by Tara Brown
A washer, dryer, and hanging rack are in another corner.
The back wall has a couch. It’s old and rotten looking, but I walk to it anyway. I walk so blindly I almost stumble over cords leading to a door in the corner under the stairs.
I know this door.
I know this gray, dank space.
I lower my gaze to the electrical cords on the floor and follow them to the door. The tiny windows provide almost no light and they are clear across the room, but I don’t need much light to see this place and know it.
I lift my hand to the doorknob and hold it, trembling and begging myself not to open it. In my head there’s a ring of light around the door, as if there were light inside the room. But my eyes do not see what my head says is there. Courage or stupidity takes over and my hand turns the knob.
It takes a second for the door to open, as my arm has joined the idea that I shouldn’t see inside. When I do open it, I gag, heaving at the sight of the plain room. There is nothing in there but the tail end of the cords. However, my head is suddenly full of memories that fill the empty spaces of the dank basement.
The memories were never taken; they were blocked. I see that now as they all fill the empty space. Time spent in this horrid little room takes space up in my brain. The small room is the trigger. It is the memory bank I have sought for so many years.
I drop to my knees, still heaving and somehow now sobbing.
“Jane,” Antoine whispers. “I’m here, Jane. It’s okay.”
I don’t share what I see inside of my head, the things he cannot. Because I know deep down he has seen them. He has seen the photos my own father no doubt loaded on the Internet so his disgusting friends could see too. I would have been long gone by the time the Internet was around, but the pictures would have been there—here.
I close the door, turning around and leaning against it.
The song fills my head. The one I believed had come from Samantha Barnes. But it’s not hers, it’s mine.
My childlike voice fills the empty space in the dank room. I am singing it, alone in the corner with the Barbie he gave me. She’s so pretty. Her name is Andrea. And I am singing the song to her. I don’t know where I heard it. “Listen, listen to the wind and stone. Listen, listen to the sounds of old. Listen, listen as my hopes are drowned. Listen, listen to the sounds that bullets make of blood and bones. Where will you run today? How will you ever get away?” My voice cracks as I sing it.
With my tiny little fingers, I tie the purple scarf around Andrea’s throat, making it fluff exactly the way my mom always does with her scarves.
I lift her up, looking her over. She’s so pretty. I wish we were twins, Andrea and me. I named my Barbie that because of the beautiful girl at school. The girl with the blonde hair and the pretty face. She’s exactly the sort of girl I wish I were. Her eyes match.
Even though my mom tells me that eyes are sisters and not twins, I wish my eyes were twins like Andrea’s.
“Penny!”
We both look, me and the little version of me. My mother is there, with her dark silky hair and beautiful face. Her eyes are haunted, dead like fish eyes.
“I told you to clean your room before your dad gets home. You know he likes it clean.” Her accent is thick, but her English is good.
The little version of me puts the Barbie in the room with the door. There are other things in there now, in my old memories. A camera on a tripod and a Polaroid picture that shows my face with tears in my eyes. My different-colored eyes. The pale-blue walls make me cringe. I hate powder-blue paint. I hate powder-blue walls.
I get up and follow the memory to the stairs.
Little me, little ten-year-old me, climbs the stairs. A picture on the wall catches my eye when I get to the top and open the door. It’s of me and my mom at the beach. She’s wearing a purple scarf and sunglasses. She looks happy, but in the reflection of her glasses I can see him. He’s holding the Polaroid camera. That was the day she was singing it, “867-5309/Jenny.” She sang it in the car. It was her favorite song.
I hate him.
Penny, the little girl I am not, walks into the kitchen and sits. Her mom is making a drink. A tequila sunrise with maraschino cherries. She pops one in her mouth and ties the stem off. She hands Penny one and Penny tries. She can’t do it. I can’t do it.
She leans across the counter and sips her drink, letting Penny have a sip too. “One day, my lucky Penny, me and you are gonna be happy. One day.” She winks and sucks back the drink too fast. She takes cash from her pocket and leaves the room. I leave Penny at the table and follow our mom. She walks down the hall to my room. She pulls down the four-leaf-clover box and places cash inside it. She tucks it back into the nook in my closet.
She turns, stopping when the front door opens. Penny is watching from the hall; she and I are standing beside each other. We both see the look on her face. We both feel the same dread.
He’s home from his trip.
Penny loses all the sweetness on her little face, and I force away the memory.
I close my mind off and look around the gray, dank house.
All the pictures of me are gone. Penny is gone. She ran away when she was fourteen. I remember sneaking out the dirty window. I remember the way my fingertips smudged the dirt as I opened the window and climbed out, taking the box of money with me.
It had seemed like so much money, but it didn’t last.
The rest is history.
The attack is still blank, and I don’t want to recall the other things. I don’t need to remember living on the streets. Whatever the trigger is for that, I am fine without finding it.
My father was a pedophile and my mother was an immigrant who never stood a chance at getting away. She wasn’t strong as I was. I pause at the doorway, as I am about to leave.
“Where is my fath—the man who lives here?”
“Dead. He died a few years ago.”
I have a terrible feeling I know the answer but ask anyway. “How?”
“Stabbed in Atlantic City. He was there gambling.”
“Did you have him killed?” I ask. It isn’t something I would put past Antoine, not in a situation like this. I would kill someone like that man without even a slight provocation.
“It wasn’t me.” He leaves it there, offering nothing else. I wonder if it was Rory. If he had ever done me a kindness like this one.
“Is she alone, then?” I don’t want to call her mother. She was not my mother. She was Penny’s mother and even then not much of one.
“Yes. She still works as a housekeeper at a hotel. She’s been there for years.”
“Is she happy?”
“I don’t think so. She has a simple life. She is alone all the time.”
“Tell the driver to go. I want to walk for a bit,” I whisper as I leave the house, leaving it in the past where it belongs. The few memories I have of it are bad and I want them gone. The way they were before.
But like always, there are a million things in my brain that I want gone. If I get rid of those, everything else goes.
My career. My love. My friends. All I will have is the distinct feeling I know that black-and-white cat and I love him. Beyond that I will have nothing. Nothing good or bad.
It’s a big decision to make.
I had hoped to enter the house and kill the monster. I’m a little disappointed by the fact I am not going to get that opportunity.
“You all right?” Antoine asks in my ear.
“I will be.” I walk along the broken concrete of the random street in the random town. Not Atlanta. Not Andrea. Not at all who I thought I was.
I make it off the block when I see him.
He turned out not to be what I expected either.
When I walk to him his face is twisted, not just in anger but also in disappointment. Maybe in me or
maybe for me.
I click off the camera and the earpiece. “You killed him, didn’t you?” This is the piece of Dash I have been missing. This is the darkness inside him. He has taken a life against his oath as a doctor and against his nature as a human.
Dash looks down, pressing his lips together. “I didn’t know the details. I never lied to you. Antoine came to me and I wanted to be able to say I didn’t know your name and I didn’t know who you were. I wanted deniability. I didn’t even know where this house was until recently. I swear.”
“I’m not mad.”
He sighs. “I had to do it. You know that, right?”
I nod, but I’m a little worried about him. “Have you killed other people?”
“His blood is the only blood that stains my hands. It was a terrible thing to do, but the pictures were too much. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let him live. I am not strong enough. I went to confront him. Antoine traced his credit cards. I only wanted to confront him about your fate. But I got so angry—” His hands tremble and his eyes turn dark, scary dark. His brow is so furrowed I don’t know that it will lift again. The haunted look in his eyes makes sense. The things he has done for me. I realize then the darkness inside my lover’s heart was put there because of me.
“None of it matters now.” I step into him, pulling him to me. “Thank you, though.”
“What for?”
“Taking it all away. I wish it were gone again. I wish I didn’t know.” I think about the story I made up for Samantha Barnes and realize I must have known all along. I must have had an idea.
“Taking it away doesn’t work. You are a naturally curious person. You solve the crime no matter how hard I hide it. You solve the crime and I look like an asshole for hiding shit from you.”
I laugh weakly into his chest. “I want to go home. I want to forget all of this.”
“What about her?”
“She was Penny’s mother. She’s not mine.” I link my fingers into his.
“Penny?” He looks confused. He honestly never knew my name.
“That was my name.”
“I hate the name Penny. I like Jane.”
“Even Jane Doe?”
He chuckles. “We gave you a proper English name. Spears is very respectable. He was also the doctor who first operated on you when you were found.”
“I think Townshend will suit me more.”
He pauses, looking down on me. “You do?” His eyes fill with hope and whatever is left over from talking about him murdering a man in cold blood.
“I love you, Dash. I have always loved you. I will always love you. Even if I were to get my memories wiped again, I would find you again. Every time.”
He smiles but says nothing. He kisses me softly and whispers, “Then let’s go home.”
I have a feeling “home is where the heart is” will become something of a thing for us. He has likely moved us into the big house. The mischief in his eyes suggests it.
We walk to the car he has down the road.
Walking away from something bad and toward something new.
21. MARRY YOU
The big house is not my type of house. But I like the pool. I drop my robe on the sun chair and jump in. The cool water refreshes. I swim with the huge wolfhound running laps around the deck. His whine means he’s contemplating coming in.
“Sirius, go lie down,” Dash commands. The dog tucks his tail and finds his huge pillow, his docility a ridiculous sight.
Not like the black-and-white cat that ventures out from under the table and chairs to give us an indignant look. He strolls the deck, fishing his white toes in the water. It makes me smile until Dash pulls his T-shirt off and walks to the edge of the pool.
Then I sigh.
Perfection.
Binx runs when Dash dives in, swimming underwater to me. I try to swim away, but he is a much stronger swimmer than I am. He pulls me down to him, wrapping himself around me. We surface and his wet lips find mine.
I encircle my legs around his waist and cling to him. “My mother says the wedding is still going to be the wedding. We are not getting off without the hoopla.”
I laugh and lean back, letting my upper body float, but my legs stay wrapped around him. “I figured. I’m not going to fight it. Dash, marrying you is the only part of the entire day I give a rat’s ass about. The rest she can have.”
“Are you happy, Jane?”
I stare up at the blue sky and wonder if anyone has ever asked me that question. “I am.”
In the sparkle of the sunlight, a star fills my gaze. I lift my head and cock an eyebrow.
He’s holding an engagement ring over my head. It isn’t the same as the one before. It’s old and larger, the sort I would never have thought of as an engagement ring. “I don’t know how the hell we ended up here. How this worked out even after everything fell apart. I only care about going forward. I want every day to feel like this one. I know they won’t all feel this way. I know we’ll fight. I know we’ll disagree. I know my mother will always be an issue—”
I laugh, cutting him off.
He smiles at that one too, blushing a bit. “But I also know that if we can make it through what we have already, those other things are nothing. I have never met a woman your equal, Jane. I have never met someone who manages to survive the way you have, but then live and live well. You evoke my respect and my loyalty without ever saying a word. I used to think it was my job to protect you from everything. But now I see you don’t need that. You are a hero in your own right and I love you even more for it.”
My heart is racing. Not because he’s saying fancy things to me. Not because he’s proposing. But because for the first time ever, I feel like he sees me. I slip my fingertip into the circle. He pushes the ring onto my finger—of course it’s a perfect fit.
He is a perfect guy. They don’t actually screw things like this up. The advantage to having yard surrounded by woods and no neighbors for miles is that you can celebrate an engagement in a pool.
You can kiss until you don’t think your lips can take one more. You can rub and touch until you both need to exit the pool for a beach chair. You can make love in your backyard with no one watching you.
If ever there was a moment for slow and passionate, this is it.
He lays me down on the chair and slips between my legs, dragging my bathing suit bottom down. He enters me before we have contemplated more foreplay. It’s too desperate for that. When he’s inside me, he flips up my bathing suit top to expose my breasts. Our breath hitches together as our bodies writhe in the sea of bliss.
When we finish, we lie there a moment longer, holding on to each other and the moment we have made magical.
“Every second from now on will be the best in my life,” I whisper and kiss his cheek.
“For me too.” He scoops me up, carrying me inside to the shower. Water pours down on us, massaging us almost, it’s so intense.
I walk from the shower, staring at the large oval ring with the diamonds all over it. It’s too fancy and too expensive for me, and yet I love it. It’s different.
Like us.
I take a quick picture of it and send it to Angie. She texts back and I can only imagine the series of sounds she’s making—ochs and squeals.
She sends a picture too, of a guy looking down. I recognize him immediately and carry the phone to Dash. “Who is this guy? I saw him at your parents’ place.”
“That’s a cousin. His name is Charles Jardine. He’s from Scotland.”
“Of course he is.” My roll my eyes. “He and Angie are dating, I think. She sent me this picture. And from the background, I’d say that is her house. She has flowery wallpaper like that.”
He leans in, looking at the floral wallpaper. “Maybe, but that particular paper is in my mom’s bathroom upstairs.”
“Oh, dude. She had sex in the bathroom at that party?”
He chuckles. “Apparently.” He points at the black underwear on the floor behind poor Charles, who doesn’t realize she has snapped a photo of him as he looks down at the buttons on his shirt.
I press her name on my phone and stroll into the kitchen to find food.
“Och, that is some ring, Janey. Ya must have nearly shit.”
I laugh. “I was in the pool, so no.”
“Ya filthy thing. Shitting in the pool over a ring.” She laughs harder.
“So Charles, huh?” I don’t want to talk about shitting in the pool.
“Oh my, that is some lad, that is. He’s a rugged man from an area just outside Edinburgh. It’s been a pretty fantastic two weeks.” She sighs. “He’s exactly the sort of man I need. Exactly what a man ought to be—successful and weird, in the right ways. Not the scary ways, though. He folds his socks when he takes them off.”
“That is weird.” I can’t help but smile for her, even if she is just in the beginning stages. “It must feel nice to be dating again.”
“It feels nice to be shagging again.”
I laugh. “And that.”
“That is the important stuff.” She sends me another picture, making my phone buzz again. “I sent a picture of the family home. He’s right rich, Janey.”
“Not everyone thinks rich is important.”
“Tell me that again when we’re sixty years old and taken care of. Everyone cares about rich a’ some point. His clan is well known in the country. His family owns a shipping-something-or-other.”
I open a yogurt and spoon some into my mouth, thickening my words. “But you know love is more important.”
“Love is everything.” She yawns. “And I have to get back to work. We are starting some test runs soon. I’ll let ya know how the poor subjects fare.”
“You know how they’ll fare.”
“Aye, I do. I know they’ll think it’s remarkable and amazing. I remember when ya first went in. Ya thought the sun and moon set in me arse.”
“I still do.”
“Kiss the cat and the dog and Dash.” She laughs and hangs up.