where we went when we left here?”
“No, I don’t know where you went. That’s exactly what I want to know. From what I can piece together, you packed a suitcase and met him at Pine Crest Mall. Your car was found in the parking lot. You must have gotten in his car and drove to a small airfield just east of town. He kept a small plane there, and his car was found in the hangar a few days after you two disappeared.”
“He was a pilot?”
“Yes. He had mentioned it before, I think, but he didn’t talk much about it. After he hatched this plan, I don’t think he wanted people remembering that he could fly. Anyway, he had kept a plane out there for several months—rented a hangar to keep it in out of the weather and away from anyone spotting it and connecting it to him. The man who rented out the space called the plant looking for him a week or so after you and he went missing. Seems Ray owed rent on the hangar, and the owner wanted paid. Ray’s car was inside where the plane had been. So he flew out of here, that much is certain, but where he went I don’t know. We assumed you were with him, but we didn’t know for sure. As far as we knew, he could have killed you to keep you from telling the authorities anything about his plans.”
“Didn’t he have to file a flight plan or something?”
“At a small field like that, the pilot doesn’t have to file anything. Mostly agricultural flights, what they used to call crop dusters, fly out of there, and local pilots who take a plane up on a pretty afternoon for the fun of it. Folks who fly to neighboring towns for the high school football and basketball games keep planes out there, or rent one from the man who owns the place. That’s about all.
“Where you went, I don’t know. Why you’re back, I don’t know. How you got back, I don’t know.”
“And what happened to me to cause me to lose my memory neither one of us knows.”
Chapter 19
When Marnie woke up the next morning, she felt as if some of her burden had been lifted.
How odd that I feel better, she thought, since I found out so much bad stuff about myself yesterday.
At least it was out in the open—those reasons why everyone thought the worst about her. She was sure she hadn’t heard about all the bad things she had done, but she got the general idea. And although anybody else would have been depressed upon hearing all David had told her, in a way she was relieved that her past was no longer a secret. She hoped there was nothing else to surprise her and that she had heard the worst. She would hold on to that thought, anyway, unless told differently.
She had spent the last week getting well, worrying about who she was and what she had done. Now it was time to move on with her life, as best she could.
David had told her, when she asked, that she did not work anywhere, nor did she do any volunteer work. As far as he could tell, he said, she shopped and visited with friends during the day and went out with friends in the evenings. She had no hobbies he knew of.
As she dressed in jeans and a red sweater she thought about what David said about her scant amount of time with Jonathan.
I’m going to change that pattern, she thought. I’m going to spend more time with him, do things with him, get to really know him—what he likes and doesn’t like. A mother needs to know all that.
Although her husband had cautioned her about disappointing Jonathan again, she was sure she wouldn’t go back to ignoring him as she had in the past. She stopped at the nursery and found Mrs. Tucker and Jonathan getting ready for breakfast.
“I was just coming to see if I could join you, or you join me, for breakfast. May I?”
“Sure!” Jonathan said excitedly. “We were just going down to the kitchen to eat.”
“Certainly, Mrs. Barrett. Of course you may join us,” the older woman said. She appeared to be flustered, wringing a handkerchief in her hands and taking a few steps to and fro. Every few seconds her slender fingers would dart to her cheek. Marnie surmised this was something out of the ordinary, breakfasting with