The Second Mrs. Adams

He frowned, turned away and strode to the closet. “You said you preferred to join the club,” he said brusquely, “that it was where all your friends went and that it was a lot more pleasant and a lot safer to run on an indoor track than in the park. Have you decided what you’re going to wear tomorrow?”

“But how could it be safer? If you and I ran together, I was safe enough, wasn’t I?”

“It was better that way, Joanna. We both agreed that it was. My schedule’s become more and more erratic. I have to devote a lot of hours to business. You know that. I mean, you don’t know it, not anymore, but…”

“That’s OK, you don’t have to explain.” Joanna smiled tightly. “You’re a very busy man. And a famous one. The nurses all keep telling me how lucky I am to be married to you.”

David’s hand closed around the mauve silk suit hanging in the closet.

“They ought to mind their business,” he said gruffly.

“Don’t be angry with them, David. They mean well.”

“Everybody ought to mind their damned business,” he said, fighting against the rage he felt suddenly, inexplicably, rising within him. “The nurses, the reporters—”

“Reporters?”

For the second time that night, David cursed himself. He could hear the sudden panic in Joanna’s voice and he turned and looked at her.

“Don’t worry about them. I won’t let them get near you.”

“But why…” She stopped, then puffed out her breath. “Of course. They want to know about the accident, about me, because I’m Mrs. David Adams.”

“They won’t bother you, Joanna. Once I get you to Bright Meadows…”

“The doctors say I’ll have therapy at Bright Meadows.”

“Yes.”

“What kind of therapy?”

“I don’t know exactly. They have to evaluate you first.”

“Evaluate me?” she said with a quick smile.

“Look, the place is known throughout the country. The staff, the facilities, are all highly rated.”

Joanna ran the tip of her tongue across her lips. “I don’t need therapy,” she said brightly. “I just need to remember.”

“The therapy will help you do that.”

“How?” She tilted her head up. Her smile was brilliant, though he could see it wobble just a little. “There’s nothing wrong with me physically, David. Or mentally. I don’t need to go for walks on the arm of an aide or learn basket-weaving or—or lie on a couch while some doctor asks me silly questions about a childhood I can’t remember.”

David’s frown deepened. She was saying the same things he’d said when Bright Meadows had been recommended to him.

“Joanna’s not crazy,” he’d said bluntly, “and she’s not crippled.”

The doctors had agreed, but they’d pointed out that there really wasn’t anywhere else to send a woman with amnesia… unless, of course, Mr. Adams wished to take his wife home? She needed peaceful, stress-free surroundings and, at least temporarily, someone to watch out for her. Could a man who put in twelve-hour days provide that?

No, David had said, he could not. He had to devote himself to his career. He had a high-powered Wall Street firm to run and clients to deal with. Besides, though he didn’t say so to the doctors, he knew that he and Joanna could never endure too much time alone together.

There was no question but that Bright Meadows was the right place for Joanna. The doctors, and David, had agreed.

Had Joanna agreed, too? He was damned if he could remember.

“David?”

He looked at Joanna. She was smiling tremulously.

“Couldn’t I just…isn’t there someplace I could go that isn’t a hospital? A place I could stay, I mean, where maybe the things around me would jog my memory?”

“You need peace and quiet, Joanna. Our town house isn’t—”

She nodded and turned away, but not before he’d seen the glitter of tears in her eyes. She was crying. Quietly, with great dignity, but she was crying all the same.

“Joanna,” he said gently, “don’t.”

“I’m sorry.” She rose quickly and hurried to the window where she stood with her back to him. “Go on home, please, David. It’s late, and you’ve had a long day. The last thing you need on your hands is a woman who’s feeling sorry for herself.”

Had she always been so slight? His mental image of his wife was of a slender, tall woman with a straight back and straight shoulders, but the woman he saw at the window seemed small and painfully defenseless.

“Jo,” he said, and he started slowly toward her, “listen, everything’s going to be OK. I promise.”

She nodded. “Sure,” she said in a choked whisper.

He was standing just behind her now, close enough so that he could see the reddish glints in her black hair, so that he could almost convince himself he smelled the delicate scent of gardenia that had always risen from her skin until she’d changed to some more sophisticated scent.

“Joanna, if you don’t like Bright Meadows, we’ll find another place and—”

She spun toward him, her eyes bright with tears and with something else. Anger?

“Dammit, don’t talk to me as if I were a child!”

“I’m not. I’m just trying to reassure you. I’ll see to it you have the best of care. You know that.”

“I don’t know anything,” she said, her voice trembling not with self-pity but yes, definitely, with anger. “You just don’t understand, do you? You think, if you have them fix my hair and my face, and ship me my clothes and make me look like Joanna Adams, I’ll turn into Joanna Adams.”

“No,” David said quickly. “I mean, yes, in a way. I’m trying to help you be who you are.”

Joanna lifted her clenched fist and slammed it against his chest. David stumbled back, not from the blow which he’d hardly felt, but from shock. He couldn’t remember Joanna raising her voice, let alone her hand. Well, yes, there’d been that time after they were first married, when he’d been caught late at a dinner meeting and he hadn’t telephoned and she’d been frantic with worry by the time he came in at two in the morning…

“Damn you, David! I don’t know who I am! I don’t know this Joanna person.” She raised her hand again, this time to punctuate each of her next words with a finger poked into his chest. “And I certainly don’t know you!”

“What do you want to know? Ask and I’ll tell you.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “For starters, I’d like to know why I’m expected to believe I’m really your wife!”

David started to laugh, then stopped. She wasn’t joking. One look into her eyes was proof of that. They had gone from violet to a color that was almost black. Her hands were on her hips, her posture hostile. She looked furious, defiant…and incredibly beautiful.

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you mean, what am I talking about? I said it clearly enough, didn’t I? You say I’m your wife, but I don’t remember you. So why should I let you run my life?”

“Joanna, for heaven’s sake—”

“Can you prove that we’re married?”

David threw up his hands. “I don’t believe this!”

“Can you prove it, David?”

“Of course I can prove it! What would you like to see? Our marriage license? The cards we both signed and mailed out last Christmas? Dammit, of course we’re married. Why would I lie about such a thing?”

He wouldn’t. She knew that, deep down inside, but that had nothing to do with this. She was angry. She was furious. Let him try waking up in a hospital bed without knowing who he was, let him try having a stranger walk in and announce that as of that moment, all the important decisions of your life were being taken out of your hands.

But most of all, let him deal with the uncomfortable feeling that the person you were married to had been a stranger for a long, long time, not just since you’d awakened with a lump on your head and a terrible blankness

behind your eyes.