LITMIR.BIZ

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the cafe for a year and a half? I don’t believe it.”

      “Anybody notice I just got a spare?” asked Sam Hartman, rejoining them.

      “Way to go!” cheered Ramon.

      As on most Saturdays, the group of friends had met at 11:00 a.m. at Mercy Lanes, next to the Back Door Cafe. The Hartmans were the best players, but everyone enjoyed the fun and the companionship.

      The youngsters with them—the Hartmans’ sixteen-year-old son and the Mendezes’ three kids, who ranged from seventeen to twenty-one—formed their own group a few lanes away. Otherwise, the alley was empty except for a cluster of people around the videogames in back.

      “If you’re not sure it’s him, what are you going to do?” Judy asked Meg.

      “She’s going to play. It’s her turn.” Sam reached for his soft drink.

      Glad to escape Judy’s question, Meg hurried to retrieve her ball. She didn’t know what she was going to do about Hugh Menton. She almost hoped the DNA test came back negative so she wouldn’t have to decide.

      Life without Joe had settled into a comfortable if sometimes lonely pattern. She enjoyed times like today, when she could chitchat and bowl while Dana played at their next-door neighbor’s trailer.

      If Hugh did turn out to be Joe, he might disrupt her entire existence. While he wasn’t likely to claim Meg as his wife, he might insist on spending time with Dana. Maybe even want her to live with him.

      Grimly, she stared at the lane in front of her. No way would she give up her daughter! Angrily, Meg rolled the ball.

      With a whump, it hit the gutter. Whistles and catcalls erupted behind her.

      “Get your mind out of the gutter, girl!” called Rosa.

      Darn. The man was messing with her bowling game. When the ball came back, Meg focused, started forward and rolled again.

      Clean and sure, the ball flew down the lane and smashed into the pins. With a clatter, they shot in all directions. Of the few that remained, several wobbled and dropped at the last minute, leaving two standing.

      “Too bad you didn’t get your act together the first time,” Ramon said as she returned. “You could have hit a spare.”

      “They’re too far apart,” Meg said. “I’d never have made it.”

      “That’s your problem, Meg,” advised Sam as his wife went to bowl. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

      “Don’t mention credit.” She shuddered. No matter how hard she tried to pay down her charge card, the balance always hovered near her limit. The mobile home park fee, food and baby-sitting ate most of her income.

      “I’ll tell you what,” Rosa said. “I’ll give you a freebie. Come by the salon this afternoon and I’ll cut your hair. It’ll look cute.”

      Rosa had been itching to get her hands on Meg’s mane for years. Without her bushy hair, though, Meg wouldn’t feel like herself. “No, thanks. I’m taking Dana swimming.”

      The local community center pool cost a dollar per person, with kids under five free. It was one of the few treats they could afford.

      Judy hit a strike, and whooped with delight at besting her husband this round. After that, the players concentrated on their games, and Meg finished with a respectable score.

      She felt better by the time she left. Life in Mercy Canyon was safe and solid.

      Even if he turned out to be Joe, Hugh Menton might never appreciate this town as he once had. Heck, he’d probably never bother to visit here.

      Meg didn’t care. She knew where she belonged, and nothing could change that.

      TO REACH Mercy Canyon, Hugh drove his luxury sedan on narrow, winding back roads. He hadn’t believed two-lane highways existed anymore in the age of carpool lanes and ever-wider freeways.

      For a long stretch after he left the tightly packed developments of the coastal zone, he saw only a few isolated shacks and passed a mere handful of cars. Urban sprawl hadn’t reached this part of San Diego County.

      In September, the height of the dry season, a scattering of dusty trees drooped in a rocky canyon filled with dry grasses and flowers. The area didn’t look familiar. Had he truly lived here for a year and a half?

      As he descended from a slope, a sign alerted Hugh that he was entering the town of Mercy Canyon. He didn’t see anything until he rounded a rock outcropping and suddenly, below him, spread the community where he might have spent his lost months. Wanting time to collect his impressions, he stopped the car on the shoulder.

      From this rise, he made out clusters of stores, an elementary school, a church, a couple of modest-size light-industrial buildings and numerous houses. There was a trailer park at the far end of town.

      Hoping the scents would jog his memory, Hugh rolled down the window. Hot air blasted into his airconditioned cocoon.

      As he’d expected, it carried the smells of eucalyptus and desert plants. For a split second, he remembered coming out of a cool building into the same heated air.

      He was emerging from a church with a woman at his side. People lined the walkway, blowing soap bubbles. Could it be his own wedding?

      Although Hugh had come here in search of the past, this possibility disturbed him. It was alarming to think that he might really have been a different person and lived a different life for so many months.

      He knew of course that he’d been somewhere during his absence. Yet couldn’t the time have passed, as his family wanted to believe, in a succession of meaningless days of panhandling and sleeping in shelters?

      On the other hand, before he was released from the hospital, Hugh’s doctor had remarked on what good shape he was in, aside from the head injury. He hadn’t been starving on the streets.

      Maybe Meg’s story was true. He might be a husband and father. Hugh’s breath caught in his throat. So much for the rationalization that he could drive by Mercy Canyon and leave without seeing the Averys.

      He’d brought Meg’s address. He could see the park distantly from here, neat rows of mobile homes glinting in the sunlight.

      At the prospect of visiting what might be his old home, a twinge of fear ran through Hugh. What was he afraid of, that he would stumble into an unpleasant trap of his own making? Or that he would discover he’d once lived in paradise and couldn’t go back again?

      There was no sense in delaying the inevitable. After rolling up the window, he turned on the ignition and started forward.

      Chapter Four

      Halfway through the town of Mercy Canyon, Hugh got a prickly sensation down his back. He knew this place as if from a dream.

      The strip mall to one side of the road looked like a thousand others in Southern California. Yet he felt a twinge of recognition as he parked in front of a coffee shop called the Back Door Cafe.

      Handwritten specials and flyers for local school fundraisers plastered the window, while the interior was hidden behind a lopsided Venetian blind. A thought came to him: The slats always pull crookedly. You’d think they’d have fixed them by now.

      To one side sat a bowling alley. On the other, a bilingual video store featured posters of newly released films in Spanish and English.

      At the end of the mall lay a salon called Rosa’s Beauty Spot. Oddly, he knew that Rosa was married to the owner of the video store.

      He had been here before.

      Hugh sat in his car, staring at the cafe. He’d had flashes of memory before, but none had ever been tied to a particular place. The clatter of dishes in a restaurant, the cry of a baby, the scent of old-fashioned perfume would snatch him momentarily

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