It’s Harry. It’s really him. I can’t even believe it.
“Harry!” I can’t help myself. I throw my arms around him and get the hug that I’ve been wanting and needing the whole day since I woke up this morning and my whole life was turned upside down. Harry hugs me back like he needed it just as badly, and for a moment, we are both clinging to each other. He still has that same familiar smell. Dial soap and that shampoo he uses that has the woodsman in the picture on the front.
I lift my face and bring my lips to his, but he gently pushes me away. There’s a pained expression on his face. Although it’s nothing compared to the ache I’m feeling inside.
“Harry…”
“We can’t.” He shoves his sunglasses back up his nose to hide his eyes. With those shades and the beard and the cap, he was hard to recognize—he looks very different. “Camila is right there. She’ll see.”
“But—”
“Please, Tess. Don’t make this harder.”
The frustration in his voice mirrors what I’m feeling inside. This man is my fiancé. Why can’t I kiss him? There’s something wrong with the world if I can’t do that.
But instead of the passionate kiss that I badly want, he instead shifts down the bench so there’s a good two feet between us. I look over at Camila, who is reading on her Kindle. She doesn’t even seem to notice us.
“The last thing I remember,” I say, “is being engaged to you. We were living in that house together, and we were planning our wedding. And our honeymoon…”
“Someplace hot with lots of beaches,” Harry finishes for me with a crooked smile.
“We never got married though.” My voice breaks on the words. “And now I’m married to some guy named Graham Thurman. How did that happen?”
Above the rim of his sunglasses, Harry’s eyebrows are bunched together. “I don’t know, Tess. It’s not what I wanted. That’s for sure.”
“Are… are you married to someone else?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “There’s never been anyone else but you.”
I drop my eyes. I can’t keep talking about this, or else I’m going to cry. “I found a note to myself this morning. I wrote it on my leg, where nobody but me would see it. It said… it said that Graham has been drugging me.”
“Yeah. That’s what you’ve been telling me.” “I… I have?”
Harry adjusts the baseball cap on his head. I miss his hair—the way it always sort of stuck up a little on top, no matter what he did. I want to be with him so much, it’s physically painful. Especially since he’s so close, I could reach out and touch him. “You contacted me about a month ago. You tracked me down and we met. You told me about your accident and your suspicions about Graham, and you asked me to help you.”
“And…?”
“Of course I tried to help. But it’s been challenging.” He glances over at Camila. “It’s hard to get you alone. And of course, every morning you’ve forgotten everything that happened the day before so we have to start from scratch and you don’t always believe me.”
I drop my eyes. “I… I’m sorry. It’s hard to know what to believe. Graham told me I lose my memory every night.”
“Right, and that’s strange.” Harry is looking at me, but his expression is hard to read with those sunglasses concealing his eyes. “I spoke to some doctors, and they said
that losing your memory every night like that… It’s not what you would expect with a brain injury. It’s more like what you might expect with a drug, although they couldn’t name any drugs that would do something like that.”
Self-consciously, I reach for the scar on the right side of my skull. “But there was an accident. I have a scar.”
“I’m not disagreeing that you were in an accident. I’m just wondering if it was the accident that did this to you.”
“So…” I bite down on my lip hard enough that I’m worried I’ve drawn blood. “You think it’s true. You think Graham is drugging me.”
“I…” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yes. That’s exactly what I think.”
I sit there, staring down at my hands, absorbing this piece of information. I was happier thinking that it was all just a delusion. But this is real. Graham is really doing this to me.
“Now that I know,” I say, “I’ll be careful around him. I won’t drink or eat anything he gives me unless he’s eating it or drinking it himself.”
“Yeah…” Harry shifts on the bench. “The thing is, you have said those exact words to me multiple times now. You knew he was drugging you. You tried to avoid it. And… the next day, nothing has changed. You’ve still lost your memory.”
“So… maybe that means it’s not a drug?”
He pulls the brim of his baseball cap down lower. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Ziggy trots over to me, carrying a stick in his mouth. He places it on my lap and looks up at me expectantly. I take the stick and throw it across the length of the park. He goes nuts chasing after it.
“What if we take off?” I say. “You and me. What if we just leave right now? We can take Ziggy with us.”
Harry flashes a sad smile. “It’s not that simple.” “Why not?”
“Because he’s your husband.” He ticks it off on his fingers. “Also, he’s your legal guardian. You go with me and I’m kidnapping you, whether or not you came willingly.”
My chest tightens as I absorb his words. I want to believe that can’t be true, but I have a feeling he’s right. When the police showed up this morning, they didn’t even listen to what I had to say. They assumed I was too impaired to know what was going on. Even if Harry told them otherwise, they wouldn’t believe it.
“Graham has a desk upstairs,” Harry says. “That’s what you told me. There’s a drawer that’s always locked, and you said you think that’s where he’s keeping whatever he’s giving you. But as far as I know, you haven’t been able to find the key. He must keep it on him.”
“Oh…”
Ziggy trots back with the stick, but this time he gives it to Harry. Harry rubs him on his head and the dog pants happily. Then Harry tosses the stick again.
“I’m sorry.” Harry is looking off to where Ziggy is searching for the stick. “I wish I could tell you more. I wish I could do more. All I can do is tell you the things you already knew days ago that didn’t help at all. This is… frustrating.”
“Yeah.” My throat feels tight. “What about Lucy?” “Lucy?”
“You remember Lucy.” I study his expression—I wish he would take off those sunglasses again so I could see his eyes. “My best friend from college. We used to hang out.”
His lips curl in disgust. “Yes, I remember Lucy.”
Well, I don’t need to see his eyes to recognize his feelings about Lucy. I’m shocked by the amount of venom in his voice. When Harry first met Lucy, they seemed to get along well enough, but over the years, he became less and less enthusiastic whenever I mentioned her name. I finally confronted him about it.
She’s kind of toxic, isn’t she? he had said. She never passes up an opportunity to put you down.
But he was wrong. Okay, Lucy had her flaws. But she wasn’t a toxic friend. And she might be the only person who I trust right now.
“Maybe Lucy could help.” I dig my phone out of my pocket. “Her number is on my phone. We must still be in contact. I could call her and—”
“No. No.” Harry flinches. “Don’t tell Lucy about this. You can’t tell anybody about this.”
“I can trust Lucy.”
“Don’t tell Lucy anything.” His jaw tightens under his beard. I’ve never seen Harry with a beard before—I can’t decide if I like it. “You can’t trust anyone.”
“How about you?”
He slides off his shades for a minute to stare at me. The sight of his brown eyes makes me want to reach out and throw my arms around him again. “You can trust me.”
“But you just said—”
“Right, but…” He leans in slightly. “Fine. Maybe you can’t trust me. But you’re the one who came to me, and I’ve been trying to help you. And it would be hard for me to be responsible for any of this, considering before last month, we hadn’t seen each other in six years.”
That last revelation hits me like a punch in the gut. “Six
years? We haven’t seen each other in six years?”
“Well, we broke up. What—were we supposed to stay best friends?”
“Why did we break up?” He just shakes his head. “Harry…”
“You want to know why we broke up?” There’s more than a twinge of bitterness in his voice. “Because you believed a bunch of lies about me. And then Graham was ready and waiting to swoop in five seconds later. Ready to tell you what a shit I am. And you believed it. Although to be fair, I’m sure he was very convincing.”
“Graham told me…” I think back to my conversation this morning. “He said he met me when he saved my life. He gave me the Heimlich maneuver when I was choking.”
Harry bursts out laughing. “Seriously? He told you that? No. That’s not what happened. He worked for you. As a freaking accountant. Except he wanted more. He wanted you and he wanted your company.”
“Why would he want my company?”
“You know your company is a pretty big deal now, right? I mean, you’re huge. And now that you’re out of the game, Graham is in charge. Just like he wanted.”
I didn’t know my company was a big deal. The last thing I remember, yes, we were doing okay—starting to turn a small profit. We were on our way up, but nothing that amazing. But Graham had on that expensive suit, and he looked like a successful businessman. I had no idea the business he was successful at was my own.
“I… I don’t know what to say,” I murmur.
Harry adjusts the Mets cap on his head. Even with the sunglasses off, I still can’t quite read his expression. Much like the face that stared back at me in the mirror this morning, Harry looks older too. He’s three years older than I am, so he must be pushing forty now—and he looks it. His beard is peppered with gray. When he laughed, there were more lines than there used to be.
But he is still the same guy. The same cute guy who talked circles around the employee at the store where I was trying to buy a computer that first day we met. The same guy who got down on one knee and begged me to spend my life with him. And I said yes because I couldn’t imagine ever being with anyone else.
“I don’t want to go back to him,” I say in a small voice. “I want to stay with you. Please.”
His brows knit together. “I know. I want to be with you too. You have no idea how much.”
“I have some idea.”
“I thought I’d get over it when you broke it off. And sometimes I thought I almost did, but then you called me and…” His Adam’s apple bobs. “I wish we could leave together. I really do.”
“So let’s go! Come on!”
He glances at Camila, still absorbed in her book. He almost seems to consider it, but then Camila looks up. Fast as lightning, Harry has his sunglasses back on. “We can’t do this. You have to go.”
“But—”
“Don’t take anything he gives you.” His voice is firm, leaving no room for discussion. “See if you can get into that drawer in his desk. And if you need me…” He glances at Camila again, then reaches out for my arm. He pushes up the sleeve of my sweater, then brandishes a pen from his jacket pocket. He writes ten digits on my forearm. “That’s my number. Call me if you need me. But don’t let anyone else see it.”
His fingers linger on my arm just a moment longer than they need to. A tingle goes through my skin. He’s about to leave, and I can’t bear it. I reach out and grab the sleeve of his jacket.
“Don’t go, Harry…”
He lowers his head. “Don’t make this harder.”
He stands up and lets out a low whistle. A brown mutt sprints across the dog park and comes right to Harry. He pulls a leash out of his pocket and attaches it to the dog’s collar. He gives me one last look, then he and his dog leave the dog park without me.
My eyes stray from Harry, back to where Camila is sitting at the bench right outside the dog park. She wasn’t looking at us a minute ago, but now her gaze is directed right at me. Like a laser beam.
I get a prickling sensation in the back of my neck. Did she see me talking to him? Harry was sitting all the way across the bench from me, but if she had been watching us,
I’m sure she would’ve noticed we were talking. It seemed like she was absorbed in her book the entire time, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe she saw everything.
I allow my eyes to meet hers. On the way to the dog park, Camila told me one of her secrets. I don’t know whether she knows my secret or not. But I’m hoping if she does, she’ll keep it for me.
