Surprise, Doc! You're A Daddy!

Clean and sure, the ball flew down the lane and smashed into the pins. With a clatter, they shot in all directions. Of the few that remained, several wobbled and dropped at the last minute, leaving two standing.

“Too bad you didn’t get your act together the first time,” Ramon said as she returned. “You could have hit a spare.”

“They’re too far apart,” Meg said. “I’d never have made it.”

“That’s your problem, Meg,” advised Sam as his wife went to bowl. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“Don’t mention credit.” She shuddered. No matter how hard she tried to pay down her charge card, the balance always hovered near her limit. The mobile home park fee, food and baby-sitting ate most of her income.

“I’ll tell you what,” Rosa said. “I’ll give you a freebie. Come by the salon this afternoon and I’ll cut your hair. It’ll look cute.”

Rosa had been itching to get her hands on Meg’s mane for years. Without her bushy hair, though, Meg wouldn’t feel like herself. “No, thanks. I’m taking Dana swimming.”

The local community center pool cost a dollar per person, with kids under five free. It was one of the few treats they could afford.

Judy hit a strike, and whooped with delight at besting her husband this round. After that, the players concentrated on their games, and Meg finished with a respectable score.

She felt better by the time she left. Life in Mercy Canyon was safe and solid.

Even if he turned out to be Joe, Hugh Menton might never appreciate this town as he once had. Heck, he’d probably never bother to visit here.

Meg didn’t care. She knew where she belonged, and nothing could change that.

TO REACH Mercy Canyon, Hugh drove his luxury sedan on narrow, winding back roads. He hadn’t believed two-lane highways existed anymore in the age of carpool lanes and ever-wider freeways.

For a long stretch after he left the tightly packed developments of the coastal zone, he saw only a few isolated shacks and passed a mere handful of cars. Urban sprawl hadn’t reached this part of San Diego County.

In September, the height of the dry season, a scattering of dusty trees drooped in a rocky canyon filled with dry grasses and flowers. The area didn’t look familiar. Had he truly lived here for a year and a half?

As he descended from a slope, a sign alerted Hugh that he was entering the town of Mercy Canyon. He didn’t see anything until he rounded a rock outcropping and suddenly, below him, spread the community where he might have spent his lost months. Wanting time to collect his impressions, he stopped the car on the shoulder.

From this rise, he made out clusters of stores, an elementary school, a church, a couple of modest-size light-industrial buildings and numerous houses. There was a trailer park at the far end of town.

Hoping the scents would jog his memory, Hugh rolled down the window. Hot air blasted into his airconditioned cocoon.

As he’d expected, it carried the smells of eucalyptus and desert plants. For a split second, he remembered coming out of a cool building into the same heated air.

He was emerging from a church with a woman at his side. People lined the walkway, blowing soap bubbles. Could it be his own wedding?

Although Hugh had come here in search of the past, this possibility disturbed him. It was alarming to think that he might really have been a different person and lived a different life for so many months.

He knew of course that he’d been somewhere during his absence. Yet couldn’t the time have passed, as his family wanted to believe, in a succession of meaningless days of panhandling and sleeping in shelters?

On the other hand, before he was released from the hospital, Hugh’s doctor had remarked on what good shape he was in, aside from the head injury. He hadn’t been starving on the streets.

Maybe Meg’s story was true. He might be a husband and father. Hugh’s breath caught in his throat. So much for the rationalization that he could drive by Mercy Canyon and leave without seeing the Averys.

He’d brought Meg’s address. He could see the park distantly from here, neat rows of mobile homes glinting in the sunlight.

At the prospect of visiting what might be his old home, a twinge of fear ran through Hugh. What was he afraid of, that he would stumble into an unpleasant trap of his own making? Or that he would discover he’d once lived in paradise and couldn’t go back again?

There was no sense in delaying the inevitable. After rolling up the window, he turned on the ignition and started forward.

Chapter Four

Halfway through the town of Mercy Canyon, Hugh got a prickly sensation down his back. He knew this place as if from a dream.

The strip mall to one side of the road looked like a thousand others in Southern California. Yet he felt a twinge of recognition as he parked in front of a coffee shop called the Back Door Cafe.

Handwritten specials and flyers for local school fundraisers plastered the window, while the interior was hidden behind a lopsided Venetian blind. A thought came to him: The slats always pull crookedly. You’d think they’d have fixed them by now.

To one side sat a bowling alley. On the other, a bilingual video store featured posters of newly released films in Spanish and English.

At the end of the mall lay a salon called Rosa’s Beauty Spot. Oddly, he knew that Rosa was married to the owner of the video store.

He had been here before.

Hugh sat in his car, staring at the cafe. He’d had flashes of memory before, but none had ever been tied to a particular place. The clatter of dishes in a restaurant, the cry of a baby, the scent of old-fashioned perfume would snatch him momentarily from his reality, and then drop him right back into it.

His heart raced with an emotion akin to fear. There was no reason for alarm, yet it disturbed him to realize that he might be about to confront an unknown part of himself.

Most likely, he’d psyched himself to believe he’d once worked here because of what Meg had said, Hugh thought sternly. Annoyed at himself for indulging in useless worry, he got out, crossed the walkway and pushed open the cafe door.

The smell of coffee and frying hamburgers greeted him, familiar as a friend’s face. Still, who hadn’t smelled coffee and hamburgers before?

To his left stretched a counter where a grizzled man in a cowboy hat sat drinking coffee. To his right lay a row of booths, one of which held a family of four. In the back, past an open archway, sunlight from side windows streamed into a large room filled with tables and booths.

“Can I help you?” A young Hispanic man behind the counter regarded Hugh with impersonal friendliness that rapidly changed to confusion. “Say, man, you look familiar.”

“Have you worked here long?”

“About a year.” The fellow was no older than twenty, Hugh guessed. “I’m the assistant manager, Miguel Mendez.” He extended his hand.

Hugh shook it. “I’m Dr. Hugh Menton.” He hadn’t meant to throw in his title, but it slipped out.

“You’re a doctor?”

“Pediatrician.” Hugh decided to risk another question. “Does Meg Avery work here?”

“Sure.”

A tall, blond waitress came out of the kitchen hefting a tray of burgers, fries and drinks. When she saw Hugh, she stopped dead.

“Doggone you, Joe Avery!” she said. “What do you mean disappearing and then turning up like this? Does Meg know you’re here?”

“I thought you looked familiar,” Miguel said. “What’s this doctor business, man?”

Hugh wondered if he’d fallen asleep. This felt like one of those dreams in which he found himself on stage, expected to enact a role he hadn’t learned. Or in an operating room, about to perform surgery on an organ he’d never heard of.