Without a Past (5 page)

As he headed toward the shop to tell Ida Jane and Andi goodbye, he passed by an open door. Glancing in, he spotted an oil painting above the ornate fireplace and made a detour.

The room was filled with antiques like the rest of the bordello, but this room had a homey, lived-in feel to it. He ambled past the vintage sofa, running his fingers over the dusty keys of a player piano topped with knickknacks and photos in mismatched frames.

But it was the painting that drew his attention. Somewhat stylized, it was a bucolic portrait of the fraternal triplets at age twelve or so. The artist had managed to depict each child's individual essence. Harley had no trouble picking out Andi—the rebel. Her cap of red hair fell across her eyes like that of the huge Old English sheepdog she embraced. Her sisters stood on either side of her—prim ladylike Jenny on the left. Wistful, angelic Kristin to the right.

He didn't hear Andi approach until she said, “That's Daisy. We got her the first day of kindergarten. She'd be waiting for us every single day after school. A big doggy grin on her face.”

Harley studied the animal for a moment. A sliver of pain made his eyelid flicker. He blinked and rubbed the spot. “You're sure it's not a hairy cow?” he asked disconcerted by his odd reaction. “That's the biggest dog I've ever seen.”

“How can you be sure? You've lost your memory, remember?”

Her question wasn't too different from the razzing he got from some of his fellow cowboys, but her smile made it more palatable. “How long ago did she die?”

“The summer after we graduated from high school. Kris was in Ireland living with our aunt and uncle. I was working
in Tuolumne Meadows, and Jen was hiking with Josh before starting summer-school classes at Fresno State. I told Daisy we were coming back, but I guess she didn't believe me.”

Harley could tell that even now, all these years later, Andi was moved by the memory. “You found her, didn't you?”

She turned away, as if his observation bothered her. “I came home one afternoon, and she wasn't at the gate to meet me.” She tried to shrug her shoulders, but the blasé motion fell short. “She lived a good, long life.”

“That didn't make it hurt any less, I bet.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That's a pretty empathetic observation for a guy with no past. How do you explain that?”

Harley might have been put off by her contentious tone if he didn't understand the feelings behind it. Andi kept her attitude front and center for protection, like a porcupine.

“I don't. I just tried to imagine how I'd feel if someone I cared about died. And I could tell by the look in your eyes, you really loved your dog.”

She lifted her gaze to the portrait. “Daisy was special. I could tell her anything, and she seemed to understand. Not too many people are like that. Not around here, anyway.”

“You have two sisters. And Ida Jane. And from what I hear, a town that follows your every move.”

“A dog doesn't judge you.”

Oh.
The sentence told him more than she probably intended. As if conscious of the slip, she added, “Daisy was just part of a whole menagerie. Rabbits, goldfish, six, no…seven cats, a parrot, chickens, ducks, two turtles, peacocks and a bad-tempered Shetland pony named Homer.”

Harley pictured the cow dogs at the Rocking M, and his slight aversion to them. He'd wondered why he felt no affinity toward animals. Andi's pet history made him a little uncomfortable. “That either sounds like a Disney movie or a horror story. I can't decide which.”

His observation seemed to startle her. “How come you know movies but not…? Never mind. I need to get to work before Ida decides she
can
make a cappuccino without help.”

Harley took the hint. She was obviously reluctant to leave him wandering around her home alone. But Harley was just as reluctant to give up this connection he felt with her. And her life. Maybe this documented record of Andi's childhood filled a void he hadn't wanted to admit existed.

He pointed to a framed snapshot of a man and woman riding a merry-go-round. The woman resembled Jenny, although her waist-length red tresses were the color of Andi's. The man had Andi's serious gray-green eyes and Kristin's charismatic smile.

“Are those your parents?”

“Yes. They were honest-to-goodness hippies.” Her sudden grin made his breath catch in his throat.
She doesn't smile enough.
“They lived on a commune near Shasta until our mother got pregnant. Ida Jane told us that a psychic had predicted a multiple birth but had seen tragedy associated with it.”

Harley interpreted her slight shudder as skepticism. “Ida said they were afraid something bad might happen to us, so they moved in with her to be closer to a hospital. But because Mother wanted a natural birth, she saw a midwife, too.

“They were on their way back to town when a storm blew in. Their Volkswagen bus hit a patch of black ice and slid off the road. Our dad was killed on impact, but Mom hung on long enough to deliver us.”

Harley had heard the story before, but listening to Andi tell it touched him differently. The repressed questions he struggled to keep at bay suddenly bombarded him.
What if my parents are alive? Are they worried about me? Have
they been searching? What if I have a wife and family? Has my disappearance left them shattered? Destitute?

Along with the questions came a blinding headache.

Harley squeezed his eyes closed and groped for the medication in his breast pocket. With his other hand he reached out for something to hold on to. His balance was the first thing to go. Whatever was in his stomach usually followed.

A strong, solid arm took his. “What's going on? You're white as a sheet. Come and sit down.”

Her words sounded far away but overly loud. They competed with the ringing hiss that increased the level of pain. “Headache,” he said. The words came off mumbled and slurred.

Andi helped him to the sofa and gently pushed him backward so he was slightly reclined. She disappeared for a moment, returning with a cold cloth that she pressed to his eyes. “My roommate used to get migraines. She thought they were caused by a food allergy. I hope it wasn't the cactus jelly I fed you.”

Harley would have smiled if he could have felt his lips.

“I brought you some water,” she said, wrapping his fingers around a glass. “Let me help with your pills.”

She took the tiny container from him and a second later he tasted the bitterness of the tablets. “Thanks,” he mumbled, right before he washed them down with a gulp of water. “They help. They just take a few minutes.”

“Good. I know this isn't what you want to hear, but you look awful.” Squinting against the pain, he saw her close the drapes. In the shadowy dimness, she returned to his side. “Just rest,” she whispered. “Ida will be by to check on you in a minute. She'll love having someone new to play nurse with.”

Her words were a blur. And he probably imagined the
kiss on his cheek. Then he was alone with his pain. Harley might have focused on the odd, disparate images that bombarded him in the blackness behind his eyes, but he was too busy concentrating on keeping his breakfast in his stomach.

A
NDI GLANCED
at her watch to double-check the progress of the grandfather clock across from her desk. Both time-pieces said the same thing. Time was crawling this afternoon.

Of course, it didn't help that in the two hours since Harley Forester had nearly collapsed in her parlor, Andi hadn't been able to take even a five-minute break to check on him. First, a busload of retirees who were walking off the pancakes they'd eaten at the Golden Corral showed up to browse. Andi's total sales amounted to thirteen dollars, but she had a feeling she might have sold a few big-ticket items if she'd had a Web site to send them to when they returned to Illinois.

Not long after the customers left, Beulah Jensen and Mary Needham walked in, having just heard through the grapevine that Ida Jane was home. Both were Ida's cronies from the Garden Club, and the three old friends put away two caramel rolls, four biscotti and three extra-large mochas before Ida announced that she had a man in her room and she needed to check on him.

Andi would have explained to the dumbfounded women, but she was sidetracked by a phone call. A customer wanted to know if she had the written operating instructions to go with a circa 1950s slide projector that he'd bought from Ida Jane two years earlier. And if not, could she please talk him through the steps to replace the bulb.

It's been two hours. How long should I leave him there? What if he has a broken blood vessel in his head? He could be in a coma. Or—worse—Ida Jane could be showing him all my baby pictures. That would bore him to death. Maybe I should put the Back in Ten Minutes sign on the door and go check on him myself.

She straightened the basket of pink and blue sugar packages at the table where Ida and her friends had been sitting, and cleaned up the napkins and stir sticks. Andi didn't mind giving free coffee to Ida's friends, but the chocolate-drizzled biscotti and walnut-pecan caramel rolls were purchased from the bakery. Andi usually broke even on baked goods, but she couldn't do that if Ida gave them away. And these days every nickel mattered. Unfortunately, she didn't know how to explain that to a woman as generous as Ida Jane without sounding miserly.

“Ahem.”

Andi spun around, nearly upending the molded plastic chair she'd been wiping down.

“Oh, hi. I was just coming to check on you. You look much better,” she said, pleased to see Harley standing, hat in hand, in the doorway. He still seemed a little pale, but he didn't have that pinched look about his lips and eyes. “Are you okay?”

One shoulder moved incrementally.

She motioned him in. “Can I get you a cup of coffee? Caramel roll? Biscotti?”

He shook his head faintly—as if the pain still lingered. “No, thank you. I should be going. But I wanted to thank you for helping when that headache hit.”

She was disappointed. Even though she knew it wasn't a good idea to get involved with the guy, she wasn't ready to let him leave. The afternoon loomed ahead, long and boring.
Maybe she was a little lonely. And she definitely wasn't looking forward to talking business with Ida Jane.

“Are you sure I can't bribe you into sticking around?” she asked. “I could use your help.”

Instead of leaving through the back door, which was just behind him, he walked toward her.

“The pay isn't great—food and caffeine—but the work isn't overly difficult. Honest.”

He stopped about an arm's length away, shifted feet as if uncomfortable with his choices and took a long, deep breath. “I owe you a favor. What can I do?”

Andi smiled at his serious tone. “Sit out front in the rocking chair and read the paper.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

She turned away and finished wiping the table so he wouldn't see her blush. Her sisters would have been able to see right through her ploy. “You've heard of priming the pump, right? Well, I don't know for sure if this will work, but I thought that having a man sitting on the porch, looking relaxed and reading the paper—while his wife was inside spending money with carefree abandon—might draw in customers. And your presence—a big, masculine cowboy—would make other husbands less intimidated about going antique shopping with their wives. What do you think?”

When she looked his way, his smile started out slow then grew to a grin that made her knees tremble. “I think it's a brilliant idea. Very astute. I'm pretty sure I can be a dummy without any problem.”

Dummy.
The word made her flinch. “Shh…” she warned. “Not the D-word. Ida Jane would wash your mouth out with soap if she heard you say that.”

His look of confusion made her explain. “Kristin had a few problems in school. One or two of her teachers suggested she was slow.” Andi whispered the word. “So, we
were never allowed to use derogatory words about each other's mental acuity.”

“Was the problem a learning disability?” he asked.

“Possibly,” Andi said, motioning for him to follow her to the wicker rocker on the covered porch. “From what I've read, it sounds like attention deficit disorder. But whatever the problem, it was never formally diagnosed. Ida Jane tried taking Kris to some kind of psychologist for special tests, but Kristin refused to cooperate. She insisted she could do the work if it weren't so boring.”

Andi remembered the running arguments between Ida and Kristin, who was as easygoing and malleable as a puppy except when it came to doctors and taking pills. It was no surprise to Andi that Kris had gravitated toward holistic healing in her adult life. “Kris kept her grades in the C's and D's range. But in subjects she liked, she could get A's.”

“Then she must have been right,” he said in that slow, thoughtful way of his. As if any statement he made was subject to change by the
real
Harley Forester—whoever he was.

“Have a seat,” Andi said as she dashed inside to grab a newspaper from the pile beside her desk. When she returned, Harley was gingerly lowering his excellent derriere into the rocker. “I know the chair looks rickety, but it will support you. I promise. My friend Pascal—he's a teacher at the high school—comes by on weekday mornings before school, and always eats his roll and drinks his triple espresso in that chair. And he's a big guy. Three-fifty, at least.”

Once seated, Harley tossed his hat on a nearby bench. “Is he a boyfriend?” he asked, not making eye contact.

Andi stifled a giggle. “He was my teacher when I was in school, and he was one of the names on my Daddy List, if that gives you an idea of his age.”

“Oh.” He held out his hand for the paper but didn't look up at her.

Andi felt compelled to add, “Poor Pascal. He's a sweetheart of a man, but he must have been mortified to find out I'd paired him with Ida Jane. He's at least twenty-five years her junior. But when you're a kid,
old
is anything over thirty.”

As Harley rocked back, the chair runners made a soft creaking sound against the planking. “Then I must be old,” he said, his voice heavy with a sigh.

Andi moved to the railing across from him and leaned against it, crossing her ankles. “How old do you think you are? Thirty? Thirty-one?”

“Older.”

“What makes you say that? Did the doctor guess your age? You know, when she examined you?”

His laugh curled around the eaves like a warm echo. “You mean they way do a horse? By checking its teeth?”

Her cheeks grew hot. “Well, maybe. I don't know. I was just curious…”

“Don't get all defensive. I was only teasing.” His tone let her off the hook. She really liked him way too much considering she knew absolutely nothing about him.

He rested his left ankle on his right knee and brushed at a scuff on his worn boots with the pad of his thumb. Andi knew he shopped at the local thrift store, because Jenny had been the one to take him there with an advance on his first paycheck.

“In all honesty, I don't have a clue how old I am. But after a headache like that one—” He nodded as if he'd left the pain behind him in the house. “I feel ancient.”

Andi's impulse was to feed him. “Listen, caffeine might not be good for a headache, but a fruit smoothie could help.
You know…something cold. Let me get you one. On the house. For giving Ida Jane a ride home this morning.”

She started away, but he put his arm out to block her. “You don't owe me anything, Andi. I like Ida. I volunteered when Hank asked for someone to help out. Sundays can get a little long when you don't know many people and you don't have much money.”

Since Andi's only day off was Monday—the day she ran nonstop errands—she hadn't really given that any thought. “So, what do you do with your downtime?”

“Read. Write in my journal, like Dr. Franklin suggested. Last Sunday, I visited Lars at the mine, but it's not always easy to catch a ride. The Blue Lupine isn't exactly on the beaten path.”

Which made it all that much odder that someone would be riding a motorcycle in that vicinity, she thought. “I haven't been to the mine in years,” Andi said. “When I was a senior, my science class had a botany project that required us to collect wildflowers from all over the county. I asked Lars for permission to pick flowers from his property.”

“And he said yes?” Harley asked, his surprise obvious. Lars Gunderson's cantankerous personality hadn't won him too many friends over the years. Sam O'Neal was one of the few people who always kept an open door to the old miner.

“Actually, he was real nice once we got past the shouting,” she said with a wink. “I once dated an army drill sergeant like him—all hot air and paranoia.”

She might have elaborated, but the ringing of the telephone made her rush indoors. She snatched the portable from its cradle then walked into the “Coffee Parlor” to mix up a smoothie. “Hello,” she said, adding as an afterthought, “the Old Bordello Antique Shop and Coffee Parlor.”

“Nicely done,” Jenny praised. “Almost made me want to rush over and buy something.”

Andi chuckled. “Cool. That would make my third sale of the day. If you pick something big, I might even break twenty bucks gross.”

Jenny groaned. “Bummer. I'm sorry business has been slow. How's Ida Jane doing? She got there okay, didn't she? Harley isn't back, and I'm starting to get worried.”

Andi dropped a prepackaged frozen plug of concentrated puree of bananas and mangoes into the blender, along with additional ice. Before adding the milk, she ripped open an envelope with her teeth and dumped a grayish-looking powder on top of the pink-orange cube. When she'd first considered selling coffee as a sideline, she hadn't planned to make frozen drinks, too. But Kristin had pointed out that in the long hot days of summer, a chilled selection would be more appealing than hot coffee. Regardless of her performance in school, Andi thought, Kristin was no dummy.

After locking the lid in place, Andi hit the button on the mixer then moved around the corner so she could hear over the noise. “Ida's unpacking. Or resting. I'm not sure. And Harley is still here. He's my live bait. I've got him sitting on the porch to lure customers in.”

“Live bait?”
Jenny repeated, as if slightly repelled by the concept. “I'm not sure how his presence will help unless you're trying to get young girls to come in, but, hey, whatever works. As long as he's okay, and the truck is safe. Sam might call off the engagement if I lost one of his employees and his beloved flatbed truck while he was away on business.”

Andi sincerely doubted that. Sam adored Jenny and doted on the twins. She peeked out the window. The cowboy in question was rocking lazily. He seemed to be engrossed in an article on the front page of the
Ledger.

“Oh, damn,” she groaned, catching a view of the headline.

“What?”

“I gave him the wrong paper. This one's got the nasty article Gloria wrote about why I shouldn't take over Ida Jane's seat on the chamber of commerce.”

Jenny's sigh said she understood. “I really don't like what I've been reading lately. It's so one-sided in favor of big business. I'm not surprised Gloria is trying to use her influence to get someone more in favor of growth onto the committee. I heard her son is now a hotshot developer in Seattle or Portland.”

“Ty's into building things?” Andi croaked. “Somehow I pictured him more the plastic-explosives-under-a-bridge type. Go figure.”

When she'd dated him—nearly a dozen years earlier—Tyler Harrison had been the town bad boy. His role in a three-way skirmish with Kristin and Donnie had resulted in Ty's premature departure from school. Andi couldn't picture him as a successful businessman.

“People change, Andrea,” Jenny said with authority.

“True, Jen, but that doesn't mean we have to roll over and play dead because big business wants to change Gold Creek into some slick tourist trap with a casino right outside of town,” she said, repeating one of the rumors that was circulating. When Andi returned to Gold Creek the previous April, she'd learned all too quickly that certain factions—like the owner of the newspaper, Gloria's brother, and his friends—were willing to do almost anything to bring new enterprises into town. Even at the expense of old, established businesses—like the Old Bordello Antique Shop.

Andi had heard the Growth versus No Growth controversy a dozen times in the past year. In all honesty, she was sick of talking about it. Before Jenny could reply, Andi cut
her off. “I gotta finish making a smoothie for a customer, sis,” Andi said, returning to the mixer. Best not to mention her
customer
by name. Jenny was something of a match-maker. “I'll have Ida Jane call you later.”

After exchanging quick goodbyes, Andi set the phone down. She transferred the frothy mixture to a large opaque plastic cup and grabbed a paper-wrapped straw from the box stashed under the counter.