Her Man To Remember
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She’d had attacks like this before—both sleeping and waking—but not for a while. They had been so painful, so terrifying, that at first she’d thrown up after them.
Then she’d learned to block them. She had stopped trying to remember the past. And the panic attacks had vanished.
But they were back.
Rushing wind. Cold. Darkness. Screaming—her own.
Pain streaked through her temples, almost bending her double. She couldn’t give in to it. She forced herself to straighten, to walk. Then run, run. Breathe. Run.
She had been a runner in her life before Thunder Key; she knew that. She could run for miles. It was her salvation from the pain, from the past. She reached the packed wet sand and she immediately found the contact soothing. She loved to run right along the shoreline. The faster she ran, the faster she could shut down the haunting bits of the past that never came together, only remained in shards that stabbed at her mind.
Somehow the man from the bar had brought the past crashing down on her again. Was that why he was dangerous? Did he remind her of someone from her past?
Or was he someone from her past?
Birds wheeled overhead, their calls breaking the still morning air. She was alone, all alone, but in her head the haunting wind and screams played on. Sometimes she was afraid she was going crazy.
I know who you are, the voice said. Who was she?
Run, run, run. Before her head exploded.
I know what you’ve done. What terrible thing had she done? Why? What kind of person was she? Did she even want to know?
Leah ran faster, faster. Running was the first thing she remembered.
Pitch-black night, lights flashing past, air, just air, and she was dropping, dropping, dropping. Water. Pain. But not so terrible. No, she could move. She could run.
The trucker who had picked her up from the side of the highway had worn a green-checkered shirt and faded blue jeans with a hole over one knee. He had a round, easy face, and kind eyes.
“I’m going south,” he’d said.
“Me, too,” she’d answered. “Thunder Key.”
Where had that come from? She hadn’t even known where Thunder Key was located. It had come out of nowhere, and it had actually scared her, but everything had scared her that night, so she hadn’t let that stop her.
She’d been damp, bruised, shaken. Barely dawn, and she hadn’t known how long she’d been running.
“You got a name?” the trucker had asked.
She hadn’t known what to say. The trucker had reached over, and in the glow of the rig’s dash, had touched the bracelet on her arm.
“Leah.” He’d read the engraved letters. “You got a last name?”
They’d passed an interstate sign: Wells, 1 Mile.
“Leah…Wells.” She’d shivered in the heated cab.
He’d had a road atlas. In the index, she’d found Thunder Key, part of the chain of islands that appeared like an afterthought on the tip of the Florida coast.
The trucker had taken her as far as South Carolina. He’d given her money for a bus ticket from Charleston. He’d insisted.
“A pretty lady like you shouldn’t be hitching,” he’d said.
She’d made him give her his home address, and promised to send him the money. And she’d sent it, a month later, after she’d gotten her first paycheck from the Shark and Fin.
She’d met Morrie on the beach the day she’d arrived on Thunder Key. She’d been sitting on a bench, just staring out at the vast ocean of clear water.
“Are you lost?” he’d asked her.
“No. I think I’m found.” She was where she’d meant to go. That was all she knew.
Then he’d asked her if she needed a job and a place to live. He didn’t ask any more questions after that. He didn’t care where she came from. At a trim and vigorous sixty, the slightly balding bar owner didn’t like to talk about his own past, but she knew he’d been in prison. He was reformed, he told her. He’d started life over in Thunder Key.
She knew he must have still had connections. He’d offered to help her dig into her past after she confided in him that she’d lost her memory. And one day he’d shown up with an array of identification for Leah Wells.
“In case you ever need it,” he’d told her.
She hadn’t liked taking the false ID, but she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings. He’d done so much for her. So she had put the documents away in a drawer.
Recently he’d reconciled with the family from which he’d been long estranged. Leah missed him, and she wondered what the future held for her.
For eighteen months she’d been happy here. Now Morrie was selling the bar, and a stranger was watching her.
And the panic attacks were back.
She stopped running when she came to the public beach and the parking lot outside the community center. From there she walked up Thunder Key’s main street, letting her breathing slow as she headed for the coffeehouse.
The town was quiet in the early mornings. In the distance she could see a car or two on the Overseas Highway. Most drivers kept right on going, heading for the hot spots of the other islands where they could find more exciting attractions and hipper nightlife.
Thunder Key suited Leah just fine. Just as she’d known it would.
She had her breathing and her nerves under control by the time she reached the counter inside the just-opened-for-the-day coffeehouse.
“Hi, Viv,” she said. “Got my caf'e con leche ready?”
“Of course,” Vivien Ramon said, her rough smoker’s voice softened by her smile and the youthful sparkle in her eyes that belied the silver threading through her swing of rich black hair. Her husband was a sail maker, and Viv ran La Greca, the island’s only coffeehouse. If Morrie was like a father to Leah, then Viv was like a mother.