Forget Me Not: A Novel (Crossroads Crisis Center) by Vicki Hinze Read Free Book Online

you were scaring her.”
    Susan turned to look at him and her gaze lighted on a painting hanging on the wall above the table. She gasped. “Look, Clyde. It’s me!” Transfixed, she walked over to the painting.
    A short, sturdy woman rounded the corner at a good clip. Worry lined her face. Clyde intercepted her. “Glad you’re here, Peg.”
    “We’re fully staffed every Saturday night,” she told Clyde. “Heavy traffic on Saturdays and holidays.”
    “There’s no emergency.” He went on to explain the circumstances.
    They knew each other, Susan realized. It couldn’t hurt to let him talk, and it could help her credibility.
    A small gilded mirror hung in a grouping on the far wall. She rushed to it and examined her face. Swollen, bruised and distorted, dirty, but the resemblance was plain. She moved back to the painting and checked again. Reasonably pretty; chin-length blond hair—clean and coiffed, notstrung with bits of leaves and grass; blue eyes—same shape and color; same chin and nose and neck. She gasped again. The cross. She was wearing the same cross!
    Susan spun toward Clyde. “It really is me. I’m Susan.” She riveted her gaze back to the small brass placket mounted to its frame. “Susan Brandt.”
    Clyde frowned. So did the woman beside him.
    Susan’s skin crawled. “I know I’m a mess, but you can’t miss it. She’s me.” A nervous laugh escaped, then she glanced skyward. “God, thank You.”
    She smoothed her pale hair back from her face. “I can’t tell you how unnerving it is not to remember.” Susan noticed something else written on the painting’s brass placket.
Two dates
.
    Two
.
    Birth and …
    She gasped and stared at the sober-faced woman beside Clyde. “I’m
dead?”
    “Mel,” the woman said, not looking away from Susan. “Get Doctors Talbot and Harper.”
    Susan couldn’t move. She wanted to, tried to, but her feet seemed rooted to the tile floor. “I-I can’t be dead. How can that say I died three years ago?” She flipped up a hand, then thumped her chest with a fist. “I’m standing right here.”
    “It’s going to be okay,” the woman said.
    “Easy for you to say. No one is claiming you’re dead.”
    “No one is claiming you are either,” the woman told her.
    Susan grunted. “I’d have to disagree. Haven’t you seen that?” She pointed to the painting’s placket.
    “You aren’t dead … ”
    “Susan. My name is Susan.”
    “Susan.” The woman stumbled over it. “You’re not dead.”
    Susan stilled, not so sure. Too much was too weird. “Who are you?”
    “Peggy Crane. Director here at Crossroads Crisis Center.” She started to step toward Susan but then stepped back next to Clyde. “Just stay calm, okay? From what Clyde says, you’ve been through a lot in a short period of time, but you are safe here. You’re safe, and we’re going to help you sort out everything.”
    Tears burned the backs of Susan’s eyes and, having trouble catching her breath, she dragged in deep gulps. “But it says I’m dead—and I’m not dead.” She blinked hard. “I’m not.”
    Peggy walked toward her. “Of course you aren’t.” Her calm seemed forced, but it still helped.
    “So you know I’m Susan?”
    Melanie passed Peggy a plastic container of wet wipes. She didn’t offer one to Susan. Was the receptionist worried about destroying evidence?
    “At the moment,” Peggy said, “I’m not sure who you are, but we will find out. What I can tell you right now is that you’re not the woman in the painting.”
    How could she say that? Even think that? “But—”
    Peggy stopped in front of Susan and searched her face. “You look a lot like her. But you aren’t Susan Brandt. I know that for fact.”
    Unable to believe it—her eyes weren’t lying to her—Susan glanced back at the painting, then again at Peggy Crane. “With all due respect, you are mistaken. I’m looking at myself.”
    “No, you aren’t, and I’m not mistaken,” Peggy said.