Alison pressed her lips together, holding back a smile. She didn’t want Kevin to think she was laughing at him. There were times when she envied her brother, the simplicity of his soul.
“He’s only had amnesia for less than half a day. That means if he’s ‘missing,’ he’s only been so for that amount of time. If he’s supposed to meet someone, they probably think he’s just been delayed.”
“Meeting someone.” Kevin rolled the idea over in his head. There had to be possibilities they weren’t seeing or tapping into. “Were you on your way to a meeting?”
“Well, he was on his way to a hotel,” Alison told him. Told both of them, she realized. Luc was listening to her as intently as her brother was. She had to remind herself that this was news to him, as well. She wished he had talked more to her when he’d gotten into the cab. Some fares never stopped talking from the moment they got in until she brought them to their destination. But after the exchange of names, Luc had been fairly quiet.
“I picked him up at the airport.”
The information felt like a depth charge aimed at a submarine. Kevin felt disappointment wash over him. “So you don’t even live around here?”
Luc considered the question, turning it over in his mind. Trying to find a bit of information that might begin to answer the query. But not even a glimmer pushed forward.
He sighed. “Not that I know of.”
“There has to be something you remember.” Kevin saw Alison opening her mouth, undoubtedly ready to launch into some sort of medical terminology. He was going with common sense. “People don’t lose their total memory when they get amnesia. I mean, you still speak English and you know how to walk, right?” Eagerness built in his voice. “There’s got to be something else rattling around in your head. You just don’t know, you know.”
There was that simplicity again, cutting to the heart of things. Alison looked at her brother with affection. “Sometimes, Kevin, I think you should have been a Rhodes scholar.”
He had no time for compliments, though it was nice to be appreciated once in a while. “I know all the roads I need to, right here in Seattle.” In his enthusiasm, Kevin leaned in closer to Luc. “Think. Is there anything? Anything at all?”
There was no harm in giving Kevin’s theory a whirl, Alison thought. “Maybe if you closed your eyes, it might make you focus better.”
Luc was game to try anything to jar at least a few thoughts loose. He did as she suggested. After a moment he opened his eyes again.
“Anything?” she pressed, eager. There was something there, she thought. In his eyes. He’d remembered something.
“Snow.”
Alison stared at him, confused. “Excuse me?”
“I had an image of snow.” But even as he said it, the image was fading into oblivion. “Or maybe just a huge expanse of nothingness.” Brought on by wishful thinking, he added silently. “I can’t tell.”
She placed a hand on his shoulder, leaving it there for a single beat before realizing what she was doing. Alison let her hand drop to her side. “It’ll come to you. You’re probably just trying too hard. Maybe after a good night’s sleep—”
“It’s only five o’clock in the afternoon,” Kevin pointed out.
Maybe, but Luc had been through a lot and he was undoubtedly exhausted. Some of his color was returning, which was a good sign, but she didn’t want to push it. Noticing his color, she realized that it looked as if he was tanned. Did he live on the coast? Near a beach? His way of speaking was relaxed, laid-back. Did that make him a Californian?
God, but she was lousy at playing detective. Where was Sherlock Holmes when you needed him?
“He can still get some rest, Kevin. C’mon, I’ll take you home.” Walking out of the office, she stopped abruptly. The space where she’d parked her car this morning was empty. She turned around to look at her brother. Kevin, she noticed, was walking slow, as if he expected the man beside him to collapse at any second. “Where’s my car?”
“Oh.” In all the excitement, he’d forgotten. “Matt parked it over by number 2. I had him do an oil change for you.”
She’d purchased the secondhand car with money she’d earned doing odd jobs since she was sixteen years old. She treated the car as if it were a beloved pet. “I can do my own oil change.”
“Yeah, I know.” It was an old story. She always balked whenever he tried to do something for her, acting as if he was impinging on her independence. She was that way with everyone. “But I enjoy doing little things for you.” He glanced at Luc. “She likes to act feisty.”
“No, just my age,” she countered. And then she sighed, looking at Luc. She’d been over this ground before, more times than she could count. “Being the youngest, they all think they have to take care of me.”
“We do,” Kevin confided to Luc, winking broadly for Alison’s benefit. “You know how it is.”
“No,” Luc replied, a wave of regret washing over him. “I don’t.”
“Yeah, right. Sorry.” Embarrassed at his blunder, Kevin looked away. He dug into his pocket, extracting his wallet and handed two twenties to Luc. “You gotta be hungry. Get yourself something to eat—on me.”
Alison gave up. There was no point in saying that she was perfectly capable of paying for both of them. Who was Kevin going to baby once she was gone? She’d put in her application to several medically depressed areas in the country and gotten back favorable responses. At this point she was just trying to decide which to accept. Kevin was going to have a lot of adjusting to do.
But for now she humored him. “We’ll pick up something on the way.”
Maybe you can pick up a wife on the way.
Almost in a trance, Luc stopped walking. “A wife.”
Alison and Kevin turned in unison to look at Luc, both stunned.
Maybe she’d heard wrong. “What?”
Luc looked at them, just as surprised as they were by what had just come out of his mouth. Very carefully he examined the words that had flashed through his head. But even now they were fading away.
“Someone said that to me…I think. Something about…looking for a wife, picking up a wife on the way. Something like that.” It made less and less sense the more he said it.
Alison laughed shortly. “I didn’t know they were holding a wife special at the mall.” At best, it was an odd clue to the man’s identity. Did he mean picking up his wife, she wondered. Could that be it? He was married and meeting his wife?
Luc tried to hear a voice, attach a face to the speaker, but it was like dropping cotton candy into the water. The words, the memory was dissolving before he could reach it.
“It had something to do with my coming here. Or maybe not,” he added with a helpless shrug of his shoulders. None of it was getting any clearer. If anything, it was becoming murkier.
For all he knew, the line that had echoed in his mind might have been something he’d heard in a movie or a television program.
He looked as if he was getting exasperated. She couldn’t blame him. Wanting to distract Luc, she said, “Let’s go get you settled in.”
To Kevin, it seemed like an odd way to put it. “What’s there to settle? The man has nothing but the clothes on his back.”
Kevin was right. Luc was going to need something else to wear. She scrutinized Luc closely. “Jimmy’s about the same size,” she judged.
“Better check with Jimmy first,” Kevin cautioned. In all