Page 6 of A Future To Remember

Nobody knew what to call me, and one of the nurses had simply defaulted to referring to me as Jane Doe. That’d gotten me upset. It’s humiliating not to be able to remember my own damn name. I didn’t need it broadcast to the world that I was one of those people. So traumatized by whatever the fuck happened to me that my brain had scrambled my sanity and banished all memories.

So, they were letting me pick something. In between the rounds of antibiotics and lectures about how I needed to put on some weight so I should eat their tasteless, disgusting hospital food, I’d been picking through a baby-name book given to me by someone in maternity.

Before perusing the “girl” names, I’d decided to skip the A’s altogether, figuring I might be tempted to just come to the first name that didn’t sound terrible and adopt it for my own. Something like Anne or Amy. Yawn. So, I started in the middle with the M’s.

Something triggered a slight response when I read the name Maddy. I liked it, but I didn’t like Madeline. I wrote it down on my lengthening list of names that felt like they could work. So far, I had Maddy, Parker, Reese, Sadie, Taylor, Violet, and Yvonne, but my eye kept going back to Maddy.

“Hey, lady,” Cash said from the doorway, knocking at the same time.

I smiled. The sheriff was here for his daily check-in. “Sheriff Penton,” I said with a nod. My head still throbbed, and I felt weak and a little sleepy, but I was so sick of feeling weak and sleepy that I was forcing myself to stay awake long enough to, for once, have a decent conversation with the man.

He came into the room twirling that Stetson—a habit that he never seemed quite conscious of. Taking a seat in the same chair I’d first seen him in, he motioned to the open book on the tray table in front of me. “Anything jump out at you?”

The sheriff thought the baby-name book was a brilliant idea. He had it in his mind that I’d stumble on my real name, which would open the floodgates, but so far, the only name that’d really stood out to me was Maddy—not in a truly memory-trigging way, but in a way that felt familiar when I said it out loud.

“My eyes keep going back to Maddy,” I said, showing him the list on the notepad I’d been given.

He nodded and wore the ghost of a smile. “That’s a start.”

“I think I want it.”

“You want it?”

“Yeah. I think I want to wear it, take it out for a spin, and see how I like it.”

The ghost of a smile bloomed into an authentic one. “It suits you.”

I closed the book. “Then it’s official. I’m Maddy. At least for now.”

Cash got up, came over to the bed, and sticking out his hand, he said, “Hi, Maddy. Nice to meet you. I’m Cash Penton. The sheriff in this here town.”

That made me laugh. I shook his hand, and that small spark of chemistry that I’d often thought was my own imagination flickered between us.

I didn’t try to convince myself that I wasn’t attracted to him—I was. And I had this visceral feeling that he was attracted to me too. But we hadn’t even flirted, and as attractive as I found him, doing even that felt…wrong. Like I’d be betraying someone else.

Which, frankly, was really fucked up, because someone had abused me, then dumped me in the cold to die—so how I could betray that person by simply flirting with a good-looking lawman wasn’t anything a rational person could argue.

And yet…

There were moments when I’d first wake up where I could feel myself reaching for someone. Someone I loved. Someone I trusted. I couldn’t put a name to him. Hell, I couldn’t even describe him, but it just felt like I belonged to him. And with him. And the profound sadness, loneliness, and loss I felt when I realized there was no one in the bed next to me was a feeling without a place or a memory to back it up, and yet it existed.

“Anything else come to mind?” Cash asked me, just like he’d asked me every day since I’d woken up two weeks ago.

“No. Sorry,” I replied, just like I’d said every day since I’d woken up two weeks ago.

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Maybe.”

He pointed to my belly. “Did you eat?”

“The swill they serve here? It’s not even suitable for the rats.”

He grinned. “We got three restaurants here in Evansville. What’re you in the mood for?”

I brightened and sat up straighter before grimacing because that still hurt like hell. “Thai?”

He cocked his head. “Thai? Like food from Thailand?”