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“Yeah,” I smile. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” she shrugs. Then her eyes light up. “Uncle Ethan is here. You remember him. He’s Daddy’s best friend, and he came the other day.”
Yeah. The supposed shrink.
“He doesn’t live around here, does he?”
She shakes her head. “No. He—”
Logan comes bursting into the room, achieving a near-failure screech stop. He gives me a curt nod and turns to Madison.
“Madison. What did we—”
“Say about boundaries?” She rolls her eyes and sighs. “I know, I know. I thought she needed the sunlight since she’d been sleeping for a while. I didn’t mean to do anything else.”
“That’s good,” Logan compliments her grudgingly. With his hand on her back, he nudges her towards the door. “Ethan is waiting for you. I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about.”
“And no, you can't be a cop,” he calls out. “Not on my watch.”
I chuckle silently, watching Madison turn around with an exasperated sigh, both hands on her lips. She mutters something before walking away.
Logan then turns to me. “I’m sorry about that. My daughter seems to have taken a serious interest in you, and it’s hard to pry her away from her interests.”
“Is one of them her choice of career?”
He winces, and I laugh. “Painfully so. She’s only nine, but she has her mind made up. Nothing seems to be working—not the promise of a thousand Barbie dolls or a house when she turns eighteen.”
I laugh again. “Trust me, I know.”
“Oh?” Logan replies with a smile.
And then it hits me. What I just said.Trust me, I know.How do I know?
With wide eyes, I look at Logan. “Did I just—?”
He nods.
“I just said that I know. And I said it with so much confidence. Do you think I have a kid somewhere?” I begin to panic.
“I think your reply is something everyone says. I have friends—even Ethan, who doesn’t have children, saying the same thing when I talk about Madison,” Logan says.
But he only looks at me half the time, so I can’t tell he doesn’t quite believe his words. And the thought of having someone out there—a dependent, makes me get off the bed.
“Maybe a niece? A nephew? What if someone entrusted their child to my care? God—if I have abandoned someone who needed my care, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Why,” I pace even faster as the possibilities and the theories swim around my head, leaving no space for thought to develop fully.
“Lily,” Logan calls out to me, but I can’t stop. I can’t stop because I can’t remember anything.
“Why can’t I remember anything!? Why is nothing coming to my mind!?” I yell, throwing my hands in the air. “It’s like I’m searching for walls in the dark, clawing at the air and calling out but getting the echoes of my voice in return!”
I feel his hands on my shoulders, heavy and grounding. It makes me stop, but my feet keep tapping the floor in sync with my closed fingers, digging into my palm.
“Lily, listen. If you tire yourself out, it will only slow down your chances of recovery. If you force your mind and your brain to remember what they are trying to deal with at their own pace, they will revolt, and you might not end up getting your memories back.
“But I promise that if you take a deep breath, you’ll be doing them a huge favor. You will get your memory back quicker. Just breathe.”
The last sentence sinks past the haze of panic and anxiety in my brain, and I close my eyes for a few seconds while taking deep breaths and exhaling loudly.
Eventually, I open my eyes to see the smile on Logan’s face.
