I waited for a while, hoping I was wrong, and Ash hadn’t lied when he’d said they weren’t a couple, and they’d soon come back outside. When another few minutes passed and they still hadn’t shown, I grabbed the biggest rock I could find, crept as close to the house as I dared, and hurled the thing straight through the window.
I ran, jumped on my bicycle and pedaled home, where I locked myself in my bedroom, refusing to come out until it was time to get the school bus the next morning. Ash didn’t sit with me that day, or the one after, and I suspected he knew who’d launched a rock at his girlfriend’s house, but I never admitted it.
It wasn’t long after that the whispers started at school. Ash and I had had a falling-out, a “lover’s quarrel.” People stared at me when I walked down the hallway, laughing and cupping their hands to each other’s ears as they quietly but not nearly discreetly enough talked about me. I’d ignored the name-calling, freak and weirdo were nothing new, but then my notebook had fallen out of my bag and brotherfucker had been added to the ever-growing list, filling me with so much shame I’d wished myself dead. Back then I hadn’t told Ash about my new nickname for months, and now that he was home again and couldn’t remember any of it, I certainly wasn’t about to bring it up.
He looked at me as we sat at the kitchen table, his expectant expression transforming to frustration. How long had I silently reminisced? I gave him some succinct details about Celine, just enough of the truth to satiate his curiosity, finishing with, “You were close. Boyfriend and girlfriend for a while but a little before your seventeenth birthday, she left.”
“Where did she go?”
I closed my eyes for a moment, told Ash how I remembered the sharp knock on the door one morning. It had come a few months after the rock-meets-window incident. Mom had answered and Celine’s mother, smelling of stale booze and cigarettes, ranted and raved about how Celine had left a note, saying she was running away. After Mom assured her Celine wasn’t at our house, and Ash was working, she’d left, but the next evening the cops showed up.
“They asked all of us questions about Celine,” I said. “And they spent ages asking you when you’d last seen her, and where you’d been.”
“They think I had something to do with her leaving?” he said.
“Not really. With the note she left about running away, and when you told them her father beat her, and Keenan and Fiona confirmed it, things changed.”
“How?”
“Her parents had to accept the truth. She ran away because of them. Her father was an alcoholic, a heavy-handed prick, and her mom had done nothing to stop him. She was usually too off her face to try.”
“Did Celine come back? Did they find her?” Ash asked, and I shook my head. “And Keenan still thinks I had something to do with her going away after all this time? Why?”
“Because he’s an asshole and you shouldn’t listen to him. It took him a while to stop throwing accusations around, then he left town for a few years and when he came back we thought he’d accepted you had nothing to do with Celine leaving, but then Kate...”
Ash looked at me. “Who is she?”
I got up, walked over to the drawer with the photo albums, where I pulled out a bundle of loose pictures, and flicked through them until I found what I needed, pictures that always surprised me because Kate looked so much like Celine, and with their dark hair and big eyes, they both resembled me, too. I set the photos on the table, slid them toward Ash with my index finger. “This is Celine, and this was Kate.”
He was about to touch the photographs but retracted his hand as if the pictures had the potential to scorch him. “Was? What do you mean?”
“Kate was your girlfriend, and she...she died. Almost two and a half years ago, a couple of months before you left town.”
“Kate’s dead?” Ash’s eyes went wide, and he jumped up, running his hands through his hair. “For Christ’s sake, why do all the people around me keep dying? What the hell happened to her?” When I remained silent, he asked again, louder, urging and insisting I tell him because he needed to know, he wanted the truth.
I blew the air from my lungs in a shaky stream as I worked up the nerve, my insides feeling as if they were on fire, burning me from the inside out. “She had an accident by the cliffs on the path behind the house.”
“This house?”
“Yes. She was an avid runner, come rain, shine or snow. She even got me to join her, would you believe?” I knew I was babbling and forced myself to get to the point. “It was a few miles from her place along the cliff path to ours, and she used to run it all the time. Called it a shortcut. We think she was on her way here one night, when it was raining, and she slipped...”
Ash stared at me, the color in his face gone. “Why can’t I remember any of this?”
“I don’t want you to remember,” I said, trying hard not to raise my voice but barely able to contain it. “You were a mess, both times. Celine was your first crush, and you told me you had plans to propose to Kate.”
“Why does Keenan think I had something to do with Kate’s death?” When I looked away, Ash took a step toward me and grabbed my hand. “Tell me. Now. I want to know if—”
“What?” I shouted, snatching my hand away as my anger erupted. “What do you want me to tell you? That Keenan dated Kate before you did? That he blames you for stealing her away and consequently for her death, because if she’d stayed with him, she’d have had no reason to come here?”
“Woah, I—”
“Or that the police investigated you when she fell? Came to the house? Asked us questions?”
“Maya, slow down—”
“Of course they did, it’s their job. But you were with me all evening. We went out for a drive and weren’t even here. Kate slipped and fell, Ash. It was an accident.”
“Keenan doesn’t think so.”
“Of course not. He’s hated you from day one. Kate’s accident was just an excuse to reignite his obsession with blaming you for everything, including Celine’s disappearance. But we all know you had nothing to do with it. Any of it.”
“Then why did I leave town?” Ash fired back, his tone and temper almost matching mine.
“Don’t you think I’ve asked myself the same thing? Don’t you think I’ve wondered every single day? And now that you know about Celine and Kate, I’m terrified you’ll leave again.”
“Maya—”
“I lost you once. I can’t go through it again. I won’t. First my dad, then Mom, and Brad. We thought that was it. We promised each other we’d stick together, you and me, because it’s all we had, but you left. You abandoned me. I came home to a goddamn note on the kitchen table and the cops wouldn’t even let me declare you as a missing person because you chose to leave.” Unable to stop myself I grabbed the saltshaker from the table and threw it at the wall, where it punched a half-moon-shaped dent before skidding across the floor, leaving a thin white trail behind. “You hurt me, Ash. You have no idea how much.”
“I’ve no idea about anything,” Ash shouted back, and I realized I’d pushed him too far, I’d let my frustrations out and this was the result. Anger begets anger. How could I have been so stupid?
“For God’s sake, Maya,” Ash continued, his voice rising further still. “People think I hurt those women? I can’t deal with this. I don’t know how to...” He looked at me for a moment, his chest heaving, and before he said anything else, he stormed past me and out of the kitchen.
I flinched as I heard the front door slam shut behind him and, heart racing, I reached for my bag, for the clonazepam in the side pocket that I hadn’t needed for months. I dropped what was supposed to be my last pill ever into my palm before rolling it between my thumb and index finger. If I swallowed it my anxiety levels would immediately wane, but the consequence was my brain would feel fuzzy as cotton wool for the rest of the day. I stared at the medici
ne, cocking my head to one side, thinking things through before biting off half the pill and swallowing it dry.
Sometimes we all needed a little bit of help.
12
ASH
Standing outside clutching the wobbly railing of the old, rickety porch, I took deep breaths, attempting to steady my head, which whirred and spun from my sister’s revelations about the two women I couldn’t remember, but had been involved with. Celine had run away when we were teenagers. Kate had died. And then, a couple of months later, I’d disappeared from Newdale overnight. If that wasn’t the sign of a guilty conscience, I didn’t know what was.
Maybe Keenan’s suspicions were valid, but Maya had been adamant I’d had nothing to do with Celine leaving, or Kate’s death. My sister’s reassurances were welcome, because, without any firsthand knowledge of what I had or hadn’t done, her comfort was all I had.
Last night Maya had pushed pretty hard for me to see a doctor, and perhaps she was right, except...what if I saw someone, got my memory back and found out she was wrong about my lack of involvement? What if the doctor told me my condition was permanent, that I’d never remember anything about my past or know who I truly was? I couldn’t figure out which was worse. When I’d woken up on the beach in Maryland I’d felt lost and confused, scared even. Since my arrival in Newdale those feelings seemed to be turning into anger, a sensation buried deep inside my chest and which I was unable to explain. I could almost feel it expanding and growing, a snarling beast I wasn’t sure I could get under control. Had I always felt this way? This tightly wound? So close to exploding?
After another few minutes of deep breaths, ruminating and trying to force my brain to work properly, I went back inside. Maya sat on the stairs, and when I saw her, my anger dissipated some more. She hadn’t done anything wrong. From the moment she’d heard me on the other end of the phone at the petrol station, she’d bent over backward to help me.
“You don’t have to worry about me leaving town,” I said gently. “You’re my sister. I may not remember it, but I’m going to do whatever I can to make everything come back.”
She nodded, pressing her lips together, looking like she might cry. “But I don’t want you to remember everything. I mean, I wish I could forget the pain of losing Mom and Brad. You don’t have any of that anymore, why would you want it back?”
“I don’t think it works that way. How can I leave who I am behind?”
She looked at me with her big, unblinking eyes, and gave me a small nod before getting up. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said, and headed upstairs where I heard her close her bedroom door softly behind her. It seemed she needed to retreat and regroup as much as I had.
I turned and stared at myself in the hallway mirror, still feeling like I was looking at a stranger. My face seemed to have regained some of its color, and after a good shave I no longer appeared quite so disheveled, but as I examined my features in the reflection, I couldn’t stop my brain from wandering back into dangerous territory.
Was this the face of someone who’d harmed two women? Keenan believed I was responsible for something, but Celine had run away—she’d even left a letter for her family—and the police had ruled Kate’s death an accident. Maya had said I’d been cleared of all suspicion, but no wonder the authorities had wanted to speak to me on both occasions. Had that been why I’d freaked out when I’d seen the cruiser near the beach? Was my anxiety because I’d been subjected to their questioning twice already? I looked away, not wanting to see my expression change as I silently admitted it wasn’t anxiety I’d experienced when I’d come across the police vehicle as much as it had been blind terror.
“Because you felt so messed up,” I whispered, my head snapping up, gazing into my own eyes as I tried to convince myself. “That’s why you panicked, there’s nothing more to it.”
My mind continued to torment me. What if Maya was wrong and I was a bad person, an evil one? Right now, I felt like there was a stranger within, but what would happen if I discovered a monster instead? Surely if I’d hurt Celine in some way to make her leave town or had something to do with Kate’s death, I’d know. Then again, I didn’t remember either of them. Not their names, faces or the sounds of their voices, so how could I be sure? I could tell my anger wanted to resurface so I forced it down.
A little while later I joined Maya in the kitchen, hoping she’d tell me more about Celine and Kate now that we’d both had the opportunity to calm down. She had her back to me, and as she poured something into a sizzling pan, I heard her humming a tune. A song I instantly recognized.
“That’s the White Stripes,” I said, and saw her back stiffen for a second. “‘Seven Nation Army,’” I added, her eyes widening as she turned around, and I felt the need to explain. “There was a T-shirt in the trailer. I remembered the band, but this image of a younger girl kept coming to me... I think...I think it was you.”
Her face lit up, her apparent confusion transforming into a broad smile. “Ash, this is incredible. You remembered something from our past. You remembered me. Meg White was my hero. I dressed up as her three Halloweens in a row.”
The relief I felt from retrieving a memory, something clear but unthreatening, sent a rush of adrenaline through my body. Before I had time to think about it again or change my mind, I said, “You’re right, I should see a doctor. I need to know what’s going on.”
She gasped, put a hand to her throat. “Really? You’ll go see Dr. Adler?”
My initial excitement waned a little but held firm. There was no backing out of this now. “Yeah. Things are coming back and maybe he can help make it happen faster.”
“I’ll come with you. I’ll call him now.”
“No, I’ll do it. If I want to get back to normal, I should start by advocating for myself.”
Maya pulled out her cell, swiped her finger across the screen and handed it to me. As it was the weekend, I didn’t expect Dr. Adler to answer, was preparing to leave a message, but he picked up the phone with a baritone hello.
“Good morning,” I said quickly. “My name is, uh, Asher Bennett.”
“Good morning to you, Mr. Bennett.” His voice rumbled a little, his words neat and precise, measured, and in direct contrast to mine. “How may I help?”
“I need an appointment. I...I’m having trouble with my memory.”
He paused. “What makes you say that?”
“I can’t remember anything before yesterday.”
“Oh, goodness. In that case you’d better come to my practice today.”
We agreed to meet as soon as I could get there and he gave me the address, which I scribbled down before realizing Maya probably didn’t need it. After we hung up, I turned to her, hoping she wouldn’t see how anxious I felt. “We can go now,” I said, “but remember I told you how I felt when I saw the police cruiser? I don’t know why that happened, but...I don’t want to tell Dr. Adler I was in Maryland. Let’s keep that to ourselves for now.”
“Of course. Whatever you say.”
“And when we get back, I want to search for myself online.”
She hesitated, playing with the wooden, seahorse-shaped pendant hanging on a leather strap around her neck. “I spent hours last night doing exactly that when I couldn’t sleep.”
My pulse throbbed in my neck as my throat ran dry. “Did you find anything?”
“No, I’d have told you. Are you sure you came up from Maryland?”
“Yes, that’s where I got in the trailer. Why?”
“Because I ran searches from there to Delaware and New Jersey. Then I added Virginia and the Carolinas, and still nothing. No missing persons, no reports mentioning you and no phone listings, either. It’s as if you’re a ghost.”
“Are you sure? Let me—”
“A hundred percent certain. There’s nothing about you anywhere. Trust me, I’ve been searching for two y
ears. If there was anything, I’d know.”
“How is that possible?” I said, fists clenched. “Somebody must be wondering where I am. A partner—”
“You’re not wearing a ring—”
“Maybe not a wife then, but a girlfriend? A friend? My boss? Don’t I have a job?”
Maya sat down, put her hands flat on the table. “I have a theory. It might sound a bit out-there, but what if you were in Maryland somewhere on vacation?”
“On my own?” I shot back. “What do you think I was doing, taking a spiritual trip to find myself or something?” I almost laughed at the irony, but given the circumstances, it wasn’t remotely funny.
“Maybe you were traveling solo,” Maya said, her voice calm, making me wonder how hard she had to try to stop herself from telling me I was acting like a jerk. “It’s possible, plenty of people do. Perhaps you were meeting someone there. What if you lived, I don’t know, in South Dakota or Wyoming or somewhere? For all we know you were staying in Alaska. To your point of having a boss and friends, they might not even realize you’re missing yet.”
“But why would I—”
“Hear me out. If you were on a beach on the first day of a week’s solo vacation, nobody would know you’re gone yet, especially if you were renting a place and not staying in a hotel, and—” Maya let out a yelp and rushed to the stove, where she pulled the pan off the burner. “Balls, the eggs are ruined.” She turned to me, heaving a sigh. “God, I feel so useless, and now I’m coming up with all these ridiculous theories, confusing you even more.” She took a few breaths, pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “After we’ve seen the doctor I’ll go and pick up a few things at the grocery store. Give you some space.”
“I’ll come with you. It’ll be good to get into town and have a look around. Maybe you could show me my old haunts, see if anything comes rushing back.” I forced a grin that didn’t fit my face all too well, but I made it stay there all the same. “You know, fingers crossed and all that.”
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