I’m home. Everything else can wait.
“Go to bed.” I tell her, “You need your rest. We’ll figure this out tomorrow.” Tomorrow, together.
She nods and we say good night. I don’t try to go into the bedroom with her because I’m wide awake. Apparently I’ve been asleep for six weeks, and I don’t want to sleep anymore right now. I need to think.
She slips into the room and shuts the door. I stand there a minute, and put my hand on it. She’s right on the other side, but there’s a gap of at least six weeks between us. I drop my hand and walk away.
***
Maisie
I lock the bedroom door against my husband, and stand there staring at it, my palm pressed to the surface. Why had I done that? In all the years of stupid arguments we’d had, no matter how mad I’d been at Grady, I’d never locked him out.
More often than not, I’d lain there pouting, hoping he would come in and apologize, so I could apologize, and then we could go to sleep together. Almost always, he did just that.
But I’m not mad now. Well, maybe a little, but I’m mostly scared, confused, and worried, and tense. Grief had been replaced by suspicion.
Earlier it had felt as if my husband was just on the other side of the door, but he hadn’t been. Now he is, and I can feel him there, but it isn’t the same. He isn’t the same.
Is he sick? He looks awful. Where has he been? Why had he left me? What happened to him?
Is this even real?
The bed sags under my weight as I sit on it. Maybe I’m having a mental breakdown and he will be gone when I open the door again. The thought wrings my heart out, because whatever is happening now, I don’t want to go back to thinking he’s dead. To missing him with every cell of my body.
I just... How can this be?
How could he disappear for six weeks, and reappear now? How could we have all thought he was dead and had a funeral, when he was very much alive? And how the hell can he not remember?
He said he’d been hit in the head. Maybe that is it. Or maybe he’s sick, like he said. Maybe his memory will come back to him, and in the morning he can explain to me why I’d thought him dead up until half an hour ago.
Or maybe... I look at the closet door. Inside on a shelf is a box that holds all our important papers.
There had been one thing all this time that had bothered me almost as much as his death. A last charge to his credit card, on the night he died, from a local hotel.
I flip the light switch in the closet and pull down the box. Beneath the funeral home bill, the life insurance paperwork, and all the other important papers I hadn’t had the energy or will to look over yet, was the credit card statement.
The paper rasps as I pull it open and stare at the innocuous charge that had befuddled me all this time.
I’d told the police, but considering he’d died at his work, and it looked like an accident, they hadn’t seen it as relevant.
But now he’s not dead. He’s alive, which means everything the police know is wrong and screwed up. Everything I thought I knew is wrong. And he says he doesn’t remember where he’s been, or what happened, or with whom.
I re-fold the paper and sigh. But as I place it back in the box, I notice something else at the top. Our bank statements, with all the zeros seeming to stand out in bold.
We’d had a few accounts together. A joint checking account, a joint savings, and individual savings account for each of us. When he’d died, I was the beneficiary to all of them. They’d taken his name off the joint accounts, and closed out his individual savings.
My heart shatters for the second time, my fragile hope dissolving into heartbreak.
If my husband hadn’t died in an accident, which he obviously hadn’t... Could he have faked his death?
Maybe he had been trying to get away from me, to leave me. Did he leave me, and come crawling back when he ran out of money, showing up at our door ragged and dirty? Lying to me, trying to convince me he has selective amnesia to resolve himself of any blame...
Maybe he was into something he shouldn’t be. Drugs? Gambling? The mob? Something where he felt it was necessary to fake his own death to get away from it. And maybe that was why he didn’t want to tell anyone he was actually alive. He is still hiding.
But none of that fit the Grady that I knew in any way. That I married.
Maybe he really did just get hit in the head somehow, develop amnesia, and wander the city, lost, until he finally remembered his address and his wife.
So why had he been wearing his burial clothes? Why had he been covered in dirt and dried blood? What the hell was going on here?
I can’t think of any scenario that ties all those things together that isn’t totally insane. And even my insane theories have gaping holes.
Who was it, if not him, that was accidentally killed, identified as him by his boss, and buried in his casket? There had definitely been a body, at his work site, at the funeral home, and in the casket.
Whatever had happened to him, I am committed to helping him figure it out in the morning. I owe it to him if he’s telling the truth.
I owe it to myself, and our baby, if he’s not.
I don’t know how I’ll sleep with the events and insanity of tonight. With all these thoughts circling in my brain. But I need to try, for the baby.
When I lay down on the bed, it’s different. With my eyes closed, it’s like Grady is just staying up late to watch television because we’ve had an argument, and the last six weeks were a bad dream, and I don’t feel so alone.
So I sleep, dreamless, unawakened by heartbroken dreams.
***
Grady
After Maisie shuts the door, I pace the living room, trying to conjure up memories of where I’ve been or what I’ve been doing. But there’s nothing.
I need more facts to go on, but I resist the urge to go wake Maisie up and dig for more information. It will have to wait until morning. She obviously needs her rest.
I, on the other hand, feel like I’d slept for, oh, six weeks or so. Sleep is going to be impossible.
Instead, I wander quietly, like a ghost in my own home, because it’s obvious I haven’t been here for a while. I note where things have changed, have been added or removed or replaced.
A lot of my daily “stuff” is gone, the everyday objects that are a sign of a person living in a space. My coffee cup, my dirty laundry, my jacket over the kitchen chair. My toothbrush, shampoo, and conditioner aren’t in the bathroom, but all my other toiletries are still in the medicine cabinet.
It’s strange to feel like I’ve been gone a long time, to feel like a stranger, in a place that was home just yesterday in my memory.
But my memory is wrong, and I need to fix it.
Settling onto the edge of the couch in the darkened living room, I put my forearms on my knees and concentrate with all my might. I remember work, and I remember snow and cold. There had to be something else.
Think, dammit.
But it’s like trying to capture smoke in my hand. There is the hint of a memory on the edge of my brain, but when I try to explore it, it disappears.
I get up again and pace, full of a tense energy I can’t explain. Hours ago I was sluggish and barely lucid, and now my thoughts are racing and I can’t sit still. Why? What has changed?
There’s a flashing memory of a dog barking and then dark silence, and then waking up, bloodied, at our front door. But I’m not sure that gap matters, because I have a bigger gap, and bigger problems to focus on.
I want to ignore them. I want to just pick up the pieces and get on with my life, with my wife. But how can I?
I’ve been missing for six weeks, with no memory of it. Everyone I know had a funeral for me, thought I was dead. I’ll have to ask Maisie tomorrow why they assumed I was dead, not just missing. Not that I would ever do it in a million years, but why wouldn’t they just assume I’d run off and left my wife and decided to start a new life somewhere else? Things li
ke that weren’t unheard of.
Why dead? Wait—
Everyone thinks I’m dead.
My parents, my sister, my friends? My boss and coworkers? What would I tell them? They would likely understand if I told them I had amnesia. But what about everyone else?
What about Biff? Do I still have a job, or has he replaced me already? He would have had to in order keep the crew and project on track. And what about the government? I’m sure they’d have little sympathy for our situation if I showed up to tell them I’m alive.
And how would we pay back the life insurance Maisie must have received? What if they think we’ve committed some kind of fraud?
I scrub my hands down my face. What a screwed-up situation this is. Everyone thinks I’m dead except my wife, and she looks at me as if she’s not sure. But I’m not dead.
I place my palm to my chest to be reassured by my heart’s steady beat. But like most of the time you aren’t even aware of your heart beating, it turns out you aren’t really aware of it not beating either. I feel nothing.
I move my palm around on my cold, empty chest in disbelief, waiting for a heartbeat to come.
Then there’s one little thump. I wait for an eternity, and there’s another. It’s slow and it’s weak, but it’s there.
Relief and dismay flood me in equal measure, because it’s too slow. How can I be sitting here conscious? How can I stand and walk around with such a slow heart without passing out? I test it out by getting to my feet, but I feel fine. Okay, I don’t feel great, but I’m fully conscious and feel no different than I did sitting. I don’t know what’s going on but this is part of it.
I must be sick. That would explain how cold and sluggish I am, the slow heartbeat. But why? With what? Am I contagious? How and where did I catch it?
I can’t remember.
I sit back on the edge of the couch and close my eyes. I need to remember.
I push my mind back to the last thing I recall. Going to work. The memories are murky, muted, like I’m reaching across a great distance. Like they are from my childhood instead of a few weeks ago. And no matter how much I try, everything fades to black after clocking in.
Maybe trying to force my memory is the wrong idea. I take a few deep breaths, just trying to relax and let my mind wander.
I go back to my memory of work. I remember clocking in, I remember Biff being irritable. It could be the memory from any day at work in the last three years actually, except it made my stomach sink. It was that day, the day something happened to lead me to this point.
So I let the memory play over and over, trying to get past the murky gray fog after I clocked in.
I walked outside...and saw Travis without his hardhat on. Yes! I’d had him cut the engine and put his hardhat on, and—
The image of Travis wavers, flickering between daytime and nighttime. From a sheepish expression on his face, to an obstinate one. I don’t understand it, but I don’t push it, because when I try to, it starts to fade completely.
The next thing I remember is seeing snowflakes falling through my windshield. The sky was dark gray, like at dusk.
Okay, so I’d worked my shift and then gotten into my truck to leave. What happened after that?
Red blinking light—red falling snow—red barrels—red liquid in the dirt.
The images flash by so fast, I can’t make sense of them. It’s just a sea of various shades of red.
I blink..
There is nothing concrete, nothing that makes sense. I close my eyes and conjure the red light again. It flashes on and off in my mind a few times. Then it comes to me. It’s the light at the intersection by my work. So I did leave that night.
But what the hell happened after that, to keep me away for six weeks? To make everyone I knew think I was dead? And why do I feel an enormous sense of dread?
Chapter Six
Maisie
I wake up in the morning stretched out, half on his side of the bed. And it’s okay.
But then my heart pounds and my eyes tear up, because what if? What if I just dreamed vividly about him again? What if he was a delusion? A ghost?
Maybe I will get out of bed this morning, like I had many mornings, hoping my husband is really still alive. But he will still be dead.
I race to the door and pull it open.
But he’s there, sitting on the couch, looking at a small photo album.
It’s one I haven’t been able to open yet. He looks up at me, somber, and I take a deep breath. Half relief, half disbelief.
“Krissy took those pictures at your funeral. She said I might want them someday.” It had been a thoughtful gift from my sister-in-law, and she was probably right, I would have wanted them someday.
If my husband hadn’t just come back from the dead last night.
I smile at him, though it’s tight. “Breakfast?”
“I could eat.” His return smile is brief and dissolves into a serious expression, but at least it was there. At least he’s here.
I go into the kitchen to start breakfast, and he follows me, carrying the album. While I get ingredients out, he sits at the table. For a few minutes of comfortable silence, it’s like nothing’s changed. All the events of last night, of the last six weeks, were just some movie I watched or novel I read. Or a spicy food induced nightmare.
“I couldn’t really sleep last night, so I did some thinking. I remembered some things.”
Spell broken. I look back at him as I scramble eggs. “Really? Like what?”
“Just a few things, but they don’t really make a lot of sense. Do you think we could talk about... that day? What you remember? Maybe it would help jog my memory.”
It’s like someone put ice cubes down the back of my shirt, and I shudder. I don’t want to remember that day, much less talk about it. I’ve been avoiding remembering it and forcefully reliving it simultaneously for weeks now. It was literally the worst day of my life, followed by forty-two days that were almost just as bad.
But I would have done anything to reverse that day, to rewind history, just twelve hours ago. I would have done anything to have my husband back, and here he is. I guess I could talk about it now if it helped solve the mystery of how that happened.
“Sure,” I say, calm. “Just give me a sec.” I plate up the eggs and sausage for both of us, and turn to him.
I stop for a second, and the plates wobble in my hands because it hits me again. His side of the table has been hauntingly empty for a small eternity, but now he’s there, back in his chair.
He stands and gently takes the plates from me, setting them on the table, and grabs my hands in his. We stare at one another, then he leans closer.
But I don’t know where he’s been or what he’s been exposed to. He looks... different. Ill. And I can’t risk transferring anything to the baby. I turn my head away, and his kiss lands on my cheek. Then we sit down together, as if that hadn’t just happened.
I take a few fortifying bites. “Where would you like me to start?”
“From the last time you talked to me, if that’s okay. We texted after I got off work, right? I remember that.”
I nod. “We talked about dinner. I made Chicken Parmesan.” Hadn’t been able to make it since. I’d been sure I’d never eat it again, because it would forever taste like fear and sorrow.
“Did we talk again after that?”
Shaking my head, I say, “No. I called and texted you when I realized you were late, then probably a hundred more times through the night.” Where are you? Are you there? Are you okay? Please answer me, you’re worrying me. “But you never replied.”
“What then?”
I serenely set my fork down on the table beside my plate, but inside, a storm is building. “I stayed up all night worrying. I knew something bad had to have happened, because you didn’t come home and you didn’t contact me. And that’s not like you. I knew you wouldn’t worry me like that on purpose.” I peek up at him, and his head shake is reassuring. But I st
ill have my doubts. “I tried calling some of your work buddies, but it was very late, and no one answered. I called the hospitals. I called the police, but they weren’t concerned because you were a grown adult, no matter what I said.” The tears burning my eyes want to fall, but I can’t let them go yet, or I’ll never get through the rest. “It wasn’t even twenty-four hours before the police came to our door. They said...they said that you’d gone back to the site after hours for some reason, and had been crushed by some of the equipment. That Biff found you and called them.”
“So that’s why everyone believed I’d died? Because Biff said it was me?” He looks off to the side, thinking.
“Yes, but...” My fingers hurt and I look down to see them clenched together and try to relax them. “You’re identity wasn’t really in question. They found your phone, your wallet. They didn’t even ask me to identify you because they were so sure based on the evidence and Biff’s identification.” And at the time, I’d been thankful for that. I hadn’t wanted my last memory of him to be his bruised and broken body. And that was why we had a closed-casket funeral as well. But now it seemed I’d made a mistake. And Biff had, somehow, made a mistake in his ID.
“I did go back, but I don’t remember anything with the equipment.”
I look up at him. “Then why did you go back?” She’d always felt that whatever his reason had been, it couldn’t have possibly been important enough.
“I don’t know.” He shoves his hair back, frustration written all over his face. “What happened after they said they found me?”
I shake my head because I don’t have much concrete that I can tell him. “Everything after that is a blur until your...the funeral.” And what a horrible day that had been. I’d felt like dying myself, but had needed to keep it together for all their friends and extended family long enough for the funeral and the wake. “I tried to say your eulogy, but I couldn’t do it. Your brother-in-law took over. I played that song you wanted.” I catch a sob in my palm and keep going. It’s okay now, I remind myself. It’s going to be okay. He is home. “It was closed casket.” I look at him, feeling inexplicably guilty. “I didn’t know you weren’t in there.” But who, if not him, had been in there instead? Was anyone at all? But the casket had looked heavy when the pall bearers had lifted it. Definitely like someone was inside. And that reminded me... He’d been wearing the suit I gave the funeral home for his burial. The suit I’d pulled out of the bathroom trash early this morning and put in a plastic bag in the corner of the linen closet. I’m not sure why I’d saved it.
A Cursed All Hallows' Eve Page 18