Magic & Memory (4 page)

He said, “I wonder if I live in town.”

“You don’t.”

“How do you know?”

 “It’s a small town, and I would have noticed you,” she told him.

“How small?”

“Just under twenty thousand people.”

“That’s not
that
small. It’s quite possible you never noticed me.”

“No. Totally impossible,” Lu insisted.

“Why?”

“Because, Alastair,
I
would have noticed you
.”

He got what she was saying then and smiled as he told her, “I’m glad you find me attractive.”

“You’re glad about that? Why?”

“Because Lu,” he said, “it would be rather depressing if you thought I was hideous while I in turn find you incredibly beautiful. It would mean I never had a chance with you.”

She raised her brows at him, a smile playing around her lips. “Are you flirting with me?”

“Maybe a little.” His eyes sparkled.

“You shouldn’t. For all you know, you already have a girlfriend.”

“I don’t. I’m sure of it.”

“Also, you’ve recently suffered some kind of trauma. You may not be thinking clearly.”

          He smiled at that. “Regardless of what I’ve been through, I still know beauty when I see it. And I certainly know when I’m attracted to someone.” Alastair came and stood beside her, leaning against the kitchen counter like she was, their arms lightly touching. A moment passed between them, a spark, possibility flaring. Lu felt herself relaxing, letting some of the unhappiness of the past few months start to recede again.

          After a few moments, Alastair cocked his head to the side and asked, “What’s that sound?”

“What sound?” She strained to hear, but all was silent.

“You don’t hear that? The low rumbling, coming from outside?”

Lu shook her head and kept listening. It was a good minute before she heard it, too. She went into the living room and stuck her feet into a pair of snow boots, then opened the front door and crossed the covered porch to the front steps. Alastair started to follow but hesitated, hanging back inside the living room and blinking at the glare of the sunlight reflecting off the snow.

A huge pickup truck with a plow mounted to the front of it appeared at the base of Lu’s driveway, pushing a mountain of snow out of its way. The engine cut off and a tall, familiar form jumped out of the cab, grabbed a snow shovel from the bed of the pickup and started walking up to the house. When he saw Lu, he stopped in his tracks.

“Seriously?” she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest.

It had been a while since Lu had seen her ex-boyfriend. The last time had been three months ago, when he and his parents had shown up uninvited at her Aunt Claire’s funeral. Ignoring Ted had been easy then, when she’d been completely consumed with sorrow.

But of course,
of course
he would show up now, right at the very moment she was just starting to connect with someone else.

“Hi Lu.” He looked and sounded the same as always. In fact, he’d changed very little in the five years she’d known him. Ted was tall and lanky, his dark blonde hair in need of a haircut as usual, his flannel shirt, t-shirt and jeans looking like they’d spent last night on his bedroom floor -- which they probably had.

 He adjusted and readjusted the wire frames of his glasses, which she knew meant he was nervous. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something, and when she didn’t he stammered, “I was worried about you getting stuck up here in all this snow, so I borrowed the plow from my uncle, the one that lives out by Gold Hill? I know the city never makes it up this high to clear the roads, so I thought, you know….” he was rambling, obviously flustered.

Her arms were still crossed over her chest, her breath forming a little cloud in the cold air as she asked, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you bother? It’s not like you care what happens to me.”

Ted’s brown eyes went wide. “Is that what you think? That I don’t care about you?”

She knit her brows. “No,” she said, turning the dial up to maximum sarcasm, “I think you
totally
care about me, Ted. That’s why you dumped me when I needed you most, because you care
so much
.”

“When you needed me most?” Ted’s voice rose. “Yeah, right!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lu’s voice rose to meet his.

“It means you’ve
never
needed me! When Aunt Claire got sick you practically shoved me aside, that’s how much you
needed
me. I don’t even know why I bothered to do this,” he waved his arm toward the plowed road. “You’re the only person I know that gets insulted when someone tries to help them!"

“It’s not like I meant to shove you aside!” Lu exclaimed. “Don’t you get the state I was in this past summer? Do you have any idea what that was like for me, functioning on so little sleep, trying to take care of my aunt while watching cancer take a little more of her away from me every single day?” Lu’s voice broke, and she struggled to hold the tears at bay.

“I know it was hard. I do. I just don’t know why you had to be so angry at me all the time,” Ted muttered.

 “I
was
angry, but it didn’t have anything to do with you. I was angry because it was so incredibly frustrating, knowing she was going to die, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it!” Her voice wavered again, and she fought with everything she had to keep herself from crying. “God Ted, you know better than anyone else what Aunt Claire meant to me.”

 “I know she was like a mom to you. And I know how awful her cancer was, Lulu. I do.” Ted’s voice was rough, as if he too was struggling to hold back some strong emotions.

Lu took a deep breath and tucked her hair behind her ears, willing herself to calm down. After a minute she asked quietly, “Why did you come here today Teddy, after staying away for months?”

 “I’d been looking for an excuse to see you,” he admitted. “I knew you’d be snowed in up here, so I thought this would be a good time to come. I figured by now you’d had lots of time to mourn Aunt Claire’s passing, and maybe you were done being mad at me. And maybe, I don’t know….”

“What? We’d just pick up where we left off before my aunt got sick, like nothing ever happened?”

“Well, no. I knew it wouldn’t be that simple. But we were best friends long before we ever started dating. So I thought maybe we could start by being friends again and, I don’t know, just like hang out or something.”

 “Yeah, because I’ve really been wanting to hang out with the guy who
dumped me.
” Lu’s voice rose sharply.

“Is that all I am now? Just some guy who dumped you?”

Lu just shrugged, too upset to answer.

Ted shifted the shovel from one hand to the other and blurted out, “Look, Lulu--”

But she cut him off. “Stop calling me Lulu! You don’t get to call me that anymore.”

“Fine,
Lu
.” He took a deep breath. “Look, I know I hurt you. I know I totally bailed. You think I’m proud of that? I’m not, ok? But it was just too much, you know? I couldn’t handle any of it, your aunt being so sick, you being so angry….”

 Lu stared at her ex for a long moment before saying, “I never meant to vent my frustration at you. I apologize for that.”

He looked at the ground, his voice full of remorse. “I know you weren’t doing it on purpose. And I know I was a total ass for bailing like that. I’m so sorry. You don’t even know how ashamed I am for doing that to you.” He pressed his eyes shut and said quietly, “But it was just so awful. Watching Aunt Claire dying, watching you try to deal with everything on your own, feeling so useless because you never let me help you….”

“I know, Teddy.”

He looked up at her then, hope in his eyes. But abruptly his expression darkened. “But you never did need me, did you?” Ted’s voice shook with anger. “And obviously you still don’t.” He threw the shovel on the ground and stormed back to the truck, gunned the engine, and barreled back toward town.

For a moment Lu was dumbfounded.

Then she heard Alastair clear his throat somewhere behind her on the covered porch. “I apologize,” he said. “I should have stayed in the house. I just got concerned when you both started yelling, so I came out to see if you required assistance.”

She turned to look at her houseguest. He was still dressed only in the pajama pants, which rode a bit low on his narrow hips. His bare upper body was all smooth skin and strong, lean muscle, his hair tousled like he’d just rolled out of bed (though it always looked like that). He was absolutely beautiful. And it could not have been clearer that this hot guy had spent the night here with her.

No wonder Ted had gone speeding off.

Lu sighed and went back into the house as Alastair trailed behind her and said, “I’m sorry about your aunt.”

“Thanks.” She took a deep breath, trying to calm down.

“Was that your boyfriend?”

“
Ex
boyfriend.” Lu kicked her boots off at the door before wandering over to the fireplace. She leaned forward with one hand on the mantel and stared into the flames as she said, “And since you heard all of that, now you know what’s been happening in my life over the last several months. I didn’t think I could talk about it, but apparently I can stand outside and yell about it.” Lu shook her head and continued to stare at the fire for a long moment. Her voice was almost a whisper when she said, “Aunt Claire was my family, all I had. She raised me from the time I was twelve, here in this house. I loved her so much. I still can’t believe she’s gone.”

She was quiet for a while before saying softly, “Losing Ted was really hard too. I mean, it doesn’t compare with losing my aunt, but it still hurt. He was a big part of my life for such a long time. He was my best friend, long before he was my boyfriend. It used to be that we couldn’t go twenty minutes without calling, texting….” Lu pressed her eyes shut. “It was a lot, losing both my aunt and my best friend. Too much for one year. I was left so alone.”

But then she stood up straight, and after a pause turned to Alastair and said, “Well anyway, the road’s clear. We can go into town now and find your family and get you medical attention. I’ll see if I can find some warm clothes for you, and then we can take off.”

She didn’t wait for a reply as she turned and bounded up the stairs.

Lu was knee-deep in a pile of old clothes, pulling things out of the closet in the spare bedroom when she felt Alastair’s light touch on her shoulder. She turned to face him and he asked softly, “Are you ok?”

          “I’m fine,” she mumbled.

          “We don’t have to do this right now,” he said, gesturing at the clothes. “We can go into town later today. Tomorrow even. Or the next day.”

          “We shouldn’t put it off. I’m sure people are worried about you. And you need medical attention.”

          After a pause he said, “Lu, if you want to go right now because you want to get rid of me, I understand. But if I get a vote, what I want is to stay here with you.”

She stepped out of the clothes pile and looked up at him. “But your family has to be worried sick. They--”

“I don’t have a family. I know I don’t.”

“Ok, your girlfriend then.”

He shook his head.

“How do you know that if you say you can’t remember anything?” Lu asked.

“I may not be able to remember people or events,” he said, “but when I think about my life, I recall some really strong emotions. And it’s not love and happiness that I’m remembering, it’s loneliness and misery. That doesn’t fit with the idea that there’s a loving family out there looking for me.”

“You’re remembering emotions?”

He nodded. “It’s really disturbing, actually. And it makes me think that maybe I’m in no hurry to try to get back to that life.”

“But who knows what that is? Maybe you’re just reliving being burned and freezing and scared back at the creek or something.”

“I don’t think so.”

 “Well, we still need to go into town. You need to be examined by a doctor,” Lu told him. “Both for your memory loss and for your hand.”

Alastair intently held Lu’s gaze. “When I think about seeing a doctor, every fiber of my being tells me not to go. I think I should probably listen to that little voice that’s screaming inside me.”

“You’re just not thinking clearly.”

“But I am. Just because my memories are gone doesn’t mean I’ve also lost the ability to think or feel.”

“So, you really won’t let me take you to the hospital?”

“No way.”

“Well, it’s your choice.” Lu knit her brows. “I think you’re dead wrong, but I can’t force you to get medical care. We still should to go to the police station and see if there’s a missing persons report on you though, despite these bad feelings you’re talking about.”

“Call the police station and ask. I’ll bet you anything no one is looking for me.”

“I can’t call, actually,” she said. “There’s no land line to the house. And like I said before, my cell phone’s dead until the power comes back and I can charge it. So we just need to drive into town.”