Читать книгу Who Is Deborah? - Elise Title, Elise Title - Страница 7

I tried to compose myself as I waited in Dr. Royce’s office for Greg Eastman to come in. Dr. Royce had wanted to wait with me, to stand by me during the meeting and give me moral support. Or maybe artificial respiration if I passed out! But I’d been adamant about wanting my very protective doctor to leave me on my own. I think my assertiveness surprised him. It surprised me even more. I didn’t really understand my sudden spurt of boldness, writing it off as partly desperation, partly the need to begin to stand on my own two feet.

My two feet, however, weren’t holding me up all that well. They felt like a cross between rubber and marshmallows. I sat down in the armchair. I folded one hand over the other. I crossed my bare legs at the ankles. I took deep breaths. Nothing helped. My heart was racing. My palms were sweaty. I was a nervous wreck.

I kept thinking, you should be happy. This is what I’d dreamed about for months. Finally, someone’s come for me—someone who knows me, someone who’s bringing me the greatest gift possible: myself. Not that it couldn’t be some terrible mistake. This private investigator might come in, see me, and realize I wasn’t Deborah Steele, after all. Suddenly I was fervently praying that wouldn’t happen. In those last waiting moments, I found myself longing to be Deborah Steele. For if I wasn’t Deborah, I was once again…nobody. I didn’t truly exist. Even the idea of being married to a man whose mind must be steeped in horror fiction didn’t prevent me from my longing to be Deborah. I focused on what Dr. Royce had told me—the whirlwind courtship and marriage on a tropical island, the romance of it all. Oh, if I could be Deborah, the girl of this man’s dreams…

I couldn’t keep my anxiety or my anticipation at bay for more than a few moments. This meeting with Greg Eastman could hold the key to unlocking my past. And my future. Whatever had gone on before, whatever lay ahead, had to be better than the awful blankness, the loneliness that consumed me almost every waking moment here in the hospital. At least, that’s what I told myself at the time.

When he stepped into the office after what felt like an eternity but was probably no more than ten minutes, I popped up like a puppet whose strings had been abruptly tugged hard.

Greg Eastman smiled. “Please. Sit down.”

Self-consciously, I followed his request. My boldness having deserted me altogether, I could manage little more than a quick glance at the private investigator. It was long enough, though, to know that he looked utterly unfamiliar to me. I felt incredibly disappointed as I stared down at my hands.

When I think back on that first meeting with Greg, it was his smile that I remember most. Sympathetic, charming, coaxing at turns. His grab bag of smiles didn’t quite put me at ease—that would have been impossible—but they did give me some comfort. I think I must have been expecting some hard-boiled shamus right out of a detective novel. Greg was nothing like that. He was clean-cut and attractive, with close-cropped sandy blond hair, regular features, and that engaging smile.

His next words broke the awkward and extended silence. “This must be quite a shock for you, Deborah.”

The name rolled so easily and naturally off his lips that my head jerked up.

“Am I…her?” My mouth was dry. The words came out like a harsh croak.

“After they made you, they threw away the mold.” Immediately after uttering the glib remark, he looked contrite. “Sorry. It’s just that I’m so incredibly relieved to see you. Dr. Royce has explained everything to me, Deborah. The assault, the injuries you suffered, the memory loss that resulted. But it’s going to be all right. Now, you can begin to really heal. I’ve come to take you home, Deborah.”

Home. I had promised myself I wouldn’t break down, but it was all too much. Home.

My sudden burst of tears filled Greg with alarm. He didn’t seem to know what to do, what to say. After a few attempts to calm me with words and pats on my shoulder, he finally just kept handing me tissues until I got my bearings again.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, horribly embarrassed.

“Don’t be. It’s probably the best thing for you.”

The best thing for me. No. The best thing for me would be to remember being Deborah.

“Did the headshrinker fill you in?” Greg asked. He gave me a quirky smile in response to my blank look. “Sorry. The psychiatrist.”

I repeated by rote what Dr. Royce had told me. “He said that you knew me from Sinclair. In the Catskill Mountains three hours north of here. You have a getaway cottage there. You’re a friend of Nicholas Steele’s. You’ve known him for five years. You’re tennis partners.”

I continued in a monotone. “Nicholas was married for two years and then two and a half months ago his wife, Deborah, disappeared. You saw my photo in the newspaper clipping and recognized me as Deborah Steele.” I might have been giving a canned speech at a conference. Nothing that I said had any foundation in reality for me. I felt like I was talking about someone else altogether. Deborah and Nicholas. They were both no more than phantom beings. I felt no connection to either of them.

Greg leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, palms capturing his square chin. He seemed unfazed by my mechanical presentation.

“You must have been mugged the first day you got to the city,” he said. “I checked out the area where they found you. At night, it’s a pretty desolate spot, but there are a few designers who have lofts in that neighborhood. You always had a thing for searching out new fashion designers. The best-dressed woman with the most original wardrobe in Sinclair. Not that Sinclair’s exactly a fashion mecca, but we do have our country-club set.” He winked, clearly expecting to garner a little laugh or a smile from me at the very least.

But my mouth was stuck in a tight line. To make matters worse, I became horribly self-conscious about the drab cotton print sundress that hung loosely on my narrow frame. My meager wardrobe, culled from the hospital’s thrift shop with a few hand-me-downs from a couple of nurses tossed in, was about as far from designer wear as one could get. I was certainly not the fashion plate of the New York General.

Greg leaned a little closer. I squirmed under his scrutiny, thinking he, too, was none too impressed with my attire, nor with my whole appearance. But how I looked and what I was wearing turned out not to be what was on his mind. “I know all this must be hard for you, but it’s hard for me, too, Deborah. You really don’t remember anything? Anything at all?”

Slowly, I shook my head. “This feels very unreal. I don’t even know whether to believe any of it. I keep thinking…you must have made a mistake.”

“No mistake,” he said confidently. And then he added, “Maybe this will help.” He withdrew a photo from a manila envelope and extended it toward me. As much as I wanted to look, I felt frozen to the spot. I couldn’t even reach out my hand to take the photo from him.

Eventually he laid it in my lap, facing me.

Still, it took several long moments for me to manage to lower my eyes to it.

It was an eight-by-ten glossy of a blond-haired woman in a bikini, smiling provocatively into the camera as she posed on the bow of a sailing sloop. What emerged most from the shot was the vibrancy of her coloring—the healthy, glowing golden sweep of hair, the tanned skin, the glamorous red lipstick, the vibrant blue eyes that sparkled with such youth and vitality.

Was this me? A me in happier times? Had my blue eyes ever shone like that? Had my blond hair ever looked so lustrous? Had I ever been so carefree? So curvy?

Incredible as it was, the similarities were undeniable. Not just that our eye color and hair shade matched, but it was there in the shape of the eyes. And in the mouth. Even our noses weren’t all that different. The jawlines…Well, they weren’t the same. Hers seemed to jut out more, giving her an air of defiance. It went with the seductive glint in her eyes. She seemed so sure of herself. And maybe a little full of herself, as well. That was the heart of the difference between us. I was certain that was what Dr. Royce saw, too, when he examined the photograph.

“You just need to put on a bit of weight, get out in the sun again, and—”

“Tell me about her,” I said, cutting him off.

He looked slightly startled. Then he smiled. “Well, she’s beautiful, vivacious, fun loving…”

But those were all qualities I could see myself in the photo. I wanted to know about the parts of her—of me?—that I couldn’t see.

My disappointment must have shown on my face, because he gave me a tender smile. “You always looked very sure of yourself, but you didn’t always feel that way. Not by half. We were good friends, Deborah. You…confided in me. You told me how important painting was for you. You talked about how lonely you were as a child.”

“My family…?”

A flicker in his hazel eyes told me it was a sad story. “Your father walked out on you when you were a small child. You always wished you could at least picture him in your mind, but you couldn’t. Your only memory of him was of a red plaid shirt he’d worn. You used to…tear up a little and say, ‘Can you imagine remembering nothing at all about your father but a dumb old shirt?”’

I hung on every word Greg spoke, struggling to make them mean something to me. I could feel for this sad child, but I couldn’t identify with her as being a part of myself.

“And my mother?”

He sighed. “She died when you were nine. You went to live with a maiden aunt in Omaha. I always used to tease you that no one really lived in Omaha.”

“And…and what would I say?”

“You’d say, ‘I didn’t live there, Greg. I existed there. Just barely, at that.”’

I sat very still, tears slipping down my cheeks. It sounded so much like the feeling I had here in the hospital. This was the first real connection I felt to Deborah.

“I honestly think that once you’re with Nick at Raven’s Cove, it will all come back to you,” he said in a soft murmur.

“Raven’s Cove?”

Greg grinned. “From Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven.’ An appropriate name for the abode of a renowned spook writer. Not that Nick takes any of that nonsense seriously. I think it was his cousin who named the place.”

“His cousin?”

“Second cousin once removed, or something like that. Lillian. She sort of looks after things. Very quietly and unobtrusively. You needn’t worry about old Lill.”

“I’m worried about everything,” I confessed readily. “I don’t think I’m really able to take it all in.”

He went to reach for my hand, but instinctively I jerked it away. Even though I remembered nothing about the assault, it had left me with an uneasiness about being touched. I started to apologize, knowing Greg meant only to comfort me, but he waved off my apology.

“Deborah, listen to me. You don’t belong here. You won’t get well here. And that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Of course, he had to know I wanted that more than anything.

I asked shakily, “Have you…spoken with him already?” I couldn’t say his name yet. Nicholas? Nick? Darling? I felt my cheeks redden.

“Yes.”

“He’s…expecting me?”

“Yes.”

“Were you so certain I’d come?”

“As certain as I was that you were Deborah. And now I’m more certain than ever. I’ll say it again. Deborah Steele is one of a kind. Since you can’t know that, take it from someone who does.” It was a warm compliment and I sensed no seductiveness in it. Here, I started to think, was someone whom I might be able to trust. Trust wasn’t something that had been coming easily to me. I got the feeling from the little Greg had told me, it never had. But I must have trusted him in the past. He’d said I’d confided in him.

“It’s going to be all right, Deborah. I promise.”

I managed a small smile. “I have to confess, Mr. Eastman—”

“Greg. I’ve been Greg ever since we first met, two years ago. What do you confess, Deborah?”

Her smile deepened a little. “I confess, Greg, that your confidence is a bit contagious.”

He smiled back—a smile at once charming and ingenuous. “Progress already. Won’t Dr. Royce be pleased.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’ll phone up to Nick and let him know we’ll be on our way.” Then, realizing I might feel he was moving too fast, he hastened to add, “As soon as you’re ready.”

Having all but sealed my fate, I felt a flurry of nervous anticipation. No amount of sitting around the hospital would make me any more ready than I was. Not that I was the least bit ready psychologically, mind you.

“I just need to pack and tell Dr. Royce—”

“Good,” Greg said cheerily. “Then we’ll make it up to Raven’s Cove in time for dinner.”

The rain started as Greg guided his sunny yellow Miata sports car onto the New York State Thruway. Flicking on his windshield wipers, he asked, “Are you okay?”

“It’s just…the rain,” I replied, not knowing whether Dr. Royce had told him anything about that.

“It should clear up,” he said with an overabundance of confidence that the cloud-laden skies didn’t support.

But it wasn’t only the rain. It was my growing sense of unease. All I could think, now that I was actually on my way, was that I shouldn’t have jumped into this so impulsively. Dr. Royce had tried to talk some sense into me. He’d even suggested phoning Nicholas and having him come down to the hospital to meet with me a few times…

“Why didn’t he come?”

Greg gave me a blank look.

“Nick.” I felt somehow foolish speaking his name.

“I only just told him about finding you a few hours ago. And his editor was up there. He would have come…Would you rather he’d have…?”

“No. I don’t know,” I answered shakily. Saying that, I was struck by how little I knew about Nicholas Steele. It was beyond me at that point to think of that stranger, a writer of macabre stories, as my husband. In my rush to begin my real life again, I’d pushed this rather crucial but certainly troubling part of it aside.

Greg must have picked up on my distress, because he started to tell me about him. “I should have brought along a picture of Nick. I could have pulled off a jacket cover from one of his books lying around my office.” He winked at me. “I’m not only a close friend, but an avid fan. Well, let me ease your worries. He’s real easy on the eyes. Tall, dark and Hollywood handsome. Although I’m always teasing him about getting a haircut. He keeps it long and pulled back in a ponytail. A real rogue pirate. Women find him witty, charming and incredibly sexy, and most men are envious as hell of him.”

“Are you?” I turned scarlet. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid, inappropriate question. Please forgive me.”

Greg merely laughed. “It wasn’t stupid or inappropriate. You always did have a habit of speaking your mind, Deb. Loss of memory notwithstanding, there’s no reason that should have changed about you. And the answer is yes. As envious as the next guy.” There was a slight pause, a quick glance in my direction, as he added, “Maybe more so.”

My face remained flushed, but Greg seemed amused, letting the innuendo slide by.

“Not that Nick’s perfect, mind you. He can be a bit intimidating until you get to know him. He’s very self-contained, exceptionally disciplined, an impossible perfectionist.”

I gave him a nervous look.

Greg quickly attempted to alleviate my anxiety. “A perfectionist when it comes to his work, that is. He sets incredibly high standards for himself, but he’s not one of those people who expects those around him to necessarily follow suit,” he assured me, following the remark with a dry laugh. “Otherwise we’d never have become friends.”

I gave the private investigator a curious look. He laughed again. “Compared to the illustrious Nicholas Steele, I’m just an ordinary slob, Deb.”

I didn’t think he was ordinary, but I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything. “We should be there in another hour or so,” Greg said a few minutes later.

Another hour? So soon? As if to amplify the mounting tension I was feeling, the rain began falling harder and the car was buffeted by the accompanying winds. The quick, steady rhythm of the windshield wipers seemed to mirror my rapid heartbeat. What had I gotten myself into?

My silence, and no doubt my rigid posture, clued Greg in to my anxious mood. Without thinking, he reached out and patted my knee in what I knew was meant to be a calming gesture. Still, I couldn’t suppress my automatic response.

My sharp cry of alarm at his touch nearly cost Greg control of the car. He managed, after a few panicky moments, to pull over. There was a truck stop up ahead on the highway. He drove into the parking lot. Both of us were shaken up at this point.

“I’m sorry.” We both said the same words at the same time. Greg laughed. I managed a weak smile.

“We can go inside, get a cup of coffee and wait the storm out,” he offered.

I shook my head, chiding myself for overreacting. I had to somehow get it into my head that every touch wasn’t a threat. Even though all memory of the assault was absent from my mind, I was paranoid. The storm and this trip only heightened it.

I took in a deep breath, exhaling slowly as Dr. Royce had taught me. I could feel some of the color return to my face. “I’m all right now. Please, let’s go.” I felt foolish and self-conscious and was greatly relieved when Greg started for the exit ramp without a word.

To my amazement and I’m sure Greg’s relief, by the time we neared Sinclair a little over an hour later, the skies had cleared. When we approached the small main drag of the quaint mountain town, the streets were actually dry, the descending sun casting a warm golden hue over the picture-postcard landscape.

The setting, far from stirring any memories, was completely unfamiliar to me, but my spirits perked up nonetheless. There was something warm and friendly and easygoing about the village. Good vibes, I thought, smiling.

Greg was delighted with the change in me. “You’re already looking more like your old self,” he commented, his eyes sparkling.

The remark gave me a surprising little thrill.

We were approaching a quaint, barnboard red-shingled convenience store. “Could we stop for a minute?” I asked. “I’d like to pick up a few things. I made do with very little at the hospital.” I was thinking some cosmetics were in order, and some perfume would be nice. What scent, though? What did “Deborah” wear? Did “my husband” have a preference?

Greg drove into the small parking area in front of the convenience store. “I’ll fill up across the street and be back here in a few minutes.”

As I opened the car door to step out, I was tempted to ask him about the perfume, but then felt foolish and embarrassed.

“Do you need some money?” he asked.

“Oh…No. I have…enough,” I said, hurriedly stepping out and waving as Greg pulled out.

Actually, I’d been penniless at the hospital, a ward of the state. The only reason I had money on me now was that I’d accepted a small loan from Dr. Royce. Despite the fact that he was against my leaving the hospital so precipitously, he’d insisted that I not go off empty-handed. I felt funny about accepting the money, but I was touched, too. For a moment, I wished I’d discovered I was Dr. Royce’s wife, not Nicholas Steele’s. I suppose most patients have special feelings for their therapists. And I suppose the converse is true of some therapists, as well. It certainly was true of Dr. Royce—even though the money he loaned me wasn’t actually his, but came out of an emergency hospital kitty. I promised to pay it back as soon as possible, not thinking at the time that it meant having to ask Nicholas Steele for the money. Or did I have some money of my own?

A little bell jingled over the glass-and-wooden door as I stepped into the shop that on the inside gave the appearance of an old-fashioned general store. There was even a bulletin board near the cash register where locals tacked up folksy announcements, photos, and notices of items for sale.

I was relieved to see that other than the young girl at the register, there were only a couple of customers in the shop—a pair of middle-aged women chatting and browsing over at the book-and-magazine rack. The prospect of being around a crowd of people made me feel skittish. I had voiced that concern to Greg at one point while we were driving up. I worried that such a rich and celebrated author as Nicholas Steele would surround himself with some sort of literary “in” crowd. Greg, however, had assured me that Nick led what most people would call a very reclusive life. He valued his solitude, had few close friends, dispatched sycophants with practiced ease, never gave big parties. Greg also insisted that, sought-after though Nicholas was, he, too, felt uneasy and out of place in large groups. Of course, a certain amount of that was required to promote sales of his books. But, fortunately, Greg had added, Nicholas Steele’s horror novels were so popular at this point that they basically sold themselves, allowing him to be very selective about the guest appearances and such that he now rarely made.

The cosmetics rack turned out to be in the aisle that was directly on the other side of the book-and-magazine rack. Feeling overwhelmed by the wide assortment of choices for lipstick, blush, eye shadows, eyeliners and face powders, I could do little more than stare at it all.

I was only vaguely conscious of the conversation between the two women at the book rack until I heard one of them say, “Nicholas Steele.”

“Night Cries is his latest,” the other was saying in a raspy voice. “Of course, that won’t come out in paperback for months. I put my name on the waiting list for it at the library the day it came out in hard cover. It was weeks before my turn came up. And then, I foolishly went and made the mistake of starting the darn thing right before bed. I was so terrified I couldn’t sleep a wink that night. And I still can’t go up into my attic without Tom.”

“I don’t care what any of those celebrity magazines say about the man, I think Nicholas Steele must be a little mad himself, don’t you think?” her friend replied. “I mean, what person in his right mind could even come up with such gruesome plots?”

My whole body was trembling as I heard a soft chuckle. “Well, we devour every one of them, Joan,” the raspy-voiced woman countered. “So what does that say about us and all of Nicholas Steele’s other fans? We may gasp in horror, lose sleep, but we keep turning the pages as fast as we can.”

“It’s not the same thing, Alice,” Joan argued. “Besides, he looks…weird. That dark hair pulled back severely from his face in a ponytail. Those eyes. I’ve never seen anyone with truly black eyes before. Why, you can’t even see where the irises leave off and the pupils begin. He gives me the willies.”

“I don’t know,” Alice mused. “I think he’s rather medieval looking. His features are so arresting and unusual. He looks like he stepped out of a history book. Or some swashbuckling movie. On the few occasions I’ve spotted him in town, I found myself thinking he ought to be wearing a dark cloak, rapier sword in hand, riding a white charger down Main Street.”

“Hiding in the shadow of doorways seems more appropriate,” Joan said dryly. “Or lurking in a rat infested dungeon like that madman, Olafson, in his book, Only the Dead.”

“Oh, please, I get goose bumps just thinking about that book.”

“I tell you, Alice, Nicholas Steele has a warped mind. It’s no wonder that wife of his ran away like she did. Can you imagine living with that man?”

There was another soft chuckle from Joan. “I don’t know. It could be rather exciting. Even…dangerous.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Surely this couldn’t be the same man Greg had told me about? He’d made Nick sound so appealing and glamorous. He’d said women adored him. Not if they perceived him as weird and frightening, surely. But hadn’t I conjured up a frightful image of Nicholas Steele myself when Dr. Royce first told me he was a horror novelist?

I was so caught up in the conversation and my response that I was completely unaware of having been approached by the cashier.

“Is there something I can help you with?” the young woman inquired politely.

I swayed at the sound of her voice, having to grip one of the cosmetic racks to keep my balance. Several of the items toppled to the floor.

“Say, are you okay?” the cashier asked anxiously, looking as if she expected me to collapse and have some sort of a fit.

With every ounce of strength I could muster, I pulled myself together and nodded. Then, without a word, I hurried to the exit. Just as I made it to the door, I heard one of the women saying to her friend, “Why, I don’t believe my eyes.”

“What? What?”

“Isn’t that Deborah Steele?”

The bell that had seemed to make a friendly jingle when I’d entered the store, sounded more like it was tolling ominously as I made my retreat.