When Hearts Collide by Kendra James

the chatter of a small child. A child who right now was calling her name.
    “Molly Mommy, I need you.”
    Molly’s return phone call to the grandmother would have to wait.
    In the kitchen, Gracie was pulling open cupboards. Molly saw the child’s plate, where only crumbs of toast remained. “Are you still hungry?”
    “I want cereal.”
    Well, that’s easy enough . Pulling two bowls off the shelf, Molly poured out cereal and sat down at the kitchen table with the child.
    Breakfast was over. Now what? The phone had not rung, and Molly’s return call had been met with a crisp female voice message. Had the grandmother raced to the hospital to be with her son-in-law?
    Molly looked at her temporary charge. Peanut butter coated several of her fingers and circled her mouth. Obviously, the first job was to clean up the child, get her dressed, and be ready for her grandmother’s arrival.
    Did Pearce Taylor have a housekeeper? From the look of his organized, but functional, desk, he didn’t appear to be a neat freak. Gracie had said her mother was ‘gone,’ so who kept this place so clean? Whoever it was, Molly prayed they’d show up soon and rescue her. She tidied up the remains of their breakfast and wondered how to entertain Gracie until help arrived.
    And where was the grandmother? Molly looked at the clock. She and Gracie had dawdled over breakfast and the cleanup. Almost an hour had passed, yet the phone still had not rung. How far away did the woman live? Had she fainted in shock and been unable to call back, or had she rushed to the hospital?
    Molly needed information. She needed answers. All she had got out of Pearce last night was that he didn’t have a wife and Gracie didn’t have a mother. But was he divorced, a widower? It was plain and simple biology, the child had to have had a mother at some point. But what had happened to her? The last thing Molly wanted was to get in the middle of a bitter custody dispute.
    The man had suffered a head injury. He might have amnesia or delusions. She had no idea if anything he told her the previous night was based on reality–except for Gracie. He had known her name, and his concern for her was appropriate. She was obviously his daughter, that much seemed to be true, but other than that, she knew nothing about him or his situation. All Gracie said was her mother was gone. Gone could mean anything to the child–gone away for a job, gone on vacation, separated from her father. Maybe the child’s mother had died.
    “Can we crayon, Molly Mommy?”
    She should put a stop to it, but Molly couldn’t help smiling at the child’s name for her. And despite the enticing picture of Pierce and Gracie being her family, that was a flight of fancy, and she didn’t have the excuse of having a head injury to create that particular delusion.
    How was Pearce doing? Should she call the hospital and inquire? They should give her his status. They thought she was his wife. Was he conscious? How lucid would he be? Would he remember anything about the accident? Would he remember begging her to pretend to be his wife, or would he deny even knowing her?
    Darkness surrounded him. It came in varying shades–pitch black to cumulous clouds of silver. Through the luminous silver, he sometimes saw a halo of light, a glimpse of scarlet, dots of blue, fading to charcoal again. Then he would sink back into the darkness, and a feeling of numbness would weigh on him. Gradually, the periods of gray came more often, lasted longer, beating out the black, as if a war were being waged.
    He floated in the waves of dense clouds. At times, he rose almost to consciousness, but never quite attained it before plunging into darker depths, where no sensation penetrated. He tried to swim to the surface, but the current overpowered him. The weight of the water engulfed him. He treaded furiously, but was swept into the depths again.
    Sensations of pain came and went in varying degrees. He would rise to the surface where