“I’m sorry,” Lucy whispered.

“About?” Adrian asked as he paused in his task of sorting through the box.

“Misjudging you.”

He met her gaze, his expression unreadable. “Are you so sure yet that you did?”

She nodded. “Pretty sure.”

After a moment of searching her face, he said, “Thank you for that, then.” He stood and held out a hand. “I know you don’t have all afternoon. Shall we move on?”

Lucy stared at his hand, absurdly afraid that if she laid hers in it, she truly would be sorry.

Because touching him might be dangerous to her peace of mind.

Available in May 2010 from Mills & Boon® Special Moments™

Once Upon a Wedding by Stacy Connelly & Accidental Princess by Nancy Robards Thompson

The Midwife’s Glass Slipper by Karen Rose Smith & Best For the Baby by Ann Evans

Seventh Bride, Seventh Brother by Nicole Foster & First Come Twins by Helen Brenna

In Care of Sam Beaudry by Kathleen Eagle

A Weaver Wedding by Allison Leigh

Someone Like Her by Janice Kay Johnson

A Forever Family by Jamie Sobrato

Someone Like Her
BY Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Janice Kay Johnson writes novels about love and family – about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Other Books By

Title Page

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Preview

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

“EVERY TABLE FULL except the reserved one, and it’s a Tuesday.” Carrying two glasses of iced tea, Mabel paused to grin at Lucy Peterson. “Those new soups are a hit.”

She continued into the crowded dining room of the café. Lucy, who had just finished ringing up a customer, looked around with satisfaction. Mabel was right. Business kept getting better and better.

The bell over the door rang. Lucy’s head turned as her guest slipped in, her carriage confident, her gaze shy. The hat lady.

Last time Lucy had seen her, the day before yesterday, she’d carried herself decorously and yet with regal authority. The pillbox hat had said it all. She was often Queen Elizabeth—the second, she always emphasized. She didn’t actually look much like Queen Elizabeth II, being slender rather than matronly in build, with hair that had been blond when she first appeared in Middleton, perhaps ten years ago. Now her hair was primarily white, as wispy and flyaway as the woman whose head it crowned.

But today, she wore a flower-printed dress and a broad-brimmed hat festooned with flowers. Her face was softer, her carriage more youthful, her gaze vaguer.

This was always the awkward moment. Lucy had to pretend she knew who Middleton’s one and only homeless person was. Calling her by the wrong name seemed so insulting.

Talk in the café hadn’t dimmed at all. Everyone knew the hat lady was a project of Lucy’s. Lucy’s Aunt Marian called, “Your majesty,” and resumed her one-sided conversation with Uncle Sidney, who almost never said a word, and failed entirely to notice the hat lady’s astonished stare.

Lucy went to her and said in a gentle voice, “I’m so glad you could come to lunch today. Your table’s right here, by the window. Did you see the crocus are blooming?”

The hat lady smiled at her, her face crinkling with pleasure. “God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.”

Okay. It was a clue. She still had a British accent, which was mostly a given, although not long ago she’d been Elizabeth Taylor, the accent wholly American. She had an astonishing gift for accents; a few months ago, she’d done a splendid Eliza Doolittle, starting with a nearly indecipherable Cockney accent skillfully revised over several weeks until she spoke with a pure, somewhat stilted upper-crust accent worthy of the most carefully tutored student.

Lucy had taken to rereading English literature and watching classic films so she wouldn’t be completely lost every time the hat lady changed personas.

“Please. Sit down.” Lucy gestured her to the tiny table for two in front of the bow window, which she’d reserved especially for the hat lady. Yellow and purple crocuses bloomed in the windowbox outside. Her shopping cart, neatly packed, was parked on the sidewalk where she could see it. That was why Lucy always saved the window seat for her. “Would you care for tea?”

“Please.”

She gazed with seeming delight and no boredom out the window until Lucy returned with a teapot, loose tea steeping inside. One did not offer the hat lady tea improperly made.

From the menu she chose only soup and a scone. Lucy had tried persuading her to have a hearty meal when she was here, but had never succeeded.

“Won’t you join me?” she did ask, with vague surprise as if unaware there was a busy restaurant around them, and that Lucy was in charge.

“I might sit down with you for a moment a little later,” she promised. Her friend had aged noticeably these past few months, Lucy noted with dismay. Her spine was as straight as ever, her pinkie finger extended as she sipped tea, but she must have lost weight. She seemed frail today. If only she could be persuaded to settle into a rented room! Hiding her worry, Lucy asked, “How are you?”

She tilted her face up. Her blue eyes, fading like her hair, seemed unusually perceptive all of a sudden, as if she saw the doubts and unhappiness Lucy scarcely acknowledged even to herself. In a voice too low for anyone at neighboring tables to hear, she said, “I might ask you the same.”

Lucy’s mouth opened and closed.

After a moment, the cornflower-blue eyes softened, looked inward, and she murmured, “Did you know the sorrow comes with the years?”

“I…” Something seemed to clog Lucy’s throat. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

This smile seemed to forgive her. “Grief may be joy misunderstood.”

Oh! That line she’d heard. Somewhere, sometime. It had to have been written, or said, by a Beth, or Liza, Lizbet, or Elizabeth…Yes! Lucy thought in triumph. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Of course. The hat lady was very fond of her poetry. Only, the first couple of things she said had seemed so sensible, if also profound, Lucy hadn’t recognized them as poetry.

“Miss Browning,” she said, “I’m so glad you could join me today.”

She meant to get back to the hat lady and sit with her, as promised. She did. But the kitchen ran out of spinach, and she had to race to Safeway for more, then Aunt Marian expressed her opinion at some length on the very peculiar soup—which was delicious, but she did miss the split pea Lucy used to offer. And then Samantha, Lucy’s youngest and most compatible sister, who had recently opened a bed-and-breakfast inn, suggested they join together to put on a murder mystery weekend, with the guests staying at Doveport B and B and Lucy catering the meals. Samantha had scarcely left than Lucy’s niece Bridget came in to apply to be a waitress, her air of defiance suggesting to Lucy that Bridget’s mother hadn’t liked the idea of her working. Bridget was resisting the idea of staying close to home after graduation and doing her first two years at the community college in Port Angeles rather than going away. Was she trying to earn enough to pay a significant part of her own expenses? If so, there was no doubt whose side Lucy was on.

Still, she wished every decision she made didn’t have family repercussions. The tiniest stone spread ripples of gossip, hurt feelings, righteous indignation. That was the problem with having such a large family who all lived so close by. Making a face, Lucy thought wistfully, Why can’t one side or the other live in Minneapolis or Houston instead? Anywhere but here?

Dad’s family, by preference. His sister, her Aunt Lynn, was a particular trial. Come to think of it, Lucy didn’t like most of her cousins on Dad’s side, either.

The trouble was, Dad had a sister and a brother, who had kids, all of whom had already started families of their own. Mom had two sisters, and they had kids, and…Aagh! There was a reason Lucy had yearned to leave Middleton for most of her life.

She ran the cash register as the full restaurant gradually emptied, and by the time she thought to look at the small table in the bow window, it was empty. Erin, another employee, was starting to clear it, and Lucy was disappointed to see that the soup bowl was half-full, and Miss Browning hadn’t even finished her scone.

Oh, dear, she thought. If only the hat lady would fill up when she was here. Or take leftovers in a doggie bag. She accepted invitations to dine, but wouldn’t come more than a couple of times a week. Lucy knew that she did get food elsewhere. George, down at Safeway, saw to it that expired canned goods and slightly wilted produce got set outside the back door when the hat lady’s route took her that way. And Winona Carlson, who ran the Pancake Haus out by the highway, fed her breakfast at least another couple of days a week. Still…When Lucy thought about the hat lady—gentle, whimsical, yet somehow sad—she worried.

Today, though, she was too busy to do more than shake her head and feel slightly guilty that she hadn’t made time to sit down, if only for a minute or two. Then she went back to work in the kitchen, prepping for dinner.

Hands busy, she let her mind wander. That one achingly perceptive look from the hat lady set her to analyzing why she’d felt so down lately.

Of course, she knew in part: this wasn’t the life she’d dreamed of having. Like her niece Bridget, she’d been sure she would leave Middleton behind and never be back except for visits. But after college she’d let herself get enveloped again by family. First a job at the café, the chance to be creative in the kitchen and the pleasure of seeing how her food was received. Wan lettuce and all-American comfort foods were gradually replaced by wraps, spinach andromaine salads and her signature soups. When the opportunity to buy the café came up, she’d still told herself this didn’t have to be permanent. She’d improve business and make a profit when she sold the café in turn. Perhaps she could start a restaurant in Seattle or San Francisco, or get a job as an executive chef.

Her hands went still as her chest filled with something very like panic. All of a sudden she had a terrible urge to turn the sign on the door to Closed, scrap preparation for dinner and just…run away.

Lucy grimaced. She was far too responsible to do any such thing. Okay, then; why not put the café up for sale and use the proceeds to travel for a couple of years? Give in to all the yearnings that made her so restless. Spend a year traveling between hostels in…Romania. Or Swaziland. Or…

The hat lady’s face popped into her mind, and a smile curved her mouth. England. How silly of me! Of course it has to be the British Isles. Images of thatched roofs and hedgerows, church spires and castle towers rose before her mind’s eye. Perhaps she would bike between villages, staying as long as she chose in each. She’d have to start over financially when she came home, if she ever came home, but she was young. At least she’d have lived a little before she settled into being a small-town businesswoman.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning would certainly approve.

Only a pair of tourists sat in front eating pie in the late afternoon when the front door opened so precipitously, the bell rattled and banged against the glass. Startled, Lucy let the dough she’d been kneading drop and peered over the divider between the kitchen and dining room.

It was George who’d rushed in, expression distraught. George, fifty-five and counting the years until retirement, who Lucy had believed had only one speed: measured, deliberate. George, who now let the door slam behind him with a bang.

“Lucy! Did you hear?”

Hands covered with flour, she used her shoulder to push the swinging door open and go into the dining room. She was vaguely aware that both the tourists and gray-haired Mabel, who was wiping down tables, had turned to stare. “Hear? Hear what?”

“The hat lady was hit crossing the highway.” His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked as if he might cry. “She was pushing her shopping cart, and apparently didn’t look. God.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “She’s not dead, but it doesn’t sound good.”

“Did they take her to the hospital?”

He nodded.

“But…she doesn’t have insurance.”

A silly thing to say, since the hat lady also didn’t have a name. Not a real name, one that was her own for sure.

“I didn’t hear anybody quibbling.” So he’d been to the hospital.

Lucy took a deep breath. “I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”

He nodded and left, perhaps to spread the word further.

Lucy called for Mabel to take over the dough, and remembered another line written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose poetry she, too, had loved, back when she was romantic and firmly believed her path would take her far from too familiar Middleton.

Life, struck sharp on death,

Makes awful lightning.

ADRIAN RUTLEDGE was immersed in the notes his associates had made on legal precedents for a complex case that would be coming to trial next month when his phone rang. He glanced at it irritably; he’d asked Carol, his administrative assistant, not to interrupt him until his three o’clock appointment.

He reached for the phone immediately, however. She wouldn’t have bothered him without good reason.

“Yes?”

She cleared her throat. “Mr. Rutledge, there’s a woman here who doesn’t have an appointment.”

His eyebrows rose. People without appointments rarely bothered a partner in a rarified Seattle law firm. If they did, Carol was quite capable of sending them on their way.

“She says it’s about your mother.”

“My mother,” he repeated. He felt as if he were sounding out a word in Farsi or Mandarin, a language utterly foreign to him. Yeah, he knew what a mother was; yeah, he’d had one, but at this moment he couldn’t picture her face.

“Yes, sir.” Carol’s generally crisp tones were hesitant.

“What about my mother?” he asked.

She cleared her throat again. “This woman…ah, Ms. Peterson, says she’s in the hospital and needs you.”

In the hospital? That meant…she was alive? His heart did a peculiar stutter. Adrian had assumed she was dead. Maybe preferred thinking she was.

Oh, hell, he thought in disgust, this was probably some kind of hoax. Still, he didn’t seem to have any choice but to hear her out. “Send her in,” he ordered, and hung up.

The wait seemed long. When the door did open, he saw Carol first, elegant in a sleek black suit and heels that made the most of her legs. He quit noticing his administrative assistant the moment the other woman walked in. Nor was he aware of Carol quietly closing the door behind her. He couldn’t take his eyes from this unexpected visitor.

He guessed her age as late twenties. Lacking the style of an average urban high schooler, she was as out of place as a girl from small-town Iowa wandering into the big city for the first time. Of middle height and slender, she wore a dress, something flowery that came nearly to her knees. Bare legs, flat shoes. Her hair, a soft, mousy brown, was parted in the middle and partially clipped back. He doubted she wore any makeup at all, which was too bad; she might be beautiful after a few hours at a good salon. It was her eyes that he reacted to, despite himself. Huge and blue, they devoured his face as she crossed the room, the intensity enough to make him shift in his seat.

Adrian had never seen her in his life, and couldn’t imagine how she’d found him.

Showing no emotion, he held out a hand. “I’m Adrian Rutledge.”

She shook with utter composure. “My name’s Lucy Peterson.”

“Ms. Peterson.” He gestured at a chair. “Please. Have a seat.”

“Thank you.” She sat, smoothing her skirt over her knees.

She didn’t look like his mother. He realized that had been his first fear; that he had an unknown half sister. Not that children always did look like their parents, he reminded himself. The possibility was still on the table.

“What can I do for you?”

“I assume you know nothing of your mother’s whereabouts.”

Dark anger rose in him at this blunt beginning. Who the hell was she to sit in judgment on him? And she was, he could tell, despite her careful tone.

“And you know this because…?”

“I live over on the peninsula. Your mother has been homeless in my town for the past ten years. I’m reasonably certain no family has visited her or offered any support.”

What in hell?

Adrian sat back in his leather desk chair. After a moment, he said, “You’re correct in thinking I have no contact with my mother. But tell me just why it is that you believe some homeless woman is my mother? Did she give you my name?”

This Lucy Peterson shook her head. “No. After she was in the accident, I searched her things. It wasn’t easy.” She seemed to assume he’d care. “She had a shopping cart, but she also had several stashes around town. She liked clothes. And hats. Especially hats. We called her the hat lady.” She paused, as if embarrassed.

Between one blink and the next, Adrian saw a park, maybe—lots of lawn, flowering trees in the background. His mother barefoot and twirling, a cotton skirt swirling bell-like, her arms flung out in exuberance. She was laughing; he could almost hear the laugh, openly joyous. And see the hat, broad-brimmed and encircled with flowers. The image seemed skewed, as if he’d been dizzy, and he suspected he might have been twirling, too.

He stamped down on the memory. Unclenching his jaw, he asked hoarsely, “What did you find?”

In answer, she bent to open the purse she’d set at her feet and removed a white envelope. “A very old driver’s license,” she said, and handed it to him.

In shock, he stared at his mother’s face. She was so pretty. He’d forgotten. Department of Motor Vehicles photos were usually god-awful, the equivalent of mug shots, but hers was the exception. A soft smile curved her mouth, although her eyes looked sad. Honey-blond, wavy hair was cut, flapper style, at chin length. She’d had beautiful cheekbones, a small, straight nose and that mouth, a cupid’s bow.

He forced himself to read the information: Elizabeth H. Rutledge, the expiration date—one year after she disappeared from his life—and the basic stats, hair blond, height five foot five, weight 118, eyes blue.

Not as blue as Lucy Peterson’s, he thought involuntarily, looking up.

He had no idea what his face showed, but those eyes were filled with compassion as she handed him something else. As he accepted it involuntarily he looked down, and experienced a spasm of agony. The photograph had faded and cracked, but he remembered the moment. They had dressed for church, and his grandmother had snapped it. His father was tall and stern, but his arm wrapped his wife protectively. She wore a pretty, navy-blue dress with a wide red belt, and on her head was a hat, this one a small red cloche with only a feather decorating it. And he…he stood beside her, his arm about her waist, her hand resting on his shoulder. He remembered feeling proud and mature and yet filled with some anxiety, as though there had been a family quarrel earlier. He might have been seven or eight, his dark hair slicked firmly into place, the suit and white shirt and tie a near match to his father’s. He could just make out the house behind them, the one in Edmonds where they’d lived, painted sunny yellow with white trim, the yard brimming with flowers.

He was speechless. His mother had left him, and never once in all the intervening years made contact, yet she’d kept and treasured this photo?

Not just the photo—Lucy was handing over yet one more memento, this one made of red construction paper. On the front was a drawing, the next best thing to stick figures, an adult and a child seemingly holding hands. A woman, because she wore a skirt. His mother, because she also wore a hat festooned with…God. Those had to be flowers. And beneath, in big, uneven letters that suggested he might have been in kindergarten or first grade, it said “Mom and me.”

As if through a time warp, he heard his own voice say, “Mom and me are going to the park.” And don’t try to stop us, the defiance in the words suggested. As if he had an eye pressed to a kaleidoscope that spun dizzily, he saw scene after scene, all accompanied by his voice, younger, older, in between, saying, “Mom and me are gonna…” She was his playmate, his best friend, his charge. He stayed close to her. He took care of her.

Until she disappeared, the summer he wasn’t home to take care of her.

“God,” he whispered, and let the card fall to the desk. He bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Lucy Peterson sat silent, letting him process all of this.

He felt as if he’d just been in a car accident. No warning; another vehicle running a red light, maybe, slamming into his. This was the moment of silence afterward, when he sat stunned, trying to decide if he was injured, knowing he’d start hurting any minute.

He lifted his head and said fiercely, “And you know this…homeless person is her? Elizabeth Rutledge.”

Lucy bit her lip and nodded. “I had no idea, until I found the driver’s license. I guessed her name was Elizabeth. She always went by some variant of it. But that’s all any of us knew.”

“She didn’t tell you her name?”

“She…took on different names. All famous people, or fictional ones. I think she believed she was them, for a while. I never saw the moment of transition. One day she’d be Elizabeth Bennett, from Pride and Prejudice, you know, and then Queen Elizabeth. Not the first,” she added hastily. “She said Queen Bess was bloodthirsty. Elizabeth the second.”

“I’m surprised she wasn’t the Queen Mother,” he said involuntarily.

“Because of the hats? But she wasn’t an Elizabeth, and your mother didn’t take on any persona that wasn’t.”

Abruptly he heard the verb tense she was using. Took on. She believed. Not takes on, or believes.

“I thought you said she was in the hospital.”

She looked startled. “I did.”

“You’re talking about her as if she’s dead.”

“Oh.” Once again she worried the lip, as if she often did. “I’m sorry. It’s just…the prognosis isn’t very good, I’m afraid. She’s in a coma.”

When he asked, she told him what had happened. That she’d been pushing her shopping cart across the highway, probably on her way to the Safeway store on the other side. The car that hit her had been going too fast, the police had determined, but she had likely been in her own world and hadn’t looked before starting across, either.

“She was sent flying twenty feet. The cart…” She swallowed. “It was flattened. Her things strewn everywhere. That was over a week ago. She hasn’t stirred since. There was swelling in her brain at first, of course, but they drilled into her skull to relieve it. Which sounds gruesome, but…”

He nodded jerkily. “I understand.”

“The thing is, until now it never occurred to any of us to try to find her family. I’m ashamed that it didn’t. We tried to take care of her, as much as she’d let us, but…She was just a fixture. You know? Now I wonder, if I’d pushed her—”

“If she didn’t know who she was, how could she tell you?”

“But she must have remembered something, or she wouldn’t have held on to those. Oh, and these rings.” She took them from the envelope and dropped them into his outstretched hand.

A delicate gold wedding band, and an engagement ring with a sizeable diamond. Undoubtedly his father’s choice. Adrian remembered it digging into his palm when he grabbed at his mother’s hand.

He wanted to feel numb. “She could have sold these.”

“It wasn’t just the rings she was holding on to,” Lucy said softly, her gaze on them. “She was holding on to who she was. On to you.”

“I haven’t heard from her in twenty-three years.” He felt sick and angry, and the words were harsh.

“Do you think she didn’t love you?”

He hated seeing the pity in her eyes. Jaw tightening, he said, “Let’s get back to facts. Where is she?”

“Middleton Community Hospital. Middleton’s not far off Highway 101, over the Hood Canal Bridge.”

He nodded, already calculating what he had to cancel. Of course, he’d want to transfer her to a Seattle hospital rather than leave her in the hands of a small-town doctor, but first he had to get over there and assess the situation.

“I was hoping you might come,” Lucy said.

Glancing at the clock, he said, “I’ll be there by evening. I have to clear my schedule and pack a few things.”

He saw the relief on her face, and knew she hadn’t been sure how he’d react. He might not be willing to drop everything and come running, had his mother walked out on her family for another man, say, or for mercenary reasons. As it was, he might never know why she’d gone, but it was clear she was mentally ill. His childish self had known she wasn’t quite like other mothers. Even then, she’d battled depression and a tendency to hear voices and see people no one else saw.

Schizophrenia, he’d guessed coldly as an adult, and still guessed. Her reasons for whatever she’d done were unlikely to make sense to anyone but her. There might be nothing he could do for her now, but she was his obligation and no one else’s.

He rose to his feet. “You can tell her doctor to expect me.”

She nodded, thanked him rather gravely, and left, apparently satisfied by the success of her errand.

He called Carol and told her to cancel everything on his book for the rest of the week. Then, with practiced efficiency, he began to pack his briefcase. Hospital visiting hours would be limited. Once he’d seen the doctor, he could get plenty done in his hotel room.

CHAPTER TWO

ADRIAN HAD NEVER taken a journey during which he’d been less eager to reach his destination.

Instead of turning on his laptop to work while he waited in line for the ferry, he brooded about what awaited him in Middleton.

He knew one thing: other people besides Lucy Peterson would be looking at him with silent condemnation as they wondered how a man misplaced his mother.

Yeah, Dad, how did you lose her?

Or had he discarded her? In retrospect, Adrian had often wondered. He loved his grandparents, but he hadn’t wanted to spend an entire summer in Nova Scotia without his mother. Some part of him had known she needed him. Years later, as he grew older, he’d realized that his father had arranged the lengthy visit so that no fiercely protective little boy would be around to object or ask questions when Elizabeth was sent away.

Supposedly she’d gone to a mental hospital. His father had never taken Adrian to visit, probably never visited himself. Perhaps a year later he’d told Adrian that she had checked herself out of the hospital.

With a shrug, he said, “Clearly, she didn’t want to get well and come home. I doubt we’ll ever hear from her again.”

Subject dismissed. That was the last said between them. The last that ever would be said; his father had died two years ago in a small plane crash.

Adrian moved his shoulders to release tension. Let the good citizens of Middleton stare; he didn’t care what they thought. He was there to claim his mother, that was all.

What if he didn’t recognize her? If he gazed at the face of this unconscious woman and couldn’t find even a trace of the mother he remembered in her?

Ask for DNA testing, of course, but was that really what worried him? Or did his unease come from a fear that he wouldn’t recognize her on a more primitive level? Shouldn’t he know his mother? What if he saw her and felt nothing?

He grunted and started the car as the line in front of him began to move. God knows he hadn’t felt much for his mother. Why would he expect to, for a woman he hadn’t seen in twenty-three years?

Usually, he would have stayed in his car during the crossing and worked. But his mood was strange today, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Instead, he followed most of the passengers to the upper deck, then went outside at the prow.

This early in the spring, the wind on the sound had a bite. He hadn’t bothered to change clothes at home, had stopped at his Belltown condominium only long enough to throw what he thought he’d need into a suitcase. He buttoned his suit jacket to keep his tie from whipping over his shoulders, leaned against the railing and watched the gulls swoop over the ferry and the lateafternoon sunlight dance in shards off the choppy waves.

Why would his mother have chosen Middleton? Adrian wondered. How had she even found it? It was barely a dot on the map, likely a logging town once upon a time. Logging had been the major industry over here on the Olympic Peninsula until the forests had been devastated and hard times had come. Tourism had replaced logging on much of the peninsula, but what tourist would seek out Middleton, for God’s sake? It wasn’t on Hood Canal or the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north. It was out in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

Why, Mom? Why?

He drove off the ferry at Winslow, on the tip of Bainbridge Island, then followed the two-lane highway that was a near straight-shot the length of the island, across the bridge and past the quaint town of Poulsbo. From then on, civilization pretty much disappeared but for a few gas stations and houses. Traffic was heavy, with this a Friday, so he couldn’t eat up the miles the way he’d have liked to. No chance to pass, no advantage if he’d been able to. He crossed the Hood Canal Bridge, the water glittering in the setting sunlight. Summer homes clung like barnacles along the shore. Then forest closed in, second-growth and empty of any evidence of human habitation.

Reluctance swelled in him and clotted in his chest. A couple of times he rubbed his breastbone as if he’d relieve heartburn. The light was fading by the time he spotted the sign: Middleton, 5 Miles.

He was the only one in the line of traffic to make the turn. And why would anyone? Along with distaste for what lay ahead came increasing bafflement at his mother’s choice. How had she even gotten here? Did the town boast a Greyhound station? Had she gone as far as her money held out? Stabbed her finger at a map? Or had some vagary of fate washed her up here?

So close to Seattle, and yet she’d never tried to get in touch with him.

So weirdly far from Seattle in every way that counted.

The speed limit dropped to thirty-five and he obediently slowed as the highway—if you could dignify it with that name—entered the outskirts. He saw the Safeway store almost immediately, and his foot lifted involuntarily from the gas pedal. Here. She was hit here. Flung to one of these narrow paved shoulders. With dark encroaching, he couldn’t see where, or if any evidence remained.

Ahead, he saw the blue hospital sign, but some impulse made him turn the other direction, toward downtown. The Burger King on the left seemed the only outpost of the modern world. Otherwise, the town he saw under streetlights probably hadn’t changed since the 1950s. There was an old-fashioned department store, churches—he saw three church spires without looking hard—pharmacy, hardware store. Some of the buildings had false fronts. All of the town’s meager commerce seemed to lie along the one main street, except for the Safeway.

A memory stirred in his head. Wasn’t there a Middleton in Nova Scotia? Or a Middleburg, or Middle – something? Had this town sounded like home to his mother? Had she stayed, then, because it felt like home, or because people here were good to her? Lucy Peterson had expressed guilt that they hadn’t done more, but she’d obviously cared.

More than Elizabeth Rutledge’s own family had.

His jaw muscles spasmed. If this woman was his mother, he’d have to tell his grandmother, who was frail but at eighty-two was still living in her house in the town of Brookfield in Nova Scotia. Would she be glad? Or grieve terribly to know what her daughter’s life had been like?

He ran out of excuses not to go to the hospital after a half-dozen city blocks. There wasn’t much to this town.

The hospital was about what he’d expected: two-story in the central block, with wings to each side. He parked and walked in the front entrance. The white-haired woman behind the desk looked puzzled when he asked for Elizabeth Rutledge. Then her face abruptly cleared.

“Oh! The hat lady! That’s what Lucy said her name is. You must be the son.” She scrutinized him with interest and finally disappointment. “You don’t look like her, do you?”

With thinning patience, he repeated, “Her room number?”

She beamed, oblivious to his strained civility. “Two sixty-eight.” She waved. “Just go right up the elevators there and then turn to your left.”

Despite a headache, he forced himself to nod. “Thank you.”

The elevator door opened as soon as he pushed the button. Not much business at—he glanced at his watch—7:13 in the evening. The doors opened again almost immediately, and he had no choice but to step out. He turned left, as ordered. A white-capped woman at the nurses’ station was writing in a chart and didn’t notice him when he passed.

Most of the doors to patient rooms stood ajar. TVs were on. Voices murmured. Laughter came from one room. From another, an ominous gurgling. In 264 a woman in a hospital gown was shuffling to the bathroom, her IV pole going with her, someone who might be a daughter hovering at her side. 266 was dark.

The door to 268 was wide open and the first bed was unoccupied. The curtain around the second bed was pulled, blocking his view. He heard a voice beyond the curtain; a nurse, maybe? Adrian stopped and took a deep breath. He couldn’t understand why this was bothering him so much. Whether she was his mother or not, this woman was a stranger to him. An obligation. No more, no less.

He walked in.

Hooked to an IV and to monitors that softly beeped, a woman lay in the hospital bed.

One look, and he knew. Still as death, she was his mother. For a moment, he quit breathing.

Beside the bed, Lucy Peterson sat in a chair reading aloud.

Poetry, of all things.

She had a beautiful voice, surprisingly rich and expressive for a woman as subdued in appearance as she was. For a moment, he just listened, wondering if his mother heard at all. Was the voice a beacon, a golden glow, that led her back toward life? A puzzle that no longer made sense? Or was she no longer capable of understanding or caring?

However quiet his footfall, Lucy heard him and looked up, with a flash of those expressive blue eyes. She immediately closed the book without marking any place and set it on the table. “You’re here.”

She sounded ambivalent; pleased, maybe, in one way, less so in another. Glad he’d lived up to his word, but not sure she liked him?

He didn’t care, although he was equally ambivalent about her presence. He wanted to focus on this woman in the bed—his mother—with no witnesses to his emotional turbulence. And yet he felt obscurely grateful that Lucy was here, a buffer. For once in his life, he needed her brand of simple kindness.

In response to her words, but ignoring her tone, he said, “Why so surprised? You beat me here.”

“I didn’t have to stop to pack.”

He nodded. And made himself look fully at his mother’s face.

After a long moment, he said, almost conversationally, “Do you know she’s only fifty-six?”

“When I saw her driver’s license.”

“She looks…” He couldn’t finish.

Very softly, Lucy said, “I thought she might be seventy.”

His mother’s face was weathered and lined far beyond her years, although the bone structure was the same. The slightly pointed chin, too, that had given her an elfin appearance. He’d noticed it most when her mood was fey, although it was nearly sharp now, whittled by hardship. Her hair was white, and thin. Her hands, still atop the coverlet, were knobbed with arthritis.

This was what a lifetime without adequate nutrition or medical care or beauty products did. Elizabeth Rutledge had been a beautiful woman. Now she was an old one.

Still, he devoured the sight of her face, the slightness of the body beneath the covers, the tired hands, with a hunger that felt bottomless. Inside, he was still the child who needed his mom and knew she needed him. He stepped forward, gripping the round metal railing on this side of the bed. The pain in his chest seared him.

“Mom.” The word came out guttural, shocking him. He swallowed and tried again. “Mom. It’s me. Adrian.”

Of course, she didn’t stir; no flicker of response twitched even an eyelid. She breathed. In and out, unaided, the only sign of life beyond the numbers on the monitor.

“I wish I’d known where you were. I would have come to get you a long time ago.”

If he’d come two weeks ago, before the accident, would she have known him? She had changed, but at least in his memory she was an adult. How much did he resemble his ten-year-old self? Even his voice would still have been a child’s. What were his chances now of getting through to her?

After a minute, in self-defense, he raised his gaze to Lucy Peterson, who watched him. “What was that you were reading?”

She glanced at the book. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I think I told you—” she bit her lip “—how much your mother liked her poetry.”

So much, she’d believed she was Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And a host of other Elizabeths, real and imaginary. Just never herself, Elizabeth Hamlin Rutledge, once daughter of Burt and Lana Hamlin, then wife of Maxwell Rutledge and mother of Adrian.

Perhaps when he went away that summer and let go of his grip on her hand, she’d forgotten who she was. Had she lost herself that long ago?

“I wish I knew…” he murmured, unsure what he wished. For the true story of that summer, and the year that followed? To find out what happened after, how she’d washed up here, how she had come to grasp for identities that had only a given name in common with her true self? All of the above?

“Ah,” said a voice behind him. “You must be the son.”

Adrian let go of the railing and turned. The doctor who’d entered was an elderly man, short and cherubic, head bald but for a white tonsure. He wore a lab coat open over a plaid golf shirt. Smiling, he held out his hand and they shook.

Then he looked past Adrian and shook his head in disapproval. “Lucy, you’re back. You know, she won’t float away if you go home and watch a sitcom, take a long bath, get to bed early.”

Adrian supposed that was a good way to describe his childish fears about his mother: that she might float away if he let go. There had always been something insubstantial about her, not quite anchored to the here and now.

Lucy smiled, but said, “I didn’t want Mr. Rutledge to feel abandoned.”

Adrian knew vaguely that women like this did exist—caretakers, nurturers. Or perhaps he was jumping to a conclusion where she was concerned. Maybe it was only his mother who inspired this fierce need to protect.

“It sounds as if Ms. Peterson went to a lot of effort to locate me,” he said.

“And thank God she succeeded. Ah…I’m Ben Slater.”

“I appreciate your taking care of her, Doctor. I’m hoping you can tell me more about what’s going on with my mother so that I can make decisions about her care.”

“I haven’t been able to do much. The truth is, with brain injuries we’re most often left waiting. However much we learn, there’s more we don’t know. Someone who got a minor knock on the head dies, someone who falls ten stories to the sidewalk barely has a headache. I wish I could tell you how much damage she sustained, but I can’t. She has a broken hip and ribs as well as some internal bleeding from the impact of the car, but the real problem is that she was lifted in the air and flung a fair distance onto the pavement. She struck her head hard. We did relieve some swelling in the brain, but it’s subsided satisfactorily. She may yet simply open her eyes and ask where she is.”

And she may not. Adrian had no trouble hearing what Slater didn’t say.

On the other hand, how many head injuries had this small-town doc actually seen? What was he? Their trauma specialist? They did have an E.R., so they must have a specialist.

“Has she been seen by a neurologist?” Adrian asked, knowing the answer.

“Oh, I’m a neurosurgeon,” Dr. Slater said cheerily. “Retired, of course. My wife was from Middleton, and we always intended to retire here. But I still do some consulting.”

This fat little guy in the plaid shirt was a neurosurgeon? Was that possible?

Barely managing to suppress his you’ve-got-to-bekidding reaction, Adrian asked, “Where did you work?”

“Ended up at Harborview in Seattle. I was on the University of Washington faculty.”

Adrian’s preconceptions didn’t quite vanish—it was more like watching a piece of paper slowly burn until only grey, weightless ash hung insubstantially in the air. His mother wasn’t being cared for by some small-town practitioner who’d probably been in the bottom quarter of his class. By bizarre chance, her doctor might be one of the most highly qualified specialists in the country.

“My mother is fortunate you happened to be here.”

“She would have been if I could fix her. I can’t.”

“And you don’t think anyone can.”

He shook his head, his gaze resting on his patient’s face. “It’s up to her now. Or to God, if you believe. Lucy—” he smiled at the young woman “—may do more good by sitting here talking and reading to your mother than I can with all the technology at my disposal.”

Neurosurgeons were not known for their humility or fatalism. Adrian still had trouble believing in this one. But perhaps a lifetime of trying to salvage brain-damaged people made a man both fatalistic and humble.

Dr. Slater talked some more, about reflexes and brainwaves, but Adrian had begun to feel numb. The guy noticed, and abruptly stopped. “We should talk about this tomorrow. I understand you haven’t seen your mother in years. You must be in shock.”

“You could say that,” Adrian admitted.

“Lucy,” the doctor said briskly, “did you make arrangements for him for the night?”

Rebellion stirred, but honestly Adrian hoped she had a better suggestion than the crummy motel with kitchenettes he’d seen half a mile back.

“Yes, Sam’s holding a room for him,” she said. “If that’s all right,” she added, looking at him.

“Sam?”

“My sister Samantha. She owns a bed-and-breakfast. It’s very nice.”

He nodded. “Then thank you.”

“And unless you had dinner on the way…” Seeing his expression, she said firmly, “We’ll stop at the café on the way. It’s late, but we’ll come up with something.”

“Good.” The doctor patted her hand, shook Adrian’s, said “I’ll see you tomorrow,” then departed.

Lucy picked up her book and started toward the door in turn. “I’ll leave you alone with your mother for a few minutes. Just come on out when you’re ready.”

He was ready now, but in the face of her faith that he wanted to commune with this unconscious woman, he once again stepped to the bedside and looked down at her face. The resemblance to the mother he remembered was undeniably there, but in a way that made him uncomfortable. Age aside, it was like the difference between a living, breathing person and an eerily real cast of that person at a wax museum. He might as well have been standing here looking at his mother’s body at the morgue.

But he knew why Lucy had been reading aloud. The silence had to be filled. “It’s Adrian,” he said tentatively. “I missed you. I didn’t know what happened. Why you went away. I still don’t know. I’d like to hear about it, when you wake up.”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to touch her. Not surprising, given that he wasn’t much for hugs and hand-holding. Maybe he was afraid he’d find her hands to be icy cold.

“Well. Ah. I’ll be back in the morning. I’ll probably make arrangements to move you to Seattle, where you can be close to me.”

An uneasy sense that she might, in fact, not like his plan stirred in him, but what the hell else was he supposed to do? Leave her here and drive back and forth for obligatory visits? Did they even have a long-term nursing facility here, assuming that’s what she required?

He cleared his throat, said, “Good night,” and escaped.

LUCYWAS PRETTY sure she didn’t like Adrian Rutledge, but she was prepared to feel sorry for him when he walked out of his mother’s hospital room. This had to be hard for him.

However, his expression was utterly composed when he appeared. “You needn’t feel you have to feed me. If you just want to tell me the options and directions to the bed-and-breakfast.”

“I have to stop by the café and see how they’re doing without me,” she explained. “I own it. Friday evening is one of our busiest times. I’m usually there. I may not have time to sit down with you.”

He didn’t look thrilled to be going anywhere with her, but finally nodded. “Fine. Should I follow you?”

“My car’s right out front. Yours, too, I assume?”

He nodded again, the motion a little jerky. Maybe he wasn’t as cold as he seemed. Lucy tried to imagine how disoriented he must feel by now.

Be charitable, she reminded herself. For the hat lady’s sake, if not his.

Lisa Enger, the night nurse, greeted them. “I’ll keep a good eye on her,” she promised.

They rode down in the elevator silently, both staring straight ahead like two strangers pretending the other wasn’t there. Lucy was usually able to chat with just about anybody, but she was pretty sure he wouldn’t welcome conversation right now. Not until they were out in the parking lot did she speak.

“There’s my car.”

He nodded and pointed out his, a gray Mercedes sedan.

“I’ll come down your row.”

“All right.”

Her small Ford Escort felt shabbier when the Mercedes fell in behind it, and she sympathized. She felt plain and uninteresting in his presence, too. She and her car had a lot in common.

He parked beyond her on Olympic Avenue half a block from the café, then joined her on the sidewalk.

“I’m sorry you had to take the day off to drive all the way to Seattle.”

“Would you have believed a word I said if I’d just called?”

He was silent until they reached the door. “I don’t know.”

Well, at least he was honest.

He held open the door for her. Slipping past him, Lucy was more aware of him than she’d let herself be to this point. She’d known he was handsome, of course, and physically imposing. That his thick, dark hair was expensively cut, his charcoal suit probably cost more than she spent on clothes in a year and that his eyes were a chilly shade of gray. She refused to be intimidated by him. But just for a second, looking at his big, capable hand gripping the door and feeling the heat of his body as she brushed him, she felt her heart skip a beat.

He’d definitely be sexy if only he were more likeable. If he didn’t look at her as if she were the janitor who’d quit scrubbing the floor long enough to try to tell him his business.

She grimaced. Okay, that might be her own self-esteem issues talking. He probably looked down on everyone. It was probably an advantage in corporate law, turning every potential litigant into a stuttering idiot.

Following her into the restaurant, he glanced around, apparently unimpressed by the casual interior and the half-dozen remaining diners.

“Your mother ate here a couple of times a week,” she told him.

His eyebrows rose. “She had money…?”

Lucy shook her head. “She was my guest.”

A muscle ticked in his cheek. “Oh.”

For a moment Lucy thought he would feel compelled to thank her. A surprisingly fierce sense of repugnance filled her. Who was he to speak for the mother he didn’t even know?

She hastily grabbed a menu and led him to the same table where his mother always sat, right in front of the window. “I’ll be back to take your order as soon as I check in the kitchen.”

It was easy to pretend she was immersed in some crisis and send Melody out to take his order instead. Once his food was delivered, Lucy stole surreptitious looks as he ate. She was pleased to see that he actually looked startled after the first spoonful of curried lentil soup, one of her specialties and personal favorites. He’d probably expected something out of a can.

Melody was prepared to close up for her, so once she saw him decline dessert, Lucy went back out to reclaim him. Without comment she took his money, then said, “I’m ready to go if you’d like to follow me again.”

A hint of acerbity crept into his tone. “Do you think I’d get lost?”

“I pass Sam’s place on my way home. I won’t stop.”

He nodded. “Then thank you.”

It was getting harder for him to squeeze those thank-yous out, Lucy judged. Clearly, he wasn’t in the habit of being in anyone’s debt.

Once again he held open the door for her, the courtesy automatic. At least he was polite.

Outside, she said, “It’s called Doveport Bed and Breakfast. You’ll see it on the right, about half a mile from here. There’s a sign out front.”

He nodded, pausing on the sidewalk while she opened her car door and got in. More good manners, Lucy realized; in Seattle, a woman might be in danger if she were alone even momentarily on a dark street. Maybe his mother had instilled some good qualities in him, before she disappeared from his life.

However that happened.

Her forehead crinkled. How old had he been when his parents divorced, or his mother went away? Twenty-three years ago, he’d said. Surely he wasn’t more than in his mid-thirties now. So he probably wasn’t even a teenager when he lost her.

Was he bitter at what he saw as abandonment? Lucy hadn’t been able to tell. Since she’d handed him the driver’s license and photo in his office, he’d seemed more stunned than anything. She’d almost had the sense he was sleepwalking, that he hadn’t yet figured out how to react. At least, she hoped that’s what he was doing, and that he wasn’t always so unemotional. Because if he was, she hated to think of the hat lady consigned to his care.

Lucy made sure the lights of his car were right behind her until she reached Sam’s B and B. His headlights swept the sign, and his turn signal went on. She accelerated and left him behind, wondering if she’d arrive at the hospital tomorrow and find he had already made plans to have his mother moved to Seattle.

She shuddered to think of the gentle, confused hat lady waking to the stern face of this son she didn’t remember, her bewildered gaze searching for other, familiar faces.

Unhappily she wondered if finding him had been the right thing to do after all.

CHAPTER THREE

STRANGELY, WHEN Adrian lay in bed that night, he kept thinking about Lucy Peterson instead of his mother. Maybe he was practicing avoidance. He didn’t know, but he was bothered by the fact that he didn’t understand her. He prided himself on being able to read people. The ability to anticipate reactions made him good at his job.

He’d long since learned that self-interest was paramount in most people. But if a single thing Lucy had done for his mother—and now for him—helped her in any way, he couldn’t see it. So what motivated her? Why had she noticed his mother in the first place? Downtown Seattle was rife with homeless people, sleeping in doorways, curled on park benches, begging on corners, huddling from the rain in bus shelters. To most people, they fell somewhere between annoying and invisible. When had Lucy first stopped to talk to his mother? Offered her a meal?

Why had she cared so much that she’d been determined to find the confused old lady’s family?

He kept puzzling it out and not arriving at any answers. That bugged him. Yeah, she might just be the nurturing kind. But even people like that didn’t usually nurture a homeless person. Anyway, she wasn’t a completely soft touch, ready to expect the best of everyone. She’d certainly made a judgment about him before she even met him. She was doing her best for him because of his mother, but she didn’t like having to do it.

That stung, which bothered him, too. Why in hell would he care what a small-town café owner thought of him?

He shifted restlessly in bed, picturing the way she looked at him, her eyes seeming to dissect him.

Adrian fell asleep eventually, but his dreams were uneasy and he jerked awake several times. The damn bed was too soft. The down pillows kept wadding into lumps beneath his head. Even the scent of potpourri in the room was unfamiliar and too sweet, slipping into his dreams.

He got up in the morning feeling jittery yet exhausted. The room was nice enough if you liked such things, he’d noted last night, and was decorated with obligatory old-fashioned floral wallpaper and antiques. He didn’t much care, but was relieved to have his own bathroom. This morning, though, he walked into it and stopped dead, staring at the enormous, claw-footed tub.

“What the hell…?” His incredulous gaze searched the wall above, and returned to the faucet that didn’t even have a handheld showerhead. He hated taking baths. All he wanted was a hard spray of hot water to bring him to his senses.

Given no choice, however, he took a hasty bath, got dressed and went downstairs to sample the breakfast.

If he had to sit at a common table, he’d head to town instead. Chatting over breakfast with complete strangers held no appeal. He’d find a diner if he had to drive to Sequim. Fortunately, the dining room held several tables. A family sat at one, a couple at another. He took a place as far from the others as he could get.

He hadn’t paid much attention to his hostess last night, but this morning he studied her in search of a resemblance to her sister. They did both have blue eyes. Samantha Peterson was less striking but prettier. She wore her curly blond hair cut short and had a curvy figure. She didn’t look at him as if he’d crawled out from a sewer drain. Instead, she chatted in a sunny way as she served thick slabs of French toast covered with huckleberries and powdered sugar, oatmeal and bacon that made his mouth water. It was the best breakfast he’d had in years; creativity in the kitchen obviously ran in the family.

Funny thing was, he knew he wouldn’t remember her face two days from now. Her sister’s would stick in his mind.

When Samantha paused to refill his coffee after everyone else had left the dining room, he asked, “Did you know my mother?”

“The hat lady? Sure, but not as well as Lucy. I’m not on her route, you know.”

Puzzled, he asked, “Her route?”

“Um.” As casually as if he’d invited her, she filled a second cup with coffee for herself and sat across from him. “Your mom had a routine. On a given day, you knew she’d have certain stops. The library on Mondays—they let her check out books even though she didn’t have an address—the thrift shop Tuesdays, because they’re closed Sunday and Monday and they always had new stuff then—”

“But she didn’t have money.”

She shrugged, the gesture both careless and generous. “It’s run by the Faith Lutheran Church. They let her take whatever she wanted.”

“Like hats,” he reflected.

“Right. Another of her stops was Yvonne’s Needle and Thread. Yvonne let her pick out trims, silk flowers, whatever, that she used to decorate the hats. The senior center has a pancake breakfast on Wednesday and a spaghetti dinner on Friday, and she was always at those. Lucy’s twice a week, the Pancake Haus once a week, and so on.”

What was with this town? Was every single citizen willing to give away whatever she’d wanted? Would any needy soul qualify, or just his mother? As a child he’d loved his mother, but he couldn’t imagine that one vague old lady was that special.

“She loved garage sales,” Samantha continued. “Oh, and rummage sales, like at one of the churches. During the season, she’d deviate from her usual route to take in any sales. She was always the first one there.”

“She must have picked up the newspaper then, to read the classifieds.”

“Probably,” she said cheerfully.

Had his mother read the front page news? What did a woman who believed she was a nineteenth-century poet make of the presidential election or Mideast politics? Or did she skip anything that perplexed her?

Frowning, he asked, “Where did she sleep?”

“We’re not quite sure. I offered her a room over the winter, but she wouldn’t accept. I’m a little too far out from the center of town for her, I think. Father Joseph at Saint Mary’s left a basement door unlocked for her when the weather was cold, and he says she did sleep there on a cot sometimes. And Marie at Olympic Motel says she’d occasionally stay there, too.”

Adrian continued to grapple with the concept of an entire town full of do-gooders. “In other words, everybody knew her.”

“Oh, sure.” She smiled at him. “We did our best.”

“I’m…grateful.” The words were hard to say for a man who’d never in his life taken charity. Depending entirely on the kindness of strangers…he couldn’t imagine.

No—maybe not strangers. She’d stayed here in Middleton long enough that she’d been theirs, in a sense. Lucy Peterson clearly felt proprietary.

Adrian discovered he didn’t like the idea that every shopkeeper in this miserable town knew his mother, and he didn’t.

Samantha waved off his gratitude. “Oh, heavens! We loved her.”

There it was again, that past tense. Nobody expected her to survive. Or perhaps they assumed he’d take care of her now, as, of course, he intended to do.

He drained his coffee and made his excuses. Back in his room, he sat at the small desk and took out his cell phone. It was early enough he got through to an old friend.

Tom Groendyk and he had shared an old house in the U district through grad school. Tom was an orthopedic surgeon now at Swedish Medical Center, having left the area for his internship and residency but coming home two years ago.

“Hey. I have a favor to ask of you,” Adrian said, after brief greetings. “You heard of a neurosurgeon named Ben Slater?”

“Are you kidding?” Tom laughed. “The guy looks like Santa Claus and grades like Scrooge.”

“Is he any good?”

“Only the best. Hell of a teacher, and hell of a surgeon from what I hear.” His voice sharpened. “Why? Is there something you haven’t told me?”

Adrian and Tom played racquetball once a week, had dinner or met for drinks every couple of weeks. Tom hadn’t married, either, although he was seeing a woman pretty seriously right now.

Adrian wouldn’t have told many other people, but Tom did know some of his history. “I’m over on the peninsula,” he said. “My mother has showed up.”

There was a momentary silence. “Showed up?”

“She’s apparently mentally ill. She’s been homeless. Nobody knew who she was until she got hit by a car. When they searched her stuff, they found an old driver’s license and tracked me down.”

He didn’t mention the photograph of his father, mother and him, or that Mother’s Day card. He still wasn’t ready to face the memories they had conjured up.

“If you’re looking for the best to treat her, Slater’s it,” Tom said, adding, “But the guy’s retired. I guess I could ask around and find out where he is, but I can give you some other names instead.”

“He’s here, believe it or not. Evidently his wife grew up here in Middleton, and they came back when he retired. He must have gotten bored. He’s consulting now.”

Tom let out a low whistle. “You got lucky then.”

“He says there’s nothing he can do for her. Either she comes out of the coma or she doesn’t.”

“So what are you asking me? Whether a different guy would tell you something else?”

Adrian squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. I guess that is what I’m asking. Should I get a second opinion?”

“If it were my mother,” his friend said, “I wouldn’t bother.” However blunt the answer, his voice had softened. “Man, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Adrian admitted. “Go on over to the hospital, I guess. See how it goes over the next day or two. Then I suppose I’d better find someplace to move her to. I had Carol cancel my appointments through Tuesday. Fortunately, I didn’t have anything earthshaking in the works.”

“Yeah, listen, if there’s anything I can do…”

“Thanks.” He had to clear his throat. “I’ll call.” He hit End and sat there for a minute, his chest tight. What a bizarre conclusion to his childhood fantasies of finding his mom.

He felt no great eagerness to go sit at her bedside, but finally stood. He looked at his laptop and decided not to take it. Maybe this afternoon, if he went back to the hospital. He locked his room and left without seeing his hostess.

The hospital appeared even smaller and less prepossessing in daylight. He doubted it had sixty beds. It probably existed primarily as an emergency facility, given the recreational opportunities nearby in the Olympic National Park and on the water. Mountain climbers, hikers and boaters had plenty of accidents, and Highway 101, crowded with tourists, undoubtedly produced its share. Once stabilized, patients could be moved to a larger facility in Port Angeles or Bremerton if not across the sound to Seattle.

He knew his way today, and didn’t pause at the information desk. This time a nurse intercepted him upstairs and said firmly, “May I help you?”

“I’m Elizabeth Rutledge’s son.”

“Oh! The hat lady.” She flushed. “That is…”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Dr. Slater stopped in briefly this morning. He said to tell you he’d be back this afternoon.”

He nodded. “I thought I’d just sit with her for a while.”

“We’re so glad you’re here. We’re all very fond of her, you know.”

Adrian studied the woman, graying and sturdy. “You knew her, too?”

“Not well, but my sister owns the Hair Do. Cindy washed and styled her hair regularly. Gave her perms every few months, too.”

“Why?” Adrian asked bluntly.

She blinked. “Why?”

“Your sister is a businesswoman. Why would she give away her services to a homeless woman?”

She raised her eyebrows, her friendliness evaporating. “Lucy didn’t say what you do for a living.”

“I’m an attorney.”

“Don’t you do pro bono work?”

Everyone in the firm was required to handle the occasional pro bono case on a rotating schedule. “Yes,” he admitted.

“What’s the difference? Cindy likes your mom. Whenever I walked in, they’d be laughing like they were having the best time ever.”

That was the payback? Laughter? And what the hell did a woman who couldn’t remember who she was and who lived on the streets have to laugh about?

He went on to his mother’s room, feeling the nurse’s stare following him.

Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to hear Lucy’s voice when he walked in the open door.

She wasn’t reading this morning, just talking.

“Yesterday, I saw some early daffodils opening. I know you’d have been as excited as I was. Well, they might have been narcissus or some species daffodil. Is there such a thing? These had orange centers and were small. But they were beautiful and bright.” She paused, as if listening to an answer. When she went on, Lucy sounded regretful. “I wish I had time to garden. Every time I lug out the mower and tackle the lawn, I think about where I’d put flower beds. You know how much I’d like to grow old roses. I love to get out my books and think, too bad the China roses couldn’t stand the cold here, but I’ll definitely grow some of the really old ones. Rosamunde and Cardinal de Richelieu and Autumn Damask. Oh, and Celestial. And a moss rose. Have you ever seen one, with the fuzz all over the bud? I think they look fascinating. Even the names of the roses are beautiful. Fantin-Latour.” She made every syllable sensuous. “Comte Chambord. Ispahan. ” She laughed. “Of course, I’m undoubtedly butchering them, since I don’t speak French.”

So she was sentimental. Why wasn’t he surprised?

Adrian continued in, brushing the curtain as he rounded it. “Good morning.”

She looked up, startled. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

Irrelevantly, he noticed what beautiful skin she had, almost translucent. Tiny freckles scattered from the bridge of her nose to her cheekbones. They hadn’t been noticeable until now, with sunlight falling across her.

“I heard you talking about gardening.”

Her cheeks pinkened, but Lucy only nodded. “Your mother told me spring was her favorite season. She loved to walk around town and look at everyone’s gardens. Sometimes we dreamed together.”

What a way to put it. Had he ever in his life dreamed together with anyone?

He knew the answer: with his mother.

Almost against his will, his gaze was drawn to her, looking like a marble effigy lying in that hospital bed. It was hard to believe this was the vivacious woman of his memory.

“We had a garden when I was growing up,” he said abruptly. “In Edmonds. We didn’t have a big yard, but it was beautiful. She spent hours out there every day on her knees digging in flower beds. I remember the hollyhocks, a row of them in front of the dining-room windows. Delphinium and foxgloves and climbing roses. Mom said she liked flowers that grew toward the sky instead of hugging the ground.”

“Oh,” Lucy breathed. “What a lovely thing to say.”

“She talked like that a lot. My father would grunt and ignore her.” Damn it, why had he said that? Adrian wondered, disconcerted. Reminiscing about his mother was one thing, about the tensions in his family another thing altogether.

“I’m sorry,” Lucy said softly. Perhaps she saw his face tighten, because instead of asking more about his father or when his mother had disappeared from his life, she said, “I thought about starting a small flower bed under my front windows this spring.” Almost apologetically, she told him, “I don’t have very much time to work in my yard. I wanted to take Elizabeth with me to the nursery to pick out the plants. She has such a good eye.” Her hand crept onto the coverlet and squeezed the inert, gnarled hand of his mother. “I wish she’d wake up and say, ‘When shall we go?’”

She sounded so unhappy, he thought with faint shock, she loves Mom. How did that happen?

“I’m surprised to see you here again this morning.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Because Dr. Slater tried to bully me into staying away?”

His mouth twitched. He doubted Ben Slater knew how to bully anyone. Although…“I have a friend who took a class from him in med school. Tom says he’s a tough grader.”

“You checked up on him.”

“Wouldn’t you have?” he countered.

The pause was long enough to tell him how reluctant she was when she conceded, “I suppose so. Did he get a satisfactory rating?”

“A gold star. He’s the best, Tom says.”

“I could have told you that.”

But he wouldn’t have believed her. They both knew that.

When he didn’t respond, she asked, “Have you made a plan yet?”

He looked back at his mother, watching as her chest rose and fell, the stirring of the covers so subtle he had to watch carefully to see it. “Move her to Seattle. What else can I do?”

As if he’d asked quite seriously, Lucy said, “Leave her here for now. Until Dr. Slater says she can go to a nursing home. And we even have one of those here in Middleton, you know.”

God, he was tempted. Leave her to people who cared. Whose faces she’d recognized if she opened her eyes.

Abdicate.

He shook his head reluctantly. “I don’t have time to be running over here constantly. And it sounds as if the chances are good she won’t be waking up.”

Lucy pinched her lips together. After a long time, she said, “I suppose that’s true.” She gazed at his mother, not him. “How soon will you be taking her?”

“I don’t know. I’ll get my assistant hunting for a place with an open bed.”

Now she did turn a cool look on him. “Won’t you want to check it out yourself?”

“Why do you dislike me?” he surprised himself by asking.

With a flash of alarm in her eyes, she drew back. “What would make you think—”

“Come on. It’s obvious. You think I should have found her. Taken care of her.”

Her chin rose fractionally. “I suppose I do.”

Adrian shoved his hands in his pockets. “I did look for her some years back.” He rotated his shoulders in discomfiture. “I suppose…not that hard. I thought she was dead.”

Her brow crinkled. “Why?”

“Even as a kid, I knew there was something wrong with her. My father claimed she’d gone to a hospital to be treated. Then he told me she’d checked herself out because she didn’t want to get well. I was young enough to believe that if she was alive, she wouldn’t have left me.”

She stared at him, and prompted, “Young enough to believe…? Does that mean, now that you’re an adult, you don’t have any trouble believing she’d ditch you without a second thought?”

God. He felt sick. That rich breakfast wasn’t settling well in his stomach.

“Apparently she did,” he said flatly.

He felt himself reddening as her extraordinary eyes studied him like a bug under a microscope.

She surprised him, though, by sounding gentle. “How old were you?”

His jaw tightened. “Ten.”

“And you never saw her or heard from her again?”

He shook his head.

“How awful,” she murmured, as if to herself. “Your father doesn’t sound like a, um…”

“Warm man?” Irony in his voice, Adrian finished her thought. “No. You could say that.”

“Have you told him…” She nodded toward the bed.

“He’s dead.”

“Oh.” Compassion and an array of other emotions crossed her face, as if the sunlight coming through the window were suddenly dappled with small, fluttering shadows. “Do you have other family? I didn’t think to ask if you had sisters or brothers.”

Adrian shook his head. “Just me. Dad remarried, but as far as I know he and my stepmother never considered having kids.”

She nodded, her gaze softer now, less piercing.

Without knowing why, he kept talking. “His parents are still alive. I’m not close to them.” He hesitated. “My maternal grandmother is alive, too. I haven’t told her yet.”

“Oh! But won’t she be thrilled?”

“I’m not so sure. She might have preferred to think her child was dead. To find out she didn’t care enough to ever call home…” He shrugged.

“That’s not fair! She forgot who she was!”

“But then Maman may feel she failed her in some way.”

“Oh,” Lucy said again. “Maman? Is that what you call her? Is she French?”

“French Canadian. She lives in Nova Scotia. That’s where I was, with my grandparents, the summer my mother went away.”

“What a sad story.”

Oh, good. He’d gone from being a monster in her eyes to being pitiable. Adrian wasn’t sure he welcomed the change.

When he said nothing, she flushed and rose to her feet. “I really had better go. I don’t do breakfast, but it’s time for me to start lunch.” She hesitated. “If you’d like…”

What was she going to suggest? That she could feed him free of charge like she had his mother?

“Like?” he prodded, when she didn’t finish.

“I was going to say that, after lunch, I could take an hour or two and introduce you to some of the people who knew your mother. They could tell you something about her life.”

“Your sister started to.”

He felt weirdly uncomfortable with the idea. But if his mother died without ever coming out of the coma, this might be the only way he’d ever find out who she’d become. Perhaps she’d even given someone a clue as to where she’d been in the years before she came to Middleton. He thought his grandmother, at least, would want to know as much as he could find out.

After a minute he nodded and said formally, “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”

Lucy smiled, lighting her pale, serious face, making her suddenly, startlingly beautiful in a way unfamiliar to him. Adrian’s chest constricted.

He thought he took a step toward her, searching her eyes the way she often did his. Her pupils dilated as she stared back at him, her smile dying. He felt cruel when wariness replaced it.

She inched around him as if afraid to take her gaze from him, then backed toward the door. “I’ll, um, see you later then? Say, two o’clock?”

“I’ll come and eat lunch first.” He paused. “Your soup was amazing.”

The tiniest of smiles curved her lips again. “Wait until you taste my basil mushroom tomato soup.”

His own mouth crooked up. “I’ll look forward to it.”

“Well, then…” She backed into the door frame and gave an involuntarily “umph” before she flushed in embarrassment, cast him one more alarmed look and fled.

He stood there by the curtain, the soft beep of the machines that monitored his mother’s life signs in his ears, and wondered what in hell had just happened.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CAFé WAS BUSY, which made it even more ridiculous that Lucy’s heart insisted on skipping a beat every time the door opened and a customer entered. Was she excited at the prospect of spending more time with Adrian? Nervous about it? She didn’t even know, but she didn’t like reacting so strongly for no good reason at all.

For goodness’ sake, he was going to eat lunch in the café! He’d eaten here last night. She planned to introduce him to a few people. He’d probably freeze her out in between stops. He was good at that.

Reason didn’t seem to be helping. Something had changed between them this morning. He’d let her see the cracks in his facade of invulnerability. Well, he might not have chosen to show them, but they were there. He did hurt. This wasn’t easy for him.

And he’d looked at her. Really looked, and maybe even liked what he’d seen. For just a moment, she’d seen something on his face that had stolen her breath and panicked her.

Common sense and reason did work to stifle any sense of expectation that he was suddenly, madly attracted to her. Okay, there might have been a brief flicker. But Lucy hated to think how she compared to the women he usually dated.

Her hands froze in the act of tossing salad in a huge bowl.

Dated? He could conceivably be married. When she researched him on the Internet before going over to Seattle that day, she didn’t see anything to make her think he was, and he certainly hadn’t mentioned a wife, as in, My wife will visit any nursing homes my assistant finds, which you’d think would be natural. But he was closemouthed enough that it was still possible.

And what difference did it make if he was? she asked herself with unaccountable depression. He was here in Middleton until Tuesday. Today was Saturday. Once he was gone, she’d probably get a nice note thanking her for taking care of his mother and that was it. Oh, and the chances were his assistant would’ve written the note. Wasn’t that what assistants did?

Mabel stuck her head in the kitchen. “Erin just called in sick. She has a cold.”

Lucy groaned. “Oh, no. Is it bad? Or an I-need-a-personal-day bug?”

“I didn’t recognize her voice. It sounded like she has a doozy of a cold.”

“Which we’d better not catch.” Lucy frowned. “Okay. Why don’t you call Bridget? I was going to hire her anyway. See if she can start tonight. She’s spent enough time here she ought to be able to jump right in.”

Mabel knew Lucy’s aunt as well as Lucy did. “Beth doesn’t want her to work.”

“Yeah, I kinda suspected that. That’s between them. I can’t imagine she’d mind Bridget filling in.”

“Probably not,” Mabel conceded. She flapped a hand and retreated.

The bell on the door tinkled and Lucy’s head snapped around. For the hundredth time.

It was him. He looked more human today, wearing running shoes, jeans and a V-neck blue jersey. Sexier, she realized, her pulse tap-dancing. Even his hair was a little disheveled.

Unlike last night, when his single glance around the café had been distant and even dismissive, today his gaze moved slowly and comprehensively from the old-fashioned, gilt-trimmed cash register and the jar of free mints to the artwork hanging on the walls, the windows with their red-checked curtains below lacy valances, the townsfolk and tourists nearly filling the tables and row of booths along the back wall and finally the cutout that allowed her to see him.

Their eyes met, and he nodded.

Lucy nodded, too, hastily, and ducked out of sight, her cheeks hot. He’d caught her gaping.

No, he hadn’t. She’d glanced up because a patron had entered the café. She always kept half an eye on the front of the house even while she was cooking. Of course she did; it was her restaurant.

He had no reason to suspect he made her heart flutter, and she wouldn’t give him any reason to.

What the heck. He’d probably be rude this afternoon to someone she really liked, and her heart would quit fluttering anyway.

When she looked out at the restaurant again, Mabel had seated him and he was studying a menu. Other people were covertly watching him. Lucy’s cousin Jen was murmuring behind her hand to her best friend, Rhonda, who owned the Clip and Curl, the competition to the Hair Do. Rhonda had been heard saying disdainfully, “I wouldn’t have washed some homeless woman’s hair. Imagine how disgusting it must be.” Lucy didn’t like Rhonda, and Jen wasn’t her favorite relative, either. Jen, who liked feeling important, would be telling all she knew about the rich lawyer who was the homeless woman’s son. The two were probably both thrilled that he’d be ridding Middleton of the scourge of homelessness.

Jen had come by her tendency to gossip naturally. Her mom was Lucy’s Aunt Lynn. The one who was a trial.

Lucy had worked herself up to being annoyed enough that she took off her apron and marched out, ignoring Jen and Rhonda, straight to Adrian.

Maybe, if she were lucky, she’d start the whole family talking. Hadn’t she wished for years that she’d done something exciting enough to scandalize them?

“I’m glad you made it,” she said.

He looked up from the menu. “You thought I was afraid to show up?” Before she could answer, he said, “How’s the grilled-chicken sandwich with red-pepper aioli?”

“Fabulous,” Lucy assured him. “Sam bakes the focaccia bread for us.”

“Ah.” That apparently decided him, because he set down the menu. “This is a family enterprise, huh?”

“No, it’s mine, except that I’ve been buying baked goods from Sam. And now we’re talking about me catering dinners for some special events she’s thinking of holding at the B and B. Like a mystery weekend. You know.” She paused. “Well, and I just added one of my cousins to the waitstaff. Although her mom won’t be happy.” Oh, brilliant. Like he’d care. “Are you ready for me to take your order?”

His eyes held a glint. “Did you think I wasn’t going to show?”

“No. I doubt you ever back away from whatever you’ve decided is the best course.”

Did that sound as rude to him as it had to her own ears?

His mouth twisted. “Oh, I have my cowardly impulses. ” Then his expression closed and he said, “I’d like the grilled-chicken sandwich and a cup of your soup.”

“Anything to drink?”

“Just coffee.”

“It’ll be right out,” she said, and went back to the kitchen.

Mabel was dishing up soup. Voice dry, she said, “Bridget squealed and said, ‘I can start tonight? Awesome!’”

“She’s young.”

“She’ll do fine,” Mabel said comfortably. “If she’s floundering, I’ll stay late.”

Lucy smiled at her. “Thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”

“What’d Mr. Attorney order?”

“Adrian.” Lucy moderated a voice that had come out sharper than she’d intended. “His name is Adrian Rutledge.”

Mabel’s carefully plucked eyebrows rose. “Didn’t mean to be insulting.”

“It sounded insulting.” Lucy sighed. “Forget it. Rhonda and Jen are out there whispering, and that got my back up.”

“They get my back up every time they come in here. Don’t worry.” She nodded toward the front. “Are you getting his order?”

“Yes, and I’m going to take a couple of hours after the rush is over to introduce him to people who knew his mom. He wants to find out what he can about her.”

“Uh-huh.” Mabel’s skepticism was plain, but she grabbed two salads and whisked out of the kitchen before Lucy could demand to know why she was hostile to Adrian.

Lucy did deliver his food, but she didn’t have time to sit with him any more than she had with the hat lady the last time she’d come here. The better business was, the less time Lucy had to do anything but hustle. Between cooking and doing the ordering, she had precious few hours away from the café, and in some of those she kept the books, made deposits and created new recipes.

She liked cooking. She liked experimenting, and chatting with customers, and showing everyone she could succeed. But the responsibility of owning the place and having half a dozen other people’s livelihoods depend on her was so overwhelming, she had no chance to even imagine what else she could do with her life. She hadn’t been on a date in…Lucy had to count back. Four and a half months, and that was playing tennis at the club in Port Angeles and lunch afterward with Owen Marshall. And that hadn’t been what you’d call a success. After watching him throw a temper tantrum when he lost a set to her, she hadn’t hesitated to say no the next time he called.

Lately, no one else was asking, and it didn’t appear likely anyone would in the near future. She knew every single guy in Middleton entirely too well to be interested, and anyway, when would she go out with a guy? Friday and Saturday were the busiest nights of the week at the café. She had to be here.

What’s more, she knew she wasn’t any more than pretty. Lucy wasn’t alone in considering herself to be the plain one in her family. Put her next to her sisters Samantha and Melissa, and she faded into the background. Disconcerting but true. They had regular dates.

Which was undoubtedly why her heart had bounced just because Adrian Rutledge had looked intrigued by her for one brief moment. How often did that happen?

Never?

You’re pathetic, she told herself, before stealing another look out to see how he liked his lunch.

Hard to tell, when a man was chewing then swallowing.

It was two o’clock before she could escape, and then not without guilt. But Shea, her assistant cook, had shown up, and Bridget was to come at four to help set the tables for dinner. Lucy could spare a couple of hours.

Adrian had waited with apparent patience, sipping coffee and reading the weekly Middleton Courier.

“My mother’s accident is in here,” he said, closing the newspaper and folding it when Lucy walked up.

“Well, of course it is. I told you, everyone knows her. And we don’t have that many accidents right here in town.”

The editor had referred to her as “the kind woman known affectionately as ‘the hat lady,’” which Lucy had thought was particularly tactful. She was glad he hadn’t mentioned that the hat lady was homeless. From his write-up, it sounded as if she might have been a respectable senior citizen who was borrowing a Safeway shopping cart to get her groceries home, rather than an indigent whose shopping cart was the next thing to a home. Adrian wouldn’t have to be embarrassed after reading the article in the Courier.

“Where do we start?” he asked.

“The library.” Lucy had already decided. “I know Wendy is working this afternoon. She was really fond of your mother.”

He held open the door for her. “She’s the librarian?”

Lucy nodded, and after suggesting they walk since the library was only three blocks away, she said, “Yes. Wendy’s from Yakima, but she married Glenn Monsey who was working for a builder over there. Our old librarian was ready to retire when Glenn decided to come home to work with his dad, who’s a contractor.”

“I hadn’t noticed any new building.”

Was he bored? Or sneering at her town? Just because she sometimes thought Middleton was dull didn’t mean she’d put up with an outsider saying so. Eyeing him suspiciously, she said, “They do more over in Sequim than here in town, but we have new houses, too. Plus, they do remodeling.”

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