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I don’t see how Rhys will believe me. Even when he convinced me to return to the Dock House pier to try to unearth my buried memories, I didn’t visit my home.
“All right,” Rhys concedes. “You want me to drop you off there before I catch a flight?”
We reach the rental car and I wait at the passenger side for him to unlock the door. “It’s fine. I can take an Uber. I’ll stay at the hotel until then. Work on the case.”
That uncertain expression crosses his face again. My mention of the hotel, where the author of the note knows I’m staying. But he nods and gets into the car. “Stay in my room,” he says.
I agree without argument. Which should tip him off more than anything that I have no plans to see my parents while he’s away.
Three and a half years feels like a lifetime. Theoretically, time is relevant—all based on perception. And since I’m no longer the same person I was back then, I can only imagine how much Cam has changed.
It’s not like two friends from the past greeting each other; hugs and smiles and happy tears. We’re two strangers.
The social media posts I glance at every once in awhile don’t reveal the true person, so I have no idea who she really is now, and I have no idea why I even tracked her down, other than a compulsion to see this to an end.
All I know for sure is that I can’t stop looking at her belly as she sits across from me. She’s healthy and carrying a healthy baby. And she beams—that pregnancy glow everyone talks about. It’s becoming on her.
“Glow,” Cam says, dismissively waving her hand through the air. “Please. More like humidity sheen. Sweltering heat glisten.” She laughs, but I can hear a thread of unease beneath the throaty cadence.
I shouldn’t have come. But as the boyfriend is still out of town on business and was unable to take my call, I told myself I had time—that this needed to happen.
I shouldn’t have interrupted her happy life. I’m a painful memory to her—one she’s tried hard to forget. Yet this is one thing I can’t ignore, that I can’t leave unfinished.
I have to know if what I wrote yesterday was an extension of the fiction I’ve been building all these years, or a recovered memory.
“So did you finish your degree?” she asks, reaching for more small talk.
We’re seated on her patio. Large fans are mounted above on the pergola. Sheer white linen is draped between the beams. When I made the call for us to meet, I could barely hear her forced, enthusiastic “yes”, my heart thundering in my ears.
I’ve had her number for over a year.
“I didn’t finish college,” I admit with a tight smile. “I’m writing now.”
“Oh.” She nods. “What do you write?”
A dull throb pulses at my temples, like I’m dehydrated. I don’t do well with small talk. The meeting with her is already causing too much distress. “Cam, I came here to ask you something.”
The atmosphere around us shifts, charged. I can feel her alarm, the way her flip-flop-clad feet point toward the glass-sliding door, already marking her escape. She places her hands on her belly, as if sheltering her baby from my presence, my horrid past, or maybe giving herself some form of comfort.
I wouldn’t know.
When she doesn’t speak, but doesn’t leave either, I push forward. “I need to know about that night, Cam. What actually happened?”
Lowering her gaze, she adjusts the pitc
her of tea on the wicker table. “I’ve already told you everything. There’s nothing left to say about it, Cynthia. I’m sorry.”
That name feels so foreign to me; my mother and father the only ones who now address me by my given name.
“I had a flashback yesterday,” I say, forcing the subject. “Of us in my hospital room. Of that night…” I trail off. “It’s the first time that I’ve been able to remember a little more from the night of my attack.”
She stands. “Is that good?”
I furrow my brow. “It’s better than never remembering, isn’t it?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know, Cynthia. I don’t know. Honestly. With what you endured…” She braces her hands on the table.
“Are you all right?” I go to stand.
