The Homecoming Read Free

alone. “Can you remember if there was anyone else with you?” God, he’d better check around and make sure there wasn’t someone else lying injured and helpless down here.
    She was silent. Finally, she said in a small voice, “I don’t remember.”
    Giving the area a visual scan, Danny saw no other body on the rocks or shore. Why, then, had this tourist gone out on the ocean alone? Even a native would be unlikely to take a risk like that.
    As if she’d read his thoughts, she said, “I took boats out on the r-river all my life.” Her teeth chattered despite the warmth of the dawning day. “But the ocean’s a lot different.”
    â€œYeah,” he said dryly. “The ocean’s a lot different from a river.” He tried not to think of what could have happened to her had she not fetched up on his rocks. More than one person had gotten caught in the strong currents that ran from the Hawaiian Islands straight across the Pacific with not a speck of land for hundreds of miles. Others, without boats, had been discovered by the sharks that frequented the waters.
    He was about to ask her what river she’d meant when she made another bid to get up, and this time he decided he might as well let her try. He moved back, and she rolled to her side, then came up into a sitting position with her knees drawn up. “Oh,” she said. “Dizzy.”
    From this angle, he could see why. There was alarge and ugly knot just above her right temple with blood still oozing from the broken skin at its center. Looking down, he saw that the rock against which her head had lain was dark with blood.
    His stomach lurched. “You’ve got a pretty hefty bump on your head,” he said, trying to stay calm, though his mind was racing, wondering how much blood she’d lost. Calm down, he told himself, everybody knows head wounds bleed like crazy and look worse than they usually are. “Looks like one of those rocks reached out and smacked you on the way in.”
    She probably would be pretty, he thought, cleaned up with a little color in her face. She had nice cheekbones to go with that cute little nose, and although her lips were nearly blue, they were nicely shaped and full. She had closed her eyes on sitting up and he hadn’t gotten even a glimpse of their color, but the lashes that shielded them lay across her cheeks like tiny fronds of a thickly feathered fern.
    One corner of her mouth had turned up at his words, but he could see that she was swallowing and breathing deeply, probably fighting nausea.
    â€œI’m Danny,” he said, talking just so she wouldn’t feel compelled to respond. “This island is my home. I imagine you came over from Kauai sometime late yesterday and got caught in the currents.”
    â€œYes. Caught in the currents.” Her voice was faint but definite from beneath the fall of thick hair that fell forward around her bent head as she raised her armsand wrapped them around her raised knees. “Pushed me toward a reef.”
    â€œFrom Kauai?”
    She hesitated. Her shoulders rose and fell. “I’m not sure,” she admitted.
    He blinked. It was common, he’d heard, for people with head injuries to forget things temporarily. Especially things that happened right before their accidents.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” he asked her, still kneeling beside her.
    She raised her head cautiously, clearly testing her stomach as she opened her mouth to reply, but then an odd expression crossed her face. She automatically whipped her head around to face him, but immediately winced and dropped it back to her knees. “I— My name is— I don’t know!” She sounded both astonished and bewildered. “Just give me a minute. I’m just a little…a little…I don’t know who I am!”
    Her eyes were blue. Very blue at the moment, the irises encircled by dark rings that only made them