"I'm married?" Luke asked in shock, instinctively looking down at his left hand in search of a wedding band.
"Three years now. We couldn't afford to get rings at the time of the ceremony, and just never bothered after that." She replied, picking up on what Luke was looking for fairly quickly.
Luke lay his head back and rubbed at his eyes.
"Something wrong?" She asked.
"Just seems like I would remember an event as big as a wedding ceremony." Luke revealed.
"Well honey, you have amnesia. Don't worry, I'm sure it'll all come back in time." She replied, rubbing his arm.
"Well how long? I mean, you said you's a nurse, right? How long does it usually take for someone to get their memory back?"
"No more than a few days. Once the patient is home and able to see things he's familiar with, it usually returns fairly quickly.
At the statement, Luke opened his eyes once again and looked around the room. After a few moments, he shook his head. "Nothin' looks familiar."
"Well that's probably because we haven't lived here that long. Try not to worry about it, dear, you're rushing things."
"Well don'tcha think I should at least be taken to a doctor so's I can be looked at?" Luke argued.
"Oh there's no need in that. I've seen enough cases of temporary amnesia to know what's going on." Kathleen replied, cutting her eyes to the left. "Besides…….if you get out and start wandering around town, the police are going to find you and you'll end up back behind bars."
"In jail?" Luke asked, bewildered. "Why would they put me in jail?"
"For robbery, of course." Kathleen replied in a way that suggested Luke should know exactly what she was talking about. "You were serving a six month sentence over at the county jail before you managed to escape, Jeremy. Why else do you think we're living in this old shack? It's a safe place back away from everyone where the police can't find you."
Luke became more and more horrified with each new revelation. Looking around at the deteriorating shack that he called home, and considering that they were there because he was supposedly on the run from the police, presented situations that anyone would be glad to mentally block out.
As the baby stirred and began to whimper softly, Luke looked at him and shook his head. "This ain't right. This house, it ain't no place to be raisin' a youngin'. Why don't you take him back to wherever home is and leave me here while I try to figure things out?"
"How are you going to figure things out when you don't even know what's going on, Jeremy?" Kathleen asked. "This place may not be a Hilton, but it's sufficient. Besides, you didn't break out of jail to go on the run alone, you broke out so you could be with your family. Are you telling me after everything you did to be with Will you'd just send him away?"
"Well no….." Luke replied, desperately trying to remember the child that he thought was his. "But we've got to figure somethin' else out besides this. You can expect us to raise the baby in dilapidated backwoods houses for who knows how long."
"Well if that's what it takes to be with you, I'm willing to compromise, and I'm sure Will would be too, if he could speak for himself. Besides if this place bothers you, just fix it up. You always was good with a hammer and saw." Kathleen revealed as she rose to pat the baby, who continued to whimper, back to sleep. "But that can wait until after you've had a couple days' rest. You're hurt and exhausted from that horrible accident today."
"That's another thing. If I'm supposed to be hiding, howst come I was out ridin' around in a car in the first place?"
Kathleen paused as she thought of a response. She paused so long, as a matter of fact, that Luke was prompted to repeat his question.
"Well it was that fight, if you must know." She finally stated, turning back toward him as if she were still angry about some fictional spat. "I explained to you that I would have to continue to work if we hoped to survive, but you just couldn't understand that." She added, crossing her arms to add to the image. "I know you're not used to being alone with the baby, Jeremy, but somebody's gotta watch him while I work. And stormin' outta here and jumping in the car and takin' off didn't do nothing but make matters worse."
"I'm….I'm sorry." Luke replied, desperately trying to remember any of the events she was detailing as he put his hand to his head.
Softening a little, Kathleen sighed. "No I'm sorry. I'm standing here yelling at you about some silly fight when I ought to simply be grateful you're still alive. Why don't you go ahead and get some rest? We'll sort all this out tomorrow."
Luke nodded his head in agreement. He watched as she turned to blow out several oil lamps that illuminated the room, leaving only one dimly lit. Changing into a nightgown, she then pulled the baby's bed a little closer to her own. Finally, she pulled the covers down on Luke before she crawled over him to lay next to him.
Turning on her side, she faced him and pulled the blankets up over them before she placed her right hand on his chest.
"'Night sweetheart. I love you." She said with a yawn, laying her head on his shoulder.
Luke decided not to answer as the stranger snuggled next to him. Something just didn't feel right about all this, but then again, he reasoned, he did have amnesia.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Boys, you can stop hidin' your eyes now 'cause there ain't nobody in here." Sammy, Chicasaw County's junkyard man, announced as he peered inside the black car with a flashlight..
Matthew and Anthony peered around their uncle to see the empty car for themselves. "But how…." Matt trailed off as he looked inside the car in amazement. "He seemed hurt pretty bad, Uncle Sammy. I don't see how he could have just walked away."
"Well maybe that's because someone else come along and had the good sense you two are lackin' and saw that the man needed took to the hospital." Sammy replied, shaking his head. "I thought my big brother had raised his youngin's better than to go off and leave a hurt man to possibly die 'cause they's more worried they'd be caught in the cars they wasn't supposed ta have out in the first place!"
"It wasn't that, Uncle Sammy, it's just that I…..well I thought it was my fault and I's afraid they might send me off to jail or something…" Matt trailed off on the verge of tears.
"Well from what your brother said, it wadn't your fault. And do you honestly think your dad and I would just stand there and let you be carted off to jail without makin' sure the judge knew the truth, if it came to that?"
Anthony sighed as the three of them stared at the wreck. "So what do we do now?"
"Well, seein' how I'm the only one in the county with a tow truck, I'm gonna go ahead and pull 'em outta here, just a matter of time 'fore I'm called out anyway." Sammy replied. "And if I were you two, I'd call the hospital tomorrow and check on that fella…..and get to work decidin' how I's gonna break the news to your dad."
"You mean, you're not gonna tell him?" Matthew asked, a slight look of relief on his face.
"No, you are." Sammy replied, leading his nephew back up the embankment where the tow truck was. "You're seventeen, Matt, nearly a man. And bein' a man means takin' a man's responsibility, ownin' up to what ya done, both of ya." He added, looking at Anthony as well. "Not for causin' the accident, mind you, but for leavin' the feller here to fend for himself. I'll give you a couple of days to do that."
"Yeah well if tellin' Dad what I've done is defined as bein' a man…." Matt trailed off as Anthony followed. "…….why does the thought of doing it make me feel like a little boy again?"
Sammy offered his nephew a slight chuckle and a couple of pats on the back as they began the process of extracting the car from the embankment. "Once I get to town and you boys is on you're way home, I'll call Little, tell him I found it out here and let 'im look it over. That much needs to be done, even if nothin' else is said."
About a half hour later, the car was securely connected to the tow truck and Sammy climbed into the cab along with the boys, prepared to take them back to the junkyard to get their truck. After having visited a couple of payphones in town, finding one in use by a middle aged man in a lengthy conversation and no respect for the word 'emergency', and the other on a corner mere feet from where one of Little's deputies had set up to watch for speeders, they became anxious enough to summon their uncle, whom they could usually go to when they were in some sort of trouble. A decade younger than their father, their Uncle Sammy was young enough to remember what it was like to be a teenager and the trials they went through, yet old enough to have some knowledge of the world and the authorities in it that the youths were lacking. All things considered, they figured he was the best person they could consort with to find a solution to the problem while staying out of trouble.
"Tinker, ya got yer ears on?" A voice called over the C.B.
"Right here big brother." Sammy replied, speaking to Thomas Garrett.
"I just got a call from John." Thomas replied, referring to the eldest Garrett brother who resided in Atlanta. "Mom's been took to the emergency room down at Emory. Said we needed to get there fast."
"What's wrong?" Sammy asked, his heart leaping in his throat while Matthew and Anthony both whispered 'Grandma' as they listened in.
"Not for sure, he didn't have time to tell me. Just told me to get you on the horn and for us to get down there. I'm already on my way, just can't find the boys anywhere to tell them."
"Boys are with me." Sammy replied, already swinging the tow truck around to head toward Atlanta. "We're right behind you. Over and out." Throwing the CB down, he turned to his nephews. "Put on your seatbelt boys, we've got a long drive."
Ya know, I'm kinda worried 'bout them boys there, but my main concern lies with the fact that the only clue to Luke's whereabouts is about to be hauled outta town on the tail end of a tow truck.