In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (30 page)

“Drew?” Bridget
Casey stubbed out her cigarette and blew smoke out her pert nose. “Have the authorities contacted you about Kristen yet?”

“Just this morning,” her brother answered. “What is the world coming to when a woman can just disappear on a major interstate?”

“Papa had to be sedated when he heard the news,” Bridget said. She leaned back in her chair and smiled into the phone. She knew their conversation was being recorded by the Feds. “This on top of James disappearing has just been too much for him.”

“How’s Mama taking it?”

“You know Mama,” Bridget sighed. “She’s at church praying for Kristen’s soul.”

“Have any arrangements been made?”

Bridget kicked off her pumps and put her feet up on her desk. “The rosary will be said tonight, but the authorities won’t release the body until they’re satisfied with the autopsy report.”

“Do they have any clues?”

“I suppose they would’ve told you that before they’d tell me. But my Lord, Drew, when did we report her missing? A week ago?”

“At least.”

“I just hope they find something.” Bridget let her voice break. “Poor thing.” She sobbed. “I just can’t talk about it any more.”

“I understand.” Andrew’s voice was appropriately grave. “Call me if you need me, honey.”

As Bridget Casey hung up the phone, she smiled.

It had been so easy.

So very easy.

It was the
first time Kyle had really gotten a good look at the man in 158. He glanced at him, noting the dark hair, the build, dismissing him when the dark eyes and thin face turned to look at him. He thought he saw immediate fear in the man’s eyes before they hastily lowered and realized with a grunt of understanding that the man had been warned about him. But he was the right age, the age David Boudreaux was supposed to like, so Kyle pushed back his chair and ambled toward the card table where the man sat shuffling cards.

“Hi.”

Jamie had seen the man coming toward him. His groin had tightened with dread and his hands had begun to tremble. He had glanced around him searching for Cobb. Seeing the man watching them, he had relaxed some, the terror fading a little as he forced himself to look at the tall blond man smiling down at him.

“Hello.”

“My name’s David.” Kyle pulled out the chair across from the other patient and sat, his grin tight on his face. “What’s yours?”

Jamie glanced once more at Cobb and saw the man walking slowly toward them. He ducked his head. “Jamie.”

Kyle could feel the man’s discomfiture, almost smell his fear, but he had a role to play and he thought he’d best establish himself early on.

“Do you play anything but solitaire?” Kyle asked. When the man just shook his head in answer, Kyle reached for the cards. “Let’s play gin rummy.”

The patient flinched, jerking his hands away from the cards, letting them fall in a haphazard heap on the table. His fearful eyes widened and his head jerked around, his gaze going to the black orderly headed their way.

“Mr. David?” Cobb called in a soft, stern voice. He headed for the men. “Mr. Jamie don’t like to be bothered. You go on and find somebody else to talk to.” He reached the table and put a hand on Kyle’s shoulder.

Kyle glanced at the set face above him. “You his keeper, Cobb?” He let just the right amount of arrogance and annoyance tinge his voice.

“I look after Mr. Jamie, yes, sir.” The pressure of the man’s big hand increased on Kyle’s shoulder. “You go on now.”

Kyle swung his eyes back to the man called Jamie and saw the man was sweating, breathing heavily as though he were terrified. The dark eyes were filled with fear. He felt sick that he had frightened the man even more.

“I won’t hurt you, Jamie,” he said, wanting to kick himself for showing any remorse. He shook his head angrily and pushed up from the table. He smirked, making himself seem even more arrogant. “I like brown-eyed men.”

“Mr. David,” Cobb warned softly.

Kyle shrugged. “See you around, Jamie.” He turned his back and walked away, feeling Cobb’s eyes on him.

Jamie gathered up his cards, scooping them together into one pile, turning them over until he could arrange them in a deck once more. He was aware Marty Cobb had walked off, but was still watching him. He glanced nervously at David, saw that the man’s attention was no longer on him, and began to relax. His hands stopped shaking. After all, David had said he wouldn’t hurt him.

“I like brown-eyed men,” he’d said.

Jamie wondered why that piece of insight into the man’s preferences didn’t really seem to ease his own fear.

“He’s my friend,” Rebecca said as she came to stand by Kyle. She was holding her doll on her shoulder, patting the doll’s back as though trying to burp it.

“Who’s your friend, Becca?” Kyle asked, smiling up at the pretty young woman.

“Jamie,” Rebecca said. She craned her neck and looked down at her doll. “That’s a good girl, Angelina,” she said and lowered the doll to cradle it in her arms. She smiled as Kyle pushed out the chair beside him for her.

“Why, thank you, sir.” She giggled. “I always rely on the kindness of strangers.”

Jamie’s body jerked. He turned his head toward Rebecca and David, and felt a shiver of memory go down his spine. He stared at them, his eyes puzzled, and his face a mask of concentration.

Where had he heard that before? Who had once said that very same thing to him?

“When is your Mama coming?” Rebecca asked. She sighed. “I can’t wait for the party. Can you?”

Kyle’s smile turned to a pitying grimace. “I suppose so.”

“Angelina is going to love her cradle. I just know she will.” Her smile wavered. “I have to keep her in an old dresser drawer at night.” Her face lightened and her eyes beamed. “But from now on, I can put her right by my bed, can’t I?”

“Yeah.” Kyle felt very uncomfortable talking to the woman. He was unaware his edginess was being noted and taken as proof of his abnormal tendencies.

For a reason Jamie couldn’t explain, he found himself getting up, going toward Rebecca and David. He had almost reached them when they turned their heads away from him and the man lifted a hand to wave. Jamie looked past them and saw an elderly woman and a black man dressed in chauffeur garb coming into the day room.

“Good morning, Mama,” Kyle said, standing up as Edna Mae reached their table. He nodded at Delbert Merrill, wanting to laugh at the haughty way the black Iowa meat packer looked in the stiff gray uniform.

“Grimes,” Kyle acknowledged and had to cover his mouth with a cough as Delbert’s exaggerated Southern drawl poured out.

“Mr. David, sir,” Delbert conceded with a stiff bow.

“Well, good morning, Rebecca,” Edna Mae said. “And how is our lovely little lady today?” She leaned over the girl’s shoulder to peer at the baby doll.

“Where’s her cradle?” Rebecca asked, her face devoid of the light that had been there just moments before. “You said you were going to bring a cradle.” Her voice was an accusing whimper of grief.

“And I did,” Edna Mae told her. She swung her gaze to Delbert, her glance passing briefly over the young man standing a few feet away, staring at them with such a lonely, disturbed look on his face. “Grimes, would you go get Miss Angelina’s cradle out of the car for us?”

Delbert nodded politely and turned, his nose going in the air as he imitated what, in his mind, a wealthy white lady’s chauffeur would most certainly do. Squaring his shoulders, he walked out of the day room.

“Grimes gets stuffier with age, Mama,” Kyle couldn’t keep from saying. Edna Mae’s stern look, shot at him from beneath one arched brow, made him look down at his hands.

“Everyone’s going to be at the party,” Rebecca informed Edna Mae. “Everyone except maybe that poor man out in the bungalow behind the clinic.” She frowned for just a second and then her expression cleared. “But he never comes in here anyway.”

Edna Mae and Kyle exchanged a look. “What man is that, dear?” Edna Mae asked.

Rebecca shrugged. “I don’t know his name. I’ve never seen him, but that time when they brought him in and put him out there.” She seemed to lose interest in the conversation and stood, her avid eyes on the large box being brought to their table. “Is that it? Is that my baby’s cradle?”

Edna Mae clenched her hand, digging her nails into her flesh. She wanted to hear more about the mysterious man in the bungalow. She forced a smile to her lips.

“Yes, dear. You want to open it now?”

“Yes,” Rebecca answered. She turned her head and looked at the man standing near them. “Come here, Jamie! Come see my baby’s cradle.”

Edna Mae’s gaze fell to the young man. He was shaking his head. Even as Rebecca pleaded with him, he continued to stand where he was, his face a study in confusion and bewilderment. His eyes looked so lonely.

“You’re certainly welcome to join us, dear,” Edna Mae called to him. As his eyes met hers, the strangest sensation ran down the old woman’s spine and her eyes narrowed. He shook his head at her and took a few steps back, his eyes now filled with even more perplexity than before.

“Jamie’s shy,” Rebecca announced. She walked to the young man and held her doll out to him. “Hold my baby, please, Jamie?” She cocked her head to one side. “Please? Just until I opened her present?”

Reluctantly, the young man reached for the doll, taking it as gently into his arms, cradling its tiny head as carefully as he would have a real infant. A faint smile hovered on his face as Rebecca stood on tiptoe and kissed his flushed cheek.

“I’ll be right back,” she told him and hurried to the table where she began to tear at the paper covering the gift.

“We’d love to have you sit with us,” Edna Mae told Jamie. But he shook his head again, his eyes never leaving hers.

A great pity welled up inside Edna Mae and she had to look away. There was such loneliness, such desperation on that thin face, it was hard to watch. Her eyes met Kyle’s and she could see the acknowledgement of her feelings in his own eyes.

He stood there, weaving on his feet, confusion and chaos running through his mind. He stared at David talking to the black man named Grimes, then swung his gaze to the man’s elderly mother. He tried to concentrate and still the turmoil boiling inside his head as he looked at them. But the intense and prolonged effort only served to confuse him more. It felt as though he should know these people, remember them, but there were great black holes in his memory which had swallowed up everything but the here and now.

They were nothing to him and had never been anything to him, but the persistent, nagging feeling that they should be something to him would not leave him. He was jerked back to reality when Rebecca’s ecstatic cry of delight brought him from wherever his thoughts had tried to take him.

“I love it,” Rebecca cried. She lovingly stroked the doll cradle’s pale pink wood surface, traced the rocker arms with her finger and looked into Edna Mae’s happy eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered, bending to kiss the elderly woman’s cheek. “Oh, thank you so much, Miss Boudreaux.”

Edna Mae patted the girl’s hand. “You’re most welcome, dear.” She watched as Rebecca rushed to the young man to retrieve her doll.

“Come and see the cradle, Jamie!” Rebecca tugged on his arm. “Please?”

Jamie shook his head and turned away, overwhelmed once again by his confusion. Feeling lost, vulnerable, completely alone. He returned to his card table and sat, keeping his eyes from straying across the room to where those people—people he should know—people he
wanted
to know were gathered around Rebecca. He tried to shut out their voices, the old woman’s especially. Folding his arms on the table, he laid his head in his arms and squeezed his eyes shut. Maybe if he couldn’t see them, couldn’t hear them, couldn’t feel them across the room, he would remember where he’d seen them before.

And he had, a nagging voice whispered to him from out of the darkness of his madness. He
had
seen these people before.

And he
did
know them.

They
had
been something to him.

He just couldn’t remember.

“How’s it going, Jamie?”

He looked up and found the old man sitting on the table, his kindly smile encouraging. He didn’t know the old man’s name anymore than he knew the black woman’s who hated snow or the old wife who liked to shovel the stuff.

“Go away,” Jamie complained and lowered his head again, shutting out the sight of the man only he could see.

“Now, you know we can’t do that, Jamie,” the old man said in a soft voice. “We’re all you’ve got left.”

When his intellectual capacity came close to returning to what it had once been, Jamie always managed to retreat, some portion of his primal soul understanding that total recovery of what had once been was a pain to be avoided at all costs. It was something he had lost. Something that had been forcibly taken from him. Something he would never have again. It was safer, easier, less painful to remain in the dark than to try to step forward into the light. To remember.