Drew couldn't believe it. Not only had his wife suddenly and inexplicably returned from the dead, but she claimed she couldn't remember anything, not even their daughter:
"Samantha is your daughter," he said. "Laura, what's going on here?"
She returned her gaze to him, still barely able to breathe. "That name...I've..." She stopped, realizing how difficult it would be to explain when she understood so little herself. "I don't remember...I'm afraid I don't remember you, either."
He lowered his chin, considering, then seemed to dismiss the thought. "What are you talking about? Amnesia?" he scoffed, then muttered, "That's a hell of an excuse."
"It's not an excuse," she said. Why would she need an excuse to not find her identity? Her eyes began to burn. Sam. The name had come to her over and over again in her dreams. Finally one fact in the months of confusion was starting to make sense. But was she Laura? He said so, but she didn't know this man from any other. Maybe this was some sort of trick. "Maybe you can tell me why you're so convinced I'm Laura," she said.
"Tell you? How about I show you?" He whipped his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans and fumbled through it until he produced a small stack of photos and handed them to her.
Some of them were wallet-sized portraits, some snapshots, but all of them had one thing in common. They were unmistakably her: her with him; her in a graduation cap and gown; her smiling and resting her hand on her own pregnant belly; and one of her holding hands with a small girl...
"Oh, my God," she whispered. She ran her finger across the little girl in the picture. She was a beautiful child. How she would have missed her if she were her child. "How old is she?"
He hesitated. "Sam is four."
"So young." She needed her mother still, but was Mary really the little girl's mother? Was she really Laura? It was difficult to fathom. After another moment, she slipped the photo to the back of the pile and took the graduation picture of Laura out. She examined it closely. The scar on her chin was clearly visible, even a little bigger than it was now. She raised her hand to her chin again, then turned to him. "How did I get it? The scar, I mean."
"You fell off a horse," he answered slowly, studying her with a different look now.
"I ride?"
"No." He was looking so deeply into her eyes that she felt naked. A tiny smile played at the corner of his mouth. "Not very well." The smile disappeared. "You know that."
"No, I don't."
He cocked his head to one side. "Come on."
"You're awfully cynical."
"I'm not a fool."
She smiled wanly. "Then do I bring this cynicism out in you?"
"I'm not cynical," he protested. "I'm wary. You always did have a way of blowing things way out of proportion. Are you trying to tell me you don't remember anything? Nothing at all? Not your name? your first dog's name? zero?"
"I remember what I had for breakfast this morning, and where I bought my shoes, but I can't remember anything beyond the last year or so."
He opened his mouth, then closed it and shifted his weight. When he spoke again, his voice registered absolute bemusement. "This isn't a put-on? You honestly have some sort of amnesia or something? Does that really happen?"
She paused and studied him with an impartial eye. "You've got a lot of questions but let me ask you one." One that might answer a lot of questions about what happened to me and why, if I'm your wife, I've spent the last year with no identity, hundreds of miles away, and you never came to find me. She kept her gaze steady. "Is your wife the kind of person who would lie to you?"
..WIFE
WITHOUT A PAST ....TWO BROTHERS AND A BRIDE