Forgotten Father Read online

  “Any pain or discomfort? Nausea?” the other woman asked.

  Delanie shook her head slowly and then stretched out her free arm. “My wrist aches a little. Other than that, I think I’m fine.”

  Replacing Delanie’s hand on the bed covers, the nurse said, “Probably a sprain, but we’ll leave it to the doctor to confirm that.”

  Frowning, Delanie fought to clear the mists in her head. “Why…am I here?”

  The nurse shot her a piercing look and, after a pause, said. “Let me crank up the head of your bed for you so you can sit up a little, then I’ll get Dr. Gallagher to talk with you. He’s at the nurses’ station.”

  Watching the woman leave the room a moment later, Delanie let her eyes drift across to the windows while wrestling to gather her wits. Glancing down at herself, she could see no obvious injury, no broken bone or bandage other than a cartoon-decorated Band-Aid where someone had apparently drawn blood from her arm.

  Why was she here? She couldn’t think…, couldn’t make sense of it.

  In a matter of minutes, the hospital room door opened again and an attractive, prematurely-balding man who looked to be in his late thirties, walked in.

  “Good morning,” he said with a smile. “How are you feeling today?”

  “I think I’m okay,” she said slowly, a frightened, frustrated panic starting to flutter in her midsection. “Why am I here?”

  “First, let me introduce myself,” he said, sending her another version of the nurse’s probing look. “I’m Dr. Larry Gallagher. I’ve been managing your case since you arrived here.”

  “Where is here?” Delanie asked, more sharply than she’d intended.

  “Conway Community Hospital,” he answered promptly, still standing beside the bed looking at her with that faintly-troubled expression.

  “Conway?” she echoed without recognition, struggling against the sense of déjà vu.

  “Conway, New Hampshire.”

  “I don’t know—“ Delanie started, her panic leaking into the words.

  “Shhh,” Dr. Gallagher said, patting her hand. “Let’s take this slow. Why don’t I ask you a few questions first?”

  “Okay,” she agreed, calmed somewhat by his comforting manner.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Delanie Carlyle.”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-seven.” Her heart rate slowed a little with the sensation of being on solid ground.

  “Good,” he said encouragingly. “Where do you live?”

  “In Boston,” she replied. “I’m an interior designer there.”

  “Wonderful,” he said, as if she’d performed some tremendous feat. “Now, have you been vacationing in New Hampshire recently?”

  “No,” Delanie said, wanting to laugh with relief. She did remember. She hadn’t lost her mind. “Actually, I’ve been working on a big job here. I’m part of the crew renovating The Cedars.”

  “Oh!” Dr. Gallagher smiled, the worried look clearing from his eyes. “Of course.”

  She put a hand to her head, laughing ruefully. “I’ve really got to get back there. I’m expecting some installers to come hang the drapes in the main lobby. We’re set to open next month, on the first of May, and I have a ton of things to do.”

  Larry Gallagher’s smile faded. Turning away from the bed, he dragged the vinyl armchair closer and sat down next to the bed.

  “Delanie, do you know today’s date?”

  She frowned at him. “I’m a little fuzzy and I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but I’m guessing it’s somewhere around April the first?”

  He stared at her, his eyes somber.

  “What?”

  “I need to ask you a few more questions.”

  The doctor proceeded then to ask her seemingly random questions. But even though she knew who was the president and how many days were in a year, Delanie began to feel the cold clutch of fear in her chest again.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked finally, her voice quavering. “Why are you asking me these questions? Why am I here?”

  Dr. Gallagher looked at her a long moment, as if weighing how much information she could handle. Finally, he said, “You’re here because you were found wandering along the road, dazed and incoherent.”

  All Delanie could do was stare at him in disbelief.

  “You weren’t able to respond to questions at the time. You were suffering from cold and exposure. If you’re Delanie Carlyle, the police found your car abandoned along Highway 22. It was in a ditch and wasn’t visible from the road, but it hadn’t sustained more than minor damage. Highway 22 is nearly thirty miles from here.”

  “No,” she whispered. Not again. She’d been a child the other time. So long ago…and not once since then.

  He nodded. “We don’t have any idea how you got from there to here, but from the looks of your shoes, I’d say you walked quite a bit of that distance.”

  Struggling to assimilate the situation, she just looked at him.

  “Do you remember any of this?”

  “No,” she admitted reluctantly.

  The doctor made a note on the chart he held in his hand.

  Still grappling with what he was telling her, Delanie felt numb. Blank. As if parts of her mind had been washed empty.

  “Even for a woman as young and healthy as yourself, that kind of distance would take a while to walk with our terrain.” He looked down to where his fingers were fiddling with the piping on the edge of the vinyl armchair. “You’ve been here two weeks, Delanie. Today is May seventeenth.”

  “Two weeks,” she whispered. “My God.”

  “From my brief exam just now,” Dr. Gallagher said, “you seem to be oriented and aware—“

  “Except that I’ve lost…weeks of my life,” Delanie mumbled. “I can’t remember the last month! You said it’s May seventeenth? That’s more than a month!”

  “When you were brought in we, naturally, examined you and ran some tests,” he paused as if looking for the right words. “Although you’ve been asleep most of the time, we could find no indication of a concussion or brain injury. We thought at first that you might have been the victim of a crime…but there wasn’t any clear evidence. No specific injuries.”

  “So I’ve just forgotten six weeks of my life for no reason?” she asked sharply.

  He raised his gaze from the arm of the chair where his fingers still worried at the vinyl piping. “From my research, talking to colleagues and checking the literature…some people exhibit symptoms similar to yours when they’ve had a significant…emotional trauma of some sort.”

  Delanie looked back at him helplessly, groping in her head for some wisp of a memory, some clue to explain why she sat in the hospital bed.

  Nothing. Not a picture or a name. No memory of anything but normal work stuff at The Cedars. Yesterday, she and Connie, her assistant, had hung pictures all day.

  Only “yesterday” had actually been six weeks before.

  Connie. She had to call Connie. The people she worked with must have thought she dropped of the face of the earth.

  Why couldn’t she remember?

  “An emotional trauma would cause this?” she asked, the words sounding hollow.

  “Yes. The psychiatrist I called in to consult on your case described it as a tremendous shock or a painful episode so severe as to trigger a disassociative episode.”

  “But I’d have to remember something like that, wouldn’t I?” she asked desperately. “Surely if something that emotionally disturbing happened to me, I’d remember it! I mean, most people can’t forget things like that.”

  “That’s true,” he said, his voice soothing again. “But when a shock is so jolting, so painful, the mind sometimes tries to block it out, like hiding a secret from itself.”

  “So,” she said, her hand curling into a fist where it lay on the covers, “this is a kind of…amnesia?”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes kind.

  “And what do I do about
it?” she asked in a desperate flare of frustration.

  Dr. Gallagher leaned forward, taking her hand in his. “You go on back to your life, Delanie. Back to your job and your friends. I have a psychiatrist I’m referring you to. He’s a friend of mine who practices in Boston.”

  “I need a psychiatrist?” she asked, tears pressing at the back of her eyes.

  “You’re not crazy,” Dr. Gallagher said, his face compassionate, “just because you’ve responded this way to a major shock. But Dr. Miller can help you deal with this episode. He’ll explain it better than I can. He’ll help you get on with your life.”

  Get on with her life? How could she, when she’d lost entire weeks of her life?

  Her hand fisted around a fold of bed sheet, she tried to calm herself down, tried to quell the panic forming in her midsection.

  She’d eventually remembered everything last time. It had come back in bits and pieces until she’d regained the whole, shattering experience.

  Heaven help her if this forgotten episode was as painful as the last. But she was older now, an adult. Surely she could handle it.

  “Okay,” Delanie said after a moment. Wanting to erase the worry on his face, she smiled mistily up at the doctor. “I don’t understand all this, but it’s not like I have a lot of choices.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Dr. Gallagher said awkwardly. “Something you may or may not be pleased to discover, given the circumstances.”

  “What?” she asked, made nervous again by his obvious discomfort.

  “You’re pregnant.”

  “What!”

  He looked down, his voice business-like. “From the levels of hormone in your blood test, I’d say you conceived in the last two or three weeks.”

  “Which I can’t remember,” she said numbly.

  “When you came in,” he started awkwardly, “as a matter of routine, we examined you for assault.”

  Delanie looked at him in shock.

  He lifted his gaze to hers. “While we found…evidence of recent sexual activity, there was no bruising or tearing…no indication of rape.”

  “My God,” she breathed in mixed horror and relief.

  “So,” the doctor continued, “the obvious conclusion would be that the intercourse was…consensual.”

  “Okay,” she said, her voice faint. Would she have remembered consensual sex?

  “I know it must seem strange,” he said, “not remembering, but the last month or so is not a long period. Surely, the relationship you had previously—“

  “None.” She stared at him, profoundly disturbed. “I had no relationship, at least, not like you’re talking about. No husband. No boyfriends for the last six months. No one. I’ve been working so hard on this project the last year or so, I haven’t really…seen anyone.”

  Dr. Gallagher looked at her, obviously more distressed by this information than by the gap in her memory. “You’re a very attractive woman, Ms. Carlyle. There haven’t been any men you’ve been attracted to? No relationships developing that might have…gone in this direction?”

  “None,” she said, not quite able to grasp the news that she was actually pregnant. She was going to have a baby.

  By a man she couldn’t even remember.

  ******

  EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER

  Surreptitiously wiping at the baby drool on her sleeve, Delanie smiled at the lawyer as he held the door to his office open for her.

  Donovan would have been amused. Delanie’s only clean suit and Jenna had tried to soothe her poor aching baby gums on it just as her harassed mother was trying to escape the house.

  But if Donovan Riese were alive, Delanie reflected sadly, she wouldn’t have had to make this trip to one of Boston’s most expensive lawyers in the middle of a work day.

  “If you’ll both have a seat,” the lawyer said pleasantly, moving behind his desk, “we can get on with business.”

  Glancing up from her stained sleeve, Delanie’s gaze collided with that of the other man in the room. Unlike the lawyer, his expression was anything but affable.

  Mitchell Riese, her brain told her, while her senses absorbed a wealth of other data. She remembered him from the painting in Donovan’s study.

  Only the formal portrait hadn’t done him justice, she thought, her heart beating faster as their eyes met. Tall and well-built, he had short, dark hair and the most piercing blue eyes.

  She drew in a shaky breath, struggling to subdue her sudden surge of hormonal interest. In his dark, well-cut suit, he looked trim and far too sexy given the fact that his expression was about as remote as the North pole.

  She didn’t bother trying to remember when and how they’d met before, if they ever had. After eighteen months, she’d become accustomed to maneuvering her way around the six-week blank spot in her life. No matter how she struggled or how much she tried to let it come naturally as Dr. Miller suggested, the wisps of impressions and images she held from that time never wove themselves together.

  She still couldn’t remember Jenna’s father.

  Delanie shoved aside the wave of despondency at the thought, focusing instead on the man next to her.

  With his current grim expression, Mitchell didn’t look much like his portrait, Delanie thought, remembering Donovan’s office at The Cedars. But she knew without a doubt who he was. Suspected, too, that they’d met sometime during her forgotten interval, but there was no use in straining herself to retrieve the circumstances.

  Very aware of the man next to her, she sank into a chair facing the lawyer’s desk. Mitchell Riese said nothing to her, his hard gaze on the lawyer.

  For some reason, Donovan’s grandson was very angry. With a single glance, she could tell that, despite the fact that his expression was best described as impassive. His hostility was given away by the rigidity in his facial muscles and the precise way he lowered himself into the other chair facing the desk.

  “Let’s get on with it, Parker,” Mitchell Riese said, his words abrupt.

  Delanie frowned at his terse tone. Turning to address the lawyer, she said, “Mr. Parker, I’m not sure why I’m here—“

  In the chair next to her, Mitchell snorted derisively.

  “—in your letter you said something about Donovan’s estate…,” she continued, not acknowledging the interruption. Despite his scrumptious good looks, Mitchell Riese’s attitude difficulties weren’t her problem.

  “Yes,” Alec Parker said, shuffling a stack of papers on his polished desk. “Well, to be blunt, Ms. Carlyle, you’re mentioned in Mr. Riese’s will.”

  Surprise rippled through Delanie. Donovan had been a kind friend to her, particularly since she’d become a single mother, but he’d said nothing about his will. She’d have been astonished if he had. When Mr. Parker had called her for the appointment, she’d assumed there were estate issues concerning the job she’d done at The Cedars.

  “I’m mentioned in the will? Are you sure?” she asked, puzzled.

  “Come off it, Delanie,” Mitchell cut in, obviously annoyed. “You know very well what’s going on here.”

  She glanced at him, not trying to hide her icy reaction to his tone. “As much as your faith in my ability to read minds is touching, Mr. Riese, I’d still like Mr. Parker to explain the purpose of this meeting.”

  His hard blue gaze still on her, Mitchell’s lip curled as he sat back in his chair.

  “We’re here,” Alec Parker said, clearing his throat, “to discuss an unusual bequest—well, it’s not the actual bequest that’s unusual, but the handling of what has been a family asset—“

  “Just spit it out,” Mitchell advised sardonically. “She knows what’s coming, despite this innocent maiden act she’s putting on.”

  Delanie swung around in her chair. “I have no idea what your problem is, but I have a job to get back to, so I wish you’d let the man say what he’s trying to say!”

  Mitchell straightened in his chair, his eyes suddenly blazing with wrath. “Oh, you know very
specifically what my problem is. You deliberately set out to achieve this end and now—“

  “Okay, let’s calm down,” Alec Parker interrupted, his voice soothing. “There’s no point in getting upset. The situation is the way it is and we have to deal with it.”

  “What exactly is the situation?” Delanie demanded, astonished by the rage she felt emanating from Donovan’s grandson.

  “When Donovan Riese died,” the attorney said, “he left a large and complicated estate.”

  Delanie nodded. “I knew he was very wealthy.”

  “Didn’t you just,” Mitchell muttered.

  “Yes,” Mr. Parker said hastily, “the estate is very complicated and made more so by the existence of what has been a family holding.”

  “I don’t understand how this has anything to do with me,” she said, confused and disgustingly aware of the too-attractive, too-hostile man sitting next to her.

  “Well,” the attorney cast a warning gaze in Mitchell’s direction, “I need to explain that to you. But first you have to understand how the property known as The Cedars was left.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, ignoring Mitchell as he rose abruptly from his chair and went to stand in front of the window.

  “The Cedars, as I said, is a family-held property. I believe Mr. Donovan Riese’s father built—“

  “Grandfather,” Mitchell inserted, not turning away from the window.

  “Oh, yes,” Alec Parker shuffled his papers again. “Two generations. That’s why we’re even in this situation. It was Donovan’s grandfather who built The Cedars a few years before he died.”

  Delanie glanced at Mitchell’s back, rigid beneath the dark material of his Italian suit. What the heck was eating the man?

  And what had Donovan done with his will?

  The gallant, elderly man had been a sweetheart after her life had turned upside down. He’d visited her in Boston on several occasions and had even sent gifts to Jenna over the first months of her life.

  But Delanie had no clue as to what the heck was going on with The Cedars and his will.

  When she’d gotten out of the hospital after her amnesiac period, she’d gone back to Boston and picked up her life as best she could. As far as she was concerned, The Cedars was simply a fascinating job she’d been fortunate to be involved with.