while it’s still fresh in my mind.”

“True.” The woman nodded. “But I would prefer that you be at least a leetle bit relaxed when we attempt this thing. I suggest we all sit down and have a cup of tea, a cookie or two, and a tiny chat before we get down to business.”

A half hour later, Jane sat in the center of the overstuffed sofa, with Zoe in the delicate chair the woman had proudly rescued from a thrift shop years before, and Matt looking right at home in the leather wing chair.

Although Jane had suspected that the combination of Zoe’s strong tea and a sugar-laden sweet—make that several sugar-laden sweets—would render her even more keyed up, she was surprised to find that she was actually feeling calm. Maybe all that stomach-churning angst she’d experienced upon arriving at the house hadn’t been due to dread. Perhaps she’d simply been hungry. After all, she’d actually only ingested a bite or two of that cookie in Maxwell’s cellar, along with a few tiny sips of that eggnog coffee.

“The tea too strong, ma petite?”

Jane turned to Zoe with a smile. “It’s always too strong. But loaded with milk and sugar, it is just perfect.”

To prove her point and clear her palate of the remembered eggnog, Jane lifted her teacup and drained it of the bittersweet, milky contents. She then returned the cup to its delicate saucer and said, “In fact, I think I’d like a second cup.”

Zoe’s smile was gentle and she slowly shook her head. “I think not. I think it is now time for you to tell me what happened to you at Maxwell’s. But first, get yourself comfortable. Take a deep breath.”

As Jane leaned into the sofa cushions at her back, she glanced from Zoe to Matt. His expression was encouraging. Zoe wore a similar expression as she spoke again.

“Draw the breath deep into your belly, hold it, then release it very slowly.”