Кей Хупер - Hiding in the Shadows

Before Kane could ask what she was doing, she picked up the phone and placed a call to the women's clinic. It took several minutes of talking her way patiently past a couple of staff members and then her personal doctor's answering service, but she finally reached her doctor. She made an office appointment for the following day.

Kane said when she hung up, "So she'll see you tomorrow?"

Faith nodded. "And have all my records ready so she can fill me in on my life — the medical part of it, at least. She wasn't surprised about the accident, although she didn't say how she'd heard about it."

Kane nodded and gathered up all the notes and the police report they had been going over earlier. He saw her turn another few pages of the address book and frown down at an entry. "Find something?"

She shook her head half-consciously. "I'm not sure. In the in case of emergency section, there's an address and a phone number, but nothing to identify who or what it is."

"Local number?"

"There's no area code." She met his gaze, then picked up the phone. "One way to find out."

It rang three times before a brisk, female voice on the other end announced, "Haven House."

The name meant nothing to her, but given where she'd found the number, Faith thought surely someone there would recognize her name. So, tentatively, she said, "This is Faith Parker."

There was a moment of silence, then the woman exclaimed in surprise,

"Faith? The last we heard, you were still in a coma."

Faith didn't state the obvious. Instead, she said, "I just came home this past week."

"And you're okay? I mean..."

Faith barely hesitated. "I'm fine physically, but I seem to be having some memory problems. Forgive me, but I don't remember who you are."

"This is Karen." The answer came readily enough, but wariness had crept into that brisk tone.

Faith jotted the name down on her legal pad. "So we knew ... know each other?"

"Of course. You probably spent more time here than in your own apartment up until the last few months. We always kept a bed ready for you, in case you wanted to stay."

Puzzled, Faith said, "I'm afraid I don't understand. Just what's Haven house?" She was thinking that perhaps it was a bed-and-breakfast, something like that.

The truth came as a definite surprise.

"It's a shelter," Karen replied, even more wary now. "A shelter for abused women."

Faith added that information to her notes automatically, and it was only as she watched her pen moving across the page that she realized she was writing with her right hand. She transferred the pen to her left hand, confused both by her actions and by what she was hearing.

"A shelter. Did I work there? As a volunteer?"

"You helped out when and how you could, same as the rest of us."

Karen's voice hardened slightly.

"Look, if you really are Faith and what you've told me is the truth, I'm sorry but I can't tell you anything else over the phone. We have to be careful here. Too many of us are in hiding."

"I understand." Faith wished that she did. "May I... is it all right if I come over there? I have the address." She recited it, just to make sure what was in her book was correct.

"Our doors are always open to women," Karen said. "But in case you've forgotten the rules — no men. No exceptions."

"I'll remember. Thank you, Karen."

"Don't mention it."

Faith cradled the receiver slowly.

"What kind of shelter?" Kane asked immediately.

"For abused women. And they know me there."

Faith felt peculiar just saying the words.

"But she wouldn't tell you anything else over the phone? "

"No. Understandable, I suppose. I need to go over there and talk to them. Now, today. I don't know if there's a connection to Dinah, but..."

"She did a story on a women's shelter," Kane remembered suddenly."Conrad, her financial manager, said she donated money." He paused. "If she donated her time as well, or went there at all, she never mentioned it."

"I don't think she would have. Judging by what Karen said to me, being secretive about the shelter was encouraged." She looked down at the entry in her address book. "I didn't even name it in my book."

Kane nodded, accepting that, then looked at his watch. "Lets go, then. They might not let me in, but I can make sure you get there and back safely."

Faith didn't argue. But when they reached the shelter — which turned out to be a large, pleasant old house in a quiet suburban neighborhood — she realized her visit might take some time and doubted Kane's patience to sit and wait for her.

"You said you wanted to talk to Richardson about that police report," she reminded him. "Why don't you go do that while I see the people here? If we divide the work, we're more likely to find out something useful quickly." She thought she hardly needed to tell him that, but did anyway because she knew he was reluctant to leave her there.

Kane jotted down the number of his cell phone and gave it to her. "If I'm not waiting out here when you get ready to leave, call me."

Faith nodded. She got out of the car and went to the front door of the house, conscious, as she rang the bell, of the closed-circuit security camera positioned near the entrance.

The door was opened by a tall, very thin woman of about thirty-five, with dark hair already going gray.

When she spoke after a long, steady look, it was with the brisk voice she had used on the phone.

"So it is you. Good to see you, Faith."

Faith went in, wondering, now that she was there, just what she was going to ask this woman or anyone else there besides a wistful "Who am I? Do you know?"

The house was fairly quiet, even for a Sunday afternoon. She heard, somewhere upstairs, the faint sounds of children laughing and talking, and someone softly — and inexpertly — playing a piano nearby.

"Let's talk in my office before you see any of the others," Karen suggested, obviously still feeling protective of the shelter and its inhabitants.

Faith was agreeable, and moments later found herself sitting in a small, cluttered, windowless office that had probably once been little more than a closet. The gracious old home showed plenty of signs of recent renovation, but it was clear the money had been spent where it would do the most good, the comfort of the director obviously far down on the list.

"I've been thinking about it," Faith said as Karen went around the desk and sat behind it, "and if you need someone to verify what I claim about the memory loss, I'm sure my doctor will explain everything."

Karen's sharp brown eyes softened. "That won't be necessary. I believe you. Besides, I've known you more than a year, Faith, and one thing I'm sure of is that you'd never do anything to harm this shelter or the women and children who depend on it."

"How did I ... get involved here?" Faith wasn't sure she wanted the answer, but knew she had to ask "The same as the rest of us." Karen's smile was faint and brief. "In your case, an ex-husband."

Faith swallowed, aware of a chill but no memories till no memories.

"Do you know his name? What happened between us?"

Karen shook her head. "Those are the kinds of questions we don't ask around here. And you never offered to talk about it, beyond saying you'd divorced him and that he worked somewhere out on the West Coast."

"Did I come here because I was afraid of him?"

"I think you came here initially because your doctor believed you needed to know there was some place in Atlanta where you'd be safe. That's common among abuse victims, the need to have a safe place. Also, I think, because you'd been at a shelter where you used to live, and it helps to spend time with people who understand what you've been through."

Faith wished she understood — or felt what she thought she should feel.