Deceptions of the Heart (6 page)

“Why would Anson listen to
you
? Can he trust you?”

He stepped back, landing on the heels of his feet and reeling a bit. “Did you tell him—”

“No. Of course not.” At least, I didn’t know whether Jennifer had or not, but I knew
I
hadn’t. “But he knows. I know he knows. I saw it in his eyes. I don’t know who told him, but
he knows
.”

“So sugar daddy found out you threw yourself at me.”

“Oh now, you don’t have to be that way about it, Price.”

“Sure I do. You said it wouldn’t matter to him.” He wasn’t indignant like a jealous lover might be, merely accusatory, as if chastising me for my bad behavior while he remained innocent.

“That’s absurd. Of course it matters to him,” I responded without thinking.

Whitaker’s face twisted with rage as he stood over me, inches from my face. “Why did you tell Marnie that we were—”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Get out,” he fumed and dragged me from my seat. “Get out of here. Get out of my sight.”

I grabbed Jennifer’s purse, spilling the contents onto the polished wood floor. After I restored order to her personal items, I turned toward him and sighed. “Sure. I’m leaving. You’ll never see me again.”

He pushed the chair I had just vacated across the small office. It spun and hit the wall with a thud. He flung the door open, the veins in his neck pulsing with the sudden pressure his blood exerted on his vascular system.

“I’m going to California,” I tossed into the super-charged atmosphere before he could shove me out the door.

His entire body went rigid. “I told you traveling to California wasn’t a good idea.”

“Why not?”

He rubbed his face, fatigue crawling across his countenance. His shoulders sagged. His anger dissipated before my eyes like fog on a sunny day. “You might not like what you discover, Jen. That trip was hard on you last time and you didn’t resolve anything. I don’t want you going through that again.”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what you want.”

“Maybe not, but it should matter to you what Anson wants.”

“Why does what Anson wants concern you?” I asked.

“It doesn’t. My only concern is what benefits you. Despite our difficulties, I still care about you…as your doctor…and your friend.”

“I have to go to California. I have to find out what’s happening to me…why I feel the way I do. I don’t feel like me.”

Sudden sympathy erupted in his eyes, softening the corners. “What you’re feeling is common among transplant patients. You won’t find yourself in California. You’re not going to discover who you are by dredging up your past. You need to let it go.”

“I can’t let it go.”

Before he could offer another argument, I exited through the gaping door, walked past his curious staff, and left the way I came, without any more answers than I had before…just more questions.

Chapter Eight

Standing down the block and hiding behind a large bush, I watched and waited until my daughters left their house. I didn’t want to confront Alex in their presence, knowing what my alleged death must have done to them. As much as I wanted to see them, to embrace them and tell them I loved them, the fear of causing irreparable damage kept me at a safe distance. They left together in a black Mazda Miata. I groaned. Not a practical choice for impulsive Ally.

My muscles rebelled as I crossed the road. The long trip to California nearly busted me. Every joint in my body ached. Raising my hand to knock, I considered the bright, red door. I would have never chosen that color for a front entrance, but Alex didn’t live in my house any longer. Sometime in the last three years, he had remarried and moved.

Before my fist connected with the wood, the door flew open.

“Oh,” the woman exclaimed and placed her hand on her chest. “I didn’t know someone was at the door.” Alex’s new wife waited, presumably for me to explain my presence, but I stood mute, uncertain how to proceed with my interrogation. “So? What do you want?” she pushed and glanced at her watch. “Whatever you’re selling, we’re not buying.”

“I want…I
need
to speak to Alex,” I stuttered.

“Alex?” Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“I have some questions I need to ask him.”

Then she seemed to recognize me. “What are you doing here? I thought Alex told you to leave us alone.” She drew back from me, wary and hesitant, as if she knew me. Had I been here before? Is this why Anson didn’t want me returning to California?

“Will you ask him if he’ll see me?” I pled for her indulgence. “Tell him…” The lie stalled on my tongue. Before I could fabricate something to coax an interview with my husband, Alex appeared at the door. He looked good—not at all like a grieving widower. He’d kept his weight off. Toned muscles flexed beneath his shirt sleeves. His neatly trimmed brown hair was cropped close around his ears. His gray eyes glittered, no shadow of pain dimming the spark of intelligence.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked, and then spotted me standing on his front porch. He turned his pale gray eyes upon me and my heart melted as it used to when we were young and dating and in love. When I didn’t speak, he looked to his wife for an explanation. The two exchanged a meaningful glance.

“Please, Alex. I need to talk to you,” I begged, barely suppressing the panic that rose within me. “You remember me, don’t you?” Surely he could sense Rhonda’s presence in me. “We graduated together in pre-law from Cal-Berkeley.” I offered him this tidbit to nudge his memory along.

“Okay.” He didn’t sound as if he believed me.

“I never finished law school, because I got pregnant. But you did. Remember the party when you passed the bar exam?”

He shifted from one foot to the other. “My wife and I had tons of friends at Cal. There were a lot of people at that party.”

His new wife wasn’t at Cal with Alex. He referred to me—Rhonda—as his wife. We had tons of friends, just as he said. I drew a deep breath and dropped a bomb in the middle of his new life. “It’s me…Rhonda.”

“I thought I recognized you. You’re the woman who came here before. Leave. Now.” He pushed his new wife out of the doorway, leaving his old wife on the porch to crumble and melt.

I was at the top of a precipice, and one poke from someone’s pinky could have toppled me over the side into an abyss so deep I would have never climbed out. “Wait. Please. Just hear me out.” The words scrambled from my mouth, one stacked almost on top of the other. “I know I don’t look like Rhonda, but I know things.” The door stuck on the throw rug. He yanked at the doorknob. “Please, Alex. It’s me. Rho-Do.” I tossed the diminutive at him—the one he called me—a contraction of my first and maiden names.

He shook his head so hard I was afraid it would fall from its stem. “Now you’re claiming to be my dead wife? You know she’s dead, don’t you?”

A frisson of electricity passed through me. The side of the house wobbled, the white clapboard siding shimmied and straightened. The ground beneath my feet tilted until I braced a hand on the porch support.

“How did you get this address? Didn’t Crane tell you to stay away from us?”

His angry questions penetrated the buzzing in my ears. “I…I don’t know.” My vision cleared. “I know I don’t look like Rhonda, but I
am
Rhonda.” My argument poured from my mouth without an already prepared speech. Hot tears pushed against my eyelids. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me and I can’t trust the people in Virginia to help me figure it out. You’re the only one I can turn to.
You
should know if I’m really Rhonda.”

He remained quiet, as if weighing my words, looking for the slightest hint of credibility. I was offering him the incredible. He nodded for me to continue. His silent encouragement produced a small flicker of hope. “I
am
Rhonda. Would she…I…tell anyone about your birthmark or the way you scrunch your nose when you—”

“Stop,” he demanded and glanced at his new wife.

I continued down memory lane, seeking any minor incident that might be unique to our history and ours alone. “What about the time in Santa Barbara when you got so upset you ran the car off the road? We had a hard time explaining that to the cops. They thought you were drunk because you had cough medicine on your breath. You remember that, don’t you?”

His face brightened at the mention of that horrid incident. Although it wasn’t funny at the time, later we laughed about it as if it was the funniest thing that ever happened. Emboldened, I let a hint of excitement show, smiling to entice him out of the land of uncertainty. “We barely made ends meet while you were in law school so we went through people’s trash, collecting junk so we could resell it at a yard sale.”

“Yeah, those were tough times. But we managed,” he said, a familiar husky quality winding in and out of his words. He wagged his head, an incredulous grin suffusing his face.

My unrelenting recital of shared experiences gained momentum. “We didn’t have a Christmas tree the first year we were married because we couldn’t afford one. They cut off the electricity right before finals so we studied by candlelight.” I chuckled at the memory of the two of us huddled together in the kitchen, our books and notes spread across the top of the tiny Formica-topped dining table, the torn vinyl chairs, eating take-out Chinese and thinking we could change the world. “We were stupid enough to think it was romantic. You were too proud to ask your father for money and my mother refused to help us because—”

“Stop,” he yelled. “Stop messing with me like that.” He shoved his hands in front of him as if pushing the memories away.

“Don’t you get it, Alex? I’m
not
a stranger. I know you. Whether you recognize me or not.”

“
You
are not Rhonda. She could have told you all of this before she died.”

“Why would I tell anyone these things? They were
our
secrets. The ones we laughed about and—”

“What do you want from me? I’m not giving you money.” The vehemence in his voice forced me back a step.

“I don’t want your money. I want someone to explain why I woke up in another woman’s body. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see me. I’m living a life I don’t remember. The last thing I can recall is putting new sheets on
our
bed.” Desperation pushed me to beg for understanding. “I don’t know how I got inside her. Can’t you imagine the hell I’m living in? Trying to be someone else when I know I’m me?”

The rag doll at his side came to life. “Alex, do something,” his wife demanded. Tears streamed down her face. “I don’t know who told you all this stuff about Rhonda and Alex, but…how can you pretend to be her? Don’t you know how much he’s suffered? How can you be so cruel?” she asked.

“Yes, Alex, do something. Explain to me why I have Rhonda’s memories and Jennifer’s body. If Rhonda is dead, tell me where her memories are supposed to live?” I shook with resentment toward Jennifer, toward him, toward his new wife.

“I’m calling the police.” He stomped into the house.

His wife followed, huddled behind him—a mousy mess. She looked back at me with large, frightened eyes. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Her squeaky voice unnerved me. I wanted to shake her petite frame, but was afraid she would break into two pieces. She was fragile, like porcelain. A poor trophy wife.

Alex grabbed a cordless phone from the table in the foyer. He punched numbers on the pad as if punching sense into the senseless. His hostility shook me out of my lethargy. An image nudged at the corners of my awareness. The memory wanted its recollection, spewing from my mouth before I could stop it. “I know what you did for Jackson.”

He stopped, his breath hitching in his chest. “What?” The single word was barely audible. He replaced the receiver on the base. His wife stared at the phone as if it was a serpent ready to strike.

“Alex! What are you doing? Call the cops.” She reached for the phone, the first evidence of grit I’d seen in her.

“Back off, Kristen!” He smacked her hand. “We call the cops if I decide we call the cops.”

She withdrew like a child shrinking from a parent’s wrath. I stepped between them, so close his breath heated my skin. Face to face. “You never told anyone. You never even told me. But…I know what you did.” Despite the fact I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, the words jumped from my lips, ringing with the clarion peal of truth.

“Alex, what is she talking about?” Kristen asked from over my shoulder.

He quieted her with one flick of his pointer finger. She retreated without even a whimper. He grabbed my arm and dragged me into the living room. “Sit down,” he commanded and pushed me onto the sofa. “Where is he?”

I assumed he meant Jackson. I shook his hand off my elbow. “I don’t know.”

“Where did you see him?”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t remember ever seeing him…not as Jennifer. But he
was
at the party. “In Virginia,” I offered the simple answer.

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing. Well, at least if he did, I don’t remember what he said. You see—”

“Then how do you know about…
that
?”