Chapter 4: A New Name

Harper's POV

I knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment it left my mouth, and I didn't want to take it back. Call it a lifeline for the woman who'd had nothing to hold on to a few hours earlier.

The deputy turned around. He didn't laugh, and he didn't look put out; he just squared up and gave me a straight look, the kind that means he's about to tell you something you may not want to hear.

"Miss Hayes," he said, "I'd advise against it. That business up on the north end tonight isn't settled yet. If this man came out of it and you take him home, what happens if somebody comes looking? You've done enough tonight — you covered the bill, you got him off the road. You don't know him, and you don't know what he's done before. When something goes wrong down the line, what then? This isn't your responsibility. You don't have to carry it for anybody."

I turned the cufflink over in my hand — silver, plain face, no engraving, the only thing he'd had on him, fished out of the very bottom of his pocket after I'd gone through every one of them out there on the gravel. I pulled one of my own cards from my coat and held it out to the deputy.

"I understand," I said. "But he's lost his memory. In a place that means nothing to him, even the strongest person alive would be scared. I'm about as close to a familiar face as he's got." I kept my voice even. "I'll keep him with me. If you need to follow up on anything, reach me directly."

The deputy took the card, was quiet a moment, then fished one of his own out of his breast pocket and handed it over — the substation number printed on it, his name below that. "If you change your mind, call that number." He paused. "Go ahead and sign. Once you do, he walks out of here with you."

My palm was slick when I took the pen from him. The nurse slid another form across the counter; I left the relationship box blank, filled in the address and phone number and occupation, copied out the line about voluntarily assuming all continuing responsibility for the patient, and signed my name.

When the paperwork was done I stood by the door and waited. I knew there was trouble ahead, and still something in my chest had come loose in a way that felt almost like relief. Then footsteps sounded behind me, and I turned to look down the corridor.

He came slowly, hitching whenever his right foot took his weight, and he wouldn't let anybody touch him — one hand on the wall, two steps and a stop, two steps and a stop. I walked over and fell in beside him.

"You know I'm the one taking you out of here?"

"I know. The officers told me. Thank you."

"Don't thank me. I hit you too, so we'll call it even." I looked straight ahead. "I'll look after you."

By the time he'd limped out to the parking lot with me, the rain had thinned to a mist and the lot lights had the asphalt shining wet. He stopped beside the car and spoke up without warning. "What do I call you?"

"Harper," I said. "Harper Hayes."

He nodded the way somebody nods when they're committing something to memory. "I don't know what to say," he said. "I don't have any money. I don't know what I owe you, or when I could ever pay it back."

"Get in the car. We'll sort all that out later."

I opened the driver's door, got in, put the key in the ignition, and sat there without starting it.

"You still need a name," I said. "There's no other way to call you anything."

He turned his head. "Do you have something in mind?"

"Clay," I said. I stopped a beat, and then I gave him my surname too. "Clay Hayes."

He said it back, very quietly. "Clay Hayes. That's a good name. Thank you." He didn't ask why. He just took it and held it, clean and without question, as though it were the only thing that had been handed to him all night.

I turned the cufflink over on my open palm and held it out.

"This is the only thing that was on you. I don't know if it'll bring anything back."

He looked at it for a moment, then reached over and took it and closed his fist tight around it — the way a child makes a fist around the one coin he's got.

That was the end of what there was to say about who he was. I drove us toward home and let him be quiet the whole way.

When we pulled up I saw the beige Buick sitting under the porch light. The kitchen was lit, and through the screen door came the smell of fried chicken and okra, and underneath that the pumpkin spice candle Dolores always burns.

I pushed the door open. She was at the counter, apron still tied, flour on her hands, and when she saw me she set her wooden spoon down flat.

"You're back." Just that. No shouting, no lecture. It was worse than a lecture, because I knew the whole speech stacked up right behind it, and I could have said every word of it for her without missing a syllable.

"You threw that cake and walked right out," she said, and her voice was steady in a way that was almost frightening. "Left me to deal with all of it by myself. Do you have any idea what Mrs. Miller said about me? What old Mrs. Chalmers said?"

"Mama."

"Forty minutes I stood in that yard. I thought about it the whole drive home — where did I go wrong." She untied the apron and folded it, slow and neat. "You're twenty-eight, Harper. In this town, once a woman's past thirty, nobody listens to a word she says. You think about what you're leaving me to face at the Ladies' Auxiliary. Just think about it for one minute."

I had heard this before. I'd heard it at Thanksgiving, at Easter, and last month when she came into the shop and sat at my counter with a cup of coffee.

I could even call which word she'd rotate in next — security, stability, a woman's fallback — three words dealing themselves out in turn from a deck with nothing left in it.

The room went quiet for about a second, and I nearly thought she was going to stop.

"I'm not telling you to go find somebody today," she went on, her voice softening in that particular way I know too well — that's the part that's hardest to fight. "But you have to have something settled. You can't hold yourself up on your own two arms for the rest of your life. It would be a whole lot easier with somebody helping you."

"My own two arms are all I've ever had."

"That's not what I mean."

"It's what you mean every time." I dropped my keys on the counter, louder than I'd planned. "Mama, tonight's been bad enough already. Please — not tonight—"

But she didn't stop. She moved on to next month's money, the electric bill going up, groceries going up, half a chicken left in the refrigerator — and then she wound all the way around and came back to the same spot she always does: if there were somebody beside me, she wouldn't have to carry this worry. She said it fast and smooth, the smooth of something rehearsed a thousand times over.

I turned to step away from it, and that was when I saw Clay standing in the doorway.

He'd worked out that staying outside wasn't right and hadn't worked out how to come in, so he'd stopped on the threshold with the porch light spilling behind him and half his face lit up.

Dolores stopped mid-sentence. She followed my eyes to him, and everything in her face changed inside a second. I recognized that expression — it's the one she gets when she turns the burner down before the pot boils over.

"And this is—" Her voice dropped half a register, went smooth as butter. "Harper. Who is this?"

"Where's he from? Is he married? Why does he look like that? What's he doing coming home with you? What is he to you?"

I opened my mouth. I could have explained exactly who he was, told her his being here was nothing but an accident, but the way she kept pressing had worn what patience I had left down to nothing.

In that moment my head was one solid knot with no end to pull. So I crossed the room, took Clay by the wrist, and hauled him in off the threshold and under the kitchen light, and that was enough to cut her off.

"His name is Clay."

Dolores stopped. Those amber eyes of hers went wide.

"And as of tonight, he's my boyfriend."