Savannah Knight is a retired mortician with great plans to become a paranormal author. On her first day of retirement, she heads to the local library to start her new career as an aspiring author. But shortly after her first research session, everyo...
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A year went by, and it was business as usual before any new information surfaced regarding Maggie Carpenter. No matter how hard I looked, I kept running into roadblocks, and Charlie wasn't having any luck either. That is, not until Maggie Carpenter herself showed up at our local hospital with a severe case of amnesia. Well, to be truthful, she'd showed up several weeks before, but nobody knew who she was then.
One night after I'd gotten home late from work, I watched the local news, and the picture of a familiar-looking woman showed up on my television screen. "If you have any information about the identity of this woman, please contact your local police department with any information," the newscaster said. Had I seen her around town? I didn't know. Why did that woman look so familiar to me? It didn't occur to me until several days later that the mystery woman had an identifying scar I remembered seeing in a case file. I immediately scoured the hundreds of files I kept locked in my filing cabinet at home, but of course, nothing in those pages jogged my memory. So, on a whim, I contacted Charlie and asked him to look again at Maggie Carpenter's case file. The confusing medical records mentioned a scar across her forehead—the same one the mystery woman had. I nearly dropped the phone when he confirmed my suspicions.
"That's her! That's the woman on the news!" I yelled into the phone. "She's at Norman Regional Hospital right now."
"What in the world are you talking about?" Charlie asked.
"Her picture has been on the news for the past week. They have an unidentified woman in the ICU with that same exact scar. It's got to be her." The phone clicked, and a dial tone played loudly in my ear. Several minutes later, Charlie appeared on my doorstep. He rushed inside before I could invite him in, and he had a panicked look on his face.
"Did you contact the police?" he yelled at me. "Did you contact the police?" he yelled at me even louder.
"No, I called you as soon as I made the connection. What's wrong?"
"It's her, alright, but we can't go to the police with this information. The second the world knows who she is, her life will be in danger." Charlie paced around the room while he lit a cigarette and took his first puff. While he exhaled, he said, "I need you to promise me you'll keep quiet about this information—at least for a little while. She's safe out in the open as long as nobody knows who she is, but the minute someone starts sniffing around, she could end up dead for good this time."
Night after night, I saw that poor woman's confused face on the news, and I couldn't decide if I was the good guy or the bad guy for doing what I was told that time. I promised myself that I'd keep the secret to myself–at least, for as long as she remained in a coma.
