A DAUGHTER'S LOVE
CHAPTER TWO - 1989
"You don't have any memory of who you are and how you got here? Apart from your name, I mean?" Sheriff Truman asked Becky, who had settled on going with the easiest lie possible and hopefully also the one that would lead to the fewest questions being asked: Amnesia.
"None, I'm sorry" she replied to him and got a sympathetic look from both the sheriff and doctor Hayward, whom she could already tell was a kind and honorable man that no doubt cared deeply about all of his patients.
"It can happen if the brain has to process something that it isn't capable of" Doctor Hayward interjected. "A traumatic experience, or something akin to it. You can't deny, Harry, that it adds up with how Hawk found her" he continued, leading her to the conclusion that her lie at least wasn't completely falling flat with them.
"No, I guess not. Thanks, Doc. I'm sure that you have other patients, you need to attend to" Truman answered with a small smile of gratitude.
"That, I do. Do you have any idea of where she could be housed until she begins to recover? I'd love to offer her a bed here, but with how few bedspaces that we have ..."
"Don't worry. The Horne brothers still owe me a favor or ten and asking for a free single room for a sweet and polite girl like this, at a time where their hotel isn't close to full, shouldn't be an issue. They know better than anyone, who to stay on good terms with and they always have. You have to give them that much!" Truman dryly stated and seconds later, it was just the two of them left in the hospital room. He looked at her with a face full of sympathy and even if she had only "known" him for a couple of minutes, she could already tell that Cooper hadn't been lying about him.
"Thanks for taking care of me. I really wish that I could tell you more, but my mind is drawing a complete blank" she told him and although, it didn't feel right to lie to this kind man, she also had to keep it practical. Surely, if she'd told him that she was from the future and that her parents were a pair of local eighteen-year-olds, who were still nearly two years removed from having her, he'd probably look into having her committed in no time!
"None of this is your fault, Becky. Is that short for Rebecca, perhaps?"
"I think that it could be" she said, a little unsure of how much it would be in her favor to tell him and what it would be best to keep to herself.
"I'll be completely honest with you. You're the first amnesia case that I've had to deal with, but it doesn't mean that I don't have a few ideas on where we can start. I know that the FBI has a national database of missing persons, so if anyone has reported you as missing, that's probably our best option. We'll also take your fingerprints and try to match them up against our local print database but seeing as I don't remember having seen you around here before, I won't be putting too much faith into it. You really don't have any idea where you're from, or what you did before you suddenly appeared on the outskirts of our small town here?"
"Not a clue, I'm afraid".
"From what little that know about amnesia, the most common way to get your memories back is through small triggers".
"Triggers?"
"Like for example, if you see someone or something that reminds you of home or you talk to someone, who unknowingly repeats something that's been said to you in year's past and it stuck with you. It'll all come back to you in time, I'm sure of it" he assured her with a smile that spoke volumes on how kind-hearted, he had to be.
"There's just one more small issue. I don't have any other clothes than the ones I was wearing, when I came in and I'm pretty sure that running around in nothing except for an old t-shirt and my panties, isn't the way to be discreet around here!" she joked and it got a nice little chuckle out of him.
"The hospital must have a lost and found box with some clothing in it that you can use for the time being. You're in safe hands now, Becky. We'll help you all that we can, even if it's with the smallest of things like putting clothes on your body" he told her, and after she'd searched through a pair of lost and found boxes and picked out an outfit that while it was VERY 80's, also was one that she figured wouldn't make her stick out too much, they were soon on their way.
A few hours later, they were done at the police station and after a short drive and a handful of minutes waiting in the lobby, she'd been settled into a not overly large, but very cozy room at the Great Northern Hotel with a view out on the waterfalls below that was akin to a live-action Norman Rockwell painting. The sheriff had advised her to go and see Dr. Jacoby, their local psychiatrist, the day after and had given her his phone number for her to call. She'd seen the Hawaii-obsessed Dr. Jacoby around town many times before back in "her own time" and could easily tell that he was a weirdo for sure, but she'd never talked to him before and figured that there was no harm in trying it out, if nothing else to keep the momentum of her lie going for the entire month that she needed it to.
Seeing as her room also came with free dinner, lunch and breakfast in the fancy looking hotel restaurant, she'd made her way down there after taking a short shower first to both freshen up and try to come up with a plan. She didn't know all that much about Laura's life to be perfectly frank, and out of what little she did know, some of it wasn't of a whole lot of use to her. She knew roughly how her dad's ex would have looked around this time from having looked through her mom and dad's old yearbooks countless times. Plus that Laura would have been a Senior in High School (unless, she'd been held back, in which case she'd be a junior), that she volunteered at the Double R (to help out with the meals-on-wheels deliveries), that she dated both her dad and James Hurley at the same time and finally that her best friend was named Donna and was in all likelihood a school-pal of hers. Anything else that she'd ever been told or had overheard said about Laura, couldn't be considered reliable information and for that sole reason had to be ignored entirely.
As it turned out, Sheriff Truman hadn't been a hundred percent correct when he'd said that the hotel wasn't full, because empty tables were clearly in short supply in the buzzing dining room, which was nearly filled to the brink with guests at the highly esteemed hotel and oldest still standing building in Twin Peaks. A hotel that in many ways had become synonymous with the town itself, as much as the sawmills and it's long and storied history was. As she stepped up to the Maitre D, who looked like his head was about to explode with stress, she did so cautiously, so as not to antagonize him even more than he clearly already was.
"Another one? How many tables do those brothers think that we have in here?" he sighed to himself before turning his attention to her. "Table for one, Miss?"
"If you have one. I don't want to be a bother" she said in the friendliest way that she could, and it seemed to ease him up a little.
"If only all of our guests were as well-mannered as you are, Miss! Many of them seem to forget all about manners, the moment that they step through our doors. To be perfectly honest with you, the only available table which we have left is right next to the kitchen and it's with good reason that it's only used in emergencies. I don't suppose that could perhaps persuade you to share a table with one of our other single diners? There's a girl, who's the daughter of a local lawyer and very well-behaved, I assure you, that we could ask. You look to be approximately the same age as her and just between us, she doesn't look like she'd mind having someone to talk to" he suggested with a small, if rather put-on, smile.
"If it's okay with her, sure. You really don't think that she'd mind?"
"She only eats here once a week and always by herself. From what I understand, she's a "Visiting Friend" to Mr. Horne's son, Johnny. I know that it isn't my place to pry into a young girl's life, but she always has this sad look about her like she could really use a friend to talk to" he continued and as the clues kept mounting it up, it also became clear to her who he had to be talking about.
It had to be Laura.
"Is Mr. Horne's son your boyfriend?" Becky asked Laura before taking a small bite of the fish, she'd ordered for her dinner. Feeling a little guilty that she was getting all of this for free, she'd made up for it by ordering the cheapest main dish on the menu card and even that, she had to admit, beat any dish that she'd been served before. With the exception perhaps of the pies from the Double R, but to her it was like comparing apples and oranges!
"Me and Johnny?" Laura rhetorically asked before letting out a small giggle. "I doubt that he could comprehend what romantic love is, let alone participate in it. I should explain, so that you get the full picture. He was brain damaged at birth, when he almost choked to death on the umbilical cord".
"That's so tragic!" Becky had to let out and it made the young and much more vibrant version of Laura than the one she'd met in her dream, nod along in agreement with her.
"From what his dad told me, they came within seconds of losing him, but the minutes that his brain went without oxygen was enough to permanently damage it. He remembers me and a few other people enough to remember our names, but how much he actually understands of what's going on around him is impossible to say".
"And you still come down to visit him every week? You're a saint compared to me! I don't think I could handle being around someone like him, no offense" she said, and it nearly got a giggle out of Laura, who had to fight a little not to.
"Trust me, I'm nowhere close to a saint! If you want the truth, a lot of the things that do out of the goodness of my heart, like coming here to hang out with Johnny or helping out with delivering meals for the weakest around these parts, is just as much to soothe my guilty conscience over other things that I've done".
"You don't need to explain. Haven't we all done things that we've regretted afterwards?"
"Yeah, but my guess is that I've done more of those things, than most of my peers have. How old are you, by the way? Are you my age, or ..."
"That all depends. How old are you?"
"Seventeen. You?"
"How old would you guess, I am?" Becky teasingly asked back and from the looks of it, Laura was liking her style of not giving her whatever she wanted, just because she'd asked for it.
"I don't think, you're out of High School yet. I'm guessing that you're seventeen or eighteen".
"Seventeen" Becky lied, while having to hide that she was a little gleeful, that she could still pass for someone that young.
"Where are you from, Becky?"
"That's the thing, I don't really know. I have amnesia" she "confessed" to Laura, who took the news in a rather cool and unfazed way.
"Isn't that where you can't remember anything?" Laura asked her.
"All that I can remember is my first name. One of the deputies found me by the side of the road a handful of hours ago and now, I'm here!"
"You could remember how old you were just now" Laura picked up on. "Perhaps, it's a sign that your memories are coming back to you".
"I guess, it could! I sure hope so! This whole "not having a clue why you're here or where you're from" isn't something, I can recommend!" she jokingly answered, a little relieved that she hadn't blown her cover already. Her lame little quip did get a smile out of Laura, so that was something, at least.
"You aren't like most girls our age! Are you, Becky?" the teenage version of Laura smilingly asked, without having the slightest clue of how right, she was!
"You could say that!" was all that she replied, hoping that it would end the topic for now.
By the end of her first day living in a year where she hadn't even been born yet, Becky could say that she'd gotten a decent start on her "mission". She'd already met Sheriff Truman and Doc Hayward and gotten a great first impression of both of them and she'd been fortunate enough to not just already having met Laura but also having begun to make friends with her. Now, where she was getting to know her a little, it was easy for her to see too what had attracted her dad enough to her that it would make him cheat on her mom. One thing was that she was attractive, but another thing that struck her was how there was a sadness hidden beneath her smiles that made you want to do whatever you could for this girl. Even if Laura hadn't say it in so many words and Becky hadn't already been told countless stories about the insane things, she'd gotten up to (most of which were probably stories made up by bored high school kids, anyway), it shone out of her that here was a girl that was reaching the end of her rope, and was desperately crying out for someone to save her.
If she was going to save her though, it all began with becoming closer with her and Laura inviting her to come over to Doctor Hayward and his wife's house the day after, to hang out with her and their daughter Donna, could end up being a major step in this direction. A month may have sounded like it was plenty of time when she'd first been told that it was how long, she had, but the more thought she put into it, the clearer it was to her that there wouldn't be much time to waste if she was to reach the finish line, before the preverbal buzzer on Laura's life went off.
END OF CHAPTER TWO