“I think I get what you mean. So maybe the fire—the shock of it—is responsible for my amnesia. And maybe my parents haven’t shown up to claim me because… they’re dead, burned to death.”
Carol took the girl’s hand. “Don’t worry about it now, honey. I may be all wrong. I probably am. But I think it’s a possibility you ought to be prepared for.”
The girl bit her lip, nodded. “The idea scares me a little. But I don’t exactly feel sad. I mean, I don’t remember my folks at all, so losing them would almost be like losing strangers.”
Behind them, the driver of a green Datsun blew his horn.
The light had changed. Carol let go of the girl’s hand and touched the accelerator. “We’ll probe into the fire during tomorrow’s session.”
“You still think I am Laura Havenswood?”
“Well, for the time being, we’ll keep calling you Jane. But I don’t see why you’d come up with the name Laura if it wasn’t yours.”.
“The identity didn’t check out,” the girl reminded her.
Carol shook her head. “That’s not exactly true. We haven’t proved or disproved the Havenswood identity. All we know for sure is that you never lived in Shippensburg. But you must have been there at least once because the farm exists; you’ve seen it, if only in passing. Apparently, even under hypnosis, even regressed beyond the onset of your amnesia, your memories are tangled. I don’t know how that’s possible or why. I’ve never encountered anything quite like it. But we’ll work hard at untangling them for you. The problem might lie in the questions I asked and the way I asked them. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
They rode in silence for a moment, and then the girl said, “I half hope we don’t get things untangled too quickly. Ever since you told me about your cabin in the mountains, I’ve really been looking forward to going up there.”
“Oh, you’ll get to go. Don’t worry about that. We’re leaving on Friday, and even if tomorrow’s session goes well, we won’t be able to untangle this Laura Havenswood thing that fast. I warned you, this could be a slow, complicated, frustrating process. I’m surprised we made any progress at all today, and I’ll be twice as surprised if we make even half as much headway tomorrow.”
“I guess you’ll be stuck with me for a while.”
Carol sighed and pretended weariness. “Looks that way. Oh, you’re such a terrible, terrible, terrible burden. You’re just too much to bear.” She took one hand off the steering wheel long enough to clutch her heart in a melodramatic gesture that made Jane giggle. “Too much! Oh, oh!”
“You know what?” the girl asked.
“What?”
“I like you, too.”
They looked at each other and grinned.
At the next red light, Jane said, “I’ve got a feeling about the mountains.”
“What’s that?”
“I have this strong feeling that it’s going to be a lot of fun up there. Really exciting. Something special. A real adventure.” Her blue eyes were even brighter than usual.
After dinner, Paul suggested they play Scrabble. He set up the board on the game table in the family room, while Carol explained the rules to Jane, who couldn’t remember whether or not she had ever played it before.
After winning the starting lottery, Jane went first with a twenty-two-point word that took advantage of a double-count square and the automatic double score for the first word of the game.
BLADE
“Not a bad start,” Paul said. He hoped the girl would win, because she got such a kick out of little things like that. The smallest compliment, the most modest triumph delighted her. But he wasn’t going to throw the game just to please her; she would have to earn it, by God. He was incapable of giving the match away to anyone; regardless of the kind of game he was playing, he always put as much effort and commitment into it as he put into his work. He didn’t indulge in leisure activities; he attacked them. To Jane, he said, “I have a hunch you’re the kind of kid who says she’s never played poker before—and quickly proceeds to win every pot in the game.”