The Second Mrs. Adams

Morgana, who knew him as well as anyone except his wife, sensed his unhappiness and tried to help.

“You mustn’t be so possessive,” she told him gently. “A woman needs room to grow, especially one as young as Joanna.”

So he backed off, gave her room. But it didn’t help. The gap between them became a chasm. Joanna gave up pretending she liked the country at all. She begged off lazy weekend drives and quiet evenings by the fire. She hinted, then straight out told him she preferred the luxury of their Manhattan town house, and before David knew what was happening, the town house was crammed with ugly furniture and his life was governed by the entries in his wife’s calendar.

The girl he’d fallen in love with had changed into a woman he didn’t like.

Joanna traded denim and flannel for cashmere and silk. She scorned hamburgers grilled over an open fire in favor of filet mignon served on bone china in chic restaurants.

And she’d made it clear she preferred her morning coffee brought to her bedside by a properly garbed servant, not by a husband wearing a towel around his middle, especially if that husband was liable to want to sweeten the coffee with kisses instead of sugar.

David’s hands tightened on the steering wheel of the Jaguar. That had been the most painful realization of all, that his passionate bride had turned into a woman who lay cold in his arms, suffering his kisses and caresses with all the stoicism of a Victorian martyr.

Had she worn a mask all along, just to win him? Or had his status and his money changed her into a different person?

After a while, he’d stopped touching her. Or wanting her. He’d made a mistake, and he’d fix it.

Divorce seemed the only solution…

Until last night, when his kisses had rekindled the fire they’d once known and she’d burned like a flame in his arms.

Was that why he’d suddenly decided on coming here this weekend? Not in hopes of jarring her memory, as he’d claimed, but because…

No. Hell, no. He wasn’t going to make love to Joanna, not this weekend or any other. He’d brought her to Connecticut because she’d had another of those all-too-swift flashes of memory, and they’d all been connected to this house.

The sooner she remembered, the better. The sooner he could give up his sham of a marriage and get on with his life—

“We’ll be there soon, won’t we?”

Joanna’s voice was soft and hesitant. David looked at her. She was staring straight ahead. The sun was shining on her hair, making it gleam with iridescence.

“Just another few miles,” he said. “Why? Do things seem familiar?”

She shook her head. “No. I just had the feeling that we were coming close… What a pretty road this is.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I like the stone walls we keep passing. Are they very old?”

“Most of them date back to Colonial times. Farmers built them with the stones they cleared from the land as they plowed.”

“So many stones… It must have been hard land to cultivate.”

“They still say that stone’s the only crop that grows well in New England.”

She smiled. “I can believe it.”

I can’t, David thought. We’re talking like two characters in a travelog.

“What kind of house is it?”

So much for travelogs. That was the same question she’d asked the first time he’d brought her here, and in that same soft, eager voice. He remembered how he’d smiled and reached for her hand.

“A house I hope you’ll love as much as I do,” he’d said.

This time, he knew enough not to smile or to touch her, and the only thing he hoped was that this weekend would end her amnesia and his charade.

“It’s an old house,” he said, and launched into the safety of the travelog script again. “The main section was built in the 1760’s by a fairly prosperous farmer named Uriah Scott. His son, Joseph, added another wing when he inherited the house in the 1790’s and each succeeding generation of Scotts added on and modernized the place.”

“The house stayed in the Scott family, then?” Joanna sighed. “How nice. All those generations, sharing the same dreams…that must be wonderful.”

David looked sharply at his wife. She had said that the first time, too, and just as wistfully. The remark had seemed poignant then, coming from a girl who’d been raised by a widowed father who’d cared more for his whiskey than he had for her; it had made him want to give her all the love she’d ever missed…

What a damned fool he’d been!

“Don’t romanticize the story, Joanna,” he said with a hollow smile. He glanced into his mirror, then made a turn onto the winding dirt road that led to the house. “Old houses are a pain in the ass. The floors sag, the heating systems never work right no matter what you do to them, there are spiders in the attic and mice in the cellar—”

“Is that it?”

He looked at the white clapboard house with the black shutters, standing on the gentle rise at the top of the hill. It was a small house, compared to the newer ones they’d passed along the way; it looked lonely and a bit weary against the pale Spring sky. The winter had been harsher than usual; the trim would need to be painted as soon as it got a bit warmer and he could see that the winter storms had worked a couple of the slate roof tiles loose.

A bitter taste rose in his mouth.

What had he ever thought he’d seen in this place to have made it magical?

“Yes,” he said, “that’s it. I’m sorry if you expected something more but—”

“Something more? Oh, David, what more could there be? It’s beautiful!”

What in hell was this, a game of déjà vu? That was another thing she’d said the first time they’d come here. Later on, he’d realized that it had all been said to please him.

He prided himself on being a man you could only fool once. He swung toward her, a curt retort on his lips, but it died, unspoken, when he saw the enraptured expression on her face.

“Do you really like it?” he heard himself say.

Joanna nodded. “Oh, yes,” she whispered, “I do. It’s perfect.”

And familiar.

She didn’t say that, though she thought it. It was far too soon to know if this weekend would jog her memory and there was no point in getting David’s hopes up, nor even her own. And she sensed that he was having second thoughts about having brought her here. She was having second thoughts, herself. If she didn’t begin to remember after this weekend the disappointment would be almost too much to bear.

“Jo?”

She blinked and looked up. David had parked the car and gotten out. Now, he was standing in the open door, holding out his hand.

“Shall we go inside?”

She looked into his eyes. They were cool and guarded. She had the feeling that he was hoping she’d say no and ask him to turn around and go back to the city. But she’d come too far to lose her courage now.

“Yes,” she said quickly, “yes, please, let’s go inside.”

* * *

David wasn’t sure what he expected once Joanna stepped inside the door.

Would she clap her hand to her forehead and say, “I remember”? Or would she take one look at the small rooms and the old-fashioned amenities and say that she didn’t remember and now could they please go home?

She did neither.

Instead, just as she had all those years ago, she almost danced through the rooms, exclaiming with delight over the wide-planked floors and the windows with their original, hand-blown glass; she sighed over the banister he’d once spent a weekend sanding and varnishing to satin smoothness.

He’d made an early morning phone call to the couple who were his caretakers and he could see that they’d stopped by. The furniture was dusted, the windows opened. There was a pot of coffee waiting to be brewed on the stove and a basket of home-baked bread on the maple table he’d built. A jar of homemade strawberry jam stood alongside and there was a bowl of fre

sh eggs, butter and a small pitcher of thick cream in the refrigerator.

Joanna said it was all wonderful, especially the fireplaces and the hand pump on the back porch. But she added, with a happy laugh, that she was glad to see there was a modern gas range and real running water and a fully stocked freezer because she wasn’t that much of a stickler for the good old days.

And suddenly David thought, but these were the good old days. This woman bent over the pump, inelegantly and incongruously attired in a pale gray cashmere sweater, trendy black nylon exercise pants and running shoes… “It’s the only comfortable stuff I could find,” she’d explained with a little laugh, when she’d reappeared that morning…this woman, with her hair hanging down her back and her face free of makeup, was everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d thought he’d found when he’d found Joanna.

Dammit, what was wrong with him?

He muttered a short, sharp epithet and Joanna swung toward him.

“What’s the matter, David?”

“Nothing.”

“But you just said—”

“I, ah, I saw a mouse, that’s all.”

“A mouse? Where?”

“It ran out from under the sink. Don’t worry about it. There are probably some traps in the barn out back. I’ll set some out later.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’m not—”

“I’ll show you upstairs,” he said brusquely. “You didn’t get much sleep last night, Joanna, and this trip has probably been tiring. I think it might be a good idea for you to take a nap.”