Page 9 of Weight of Guilt

“Pieces of what?” Marlowe’s voice sounded thin with hope.

“Sounds, mostly. A room. Someone’s voice. But I can’t—I don’t remember most of it. Just flashes.” He began to tap at his forehead with his fist—harder and harder.

Nora stepped toward him. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. You don’t have to do that.”

Wren braced herself as she waited for his reaction.

Nora’s calm demeanor seemed to work. He lowered his hands, but his eyes were watery with tears and frustration.

“Listen, you could have a concussion,” Nora said. “Or worse—you could have head trauma. With memory gaps like that, you need to be seen by a doctor.”

“I’m fine.” He swung his head back and forth again.

“You don’t know that. You just told us you don’t know anything.” Nora’s voice sounded clinical, but Wren heard the fear beneath her words. “For all we know someone gave you something. Drugged you. Disoriented you on purpose. That would explain the memory gaps.”

He went still. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“How do you remember your name?” Marlowe asked. “And us? But nothing else?”

He shook his head. “I . . . I don’t know. So many of my memories are just . . . darkness right now. Blank spaces.”

“Selective amnesia is a real thing.” Nora glanced at her sisters. “He could be telling the truth.”

“Ten years ago today is when . . . when everything happened.” Marlowe stared at him in awe.

“That can’t be a coincidence,” Nora said.

“I don’t know.” For the first time, his voice had an edge of something that might have been fear. “I don’t know why today. I don’t know anything!”

Then he began to sob.

Something about the sound broke something inside Wren.

Christian used to cry like that.

It was never loud. He only cried when he couldn’t stop himself anymore, like when he’d fallen off something he wasn’t supposed to be on and waited until he got inside the house to fall apart. She’d sat on the bathroom floor with him more times than she could count, putting a bandage on a knee that didn’t need one, waiting him out.

He’d always stop as soon as she sat down.

Her feet moved before she’d decided anything.

She crossed the yard and threw her arms around him.

Tears flowed down her cheeks as she held him. Nora joined them. Then Marlowe hugged all of them.

They were all one big sobbing huddle together.

When Wren finally pulled away, she glanced at his arm.

She hated to do it. But she had to know.

Her breath caught when she saw the scar on his forearm.

Christian had been five or six, and he’d tried to whittle a stick into a fish.

The knife had slipped and opened up his forearm. Dad had driven him to urgent care with a dish towel wrapped around his arm while their mom started a prayer chain. Christian had cried more about ruining the stick than about the six stitches.

This really was Christian, wasn’t it?