The Lion's Den (Faraway Book 2) (12 page)

“Sorry, I took these by mistake somehow—” She stood, just inside my office, with my car keys in her hand. Her eyes fell on my bare chest and she began to sway. She raised her hands to her forehead as if she were in pain.

I rushed over to her. “Are you okay?” I wrapped my arms around her waist to support her and shoved the door closed. “Mar, what is it?”

“Shhh,” she said and closed her eyes. She let her hands fall to my chest, where her fingertips stretched across my skin. She stopped breathing, and every cell in my body stood at attention for her. Weeks of not touching her all seemed worth it as she stood in my arms. Her hands on me pulling me to the needs I’d silenced, making it impossible to stay away from her.

I waited. Waited for her to breathe again. Frustration covered her face as a tear fell from her still-closed eyes and she lowered her forehead to my chest. I held her close, never wanting to let her go.

I inhaled her and closed my own eyes. She had to come back to me.

“It’s like a blanket wraps around me, holds me tight with intense memories, and then is ripped away, leaving me grasping at frayed threads to keep it.” She raised her head, and against my instincts, I loosened my arms around her. She wiped the tears from her face. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head as if she was absurd, but she was mine. When she lowered her head once more, clearly angry with herself for not remembering, I pulled her close to my chest again.

“You’re going to remember,” I said, as much to myself as to her. She had to. I was tired of living without her.

Meredith Walsh

IT WAS TERRIFYING. NO MATTER
what I did, I couldn’t force my mind to comply with my demands. The memories didn’t come back the way the doctor said they would. It wasn’t a slow shrinking of the missing time. The first thing I remembered was only a feeling.

I was at the shore house Brad had rented to help me recuperate and relax. I wasn’t sure where he’d gotten the idea that recuperation should take place during a party, but that was what he did. He took me away from my home and threw a party. I told myself he didn’t know what to do and that he was trying, but when Jenna looked at me and rolled her eyes while Brad laughed loudly off to the side, I knew it wasn’t all in my head. That brought me back to what wasn’t in my head.

As soon as I got Jenna alone, I began the interrogation. If anyone knew what was going on in my life, she did.

“What was last year like?”

“I don’t know,” Jenna said and took a sip of her water. It was strange to see her without a drink in her hand.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” She was my only hope.

“I mean, I don’t know. Something was going on with you, but you never told me what. You went through weeks where you were miserable, then happy, and then distant. You were all over the place.”

“Was I depressed?” I watched Liv and James running in the sand with a kite. Had I not loved being with them?

“I think so. For some of the time.” My gaze circled the room as I searched my mind for memories of sadness. “You asked some strange questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like if I ever had an affair.” Jenna watched my reaction. She waited, but there was none. “And if John is the only guy I’d ever had sex with.”

My head snapped up in surprise. “That is an odd question.”

“I know. Any of this coming back?”

“No,” I answered honestly. None of it sounded familiar or like the version of myself I knew. It didn’t make sense.

When Jenna and the rest of the town finally left, Brad came into the bathroom as I brushed my teeth. He kissed the back of my neck, and it brought back a memory of sorts. It was more of a feeling than a memory.

The feeling of wanting to disappear.

It was a dull ache that swarmed my body, forcing me down and making me crave an escape. The sensation was so strong, I almost told Brad about it, but when I walked out of the room, it lessened. It must have been a mistake. My memories were confused. Why would I want to disappear from Brad? If anything, I should have been clinging to him. He was the only person alive who knew more about me than I did. Yet, he didn’t know I wanted to disappear, and I didn’t tell him.

A few days later, my brother took the children to his house and Brad returned to work, leaving me alone to battle with my mind. Not having my memory was unacceptable. I searched every megabyte of my phone. I might have lost my memory, but my phone hadn’t. I looked through the photo album, the texts, the web history, and all my e-mails. Nothing told a story of anything other than a mother scheduling her children’s lives.

I searched through my Facebook page and the page of every person I knew. I viewed their photos, their posts, their vacations. I’d been to a pony party, the pool, the Fall Festival, and apparently Lacey’s mom’s shore house and her Christmas party. I was tagged on dozens of pictures of my children. My page had fewer than ten photos of me, and a hundred of Liv and James. Even my profile picture was of the two of them. Brad was nowhere to be found.

I went through every contact on my phone, one by one. Every single one of them was silent regarding the last year of my life, until I found the two entries for Jenna: one with her first and last name and her phone number, and a second entry with her full name, including her middle initial. That phone number was different from the one I recognized, so I called it, and the colonel answered.

I recognized his voice. I knew it was him, but I only remembered seeing him twice in my life. Once on a school bus to Philadelphia and then in my hospital room, but he was on the other end of the phone in my hand. Even across the miles between my hometown and me, his voice warmed me immediately. Instead of hanging up, I made up an excuse for the pause and the phone call. I wanted to return to work. Yes. It was a good one. The colonel was more than willing to come discuss the job and rescue me from my boredom at the shore. He was kind, and I was confused. I didn’t know how he fit into the last year of my life or why I’d hidden his number in my phone.

I opened the door to the shore house, and the colonel was standing on the other side. Every emotion and dirty thought from Liv’s field trip to Philadelphia came back. In the hospital, I’d remembered who he was and where I’d met him. But there, standing in the family room of the shore house Brad had rented, as I watched the colonel looking at the view, I knew how sitting next to him on the school bus had made me
feel
. How my heart had raced as our legs touched. How I’d inhaled the hint of mahogany that followed him and made me want him to steal me away. He was strong and he was kind. It was a compelling combination.

“Wow. That’s some view,” the coronel said and looked out the three sets of sliding glass doors. The mahogany drowned out the salt air trapped in the house. I inhaled, deeply and silently. I was warm.

“You just missed the dolphins swimming by. I swear they know I’m here,” I said and realized what a fool I must have sounded like, talking about the dolphins as if they were my friends.

“I’m sure they do. They know where all the mermaids are,” he said, and I stopped breathing. He’d called me a mermaid, but I’d never told anyone about believing I was one. No one except my father. I stared deep into the colonel’s light green eyes, waiting for them to reveal what else he knew, but he stayed still, keeping the rest from me. Suddenly, nothing seemed as perfect and simple as Brad had made it out to be.

The colonel visiting me was confusing. He had asked me not to tell my husband about it. I did as he asked and didn’t mention the visit to Brad, but that night, I dreamed of the colonel. In the dream, we were having sex, and when I woke up, I thought it was a memory, but that was crazy.

BRAD DROVE THE KIDS AND
I home, and our marriage was completely different than I remembered it. He was still selfish. That would never change. But he was needy. No, he was desperate and careful, neither of which I’d ever seen in him before. He never spoke of the accident. In fact, he never talked about anything except how perfect we were together. He was attentive and engaged. He asked me questions and appeared to listen to the answers.

I wasn’t clear on the last twelve months, but I was certain something had happened to make Brad appreciate me more. Buoyed by this security, I asked him to sell the house, and as soon as the words left my mouth, I felt a relief. It was a burden I’d carried with me that I didn’t realize was so heavy. Like a dog lying on a nail, I wasn’t aware of the pain until I’d finally stood up.

House hunting wasn’t as pleasant. One might have thought I was taking Brad to donate a kidney. He even asked me to drive. He was acting as if he was so sickened by the idea of moving that he couldn’t trust himself behind the wheel. I rolled my eyes as he climbed into the Escalade and rested his head on the window.

“You did agree to this,” I said, reminding him I wasn’t making him do anything.

“I regret it.” I stopped the car halfway out of the garage and stared at him until he turned to me. “What? I do. Our house is perfect.”

“You’re never at our house. I’m here all the time.” Brad took my hand in his. He’d held my hand through so much in this life. We’d get through this. “Try to keep an open mind.”

He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. “Okay, but only because I want you to be happy.”

How could we be so far apart on this? On everything?

We drove the five miles to the brick home set back off the road and parked next to our realtor.

Brad surveyed the green acres of hills surrounding us. Not a person in sight. “Please say we’re just meeting him here. That this isn’t the house.”

“Open. Mind.” I raised my eyebrows at him.

I wanted to buy the house just from the outside. It was brick on all four sides with a matching detached garage. Brad looked like he’d eaten bad shellfish for breakfast.

“It was built in seventeen fifty two as a tavern,” the real estate agent explained as we strolled up the front walk. I was hanging on every word, and Brad was lagging behind as if he were a dog I was dragging to the vet. We stopped to wait for him at the enormous wooden front door.

“It’s impressive,” I said, more to Brad than the realtor.