Who Is Deborah?. Elise Title

Information. To my relief, there was one cab company in town. I received a busy signal on my first three attempts, but finally got through on my fourth try.

      “Sinclair Cab,” a nasal voice snapped.

      “Yes, I’d like a cab to the train station,” I replied in a hushed whisper, as if someone might be listening. My gaze strayed involuntarily to the bureau where I’d put Nicholas’s frightful book. “Right away.”

      “Address?”

      I hesitated. “Raven’s Cove.”

      There was a drawn-out silence.

      “Is…Is there something…wrong?” I asked finally. The response took me aback.

      “You must be her.”

      I rubbed a sweaty palm on my dress. “Excuse…me?” I was getting my first taste of what small-town life was about. It was clear that word had already spread through Sinclair about my arrival at Raven’s Cove. Or, as at least a couple of the townsfolk and Greg believed, my return. For all I knew, Nicholas shared their belief and was just getting some perverse amusement out of voicing doubts as to my identity. Again, I wondered if it was payback for my having walked out on him. Maybe he held other misdeeds against me, as well. He’d certainly implied some indiscretions on my part.

      “You say the railroad station?” the dispatcher asked.

      “Yes.”

      “You planning to catch a train?”

      “Yes.”

      “Where to?”

      I thought it was none of the dispatcher’s business.

      After a pause, he said, “Next train out’s at eleven. Goes to New York City. Express.”

      “Fine.”

      “Not even nine. You don’t need a cab for a while yet.”

      I was about to tell him I was in a hurry, but stopped myself, realizing how odd that would sound since I’d be stuck waiting at the train for close to two hours. Besides, I didn’t want this nosy dispatcher spreading rumors. I could just hear the townsfolk buzzing away. Wanted to get out of there in a real hurry, she did. Sounded scared out of her wits. Guess it’s true about that Steele fellow being mad…

      In as level a voice as I could manage, I said, “I do have a few errands to do in town first. Do you think you could get a cab up here by ten?”

      “I got one driver out sick and my other guy’s got a pickup in town in ten minutes. A gal who’s going over to Carlisle. Better make it ten-fifteen. Just to be on the safe side.”

      The safe side.

      There was no safe side about it, I thought as I hung up, frowning.

      After I was dressed, I searched in my purse for my hairbrush. It wasn’t there. I realized that I must have left it back at the hospital. Crossing to a mirrored dressing table, I searched there for a brush. The surface of the dressing table had a pristine tidiness about it. Save for a small collection of ornate and very beautiful blown-glass perfume bottles that sat on a mirrored silver tray, there were no other personal effects to be seen.

      Still shaky and weak, I sat down at the table. I opened the top drawer. Inside was not only the brush that I needed, but a framed eight-by-ten photograph, half hidden by some blank embossed stationery. For all my trepidation, my curiosity got the best of me. Nervously, I removed the photo from the drawer, waiting a moment for my breath to steady before actually looking at it.

      There was certainly nothing gruesome about the photo. Far from it. It showed a couple embracing on a white sandy beach under a palm tree. Deborah and Nicholas. The shade fell across Deborah’s face, clouding her image. But Nicholas’s face was in full sunlight, as was his tanned, athletic body clad only in a pair of black swimming trunks.

      I almost didn’t recognize him. Could the grim, patronizing, disdainful man who inspired such anxiety and worse in me, and the smiling figure in the photo, truly be one and the same? Oh, I had caught a quick glimpse of Nicholas’s smile, and it had most definitely softened his features. But the smile he wore in this photo utterly transformed his face. Up until now, I had thought Nicholas imposing, striking, but not really good-looking. Not in any traditional sense. His features were too strong, too harsh. But in the photo he looked heart-stoppingly handsome. Perhaps because the smile he was bestowing on Deborah was so adoring, so filled with love. No. More than love. Adulation.

      I wiped tears from my eyes. Instead of placing the photo back in the drawer, I set it on top of the dressing table. It held such fascination for me. And something else. A sense of loss. So that was what my tears were about. If I was Deborah, then I questioned whether I would ever again see such love in Nicholas’s face. And if my memory returned and I proved not to be Deborah, then I’d never know what it must have felt like to have been so cherished and adored. All I would know was envy.

      I lifted out the sterling-silver-handled hairbrush from the drawer. A beautiful object. Why had it been left behind? Had I been so angry when I walked out, that I took almost nothing with me? I realized, despite Nicholas’s doubts, I was already incorporating Deborah into my identity. After all, I had no other. And somehow, for all the discrepancies between Greg’s vision of Deborah and Nicholas’s, I felt like her. And, much to my consternation, I even felt I could have fallen wildly, deeply in love with the man in the photograph on the dressing table.

      As I brushed my hair, I noticed the perfume bottles beside the photo. Finishing with my hair, I gingerly lifted one of the bottles up and carefully removed the sculptured-glass top. I sniffed it cautiously, as if it might be tainted.

      The scent was strongly floral and cloying. My nose crinkled as I hurriedly closed the bottle. It wasn’t something I would wear at all. Was that a clue? Did it mean I mustn’t be Deborah? And again the question, did it even matter now? Now that I was resigned to leaving Raven’s Cove?

      I put the bottle back on the tray. Of course, I might have received the perfume as a gift and not cared for it. I tested the other scents. Unlike the first one, these were more pleasant. One in particular—a perfume with a slightly pungent fruity aroma—was especially pleasing. I felt tempted to put a few dabs behind my ears.

      “He doesn’t care for Intoxication.”

      The remark was so strange that for a moment I didn’t even connect it to an actual voice. The information had been supplied by Lillian, who was standing at the open door. She’d had the gall to step in without even bothering to knock. Had it been Lillian, not Nicholas, who’d put his book in my room while I’d been in the shower? In any case, both cousins certainly seemed too comfortable about walking into my room unannounced and uninvited.

      Unnerved by Lillian’s sudden appearance, I accidentally let the exquisite glass perfume bottle drop from my hand. It hit the corner of the dressing table, shattering on contact. The scent, far stronger now as it spilled out on the table and carpeting, permeated the air, making me feel queasy. I stared down at the shattered glass with dismay, then bent to pick up the shards.

      A scornful smile colored Lillian’s expression, not improving it, as she crossed the room in long, gliding steps and brushed me aside with a dismissive wave of her hand. Silently and thoroughly, the gaunt woman set to the task I’d begun. If the heavy scent bothered her, she gave no sign of it.

      “I’m…so sorry about the vial. It’s just…You startled me.” No sooner had the words come out than I instantly regretted them. It certainly wouldn’t help matters to blame Lillian for my own clumsiness.

      “Nicholas sent me up to ask what you wanted for your breakfast.” Lillian spoke without affect, but I felt duly chastised nonetheless.

      “Oh…It doesn’t…matter,” I replied meekly, glancing at my closed suitcase. I had meant to skip breakfast at Raven’s Cove and remain in my room until just after ten. Then my plan was to steal out of the house and meet the cab at the wrought-iron gates to the property.

      “Bacon and eggs?” Lillian