by Joe Hart
“You just got here,” Merrill says.
“I know, but it was a long day.” She makes her way around the table, hugging each of them in turn. Merrill holds her for an extra second after she releases him, kissing her on the brow before letting her go. He says everything he needs to in the last look before turning away, and she smiles as she waves her good-byes and makes her way out through the bar.
The smell of ripe apples drifts across the highway to the parking lot from the massive orchard and she breathes it in, taking a moment of solace for herself. As she walks to her vehicle she brushes back a strand of loose hair from her forehead. It’s grown nearly to her shoulders in the fourteen months since she cut it, but she’s not sure it fits her anymore. Each time she looks into a mirror it is like gazing into the past, one she still doesn’t truly understand. Maybe she’ll end up cutting it again soon. Perhaps that’s better since some things can never go back to the way they were.
Zoey climbs into the four-wheel drive SUV and pulls away from the bar, giving the enclosed courtyard where her family is celebrating a last look.
She drives north through the outskirts of the city, the elevation gradually bringing her up and away from the sprawling neighborhoods that are beginning to come to life again. She winds her way past several stores that have popped up in what seems to be only the last few weeks and turns right onto a dirt drive threaded between thick stands of red cedar.
At the top of a rise she turns into a driveway that curves twice up the side of a foothill, emptying out in a clearing, at the back of which is her house. It is a tall timber frame with a front porch and deck overlooking the sweeping view down through the Douglas firs and spruce trees that line the mountainside. A swelling of happiness fills her just as it does every time she returns here. Home. The place she’s always wanted is finally hers. She pulls to a stop beside Nell’s car and climbs out, hauling in the few supplies she picked up in town prior to stopping at the bar.
Inside, the air is warmed by the fireplace she can hear crackling in the great room. Sunlight slants across the wide kitchen and the smell of cooking onions wafts from a pot on the stove. Zoey moves to the cabinets and begins unloading the groceries, listening for, and after a second hearing, the sound of tinkling laughter in the next room. Her smile fades only briefly as she closes the cabinet and her eyes fall on the pictures taped there: each type of food normally stored within, along with its name.
She walks to the sink and washes her hands, not really seeing the other labels around the room: the phone by the door with the word “phone” above it, along with numbers to her office at the parliament building and the emergency services in Victoria. She begins to move toward the great room but her eyes catch on the photographs beside the door, these of her own face as well as the girls’, their names below each one.
Zoey pushes through the door.
The great room is much warmer than the kitchen, the afternoon light pouring through the rows of windows lining the front of the house. Nell sits on the closest chair holding Lynn in her lap, the girl’s chubby arms raised above her head in a triumphant pose. Ellie sits near Nell’s feet, one hand on the edge of the low coffee table.
“Hey, you’re home early,” Nell says, standing.
“Yeah, meetings were quick today so I got out of there and stopped for a celebratory drink with everyone on the way.” Zoey grins as she takes Lynn from Nell, kissing the little girl on the cheek. “How are you, beautiful?” Lynn laughs as Zoey nuzzles her neck, tickling her under the arm at the same time.
“They were really good. Both took an hour nap this afternoon, so they shouldn’t be cranky like yesterday. How is the happy couple doing?”
“Great. They’ve already got a lot of the planning done. It’s going to be a beautiful ceremony.”
“That’s wonderful. Say, I hate to run, but Rita and Daniel are coming over for supper, and I promised I’d whip up my fish stew. I’ve got soup going on the stove, should be done in an hour.” Nell gathers her bag from the floor beside the couch before kneeling to kiss Ellie on the top of the head. “You be good for mama. And you too,” she says, sliding her finger off the button of Lynn’s nose.
“Nell?”
“Yeah,” the older woman says, pausing by the doorway.
“How was he today?”
Nell’s expression darkens slightly. “Pretty good. He got a little upset this morning after you left when he couldn’t remember my name, and he tried to fix the bathroom doorknob that’s loose upstairs.”
“Oh no. Did he break anything?”
“No. He threw his toolkit when he couldn’t figure out what to use on the screws.”
Zoey nods, disentangling Lynn’s fingers from a length of her hair as the girl starts to pull on it. “Okay. Thanks for everything.”
Nell smiles, but there is a hint of sadness in it. “No problem. Same time tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Have a good night.”
“You too.”
Nell pushes through the door and is gone.
The fire crackles in the hearth. Ellie picks up a plastic rattle and inspects it before shaking it hard enough to nearly knock her over. Zoey gazes at her daughter for a moment before looking past her to the couch in front of the picture windows.
Lee sits to one end of the sofa, hands folded in his lap. He stares out at the sunlit drop below the house, eyes tracing the movement of the treetops in the wind.
Zoey walks to the couch and lowers herself onto it, holding Lynn in her lap. “Hi honey,” she says.
Lee doesn’t look at her at first, then his head turns and she sees the dim fugue state slowly recede from his gaze.
“Hi,” he says, a crooked smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. His forehead wrinkles in concentration and his jaw works. “Zoey,” he says at last, as if the word was stuck behind a dam inside him.
“How was your day?”
He struggles, wringing his hands together. “I think I got angry once.”
“It’s okay.” She reaches out and takes his hands apart, holding one of them in her own. “It’s okay.”
The small hope she harbors throughout each day from the time she leaves the house to when she walks through the doors in the evening falls away. The doctors all concurred that it was a miracle Lee recovered at all, and they had explained that he might need constant supervision and special care for the rest of his life, even after the rigorous therapy he’d undergone. Deep down Zoey understands this, but she can’t help the ember that begins glowing inside her every day; the thought that when she comes home Lee will be there, her Lee. Not the man who has to check the photographs hanging by the door several times a day to remember their names.
She recalls two nights before, waking sometime in the early morning hours to find Lee’s side of the bed empty, the door to their room wide open, Lee gone. She’d rushed through their home, terrified he’d fallen and hurt himself or simply walked away from the house into the night and forgotten how to return.
She’d found him on the front porch, crying softly into his hands, a spoon beside him on the bench. She’d hugged him close, whispering that it was okay until he’d calmed enough to tell her he’d woken hungry and come downstairs for something to eat, but after taking out a bowl and spoon for some leftover stew, he’d forgotten what the spoon was called. It bothered him so much he couldn’t get himself to eat.
So each day she hopes that somewhere in the tangled neurological pathways of his mind a connection will be made that will in turn create another link forging a chain to draw him back to the man he once was, the man who could engineer anything he could imagine. And yet despite the challenges, he is here beside her. The life with him that she dreamed about is a reality. And that is enough for her, because the love he feels for her is there, strong as ever when their eyes meet or their hands touch.
“What smells so good?” Lee asks, looking past her toward the kitchen.
“Soup. It should be ready pretty soon.
Do you remember what we use to eat soup with?”
The look of concentration returns to his face. “No,” he says after a time, defeat thick in his voice.
“A spoon. We eat soup with a spoon.” When he doesn’t look up she says, “It’s okay, honey, you’re doing great.”
He is quiet for a long time, the sound of the fire and the occasional rattle of Ellie’s toy the only things breaking the silence. She is about to rise and begin preparing their meal when Lee squeezes her hand.
“I remember this,” he says, glancing up at her. “I remember holding your hand in the hospital and before in another place.”
“At the ARC,” she says. “That’s right, we held hands at the ARC.”
“The wall. I remember the wall. I can see it, and it’s like it’s here in my head,” he says, bringing his fingers up to brush his temple. “I know if I can get to the other side, things will be there; everything I’ve forgotten. You’ll be there.”
Her vision blurs. “We’re going to get through the wall together because I’m not on the other side, I’m right here, I’ll always be right here.”
He smiles, a choked laugh coming from him. He leans forward and kisses her gently before gazing down at Lynn. “I almost forgot,” he says, rising. He stops, frowning in a way that makes her think the wall inside him isn’t so thick after all, because for a brief moment he is her Lee from before. He grins and shakes his head. “That’s really funny; me saying I almost forgot.” He moves to where Ellie sits beside the table and picks her up, setting her on her feet. “Okay . . . El . . .” He looks at Zoey for a second before nodding. “Okay Ellie, let’s show Mom what you can do.”
For a beat, Zoey’s worried, sure that Lee is misremembering something or confused, but then he lets go of Ellie and the girl doesn’t slump to her bottom as she usually does after pulling herself up to a standing position.
Instead she takes a hesitant step forward.
Then another.
And another.
“Oh my God,” Zoey says. “She’s walking!”
Lee smiles, following a pace behind his daughter, hands held out to either side of her in case she falls. “She did it twice earlier today. I’m sorry you didn’t get to see the first time.”
“That’s okay,” she hears herself saying. Lynn burbles and flaps her arms in Zoey’s lap, and she hugs her close, watching Ellie walk and Lee follow her; their child and the man who would die for her, even if he cannot always recall her name.
“Everything is going to be okay,” Zoey says, and in her heart she truly believes it will be.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks so much to my family, who supported me through the process of writing the trilogy; you mean more to me than you know. Huge thanks to my editor, Jacque Ben-Zekry, for believing in Zoey, in the story, and in me. Many thanks to Kjersti Egerdahl, Sarah Shaw, Dennelle Catlett, Jeff Belle, Mikyla Bruder, and everyone else on the team at Thomas & Mercer; you are the best of the best, and the books wouldn’t be what they are without you! Big thanks to Caitlin Alexander for the dynamite edits! Thanks to all my author friends who I bounced ideas off throughout the trilogy; you know who you are.
And thanks last, but definitely not least, to the readers; without you I wouldn’t be doing what I am today. Thank you for following Zoey and Lee and all the others to the very end, thank you, thank you a million times over!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2015 Jade Hart
Joe Hart is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of eleven novels that include The River Is Dark, Lineage, and EverFall. The First City is the final book in the highly acclaimed Dominion Trilogy.
When not writing, he enjoys reading, exercising, exploring the great outdoors, and watching movies with his family. For more information on his upcoming novels and access to his blog, visit www.joehartbooks.com.