face. Pointed chin. Pale skin.
She turned away and paused at her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the back of the door. She ran a hand over her belly, then turned to the side. A smile pulled at her lips as excitement bubbled inside her. A baby. It almost seemed surreal that in a few months she’d be a mother. A mother with no name. No past.
She stared at her left hand. No ring. Not even an indentation suggesting she’d worn one. When she looked back at the mirror, haunted, frightened eyes met hers. Who was the father? Was he looking for her? Desperate? Scared out of his mind as she sometimes was?
Steam fogged the mirror, distorting her reflection until she could no longer see herself. She shivered at the symbolism and stepped into the hot shower.
Callahan used the store brand of shampoo and soap, but it got her clean and it smelled better than she’d probably smelled before. Even though it hurt the bump on her head and to raise her elbow, she washed her hair twice and stood under the hot spray for a long time, head tipped back, water pounding over her, easing the tension and aches and pains. But she couldn’t ease the thoughts from her mind and eventually shut the water off and stepped out.
Callahan had big fluffy towels that wrapped around her twice. A quick search of his medicine cabinet revealed a brush. She ran it through her hair and used her finger to brush her teeth with his toothpaste.
She emerged from the bathroom feeling better than she had the day before and in clean sweats that Callahan had provided. The aroma of toast and coffee drifted through the closed door, making her stomach grumble. What she really craved was a tall glass of orange juice.
One was waiting for her when she entered the kitchen. Callahan was standing at the counter, pouring another mug of coffee and waved a hand toward the orange juice and a stack of toasted bread. “Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”
“It’s okay.” She sat and reached for the juice. “If you knew the storm was brewing, why didn’t you stock up?”
He paused from lowering himself into the chair in front of her and cast her a quick look. “Didn’t have time. You remember anything?”
“No.”
Elbows on the table, he stared at her over the rim of his mug. She noted the lines fanning from his eyes and the exhaustion just under the surface. She had slept well but apparently he had not.
“Francis, Frankie, Fiona.”
Weary of the game, yet knowing it might be the only way to remember, she thought about those names then shook her head and took a bite of toast.
“Gina, Ginny, Georgette.”
“Georgette?”
He shrugged. “Watched a lot of Mary Tyler Moore in my day.”
She laughed. It felt good in the face of all her fear. But it also shocked her. The Mary Tyler Moore comment indicated he had a sense of humor under the hard mask and that went a long way in easing her jumbled mix of emotions. It let her see the good guy beneath the gruff exterior.
He gave her a funny look. “I take it none of those ring a bell?”
“No.” More at ease with him now than she had been before, she felt her shoulder muscles relax and the tension headache that had been near the surface recede.
He set down his mug and leaned back in the chair, tilting the front legs off the ground.
“You’ll fall. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that?”
“All the time.” But he didn’t lower his chair and she grinned.
She liked John Callahan.
“I believe you can’t remember anything,” he said.
“Last night you were sure I was lying.”
“I’ve seen fear before. Your kind of fear can’t be faked.”
She tilted her head. He’d seen fear before? What an odd thing to say. “So what now?”
“Now we wait out the storm. It should blow over sometime this afternoon, early evening at the latest. Then we call in the tags on your car, find out who owns it and go from there.”
“You still think Suzanne Carmichael sent me?”
“Nope.” His chair came