“Then I have done what I can,” Dr. Redecker muttered, closing his medical bag. “Rest your brain. That is no joke. No reading, no computer, no television, no work.”
Caleb frowned.
“I guess that last goes without saying until you remember more details of your life,” the doctor continued. “I will say nothing of this visit to anyone, but I strongly urge you to contact the police. They may be able to help you. If your symptoms worsen, you must go to the hospital. In the meantime, rest, and I will check on you in a few days’ time.”
Caleb lifted his head. “Rest where?”
“A hospital bed would be most appropriate. Since you have refused that advice, I can only say I don’t know.”
Shaking and releasing Caleb’s hand, Dr. Redecker turned to head in Meg’s direction.
“Let me get my checkbook,” she said to him, pushing off from the counter.
He waved a hand in dismissal. “I’ll forward the bill. When he remembers who he is, he can pay. The shelter still operates at the far side of town. Maybe you can take him there.”
Meg nodded, thanking the doctor again before walking him to the front door. Upon her return, Caleb had not moved except to turn his head once more in the direction of the window. She studied his profile, the curve of his eyelid down to the crow’s feet at the corner, the length of lash, dark and thick, the purpled line of his jaw, the slight arch of his nose as if it might have been broken at some point in his past. This was what she did, studied faces and drew them, painted them, fit them into illustrations in such a manner as to depict emotion and action. She saw none of that in his face at the moment, only an inability to move and a reverberating emptiness.
“Caleb.”
He turned slowly at the sound of his name, recalled from the echoing void.
“You can stay here for a few days.”
He shook his head. “I don’t—”
“Yes,” she said. “There is a guest room you can use. I have a lock on my bedroom door. I’m not worried.”
“But maybe you should be.”
Meg narrowed her eyes in study of the earnestness of his expression. “Why?”
“I don’t know. It seems sensible, though.”
“And yet…”
“And yet what?” he said with a deepening of the furrows on his brow.
“And yet I know things sometimes. I’m not worried.”
Crossing the kitchen, Meg headed for the back stairs to the floor above. She paused to pick up a book off the lowest step and clutched it against her breast.
“But you don’t know me,” he said.
Looking back, she found him seated in the same position, hands between his thighs, watching her.
“I told you I don’t,” she answered.
“And I have to believe that.”
“What choice do you have?”
He conceded the validity of her question with a flicker of his gaze. “Do you often dream of people you don’t know?” he asked, the tone and phrasing of the query harsh. Meg frowned.
“I’m sorry,” he went on, “but I don’t think I’m mistaken in believing that dreaming of someone, then having them turn up on your doorstep, or at the very least the beach leading to your doorstep, is not a usual occurrence.”
“I dream a lot.”
“Of people you don’t know,” he persisted.
“Of many things.”
“And these things you dream of come true? In some way, they come to pass?”
“Sometimes,” she said, “yes, they do.”
“Why do you think that is?”
For someone so befuddled by lapses in memory, his intellectual functioning did not seem impaired. Meg tightened her grip on the book, the edge of the cover pressing into her fingers. She drew a deep breath and then another.
“I wish to God I knew,” she said. “It’s hard when you don’t know which of the things you see will happen and which will not. You end up jumping at shadows, trying to foresee everything, then you ignore it all, hoping it’s meaningless, unable to recognize the one dream you should have paid attention to.”
Picking up his glass of juice, Caleb drained the remnants. “And what did you dream about me?” he asked, his voice muffled against the back of his hand as he wiped pulp from his lip. “Something that might help me, do you think?”
Leaning against the doorframe, Meg let the book slide to her waist as she tried to recall. “I don’t remember, exactly,” she said, unable to find the details. “I had no recollection of having dreamed at all until I saw you. Only then did I know I hadn’t dreamed of Matt this morning, of all mornings.”
“Matt?” he echoed, his face contorting. “That was your husband’s name?”
“It still is his name,” she answered. “He didn’t suddenly become nameless just because he died.”
“I…of course not.”
Meg nodded, the tiny movement tossing her bangs into her eyes. She blinked at the intrusion of hair into her lashes, at the sudden moisture blurring her gaze. She had to stop talking, lest she let loose something she would regret.
“You should rest for a little while,” she said after a silent interval. “I’ll put a towel and some more clean clothes for you in the bathroom and turn down the spare bed. I suppose lying down won’t do you any harm, even if you do doze off. I’ll wake you up regularly, if it comes to that, to make sure you’re okay. You can shower and do whatever you need to do while I’m gone.”
“Gone?” he said, rising from his seat, disheveled and wounded and wearing her dead husband’s clothes. “Where are you going?”
“After I get you those things I promised,” she said, “I’m going back to the beach. Maybe something else washed up besides you.”
* * * *
The sun had come out, heating the sand beneath her feet as she walked up from the shoreline. She’d seen no evidence of shipwreck, no clothing, no wallet, no personal items at all except for a leather watch band, which, by the looks of it, had been in the ocean far longer than Caleb Hunter.
Halfway between the tide and the steps leading to the house, Meg sat in the sand. She drew her knees up. Curving her hands around her ankles, she stared out to sea, to the rocky channel, the lighthouse, and the horizon that stretched to forever, a boundary almost indistinguishable between ocean and sky. Thinking of the vastness of the ocean, the unknown depths, the lonely, lonely stretches of open water, she felt light-headed and frightened. She had never fully understood how men so loved the sea they gave up all for her. Well, not men in general. She didn’t particularly care about the motivations of the sea-faring sector of the population. Only Matt. Matt who would always have been a wanderer, perhaps would have been destined to drive a truck over the road or something similar had he been born and raised somewhere inland rather than within the surging, siren call of the tides.
A year ago today—a day very like this one, the sun bright, temperature mild after a foggy morning—she’d answered a knock on her front door. The dying leaves on the bushes, flanking the entrance, had flamed gold in the afternoon light. The edge of Dan Stauffer’s badge affixed to his shirtfront had glinted with fire as he stood beside the Coast Guard officer. Dan had watched her closely as he delivered the news, expecting shock, no doubt, and sorrow, despite the nearly two years Matt had been gone. Or perhaps he’d merely been looking for confirmation, in some fashion, of the wild rumors circulating