Girding his determination, as well as his grip on her shawl, he set his own bare feet to the first step and climbed to a brick pathway that led through the garden. At the porch, he paused again, studying the length of the covered area, the blank face of each window for any sign she peered out at him. He found only the milky reflection on glass of the fogged-in sea.
He walked across the porch and halted in front of the door. “Hello?” he called, listening hard.
She responded in a muffled demand through the solid wood. “Who are you?”
“I’m sorry if I startled you.”
Silence.
“My name is Caleb Hunter,” he said with a crazy expectation she would throw open the door and announce him welcome, perhaps apologize for not recognizing him in his present state. Instead, he heard nothing. The door remained closed.
“I need help.” He waited. “I thought I would return your shawl to you, but…but I have a specific need of it at the moment.”
“Keep it,” he heard her say. The fact she had spoken again gave him a glimmer of hope.
“I don’t know where I am,” he persisted. “I don’t know who I am,” he added, frowning down at the worn boards of the porch floor. Aloud, the statement sounded ludicrous. The brief flare of fear surging through him at his own words held no humor at all.
“What do you mean, you don’t know who you are?”
The door creaked open. A security chain stretched taut in the space between frame and door. Her leaf-green eyes regarded him intently from behind a fringe of honey-colored bangs.
“I don’t remember much of anything specific,” he said. “I believe I was hit on the head and…and maybe I washed up onto the beach from the ocean. I’m not sure. My name is about all I do remember with any certainty. Is the name Caleb Hunter familiar to you?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
The door shut again. Scoured by the salt winds, the light blue paint had peeled away in places to show the bare, weathered wood beneath. A moment later, the door opened again, enough for her to toss something out at him. He bent and picked up a crumpled pair of pants. Light blue fabric, heavy and faded with wear. Jeans, they were called. He remembered that. They looked like they would fit him.
Turning his back, Caleb dropped the shells, stones, and bits of sea glass onto the lacquered surface of a nearby wicker chair. He set the shawl beside them and hastened into the jeans, grimacing as sand abraded his flesh. If the woman still stood in the doorway watching him struggle with the pants, she gave no indication. He glanced over his shoulder. Through the narrow opening, he saw nothing.
“What was that in your hand?”
At her question, he slowly pivoted to face the door, feeling more naked now than he had in her shawl. Talking to her half-dressed, wearing nothing but a pair of borrowed blue jeans, he contemplated picking up the shawl and draping it across his shoulders. Instead, he seized it from the floor where it had fallen and placed it beside her rescued treasure. The door opened a little more and her face appeared.
“Your things,” he said by way of explanation. “I never meant to frighten you, to make you drop what you’d been gathering.”
She frowned at the shells and oddments he had placed on the chair before turning her gaze to meet his. Slow to speak, she studied him a moment. “Thank you.”
The door closed again.
Caleb moved to another chair and sat down. He leaned forward, elbows on thighs, hands folded together between his knees. The shifting of his body renewed pain in every muscle and tendon. Reaching up, he fingered the back of his head to trace again the contours of the vicious lump. He remembered a flurry of fists, grunting blows, and male voices raised in harsh invective, but he didn’t recall the words. Was one of those voices his? Could have been. Yes, it could have been his voice. He remembered…nothing. Nothing else.
Damn it.
Once more, the door opened. The woman stepped onto the porch holding out a T-shirt. Gratefully, he took it, then slipped the garment over his head. It smelled as if it had been left sitting in a drawer. Not that it mattered.
“Your husband’s?” he asked, not certain from what part of his brain such a question came.
She nodded.
“Is he here?”
“He’s dead,” she said.
“Oh.” Caleb ran his hand through his salt-encrusted hair. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
She moved to the chair where her shawl lay and bent to pick up the items he had deposited there. Brushing the sand and crushed shell from the seat into her hand as well, she walked to the porch railing and sprinkled them into the garden below, permitting them to flow through a loose fist. Her eyes closed as she did this, as if something ritualistic existed in the execution of her action. He wondered what had happened to her husband, if maybe she did this in his memory.
“His ship went down in a storm.”
He started, meeting her eyes. Her direct gaze made him shiver.
“That’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it?” she said, brushing her hands clean. “You were wondering how he died.”
Caleb shivered again within the confines of a dead man’s shirt. “Yes,” he admitted, “I was.”
She nodded, her longs bangs swinging forward. “A year ago today,” she told him quietly.
Today. Caleb said nothing.
She moved back across the porch, stopping before the chair opposite him where she gathered up the shawl and sat, holding the garment balled against her stomach. With her feet tucked around the outside of the legs of the chair, knees angled together, she appeared innocent and vulnerable. Caleb’s stomach churned. He shoved a fist against his abdomen in an effort to control the response.
“I dream about him most nights,” she confided in a voice barely above a whisper, her eyes intent on his own. “But not always. This morning, though, on the anniversary of his death, I dreamed about someone else. I didn’t realize it until I saw you on the beach. I’m fairly certain I dreamed of you.”
Stunned by her speech, Caleb sat back hard against the chair frame. His breath exploded as the knot at the base of his skull met wood, causing him to jerk forward again, bright pinpoints of light dancing before his eyes.
He couldn’t remember the fundamental particulars about himself and his life, but he knew what dreams were without requiring an explanation. What she said made no sense to him. None at all. Unless—
“What do you mean? Do you know me?” he asked again. Perhaps she didn’t know his name, but she might recall having seen him somewhere. Something. Anything.
She raised her eyes from a fierce contemplation of the air between them. After a moment of consideration, she shook her head. He licked his dry, salty lips as he shifted on the seat, frowning at the pain wracking his body. Observing his movements, she reached into her pocket and drew out a narrow black object, holding it on her palm. From somewhere in the recesses of murky recognition, he recognized a cell phone. “What are you doing?”
“Calling the police,” she said.
Don’t let her. Don’t let her. Don’t let her.
The force of the voice in his head caused him to gasp, recognizing without understanding that an instinct for preservation spoke to him. “Don’t,” he said and added “please” more sedately