Elise Title - Who Is Deborah?

Ran away? But I didn’t run away. Greg had told me I’d gone on a shopping trip. He’d made it sound so…mundane. Why would he lie to me? Why?

I couldn’t still my trembling. Had he lied? And if he’d lied about that, why not about other things?

No, no, I told myself, refusing to give in to my paranoia. What did those two silly gossips know? Greg was Nick’s friend. My friend. Why would he lie to me?

“Don’t tell me you couldn’t find what you needed in Gus’s,” Greg said, his attention on the traffic as he pulled out of the parking area and turned left on Main Street.

“What?” I dabbed at the perspiration on my brow. “Gus’s?”

“Gus used to own the convenience store. Sold it about fifteen years ago, but all the locals still call it Gus’s.”

“Does…Nick?”

“Nick’s probably the only one in Sinclair who doesn’t know what they call the store. He’s oblivious to such mundane tidbits.”

“Is he?”

“When you’re the local celebrity, as Nick is, you can’t help but cause a bit of a stir every time you come into town. Nick’s not the type who likes a fuss being made over him. And he hates all the gossip—”

“Gossip?” I jumped on the word.

Greg grinned. “Sure, there’s always gossip. It goes with the territory. Nick understands that. He tries to act like he’s impervious to it, but I know him well enough to know it bugs him.”

“What…kind of gossip?” I could hear the tremor in my voice, but I hoped Greg wouldn’t pick it up.

“Oh, everything from Nick being a sorcerer to a vampire. For a while there was a rumor floating around town that he was a direct descendant of Dr. Frankenstein.”

He chuckled. “And then there was the one that he kept a wild tiger as a pet and fed it live rats. I guess when you’re gossiping about a horror writer, it’s easy to imagine all sorts of ghoulish nonsense. And I suppose Nick’s appearance and demeanor only encourage it. All of which delights his publishers because it translates into more book sales. They love the mystique that swirls around Nick. I mean, just think if the famous horror novelist, Nicholas Steele, looked like a dreary accountant.”

“What about…me? Was there…gossip about me, as well?”

I’m not sure if it was the question itself or something in my voice that made him slow the car to a stop and look over at me with concern. “Deborah, what is it? You’re white as a ghost. Are you having second thoughts?”

A hoarse laugh escaped my lips. “Second, third and fourth.”

He gave me a broad, easy smile. “It’s only natural. I suppose it must feel to you something like one of those arranged marriages with a total stranger.”

“Something very much like that.”

“Does it help any to tell you that there must be thousands of women out there who’d give anything to be in your shoes?”

My glance skipped down to my shoes—a pair of worn, scuffed, white pumps. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be in these shoes.”

Greg laughed. “They aren’t your usual style, I’ll admit that. If we’d thought about it earlier, we could have stopped along the way. There are a couple of dress shops in Sinclair, but the whole street closes down by five.”

“That’s all right.” I was feeling uncomfortable enough in “my” outfit—well, as much mine as anything I possessed.

“What do you think of that place across the street? It’s pure Greek Revival. On a small scale, of course.” He pointed to an attractive whitewashed cottage. My mind wasn’t on town architecture and I gave it the barest of nods, muttering a brief pleasantry about its cheerful appearance.

“It’s my home away from home. I’m settling in for the whole summer, so if you get lonely or just want to drop by when you’re in town…” As he spoke, he pulled out onto the road again and headed north of the town.

“Was I often lonely in…the past?”

“When Nick’s working on a book, he pretty much withdraws from humanity for whole spurts of time. If Lillian didn’t bring him in his meals, he’d probably waste away to nothing and never even notice.”

“Why Lillian?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why didn’t…I bring him in his meals?”

Greg shrugged. “You probably did sometimes. It’s just that Lillian does all the cooking and she has a tendency to be a bit of a mother hen around Nick.”

“Is she much older than him?” And then I realized I didn’t even know how old this husband of mine was. I wasn’t even sure how old I was, for that matter. I asked Greg.

“Nick’s thirty-seven and I recall him once mentioning that Lillian was a couple of years younger than him. You’d never know it to look at her. When I first met her I thought she was his spinster aunt. Maybe forty-five, even fifty.”

“And me?”

“Poor Deb. It just hit me how totally devastating it must be for you to have no memory whatsoever. Not even to know how old you are. It’s really tragic.”

I was feeling pretty tragic by then, and must have looked it because he quickly donned an upbeat tone. “You turned twenty-six on April seventeenth. But you don’t look a day over twenty-five.”

“If you want to win my trust, Greg, you mustn’t tell such bald-faced lies.”

I was surprised to see hurt cross his features. “I thought I had won your trust, Deborah. A long time ago. But, of course, I see that I have to begin all over again. Rest assured, I will.”

There was no smile on his face now, and a deep crease stretched across his brow.

I felt guilty for doubting him and for making that snippy remark. He didn’t deserve it. I might not remember anything of our past relationship, but I could sense his genuine caring.

With a cloudless blue sky overhead, the Miata began climbing a narrow winding mountain road about a mile past Greg’s cottage. This was the way to Raven’s Cove. To Nicholas Steele. I was feeling better about Greg by then, but I was a complete nervous wreck about my imminent arrival “home.”

Greg made small talk about the surrounding landscape as we ascended the mountain. I knew it was an effort on his part to get my mind off what lay ahead, but that was all I could think about. In the middle of his waxing poetic about the beauty and the joys of country life, I abruptly cut him off.

“Has he always written horror stories?”

Greg had to smile. “You weren’t listening to a word I said, were you?”

“Not a word,” I admitted sheepishly.

“Okay, you want more dope on Nick. Sure, I can understand that. Let’s see. Did he always write horror stories? I’m not sure. The horror genre is certainly where Nicholas made his name. He did confess to me on a couple of occasions that he’d like to try his hand at something else, something altogether different, but…it’s difficult. His fans would be terribly disappointed if they didn’t get their Nicholas Steele ‘horror’ fix each year.”

The voices of the two women in Gus’s came to mind.

“Was I a fan?”

“Sure, you were. Oh, I don’t know that you read all his books, but what I’m saying is…you supported him.”

“And he, in turn, supported me?”

Greg gave me a teasing, lopsided smile. “In the style to which any woman would love to be accustomed.”

I flushed. “I didn’t mean that. I meant…my work. My painting.”

To avoid answering my question, Greg turned all of his attention to driving carefully on the narrow, curving road. I realized then that he’d done that once before, when he’d failed to answer my question about whether there had been any gossip about me. It’s no wonder she ran off like she did. Had that been pure rumor? Had an innocent shopping jaunt and my disappearance gotten distorted into something hinting of menace and treachery?