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clutching a cane, his lanky frame thinner than she’d ever seen it, her heart had twisted in her chest. He walked with a limp that was worse than Shaw’s. Except for the shiny pink scar that creased his temple and disappeared into his hairline, he looked like the husband she remembered. The slightly aquiline nose, broad brow, and expressive hazel eyes, perhaps the same smile, although she’d seen only a glimpse of it. She’d almost leaped forward to throw her arms around him. Yet he was changed enough to make him a complete stranger, and that had stopped her. Even his voice and manner of speaking, his choice of words, were different. There had been just the briefest glimmer of recognition in his eyes when he’d looked at her, and that had been simply because of the photograph he carried.
    It had been another man in another life who had fired a spark in her almost every time she’d seen him. They had barely been able to pass each other in a hallway without touching, without an underlying current arcing between them. Anytime she had looked out the kitchen window, she’d automatically sought his tall leanness and the set of his dark head on his squared shoulders. This Riley—this Christophe —was little more than a fragile shell.
    “Would you like some help?”
    Susannah looked up and saw Jessica standing across the table from her. She’d been so deep in her thoughts she hadn’t heard her approach. “Oh, no, I’m just trying to keep busy and…” She let her voice trail off. And what?
    Jessica nodded at her bandaged finger. “Uh-huh. It looks like you’re having a time of it.” Coming around to sit beside her, she reached over and took the paring knife from Susannah, then picked up a carrot and began scraping it. Susannah let her, although she knew that her sister-in-law’s many talents did notextend to the kitchen. “This is a shock, I know. I don’t think any of us expected Riley to be so amnestic.”
    Susannah sent her a quizzical look.
    Jess pulled the newspaper closer and sliced off the top of the carrot with a surgeon’s precision. “We didn’t realize how much of his memory was gone.”
    She nodded, comprehending now. “Yes, just about all of it, I guess. He doesn’t even sound the same. His voice is different. His words are different. Have you ever seen anything like this?”
    “Not in my practice here. Since the influenza epidemic passed, I mostly get pregnancies, rheumatism, sore throats, the occasional appendicitis, earaches, that sort of thing. Even when I worked in New York, most of my patients were indigent women and children. A public health physician doesn’t see much shell shock.” She tipped her a wry look, and a sun shaft from the window snagged on the wheat-gold strands in her hair. “Not the kind caused by war, anyway. But I’ve been reading about it in medical journals. After two years, I would have expected at least a little of Riley’s memory to return.”
    “The doctors at the army hospital thought he would do better here.”
    “He might. But some men apparently have their pasts, well, erased, like words from a chalkboard. Some men like him.”
    “Is there something we should do? To help, I mean?” She sat with her hands in her apron-covered lap, palms up.
    “Well, for one thing, we’re going to have to convince Shaw that Riley isn’t behaving this way just to spite him.” The old man seemed to have taken it as a personal insult that his son didn’t remember him.
    Susannah raised her brows and heaved an exasperated sigh. “That’s a tall order. He’s as hard-headed as a ball-peen hammer.”Jessica let out a choked laugh. “But—do we have to call him by that name? Christopher—Christophe, whatever he said?”
    Jess lifted a shoulder. “I don’t think so. I’ll do some research about his condition, though. I’ve heard of a doctor in Portland who’s had some success treating shell shock patients. I’ll see what I can find out.”
    Just then, Susannah