Wife Without a Past

So her co-workers had pooled their money and sent her north on a bus. A well-deserved rest, they called it, for the hardest worker at Sisters Anonymous.

She looked back at the ring. Turn it one way, you’re one thing. Slip it off and turn it around and you’re something else altogether. Maybe that was why it had always appealed to her. The idea that she could just turn a magic ring around and be the person she was before the accident would have been so wonderful.

Sam I am. The odd little phrase came to her, as it sometimes did, without warning or explanation. Sam I am. She’d twisted it around and analyzed it every way possible. Was her name Sam? Was there a man in her life named Sam? Did the letters stand for something else? It had even occurred to her that she might have been in the armed services, thinking of “Uncle Sam,” but none of that seemed right.

The sun glinted in her eyes from the silver in her finger. Yes, magic would be wonderful whether it was in the ring or in the air. Too bad it didn’t exist. She set the ring back in its place on the cart, looked at it for a moment and asked the vendor, “How much?”

The wizened old proprietor scratched his chin. “For you, ten dollars.”

She smiled. Most of the pieces there were marked ten dollars. “Will you take five?” He hesitated and she added, “It’s all I have and…I really want the ring.” She didn’t have a lot of money and virtually no budget for extras like this, but the magic she’d attributed to the ring didn’t seem as absurd as it should have. When she’d slipped it on her finger, she’d had the feeling that something exciting was about to happen.

“I could never resist a pretty face,” the man said, accepting her money.

She slipped the ring on and marveled at the comfortable way it settled at the base of her finger. In some small way it made her feel a little more whole. It was like another piece in the puzzle this week on Nantucket had become.

As she walked down Federal Street, she listened intently to her inner voice, trying to hear some tiny murmur of recognition, some small explanation of why it had brought her to Nantucket. But there was nothing beyond a strange feeling of comfort and safety in the quaint, winding streets and tall, narrow houses.

She stopped in front of a linen shop and looked at a children’s bunk bed in the window. Something stirred inside of her. Her eyes scanned the other objects for something else that might make her stomach do that small flip. Then she realized the feeling had come not from what she was looking, at but from the fact that someone was looking at her. Someone at her side.

She turned her head sharply and caught the eye of a tall, thin man with vivid red hair sticking straight up and out. His wide pale eyes stared at her as if she were a ghost. His mouth was agape.

For a moment, her heart pounded with terror, then she glanced at the throngs of people milling around them, and relaxed. Safety in numbers. When she looked back at him, his face was unchanged. Clearly he was just an unbalanced person, she decided.

She gave him a polite half smile, then cast her eyes down and walked farther down the sidewalk. The feeling that he was following her clung to her back like a cold, wet towel. Every once in a while she was tempted to stop at a shop window, but she kept catching glimpses of the man in the corner of her eye, following her with that comical expression of some sort of shock on his face.

A thought came to her, so absurd that she tried to dismiss it. But she couldn’t. Was it possible that he recognized her? She met his eyes but his expression didn’t change. He didn’t move to speak to her, which he surely would have if he knew her. Instead, he just stared with that weird expression.

Good Lord, did he recognize her for some dark reason? Was she on a wanted poster in the Nantucket post offices? Had she done something terrible, then returned to the scene? Was she, even now, frightening the citizens as she passed?

No! The word echoed within her like the voice of a guardian angel. She hadn’t done anything criminal, she knew it. Of course, she had no facts to back her up, no alibi for anything before awakening in the hospital, but she just knew she wasn’t wanted for any crime. The very idea was laughable.

This guy following her was just some nutcase. As soon as he looked away, Mary slipped into one door of a corner kite store, and out the other. Best to stay away from nutcases. Just before she ran down the alley to lose him, she saw him enter the store. She hesitated only for a moment to see the top of that fuzzy orange head as he milled slowly down the aisle behind a tall display shelf.

Then she ran.

The doorbell rang, startling Drew out of the work he was trying so hard to submerge himself in. Somehow he thought it would be easier to work at his home office after the shake-up of “seeing” Laura, but the truth was the only thing he could submerge himself in was thoughts of her. The doorbell rang again.

He looked up, trying for one irrational moment to place the sound, then got up from his desk and walked to the front door, stopping along the way to pick up a stuffed frog that was in his path. Sam was going to a friend’s house after preschool. The baby-sitter wasn’t planning to bring her home until after dinner.

When he opened the door, he was surprised to see Vince standing there. His flaming orange hair was in its usual state of disarray, but his skin was ghostly white, with every freckle standing out on his skin like a fleck of dark paint. Alarm zinged in his eyes.

Drew’s adrenaline surged. “What’s wrong?” The stuffed frog flattened in his grip. - “Nothing.” Vince glanced behind Drew and gestured. “Can I come in? We’ve got to talk.”

Drew’s heart accelerated. “Sure, come in.” He stepped back and led the way through to the kitchen, tossing the frog onto the sofa as they passed.

“Coffee?” Drew offered.

Vince gave a shake of his head. “How are you feeling, man? All right?”

“Fine, Vince.” A clammy feeling of trepidation crawled up Drew’s spine. “Just fine.” He knew, even though his soul rattled with incredulity, what Vince was going to tell him. After long seconds, he found his voice. “What’s up?”

Vince scraped a chair back from the table and sat heavily. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“I don’t need to sit down.” Drew leaned against the countertop and folded his arms across his throbbing chest. He studied his friend for a few moments before saying, “You saw her today, didn’t you?”

There was no need to ask who they were talking about. Vince nodded.

Drew let out a tight breath. “Tell me.”

“I’m sorry, man. When we talked before I really thought you were going nuts. I mean—” he twirled his finger outside of his temple “—Cloud Cuckoo Land, but now—”

“Where was she?”

“Federal Street. Thereabouts.”

“Did you get a good look at her?” Drew asked. “I mean a really good look?”

“Well, you know, I felt I should be subtle. I just sort of blended into the crowd and followed her. That’s how the pros do it. I saw her from three feet away. It was definitely her.”

“Did she see you?”

There was a pause. “She saw me once. But she didn’t talk to me. Didn’t even act like she knew who I was. Just gave me a polite smile then walked past and sort of hurried down the street.” Vince frowned and shook his head.

Drew’s chest felt as though it was being crushed in a vise. How long could he have this feeling before it developed into a real honest-to-God heart attack? “Where did she go?”

“That’s the other odd thing. She went into a kite store then just vanished. I followed her in, but she was gone. Like a gho…” He stopped and bit down on his lower lip.

“What time was this?” Even to his own ears, Drew sounded like Jack Webb from the TV show “Dragnet,” but he couldn’t manage more than a few direct questions.

Vince shrugged. “Just half an hour ago at the most.”

Drew raked a trembling hand through his hair and stood up. “I’ve got to go.” It was her. Logic be damned, he knew it was her.

“Whoa, buddy, better let me drive.” Vince stood, as well. “You’re in no state to get behind the wheel.”

Drew met Vince’s eyes with more impatience than he intended. “No.” He tried to soften his voice but there didn’t seem to be time. If Laura was alive and on Nantucket—hell, even if she was a ghost—he knew where she’d go eventually. “I’ve got to do this alone.” Without giving Vince a moment to respond, he turned, snatched his car keys from the table by the door and left the house.

Mary looked around at the practically empty street she’d turned onto. Even though she’d felt as if she’d been walking in circles on the tiny Nantucket streets, she knew she hadn’t been to this one before. Yet it seemed vaguely familiar, like something from a distant dream. To the right were quaint storefronts, to the left a long border of water, with boats gliding across the glassy surface. The sun was shining, a warm breeze carried the faint scent of saltwater, and in the distance the long expanse of water sparkled like jewels on blue velvet. She hadn’t felt this alive, this comfortable, in fifteen months.

Her whole life.

She knotted her sweater around her shoulders, slipped her espadrilles off and ambled down the street swinging them in her hands. The pavement was warm beneath her feet. The atmosphere was delicious. She didn’t think about where she was going, so she was surprised when she found herself on a lovely little square beach that looked out onto the ferry boats. Children ran all around her, squealing and laughing in the warm golden sand. In the summer, the beach was probably crowded with brightly colored towels and rubber floats.

She wanted to be here in the summer. She wanted to see that

An empty wooden park bench sat in front of a colorful jungle gym and Mary sat down and closed her eyes, tilting her face toward the sun. Kaleidoscope patterns played behind her closed eyelids, forming and unforming, never quite becoming memory.

She didn’t know how long she sat like that, but when she opened her eyes again, the sun had shifted its position and shadows had lengthened across the sand. There were fewer children out playing, but the light still danced warmly on her skin. She thought about getting up, but there was something so peaceful about this place that she had to breathe it in, just a little bit longer.