“Why?” Sam asked. “Why would she dothat?”
“We’ll have to ask her.” He stood as the doctor left the room. “How isshe?”
“Coming around. If she’s more coherent in the morning, we’ll take her to a private room. Visiting hours are all day. Why don’t you come back after she’s had a good night’ssleep?”
“May I see her again?” Sam asked, accepting Walker’s hand and standing. “I need to let her know I’ll beback.”
“You’ve helped, but don’t take too long.” The doctor strode off, leaving the nurse to let them back inagain.
Sam hurried back to take Cass’s hand. Her veins were blue beneath her pale skin, but her face had color again. After squeezing her hand reassuringly, Sam rolled upCass’s silver hair, pressed it against her skull, then fastened one of her own combs in it. “I’ll be back in the morning. We need to talk, please. There’s too much I don’tunderstand.”
Cass’s eyes flew open for a brief moment. “Samantha,” she said in what sounded like satisfaction. “Welcomehome.”
She appeared to drift into a normal sleep. Without giving it any thought, Sam slidher hand into Walker’s, clinging to it as a lifeline as he led her out of thehospital.
“We’ll go to the wharf. It’s easier than finding somewhere fancy at this hour.” Without asking questions, he helped her into thecar.
Grateful for his understanding, Sam meditated on the empty place in her head and the memories slowly infusing it. Not until they were walking on the wharf, smellingthe salty air, watching the waves, did she finally breathe freely again. “The ocean is so...immense.”
“Puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? Sit here, just take it in, and I’ll be back with food.” His voice was warm chocolatereassuring.
Sam sensed an emptiness when he left, but she still experienced aconnectionwith him, like a filament of invisible essence, as she had withCass. Rather than examine that weirdness, she admired the brilliant blue shades of the ocean lapping beyond the wharf. The noise and colors of the people and shops lining the old pier fell into the background as she concentrated on the battering wind and the crying gulls. She let these new sensations wipe the slate clean, let her body relax, and began the blessed process of refilling her memoryand becoming herselfagain.
Walker returned with a bread bowl of chowder and bags of fried seafood and slaw. “It’s tourist food, butdecent.”
“I’ve never had fried food,” she said, and her heart felt lighter at the recollection.Samantha Moon hadreturned.
He dropped down on the bench beside her, sprawling his long legs across the planks and digging into his soup before hehalted in mid-bite to stare at her. “You remembered that? Of all the things to remember, it’s friedfood?”
“Lack thereof,” she corrected with a smile. “All organic, all the time, and lots of tofu. We had goats and chickens for milk and eggs. I never saw the inside of a Walmart until a friend took me when I wassixteen.”
His eyes narrowed warily. His five o’clock shadow made him looktough, but at least he wasn’t wearing his damnedshades.
“I learned to curse at college,” she added, digging into thechowder.
He all but inhaled half his soup before speaking again. “How much do youremember?”
“You’re thinking this was all a hoax, aren’t you?” She opened a brown bag and pinched off a bite of fried fish. Remarkably, she didn’t resent his assumption. Knowingwho she was made everything sane again. Joy ballooned inside her. One took moments of happiness and reveled in them as they happened, she’d beentaught.
She would get angry later, but her empty head required peace to fillit.
“I’m thinking you’re as looney as the rest of the Lucys if you want me to believe that finding Cass magically returned your memory.” He reached into the bag,produced a fish sandwich, dumped slaw on it, and ripped off a huge bite, obviously not as happy asshe.
“That’s fair,” she acknowledged. “I have no idea how she did it. The night we met, Cass explained that Jade and Wolf had been paid to keep me away from her and her family and anything to do with Hillvale. It’s a complicated history. I’m not sure how much of it I buyeither.”
Thefried fish melted on her tongue. She didn’t want to pollute it with cabbage. She poked around and found shrimp and sampled thatnext.
He tugged his cell phone from his pocket, hit a number, and said, “Sofia, did you run the genealogy on CassandraTolliver?”
Sam wriggled with happiness. She knew problems still existed in Hillvale, but for right now, she was a recent college graduatewith a master’s degree and her whole life ahead of her, and she was about to find out about her birth family. And she was sitting next to a powerful man who could summon information with a phone call. She was pretty certain Sofia wasn’t in the sheriff’soffice.
“I’ll check my account, thanks.” He clicked off, hunted through his phone icons, pressed one, and opened up a list offiles.
“Cass took my backpack. That’s where all my valuables are.” Sam watched with interest as he opened what looked like a family tree. He had to scroll back and forth to follow the lines on the littlescreen.
“We need my laptop to read this,” he said, as if reading her mind. “But if I start at the top, it looks like Cass is related to the Kennedys through her father. He was married twice,to her mother first when they were young, and to Geoff’s mother after his first wife’sdeath.”
“Geoff?” For cheap thrills, she peered over his muscled shoulder while nibbling her way through friedshrimp.
