The Wilders. Mary J. Forbes

      She again caught the skepticism in his voice. Cradling her baby in the crook of her arm, Sara took the coat from him and drew it across her lap. She didn’t know why, but her hand shook as she dipped it into one pocket. Out came a pack of chewing gum and a set of car keys.

      “No note?” Cade asked.

      “Not here.” Turning the coat over, she felt inside the other pocket. Her fingers closed over something. She pulled out a folded scrap of paper.

      Opening it, she read aloud, “‘Sara—if there’s anything you should need—anything at all—contact Cade. He’ll take care of you.”’

      Relief came in a wave, washing over her. She didn’t realize until now how much she had doubted of what she knew.

      Handing the note to him, she said triumphantly, “Your name, address and phone number are listed, along with some directions from the interstate, but as I said, there’s no signature—”

      He made a strangled sound.

      “Cade?” Sara asked.

      All of her apprehension came back as she watched him study the note as if he were memorizing every pen stroke. It was the same way he’d looked at her—except she could see in that note he was finding recognition.

      “What is it, Cade?” Still he didn’t answer her, his whole stance seeming carved in stone, and Sara instinctively clutched her baby to her breast.

      When he finally moved, he did so with a speed that seemed fantastic, and at once had rounded the bed to the opposite bed stand. He picked up an envelope lying there. He tore into it, read its contents like one possessed.

      Before her eyes, he turned pale as a ghost, and rather than shocked, as earlier, he looked utterly horrified.

      “Cade, tell me, please!” Sara cried.

      In two strides he was at her side. He practically shoved the envelope into her hand. His own closed around the sheets of writing it had contained, crushing them.

      The envelope looked as if it had been handled tens of times, even though the postmark was only half a week old.

      Then she saw what Cade obviously had: the envelope was addressed to him in the exact same handwriting as her note. The return address said “McGivern, Albuquerque, New Mexico.”

      Meeting his gaze, Sara shook her head. “This is from…your brother?”

      “Yes. My brother—Loren.” He watched her closely, obviously looking for some sign from her, but the name meant nothing to her.

      “So I must know your brother, well enough that he’d give me your name in case of an emergency. He never mentioned that to you?”

      “Funny, but it never seemed to’ve come up. Of course, this letter is the first contact I’ve had from him in seven years,” Cade answered.

      He seemed to have distanced himself from her, was more like the cynical man she’d first encountered. Except now she knew what lay behind that hard exterior of his, and she couldn’t go back.

      “Is that what’s wrong, Cade? You and your brother are estranged?” she pressed. “Was there some sort of falling out?”

      He gave a mirthless laugh that she didn’t care for, not at all. “Oh, definitely. But now Loren writes to tell me he remarried some months ago, that his new wife is pregnant with his first child. And once that child is born, he doesn’t want him not to know his only uncle.”

      Foreboding crept over Sara. Strange she should have any kind of presentiment when she remembered nothing of the past. Wouldn’t it have to be rooted in some event she remembered as already happening in her life?

      But something had happened. As short as it was, she did have a past she remembered: she and Cade had shared the experience of her son’s birth. And she couldn’t go back to before.

      She wanted to remind him of their pact to focus on this moment and not let either the past or the future stop them from living this moment to the fullest. She wanted to remind him of how he himself had allayed her fears with his own vow that still rang in her ears: Wherever both of you came from, you and your baby, you’re here now—in my house, in my bed, right where you need to be. For now, you belong here, with me. And I won’t let you down.

      It had meant so much to her, kept her hanging on through the worst of the pain and fear. Oh, was she about to lose that, too?

      She couldn’t!

      Sara put a hand to her head, it was spinning so. She felt as if she were trapped and struggling in a quagmire of all the unknowns in her life, both past and to come. Maybe that was why she clung so desperately to the certainty of the here and now. Clung so desperately to Cade.

      She didn’t want to ask her next question, but she knew she had to. Knew—because Cade knew the answer, and it would kill him not to say so. She owed him more than that.

      “Your brother, Loren.” The name felt heavy on her tongue. But definitely not unfamiliar. “His wife…?”

      Sara made herself lift her eyes to meet his, and wished she hadn’t. Memory or no, she had never seen a man look so bleak.

      “My brother’s wife’s name,” he said, “is Sara.”