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With her skin becoming clammy and her heart pounding in her chest she said, “You want me to tell her I’m not her mother?”
“Yes. It’s the only way she’s going to accept that her mother is gone. She won’t listen to me.”
“But you’re her father.” Her legs grew weak beneath her and she reached for the desk to steady herself. “Surely she trusts you to tell her the truth?”
“It’s been a while since I saw her mother.”
She frowned. “But you do remember what she looked like?”
“Yes. She looked very much like you.”
The room began to spin and Adam’s voice grew fainter in her ears.
“That’s why I stared at you the way I did earlier this morning. For a moment, I thought you were Christie. I…”
Faith didn’t hear the rest of what he said because she was falling into darkness.
As she gradually regained consciousness, she heard a man’s voice calling her name. When she opened her eyes, Adam Novak and Mrs. Carmichael were at her side looking very anxious.
“Do you think we should take her to the E.R.?” the older woman asked Adam.
“No, I think she’s coming around,” he answered.
Faith’s first attempt at speaking resulted in silence. She wanted to tell them she was okay, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get the words out.
“I’ll get a glass of water,” Mrs. Carmichael said before disappearing from the room.
As Faith tried to raise herself up, Adam lent her his arm. He felt solid and steady as she used it as a lever.
“Take it slow,” he warned, sliding his other arm around her.
She was tempted to sink back against him. He smelled good—like the forest after a rain—and he was looking at her as if she were a delicate piece of china that might break. A pleasant sensation rippled through her as she caught the look in his eyes.
“I’m okay,” she said, scrambling to her feet and away from his touch.
“You’d better sit for a few minutes,” he said, pushing a chair toward her.
Her legs still wobbly, she did as he suggested. When he hovered over her she said, “You don’t need to worry. I’m not going to do that again.”
“Maybe you should go to the E.R. and have a doctor look at you,” he suggested.
“I live with a doctor. I’ll tell him about it when I get home,” she told him, straightening her smock.
“How are you getting home? I don’t think you should travel alone.”
“I’ll be fine.” She wished he’d quit looking at her with those dark eyes of his.
Mrs. Carmichael returned with a glass of water, which Faith downed in one gulp.
“I don’t think you should go home unescorted.” Mrs. Carmichael echoed what Adam had said. “I’m going to call Dr. Carson to come pick you up.”
Faith didn’t protest, thinking it might be a good idea to talk to the doctor about what she’d just learned. While Mrs. Carmichael was on the phone, she turned to Adam.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I should visit Megan just yet,” she told him.
“No, of course not. You need to go home and take care of yourself. I would like to get this all taken care of before much longer, however. We need to put a stop to this fantasy she has that you’re her mother.”
She shook her head. “That might not be possible.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
Faith took a deep breath and said, “Because there’s a possibility I am her mother.”
ADAM STARED AT FAITH in disbelief. Either she hadn’t heard a word he had said or she truly was ill. He looked at her pale cheeks and her troubled eyes. “I think maybe you should get checked out in the E.R.”
“I told you I’m okay,” she insisted.
“Do you realize what you just said?”
She nodded. “I think I might be this Christie person.”
“No, you most definitely are not,” he stated emphatically. She didn’t look confused and he found his patience dwindling. “Are you playing some kind of game with me?”
“No. I’m just trying to tell you the truth.” There was a vulnerability about her that made it difficult for him to be suspicious of her, yet he didn’t understand what she was hoping to accomplish by saying that she might be Megan’s mother.
He reached for the other chair in the office and sat down in front of her. “Tell me why you would make such a statement.”
“A little over three weeks ago a doctor and his wife were traveling along Highway 52 just south of the cities when they saw me lying on the side of the road. I was unconscious and looked as if I’d been beaten,” she began. “Thanks to the kindness of Dr. Carson and his wife and the excellent medical attention I received, I regained consciousness and most of my injuries are healed. My hair covers the scar on my scalp.” She removed her smock and pushed back the sleeves of her shirt to show him her arms. “These are almost gone now, but you can still see where I was bruised.”
A shudder echoed through him at the sight of the areas of discoloration. It angered him to think that someone had assaulted her and left her to die on a roadside.
“I’m sorry. I hope they caught who did this to you.”
She shook her head and he felt a rush of emotion at the injustice. As she lowered her sleeves, he realized that there was another significant difference between her and Christie. Faith had larger breasts.
When she noticed where his eyes were focused she blushed. That was something Christie wouldn’t have done. As an exotic dancer she’d enjoyed the looks men cast her way.
Not wanting to make Faith uncomfortable, he asked, “Do you have any permanent damage?”
“One part of me didn’t recover,” she said. “For some reason—they think either a blow to my head or some other trauma—I’ve forgotten everything that happened prior to that night.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying you have amnesia?”
“The doctors say it’s retrograde, meaning I can’t remember anything of my past that took place before the accident, but I do remember everything that has happened since then,” she explained. “So what I was doing or where I was living…” She shrugged. “I just don’t know what that was…or where I was…or with whom.”
Adam found himself at a loss for words. He stared at her, thinking that she was putting two and two together and coming up with five. Even if she did have amnesia and even if she did look like Christie, it didn’t mean she was Megan’s mother. Mentally he noted the differences in the two women. The voice. The clothing. The jewelry. The figure.
“Because you can’t remember who you are does not make you Christie Anderson,” he stated firmly, as much for her sake as for his.
“But I could be,” she said with a spark of hope in her eyes.
“No, you’re not Christie. She died, Faith.” He kept his voice firm and deliberate. “Six months ago while sailing her small boat. The St. Louis County coroner signed her death certificate.”
“You said they never found her body,” she reminded him.
“Because they don’t find any bodies in Lake Superior.” His voice rose as his frustration increased. He didn’t want to believe any of what she suggested could be true, nor did he want to remember that only a few hours ago he’d wondered about the very same possibility.
“But you have to admit that theoretically speaking, she could be alive,” Faith persisted.
“I don’t want to speak theoretically.” He was a man who worked with facts and figures. His world was concrete. “It isn’t good enough for my daughter. Theories could break her heart so badly that I’m not sure the damage could ever be repaired. Until we sort this out, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t see Megan.”
“I don’t want to hurt Megan, but you can’t expect me not to be curious about my identity. Until today, not a single person has recognized me. You’re the first one who has said I remind him of somebody else.”
“You do look like someone I once knew, but there’s a difference between resembling someone and actually being that person,” he argued.
She cocked her head to one side. “You said you hadn’t seen Christie in a while. Can you honestly look at me and be one-hundred-percent positive I’m not her?”
He wanted to say yes, but the truth was, he did have a nagging sliver of doubt. He didn’t want it to be there, but it was. It was why he said, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll contact the attorneys who handled Christie’s estate and get their advice on this matter. Does that sound fair to you?”
She nodded. “It won’t take long?”
“No. I’ll do it today.”
“All right,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’d better get my coat. Dr. Carson should be here any minute.”
He nodded. “Before you go, can I ask you a couple of quick questions?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“How do you know your name is Faith if you can’t remember who you are?”
“The night I was found I had no identification on me, only a braided leather bracelet with the name Faith on it.” She pulled back the cuff of her sleeve and showed him her wrist. Hand painted in pink were the letters F-A-I-T-H. “Everyone assumed it’s my name.”
“It could have religious significance,” he suggested.
She ran a finger over the narrow band of leather. “It could, but it’s a lovely name, don’t you think?”
She looked up shyly at him with those blue eyes and he was charmed by her innocence. “Yes, it’s lovely,” he answered, thinking more of her face than her name.
“You have another question?”
“How is it that you ended up working here at the hospital?”
“The doctor who found me on the side of the road used to be on staff here. He suggested I do volunteer work until my memory returns. I earn my room and board by helping his wife out around the house.”
“I see. Then you don’t know what your occupation is?”
She shook her head. “What did Christie do for a living?”
“She was a dancer.” He didn’t think she needed to know about the exotic part. At least not yet.
She thought for a moment, her eyes narrowing and her lips pursing. Then she said, “I don’t think I know how to dance.”
He looked her up and down one more time and thought he’d like to see her try.
AS HE HAD the previous night, Adam decided to sleep at the hospital in Megan’s room. Not that he expected to get much rest. They’d wheeled in the same uncomfortable convertible chair he’d used the night before and Megan still had a monitor next to her bed beeping intermittently.
However, it wasn’t his physical discomfort or the hospital distractions that kept him awake. It was the relentless stream of thoughts racing through his mind. He couldn’t stop thinking about Faith and the startling information she’d told him.
As soon as he’d arrived at home he’d pulled out Megan’s photo albums to see how closely Faith resembled Christie. As much as he wanted to say they weren’t the same person, the snapshots of Megan’s mother could have been pictures of Faith.
It was too preposterous to even contemplate that the two women were one and the same, yet it was exactly what he did think about as he tried to get to sleep. All the logic in the world couldn’t keep him from concocting the most absurd reasons for Christie to have faked her own death and disappeared from the lives of those she loved.
It didn’t matter that as soon as he’d left the day-care center he had phoned the attorney who had handled Christie’s estate and had been told the chances of her surviving the drowning were slim to none. Everything the lawyer said should have convinced Adam that Faith wasn’t Megan’s mother. It should have, but it didn’t because Adam had seen and spoken to Faith. The attorney hadn’t.
“If this woman has only had amnesia for the past few weeks, how could she be Christie?” the lawyer had asked. “The accident happened last September. Where would she have been for over five months and why wouldn’t she have contacted Megan?”
Adam could have given him one of the farfetched scenarios he had come up with, but he knew he would only sound like someone who’d watched one too many B movies. Besides, they were rhetorical questions that the lawyer didn’t expect Adam to answer.
“Everyone in town knew Christie loved Megan,” the attorney had reasoned. “It would take a lot for you to convince me she would ever abandon her own daughter. She wasn’t that kind of person.”
Adam wished he could state with the same confidence as the attorney that he knew what Christie would or wouldn’t have done, but the truth was he hadn’t spent enough time with her to get to know her at all. They’d spent one night together. Less than twelve hours. It had been enough time to make a baby, but not enough time to discover who she was. Most of what he knew he’d learned after her death from a lawyer and a six-year-old.
His thoughts returned to the night they’d met. He’d followed her out of the bachelor party calling after her, “Hey, it’s a great night for a cruise down the St. Croix. I’ve got a yacht if you want to go.”
That had raised an eyebrow on her pretty face. “A yacht?”
She hadn’t believed him, but then why would she? Not many college students had a boat moored at Marine on St. Croix. “I designed it myself,” he’d boasted, then had proceeded to use the same words he’d heard his grandfather use to lure customers at boat shows.
It had worked. She’d said she would go with him to see his boat on one condition—that they take her car. He hadn’t argued and within minutes they’d been on their way to the marina.
Once there, he discovered she knew more about boats than any other woman he’d dated. That was because she’d grown up in the small town of Silver Bay on Lake Superior where her father had been the captain of an iron-ore freighter and her brother had been in the merchant marine. She’d told him that she planned to return to the North Shore once she got her life back on track. Adam had wanted to know why it had gone off track, but she’d said it wasn’t important how it happened. All that mattered was that she was now going in the right direction.
When he’d questioned whether stripping was the right direction, she’d told him that it was the best way to make a lot of money in a short amount of time. “Not all of us are born with a silver spoon in our mouths,” she’d said in a derisive tone.
Then he’d been the one on the defensive, making sure that she knew he wasn’t some rich kid who’d taken her to his father’s yacht. He’d given her a brief history of Novak Boats, emphasizing that it was only because of hard work and long hours that it was a success.
He’d never had a problem charming women and this time was no different. She’d spent the night with him and the following morning he’d awakened with a hangover and the realization that he was alone on the yacht. She’d gone, leaving nothing behind except a small scrap of paper with her phone number on it.
He hadn’t called her. After his friend’s wedding, he’d left for a summer internship in California and gotten busy with life. He hadn’t thought of Christie again, until the lawyer had called with the news that she’d named him as Megan’s guardian in her will.
They were memories Adam thought he had buried in the back of his mind. He’d brought them out briefly when he’d learned of Christie’s death, but he’d had no trouble returning them to their rightful place. Now that he’d met Faith, they’d resurfaced again and were refusing to be put away.
And he doubted he would be able to put them back in their place until he had proof that Christie and Faith were not the same person. For his peace of mind as well as his daughter’s, he needed to know the truth. The attorney said there were two alternatives he could pursue. One was to contact Christie’s brother, Tom, and have him come to St. Paul and meet Faith. Unfortunately Megan’s uncle had been called out of town and would be gone for at least six weeks, so Adam knew he would have to use the second method. A DNA test.
Adam was familiar with DNA testing. When he’d been notified that he was Megan’s father, his own attorney had recommended he be tested to make sure what Christie had stated in her will was true, that he was Megan’s father. His DNA had been a match.
Now a lab test could be used to see if Faith was Christie—and Megan’s mother. With a simple swab of the inside of a cheek the relationship between a child and her parents could either be established or denied. All Adam had to do was convince Faith to take the test and wait three to five days to get the results.
