Jacqueline Diamond - Surprise, Doc! You're A Daddy!

Yet this man remembered none of that. Even if he once had been her husband, he was a stranger now.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “Does any of this seem familiar?”

“I went by the restaurant.” He relaxed as the breeze ruffled his sandy hair. “Saw Sam and Judy. I’m not sure whether I recognize them or I was responding to suggestion.”

There he went again, using high-flown language. “I guess you mean that I put ideas in your head.”

“That’s right. Not that I’m implying you did it on purpose.”

“Two years is a long time for you to be in the dark,” she said. “Can’t your doctors do anything about this amnesia business?”

“The brain is incredibly complicated and still not fully understood.” Hugh watched as Dana and her new friend splashed each other playfully. “My neurologist can’t say why I’ve recovered everything from before my accident but lost that year and a half. He thinks it might be because I reinjured the same area of the brain.”

“So the time you spent here could be gone permanently?” Meg asked. “Erased like an old videotape?”

He shot her a startled glance. “That’s a good simile.”

“A good what?”

“Figure of speech,” he said. “The answer is, I was beginning to fear it might be gone forever, but visiting the restaurant today stirred something. Either memories or false memories. Not entirely false, though, I don’t think.”

Meg had seen a story on TV about people so gullible that they could be persuaded to remember things that had never happened. She supposed that was what he meant by false memories, but surely that wasn’t the case with Hugh.

There was another question she ached to ask. A dangerous question, but this seemed as good a time as any. “Joe—Hugh—is there someone else? Another woman in your life?”

“No. Ever since I got back, I knew there was something missing. Until I figured it out, I wasn’t ready to start a new relationship,” he said.

Hugh had missed her. A tiny hope lit within Meg.

Maybe he couldn’t go back to being the same Joe she’d known, but if he loved her, he might move to Mercy Canyon and practice medicine here. Their lives could continue pretty much as planned.

The security she’d longed for since she was small might still be possible. To have a loving husband here where she belonged, surrounded by old friends, and to have her daughter grow up in such a safe environment, was all Meg wanted.

At the wading pool, the little boy’s mother lifted him onto a towel to dry off. Dana climbed out and headed for Meg.

When she spotted Hugh, the little girl’s eyes widened. With an expression of pure bliss, she shouted, “Daddy!” and ran to him.

He barely got out of his chair in time to catch her. “Hi, honey.” Hugging her, Hugh paid no notice to the water dripping over his clothes.

“My Daddy!” Dana announced to everyone. “Mine!”

When he lifted her, she wrapped herself around him as if she’d known him all her life. “Are you having a good time, sweetie?”

“Us go home!” she cried.

“That’s right, we’re going home,” Hugh said. “Together.”

Meg’s chest squeezed at seeing her family reunited. “Last one to the parking lot’s a cross-eyed gopher!” she said, and grabbed her gear.

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