The Stranger and Tessa Jones. Christine Rimmer

least, none I can remember.”

      She gazed at him so intently. “It’ll come back, your memory. In time. You’ll see.”

      He liked her simple faith in positive outcomes. She made him think of those bumper stickers that commanded, Expect a miracle. Only she was the miracle.

      “A bath,” he said again. “Please.”

      “All right. If you really think you have to…”

      She gave him a stack of stuff to take in there with him: the sweats, the socks, a toothbrush, toothpaste. “There are clean towels on the rack and shampoo and soap in the cabinet.” She even offered one of her pink disposable razors and a can of feminine shaving cream. He took it all with a grateful smile.

      Once the tub was full, he sank into it with a long sigh, careful to keep his bandaged knees above the water. He could have stayed in there forever, soaking his aches and pains away. But his stomach kept complaining. He needed food. So he washed and got out and shaved with the razor she’d given him, lathering with her shave cream that smelled like tropical flowers. He brushed his teeth and put on the sweats, which fit well enough, although given a choice, he would have gone for something that wasn’t light purple. The socks—whoever they’d once belonged to—were thick and warm.

      And the bandage on his forehead was coming loose. He pried it off the rest of the way and studied the injury in the medicine cabinet mirror. It wasn’t pretty. It also wasn’t bleeding anymore, so he figured he’d just go without a bandage for now.

      In the kitchen, she told him he looked fabulous in lilac. She took his boxers to wash, disappearing downstairs to start a load. When she came back up, she checked the wound and agreed it was probably okay to leave it uncovered. She gave him half a roast beef sandwich. He wolfed it down and she passed him the other half. And an apple. And a tall glass of milk.

      By then, he was tired again. But he was also enjoying himself. A lot. He was warm and his stomach was full. His headache seemed to have taken a break. Sitting there with her at her kitchen table…well, he couldn’t think of anywhere else he would rather be.

      True, he didn’t have a lot to compare the moment to, given that he couldn’t recall being very many places: the highway known as 49, the town called North Magdalene and this small, plain house of hers. They were his whole life, as of now. They were all he knew, all he’d ever known.

      It was damn scary.

      But when he looked across the table at her, all he could think was that he never would have met her—if whatever had happened to him hadn’t happened. That seemed impossible, not to have met Tessa Jones. Impossible and wrong.

      From where he sat, he could see most of her great room. The bulldog was asleep on a rag rug a few feet from the woodstove. There was a white cat on the sofa. An old-fashioned clock on the rough mantel over the stove chimed midnight, softly. He’d known her for almost twelve hours. It was forever. It was his whole life.

      She left him to go down to the basement and move the load of laundry to the dryer.

      “You’re drooping in that chair,” she said, when she came back up.

      “Sit down.”

      She shook her head, but she did sit.

      He asked, “What’s the dog’s name?”

      “Mona Lou.”

      “And the cat?”

      “Gigi.”

      “Tell me about your family.”

      “Bill, did you hear me? You should go back to bed.”

      “I will. In a while. Are your parents still alive?”

      “Yes.”

      “Still married?”

      She shook her head. “My mom lives in Arkansas. My dad’s still here, in North Magdalene. He got married again when I was twelve, to Miss Regina Black. Gina was what they used to call a spinster in the old days. She was in her thirties when my dad swept her off her feet. They eloped to Reno. We were living in Arkansas then, but when my dad and Gina married, my mom let us come back home and live with them.”

      “Us?”

      “I have a sister, Marnie. She’s three years younger than me.”

      “Tall and blonde like you?”

      “Not so tall. Brown hair. Completely different personality.”

      “Different, how?”

      “Come on. I know you’re tired…”

      He didn’t budge. “Uh-uh. I want to hear about your sister. How’s she different from you?”

      She gave him a long look of disapproval. But in the end, she did answer his question. “Marnie was a crazy and wild little tomboy with a bad attitude when she was a kid.”

      “You were the good sister?”

      “Too good.”

      “No.”

      “Yeah. Too good. Seriously. We were always fighting, back then, Marnie and me. But since we’ve grown up, we get along fine. She lives with her boyfriend, Mark, now. In Santa Barbara. Mark and Marnie have been best friends since they were kids. Mark’s dad is Lucas Drury. He’s a bestselling author. Writes horror stories? And Lucas is now married to my cousin, Heather. But Lucas had Mark by his first wife.” She laughed. “Like I said before, it’s a small town. A girl can’t turn around without running into a relative.”

      He liked listening to her talk and he liked hearing about her family. “And you get along okay, then, with your stepmother?”

      “Gina? I love her. We all love her. My dad was a mess before he got together with her. He was troubled and wild, like most of the men in my family. He drank too much and went out with a woman named Chloe Swan. Big trouble, that Chloe. Once she even shot him.”

      He laughed. “You’re not serious.”

      “Oh, I am. She was trying to shoot Gina, actually. But my dad got in the way.”

      “He took a bullet for your stepmother?”

      “Yeah. That’s love for you, huh?”

      “But he recovered?”

      “Fully. And Chloe went to prison for a few years. Since she got out, she’s had the good sense to leave my dad alone. Guess she finally figured out that Gina is the only woman for Patrick Jones. With Gina, my dad found out how to be happy. With Gina, we all