Because You're Mine(70)

He glanced at the scene outside again. Why hadn’t Barry sent the workers away? This was hardly the morning to be working on a construction project, not after Richard’s death last night.

He quickly showered and dressed, then went downstairs. The group was eating cereal in the dining room. The heavy curtains were still pulled, and no one had turned on any lights. There was barely enough light to see their bowls.

“Good morning,” he said.

His gaze found Alanna at the end of the table. She glanced at him, and a flush stained her cheeks before she looked away. Was she remembering last night’s kiss too? He could think of little else.

Ena mumbled good morning, as did the other women. Grady nodded and shoveled another bite of cereal into his mouth. His skin was pale under the blotchiness on his cheeks. Jesse remembered Richard was his father, too, though he’d seen no evidence of a close relationship.

Jesse couldn’t stand the gloom. He flipped on the chandelier over the table. Everyone blinked at the sudden illumination. Grady winced and hunched his shoulders. Jesse wanted to tell the man he was sorry for his loss, but he thought the attention would bother Grady.

“Are we practicing?” he asked.

“No practice today,” Fiona said. “Out of respect.”

“Of course. The family needs space.” He glanced at Alanna and found her staring at him. She quickly averted her gaze. “So what are you all going to do today?”

“I thought I’d go shopping,” Fiona said. “I need some supplies for my jewelry. Then Ciara and I thought we’d look for costumes for the tour.”

Ena glanced at Grady. “I’ll be hanging out here.” She sent a comforting smile Grady’s direction when he looked her way.

“I’ve got a-an errand to run,” Alanna said. She rose and carried her bowl toward the back door. He could see her through the window feeding an old mutt. So like her.

Jesse wanted to follow her, but he didn’t dare. She might order him to leave, and he wasn’t ready to do that. “Can you drop me in the city?” he asked Ciara.

She nodded. “At your parents’?”

“Sure, that’d be great.” He could borrow his mother’s car today. He’d need to buy his own soon, but his savings was dwindling fast. The money from the tour would help replenish it.

Alanna avoided him, or so it seemed, until he climbed into the van with the other girls. He had to find out more information about who he was today, but he wasn’t sure where to start. Ciara dropped him at the curb outside his parents’ home. He waved good-bye and went inside, where he found his mother doing laundry.

She handed over her car keys without question, then poured him a glass of iced tea and forced some cookies on him in the kitchen.

“Who knew me best before the explosion?” he asked. “Other than you and dad.”

Her brown eyes, so like his own, held worry as she studied him. “Jesse, you’ve got to quit pushing. Your memory will come back when it’s ready to come back.”

“I can’t wait that long. I want to find out who Jesse Hawthorne really is. I didn’t much care for the man who harassed a fellow worker. Is there more nasty stuff in my background I don’t know about?”

“Of course not,” she said, not meeting his gaze.

“Mom? What else is there?”

She rose and carried the pitcher of tea back to the fridge. “There’s nothing else, Jesse. You’re looking for trouble where none exists.”

He’d have to find out the information from someone else. Many friends had stopped by to see him after the bomb incident, but their names and faces were a blur now, and the visits had stopped when they realized he didn’t know them. He knew where to find the list though. His mother had kept a notebook with the names of all his visitors. It was in his room.

“Thanks for letting me borrow the car.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead, then went upstairs to his room, a stranger’s living space.

He’d once been at home in this room. Pictures of him at football games covered one wall. He didn’t remember any of these scenes: prom with a girl he didn’t know, football games where he laughed triumphantly into the camera, a party scene where he lifted high a mug of beer. He despised the expression of entitlement he wore in many of the pictures.

The bedroom decor was what one would expect in a college dorm. A twin bed with a Stingrays bedspread. Other hockey memorabilia covered the dresser. A Stingrays throw was over the easy chair in the corner. Hockey was a totally foreign sport to him now. Did he even like the game?

He sighed and went to the closet where he riffled through the stack of photograph albums and scrapbooks his parents had collected for him from his condo after the explosion. The doctors thought looking through the stuff would help his memory, but it hadn’t worked then. Maybe it would now.

The notebook he sought was about halfway down. He grabbed it and the address book under it, then went to the garage. If he stayed here to go through the books, his mother would want to know what he was doing.

He backed out of the garage, then drove to the Battery. He parked and walked along the grassy park area where the two rivers converged. The sunshine warmed his arms and lifted his spirits. The breeze brought the scent of water to his nose.

He sat on the seawall and listened to the cry of the gulls for a moment before he began to flip through the notebook. Two names appeared over and over in the early days: Mark Holmes and Ginny Smith.