Until Spring (12 page)

"Where to have this discussion, that's the question," he mused out loud, finally urging her along to the seldom-used dining room with its eight-armed chandelier and his mother's china arrayed along the top of the buffet.

"This will do," he said. "Sit down, Jane. Well, don't just stand there! Sit down!"

Embarrassed, she pulled out one of the heavy chairs and sat.

"Now, the thing about this meeting is that it probably won't be the last one we have. Any time something concerns one of us, we have the right to discuss it. Okay?" His dark eyes sparkled at her.

She seemed to have no choice but to go along with him. Certainly she had no idea what it took to live in harmony with other people in a real household, and her assumption that the best way to go about it was to stay out of everyone's way was apparently wrong, at least in Duncan's eyes.

"The thing that bothers me most is that you're here, but I never see you. You used to come down to the kitchen, help with the dishes—"

"Haven't I been helping out enough?"

Duncan sighed and looked frustrated. "Look, this isn't about helping around the house, although I appreciate the things you've done. It's about why we never see each other anymore." His eyes were direct and honest.

"Under the circumstances, I didn't want to see you," she said in a small voice, deciding that if he was going to be upfront about the way he felt, she could be forthright as well.

He studied her for a moment. "I thought you understood that all is forgiven," he said.

She looked down at the table, wishing she could crawl under it. "I guess I didn't really believe it," she said. It was the truth.

For a long time neither of them spoke, and again she didn't dare look at him.

Finally he stood and walked around the table until he stood in front of the window, staring out. Outside the rugged landscape rose into shadowy white peaks in the distance, where pines stood green-black against the mountain slopes.

"I said I didn't want anything from you, but I was wrong," he said in a low tone. He heaved a great sigh and turned around. Her eyes widened as she waited to see what he would say next.

"Don't worry," he said hastily, "it's not what you think." He walked over to her chair and stood in front of her. "What I want from you is companionship," he said quietly. His manner was genuine and somehow very touching.

"I don't understand," Jane said, at a loss for words. She'd never suspected this side of Duncan before. She'd been so caught up in her own problems, her own attitudes, that she'd never considered him as a real person with real wants and needs.

"I don't like living alone," he said in a purely conversational tone as he sat down again.

"But Rooney—Mary Kate—" Jane stammered, at a loss to think how he could feel alone with them living right next door and in and out of the house all the time.

"They have their own lives," he said calmly. "Rooney is wrapped up in making his granddaughter toe the line, and rightly so, I suppose. As for Mary Kate as a companion—well, she's only a child. In my limited experience, ten-year-olds don't make especially good friends for anyone except other ten-year-olds."

"I thought you'd like your privacy," she said, regaining her composure.

"I told you one time that to me, privacy is the same as loneliness. I meant it," he said.

She sensed his emotion. It was there in his eyes for her to see. She wanted to look away because it embarrassed her, but maybe this was the way people were supposed to make contact with each other. She managed to hold his gaze until he smiled, and this almost, but not quite, broke the tension.

"So no more hiding when I come into the house. I enjoy your company around here at night, even if it's only watching television together. And meals—why can't we eat at the same table?"

"We could," she said, feeling out of her element. Didn't he realize that she knew nothing about carrying on a one-on-one relationship with another person? She hadn't grown close to anyone since they'd found her in that ditch.

"Would it be so hard for you? Am I so difficult to be around?" He smiled at her again, this time more engagingly, and she felt the considerable pull of his magnetism.

"You're not, Duncan. I wish I could explain. You see, I don't think you understand. It's just—just—"

He watched her struggle for words and realized that she wasn't making excuses not to interact with him but was trying to express a thought that she couldn't get a handle on. He waited patiently while she tried to articulate it and wished there was something he could do to wipe that pinched look from her face and the confusion from her eyes.

"I don't wish to avoid talking to you right now, at this moment," Jane finally explained, her face flushing. "It's just that sometimes it's like that for me—I can't get the words out. It might have something to do with that blow on the head."

"Take your time," he told her, wishing that he knew more about amnesia and how it worked.

"Anyway, what I was trying to say is that I'm not so much afraid of you as I am about being around other people. I've learned that you're to be trusted, and Mary Kate and Rooney too, but once I get past that point I don't know how to act. I always had to be careful of other people getting too close so they wouldn't steal what money I had, or of people who had less than honorable intentions, or—well, I'm sure you get the idea. And now..." Her voice trailed off.

"It's okay, Jane, you don't have to talk about it if it upsets you."

"I want to. Before I didn't, but now I do." She drew a deep breath, for some reason feeling free to be straight with him as she never had with any other person within her memory. Maybe it was because he'd been so open with her, but for whatever reason, it was as if all her emotions, pent up for so long, burst forth.

"Don't you see that I haven't had a background of being close to anyone?" she said in a rush. "I don't remember any family. And I never made friends when I was trying to survive out on the streets. The plain truth is that I don't know how to act around you, Duncan. And it's not just you. It's everyone else, too." When she finished speaking, her eyes searched his face for understanding.

He didn't know what to say. It was, he thought, perfectly natural to assume that the people we deal with every day have the same frame of reference that we do. And yet, as in Jane's case, it wasn't always true. Often when dealing with other people we assume too much. We should make an effort to think the way they think. If he had, he might have approached her in a more gentle way.

He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. "I'm sorry," he said. "It never crossed my mind that just being here with me might take a great effort on your part."

"How were you to know?" she asked, calmer now.

He closed his eyes for a minute, and when he opened them, he saw that hers were brimming with tears.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

She shook her head and wiped the tears away before they could spill down her cheeks.

"No. It's a relief to talk to someone. I've never been that honest before. With anyone. I've had to lie and cheat and—"

"Shh," he said comfortingly, reaching over and stilling her lips with two fingers. The bodily contact startled her, and he took his fingers away, but not before he noted that she had very soft lips.

"I'm not going to lie anymore," she said with great determination. "Ever."

He glimpsed the steel behind those blue eyes, the same toughness that had helped her to survive so many hardships. He cleared his throat. "You don't have to promise me anything else," he said uncomfortably. "You've already promised me the one thing that I wanted—for you to stay until you're well."

She shook her head. "Saying that I'm through lying wasn't a promise to
you,"
she said. "I'm making a vow to myself. It's a bad habit, Duncan, and I can't build my new life, the one I'm going to have, on a foundation of untruths. One lie begets another and another. After a while you're making things up all the time, and then you hate yourself for it, and soon other people start hating you, too. There's no point in waiting to start over in California when I can begin here."

"It's really important to you, isn't it? This California business, I mean?" he asked.

"I want it more than anything. I had to have some kind of goal, otherwise I'd have stayed in the same rut forever. I couldn't live that way anymore. Amos and I deserve a better life than that. We'll make it."

"Yes, Jane, I believe you will." He stretched and stood up, looking down at her. She was beautiful but unsmiling, and tension still hardened the lines of her face.
I'd like to see her happy
was the thought that leaped into his head, but he shook it away. Happiness wasn't something he could bestow; it was something she'd have to find herself. Life and a ruined marriage had taught him that. All he could provide was a safe place where she could pull herself together, and maybe a few amenities.

"How about a bowl of ice cream? There's enough for Amos if he wants it," he suggested lightly.

"Are we through talking?"

"I hope not," he said, and then he laughed. "Was it so awful?"

"No, it made me feel better," she admitted.

For a moment Jane thought he was going to slide his arm around her shoulders, but perhaps he thought better of it because he let her go through the door first and followed her into the kitchen.

She watched as he took the ice cream out of the freezer and began to spoon it into cut glass bowls. She felt a surge of gratitude toward him, not only for his forgiveness and for the kind manner in which he treated her, but also for the emotional release he had provided for her when she needed it.

There was more to breaking free from her past life than she had suspected, she knew now. The surface accoutrements of a new life, like an apartment and a job, were important. But she also needed to do some work on herself. Before, she hadn't known who she was or how she was supposed to act.

Now she still didn't know her identity—she might never know it.

But she knew that if there was anyone in the world after whom she wanted to model her behavior, it was Duncan.

* * *

The next day Duncan came in and tossed a couple of mail-order catalogs onto the couch.

"Here," he said. "You need to order some things to wear."

"I can't," she told him, shifting Amos, who was purring in her lap, to one side. "I don't have any money."

"I don't mind charging them to my accounts. You can pay me back."

"Duncan, I—"

"Only order what you absolutely need, then. You can't go on wearing my old blue jeans that don't even fit, and you'd probably like to have a few shirts in your own size. Shoes, too. The ones you wear are pretty ragged. And you should own a decent pair of boots."

She flipped through the pages of the catalogs. A few basics wouldn't cost much, but how did she know when she'd be able to repay him?

He leaned over the couch, resting one hand on the back. "I have faith in you," he said quietly. "By letting you borrow the money, I'm saying, 'You're going to make it, kid.'"

She felt flustered, but Duncan seemed to want to take care of her; it pleased him. She decided to be gracious.

"All right," she said. "I'll order some things. Only what I need, though."

"Good," he said and went away whistling.

She ordered three blouses, a pair of gray wool slacks, sturdy outdoor boots, and, something she couldn't resist, a long warm flannel nightgown printed with tiny bluebells.

Jane spent her days looking after the house, taking long naps with Amos curled up beside her on the couch, and reading Duncan's paperback mysteries, of which he had several hundred. She was intrigued by the way the heroes and heroines of these books always triumphed. They seemed to run into none of the insurmountable problems that were posed by mysteries in real life; for instance, in her case, the puzzle of who she was. At present, she was content not to worry about that. It was enough to appreciate living in this house and to spend much of her day dreaming about her future. Her past seemed less important now that she was no longer living it.

After a couple of weeks, Jane realized with a start that she hadn't had one of her crushing headaches since she arrived on the ranch. There were even definable periods every day when she felt an emotion that she cautiously identified as happiness.

It first manifested itself as a lightness of being, which then transformed itself into joy in being alive. At first she was wary of this feeling that was so unfamiliar. She thought it was a fluke. As the days went on and it didn't go away, she learned to believe in it, much as she was learning to trust that there would always be enough food to eat and a warm place to sleep.

There are people, she thought, who have always had a place to sleep and plenty of food. Probably they've never contemplated what life would be like without these things that are so necessary. And likewise there are people who have always known this contentment, this—and she was still almost too superstitious to think the word—
happiness.
Duncan Tate was almost certainly one.

Although perhaps she was wrong about the happiness. He was unfailingly cheerful, more so every day, she thought. But was he happy? Sometimes a shadow of sadness slipped over his features when he thought she wasn't paying attention, and she wondered about it. She thought that maybe it had something to do with his former marriage. Jane had been told about that by Mary Kate, who had fallen into the habit of dropping by to visit with Jane every afternoon after the school bus dropped her off.