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reticence.
    Susannah’s hands paused for a moment, then continued. “The Red Cross found Riley living in the French countryside and reported his whereabouts to the army. He was wounded toward the end of the war, and the ambulance taking him to a field hospital was shelled. He has amnesia and they sent him to a hospital for a couple of months.” She didn’t turn to look at him. “The doctors think his injuries will improve over time. But they weren’t able to help him recover his memory so they’re sending him home. They think he’ll do better here, with people he knows.”
    He glanced at Susannah’s straight back and then turned his gaze to the ceiling. “When? When is he coming?”
    “Tomorrow afternoon. I got his room ready for him earlier.”
    She leaned over and blew out the lamp, then climbed beneath the coverlet. Until last week, most nights she’d lie with her head on his shoulder for a few moments, even when they didn’t make love. It always gave him a sense of contentment and peace that he’d never imagined possible before he married her. Since then, she left a gap between them that felt as wide as a river valley. He looked toward her side of the bed and saw her profile in the thin gray moonlight that filtered through the lace curtains at the window. She looked as rigid as he felt.
    “You know,” she said, “there’s a possibility that we’re not even married now. Have you thought about that?”
    He swallowed, feeling as if a mule had kicked him in the chest. She’d tried to talk about this before but he’d always managed to squirm away from the topic. Now he couldn’t. “Maybe.”
    “I might still be married to Riley. Now that he’s alive, I mean. I—we’ll have to find out.”
    He tried to think of something positive to offer, a damn near impossible task, considering. At last he said softly, “I suppose it’s agood thing we took Cole’s old room, here, instead of the one you used before, when Riley—well, before.”
    “Oh, God,” she uttered, and rolled to face the wall.
    Tanner sighed in the darkness.

Christophe did his best to flex his bad leg beneath the seat ahead of him on the train. Sitting for long periods made it ache more than usual, and the trip to Oregon had been nothing but a long ride. He watched from the window as trees and ferns that grew close to the railroad tracks gave way to broad pastureland and berry fields cradled by tall buttes and cool, dark stands of timber. Herds of fat, sleek dairy cows that grazed in meadows lifted curious heads to look at his train pass, grinding their cuds with jaws that moved from side to side. In the distance, a V formation of geese crossed the blue sky, directed by instinct to a warmer southern climate. Late afternoon sunlight, rich and mellow as butter, gilded everything in his view.
    The pastoral scene bore no resemblance to the village near Véronique’s farm. Nothing he had seen in America looked like the scarred French countryside he was used to. He was from this place, he’d been told. He had grown up here, had married the pretty woman in the photograph Véronique had given him, and as far as anyone knew, he’d never lived anywhere else until he’d joined the army.
    But Christophe, uneasy in the stiff collar and ill-fitting suit he’d been given, found nothing comforting about it. It was as alien as his real name—Riley John Braddock. The meaningless identityhad been forced upon him in General Hospital No. 3, a military hospital in Plattsville, New York. When he’d asked a nurse to call him Christophe, she had pursed her lips so hard they had turned white and she’d told him that he must stop that nonsense immediately. There was no such person as Christophe. He was Riley Braddock. Her brittle, righteous attitude, as starched as her uniform, had infuriated him, and he’d lashed out in French with the first phrase that had come to him.
    “Chèvre têtue! Je m’appelle Christophe!”
    The nurse’s lips had disappeared