Elise Title - Who Is Deborah?

He was watching me closely. “Does it sound familiar to you?”

I started to shake my head, but then I stopped abruptly, my heartbeat accelerating. “I…don’t know. It does…ring a bell. I…I think I’ve heard the name…before.”

Could this be that first chink in the armor? If it was, I would have expected to see some sign of pleasure in the doctor’s face. I didn’t. If anything, his expression took on amore somber cast. I was crestfallen.

“Nicholas Steele is a writer,” he said gently. “His novels are bestsellers. You might have seen some of his books here at the hospital or seen an ad for one of them in a newspaper.” He paused. “On the other hand, it is possible you may—”

I shook my head then. “No,” I said, cutting him off. “I must have seen his name on a book or in the newspaper. It certainly doesn’t conjure up any images.”

“Maybe that’s just as well.”

As soon as the words had slipped out of his mouth, I could see that he regretted them.

He smiled awkwardly. “I only meant…He writes horror novels.”

By this point my head was swimming. How could I, the victim of a horror so traumatic I’d erased it and everything that came before it from my mind, be the wife of a famous—for all I knew, infamous—writer of ghoulish deeds? It was utterly perverse and incredible. I had to be dreaming—an insane nightmare.

“You don’t believe this, do you? You don’t think I’m the wife of a man…like that?”

Dr. Royce donned a fatherly expression. “Like what? Just because he writes horror stories doesn’t mean—”

“I can’t even imagine reading a horror novel. I can’t believe I…I ever did.”

“Wives aren’t required to be fans of their husbands’ work.”

“You think I’m Deborah?”

“I talked with Mr. Eastman for close to two hours. He was very candid, and he gave me a great number of details that I must say sounded credible.” He hesitated, and my body tensed. “He also told me that Nicholas Steele lives in a small town about three hours north of here. Sinclair. It’s in the Catskill Mountains.”

I finally understood his remark back in the O.T. room when he was looking at my landscape. “I wasn’t painting any particular mountain. I…I couldn’t have been.”

“Not on a conscious level,” he went on, in an almost-chatty tone. I knew he was trying to calm me down, but even he had to know that wasn’t a likely prospect. Still, though my head was spinning with it all, I tried to concentrate on his words.

“Mr. Eastman has a getaway cottage up in Sinclair,” Dr. Royce was saying. But I wanted to hear about Nicholas Steele, this writer of horror stories, this man who was supposedly my husband. Or did I?

“Eastman spends most weekends and summers there. He’s known Steele for more than five years. They’re tennis partners and Eastman says he’s even been acknowledged in a couple of Steele’s books for giving him technical advice. From what he said, I gather he and Steele are very good friends.”

“And what about me?” There. I’d said it. Me. Not her. Me. It was the strangest feeling, yet not altogether unpleasant.

I saw that Dr. Royce didn’t miss the shift in pronouns. “Nicholas Steele was, according to Eastman, a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor until he was off in St. Martin doing some research on a book and met ‘the girl of his dreams.’ That’s a direct quote from Mr. Eastman.”

I found myself smiling, but then the incredulity of it all made me stop abruptly.

Dr. Royce continued. “When he returned to Sinclair three weeks later, he had a bride with him.”

“A whirlwind courtship, marriage on a tropical island…It sounds like something out of a romance novel.” But, better a romance than a horror novel.

“That was just over two years ago,” he told me quietly. “And then, two and a half months ago, Deborah Steele disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” I echoed, and shivered.

Dr. Royce’s gaze fixed on me. “She left the house to catch the train down to Manhattan for a shopping trip and…and that was the last that was heard of her. Eastman says he spent a month working both with the police and on his own, trying to trace her. Finally he returned to Sinclair, since he thought it was possible she could have met with some kind of accident or foul play before ever getting on the train. After getting nowhere in Sinclair, either, he came back to Manhattan and—”

“Saw the picture of me in his file.”

Dr. Royce nodded. I found myself nodding back inanely, the whole time feeling completely adrift. Eventually I asked, “Now what?”

“Mr. Eastman wants to see you, talk to you. I told him I would talk with you first and that I’d suggest you let all this…news…sink in for a day or two, or however long you need. There’s no rush. I know all this is an enormous shock to your system—”

“Is he still here?”

Dr. Royce hesitated. “Yes, but—”

“I want to see him.”

“Katherine—”

“But it isn’t Katherine, is it?”

He scowled. “For you, it still is. You can’t take on a new name and a whole new identity in a matter of minutes. It will take time. And there’s still the possibility that he’s wrong.”

“All the more reason for us to meet right away,” I insisted.

I could see that Dr. Royce wasn’t particularly pleased with my refusal to take his advice. Now it was I who leaned closer. “I must know. You do understand that.”

He nodded. “My only concern is for your welfare. Too much, too soon—”

“I’m stronger than I appear.” I laughed softly, experiencing a ripple of surprise. “I didn’t know that myself until just now.”

“I did,” he said, a smile curving his lips. And in that smile I saw genuine caring. I think that’s where much of my strength came from. Little did I know that very soon, I’d have to call on that strength in spades.

I tried to compose myself as I waited in Dr. Royce’s office for Greg Eastman to come in. Dr. Royce had wanted to wait with me, to stand by me during the meeting and give me moral support. Or maybe artificial respiration if I passed out! But I’d been adamant about wanting my very protective doctor to leave me on my own. I think my assertiveness surprised him. It surprised me even more. I didn’t really understand my sudden spurt of boldness, writing it off as partly desperation, partly the need to begin to stand on my own two feet.

My two feet, however, weren’t holding me up all that well. They felt like a cross between rubber and marshmallows. I sat down in the armchair. I folded one hand over the other. I crossed my bare legs at the ankles. I took deep breaths. Nothing helped. My heart was racing. My palms were sweaty. I was a nervous wreck.

I kept thinking, you should be happy. This is what I’d dreamed about for months. Finally, someone’s come for me—someone who knows me, someone who’s bringing me the greatest gift possible: myself. Not that it couldn’t be some terrible mistake. This private investigator might come in, see me, and realize I wasn’t Deborah Steele, after all. Suddenly I was fervently praying that wouldn’t happen. In those last waiting moments, I found myself longing to be Deborah Steele. For if I wasn’t Deborah, I was once again…nobody. I didn’t truly exist. Even the idea of being married to a man whose mind must be steeped in horror fiction didn’t prevent me from my longing to be Deborah. I focused on what Dr. Royce had told me—the whirlwind courtship and marriage on a tropical island, the romance of it all. Oh, if I could be Deborah, the girl of this man’s dreams…

I couldn’t keep my anxiety or my anticipation at bay for more than a few moments. This meeting with Greg Eastman could hold the key to unlocking my past. And my future. Whatever had gone on before, whatever lay ahead, had to be better than the awful blankness, the loneliness that consumed me almost every waking moment here in the hospital. At least, that’s what I told myself at the time.