When I get home, I’m itching to go upstairs and have a look in Graham’s office. But Camila won’t leave me alone. We have lunch together, then she plops down next to me on the sofa and picks up the remote control.
“What do you feel like watching?” she asks.
I frown at the TV. I didn’t bring up to Camila the possibility that she saw me talking to Harry, and neither did she. But it’s all I can think about. “What are my options?”
“Basically, anything. We can rent any movie you want.
And most TV shows are available streaming.”
“Really?” It’s an interesting concept but slightly overwhelming. How can you decide on anything if your options are everything? “So say I wanted to watch The Princess Bride? I could just do it?”
Camila snickers. “Unfortunately, yes. We have watched that movie five billion times. Ballpark estimate.”
When I was a kid, my mother and I used to watch The Princess Bride at least once a month. It was our favorite movie to watch together. My father started teasingly calling me Princess Buttercup (or Princess for short). My greatest fear used to be of six-fingered men—until I found out my mother had cancer, and I found out there were a lot of things to be afraid of beyond men with the wrong number of fingers. After she was gone, my father never called me Princess again.
But I still love the movie. It always makes me think of the before time with my mother. It’s my favorite way to remember her.
“Five billion is a lot,” I say. “I’m sorry I did that to you.” “Liar,” Camila says.
“Fine. Let me make it up to you. What do you want to watch?”
She lifts a shoulder. “I’m not much of a TV person.” “Even when you were a kid?” I think back to my
childhood. When I was little, my mother would only let me watch Sesame Street. As I got to be older, I was allowed more television privileges, but she was still pretty strict about my screen time. Of course, after she was gone, my father let me watch whatever I wanted. “I spent most of my non-school hours in front of the television when I was a teenager.”
She taps a finger against her chin. “After school every day, I would go to my grandmother’s house and we would watch telenovelas. She had two of them she was really into, and I would get into them too. I couldn’t wait to get home and see if, like, Luisa would go through with killing Alberto.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Did she?”
“Of course she did. It’s a telenovela!” Camila gives that throaty laugh. “God, I haven’t thought about that in years. I used to go to my grandmother’s house every day. And then I remember one day my mother said I couldn’t go anymore. She said Abuelita wasn’t feeling well. She didn’t tell me until two months later that she had died.”
“Oh no! They didn’t tell you for two months?”
“I know, can you imagine?” She scowls. “I don’t know what they thought would happen. Maybe I would forget her and stop asking? I even missed the funeral because of them. They should have just told me the truth. I… I’ll never forgive them for that.”
Camila is looking down at her hands. I’m not sure what to say. I want to comfort her, but at the same time, I hardly know her. Even though she knows me very well.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say.
She takes a moment to respond. “It’s fine. Like I said, it was many years ago. I haven’t thought about it in so long.”
She lifts her eyes. “So what would you like to watch? A movie? A TV show?”
Somehow, I have lost all my enthusiasm for television. “Actually,” I say, “I’d sort of like to read. Where are my books?”
She nods at the corner of the room, where there’s a five- shelf wooden bookcase overflowing with paperbacks. “Over there. But you don’t read often. I mean, usually.”
I used to like to read, so that sounds strange. “How come?”
“You said it’s frustrating. If you don’t finish the book in one day, you’ve forgotten everything that happened and you have to start all over again. For a while, you would write yourself notes on what had already happened in the book, but then you stopped doing it.”
“Oh.” It makes sense. And it’s a depressing thought. “I don’t feel like watching any TV right now though.”
Camila gives me a long look. Finally, she gets to her feet. “I’m going to go to the kitchen. Give me a yell if you need anything.”
Camila disappears into the kitchen, but I don’t want to go snooping around the house quite yet. Instead, I reach for my phone and make sure I don’t have any missed calls. Namely, from my father or Lucy. But no. Neither of them has returned my messages.
I suppose I’m not surprised that Lucy hasn’t called back, considering she’s probably busy at work. But why isn’t my father calling back? He was getting close to retiring seven years ago, so he’s surely retired by now. Meaning all he’s got to do is sit around all day.
Is it possible he has a girlfriend? Maybe that’s what’s taking up all his time. Of course, it’s hard to imagine. I’m fairly sure there have been no other women in my father’s life since my mother died.
At first, I was glad he was honoring her memory. That he wouldn’t find somebody to replace my beloved mother. But
then after I finished high school and went to college, I worried about him. He was all alone, and it didn’t seem to bother him one bit. When dating websites became more popular, I encouraged him to put up an ad.
I’m not interested, Tess, he would always insist. I’m fine.
Don’t worry so much.
But I did worry. He said he was fine, but he never seemed happy. The happiest I ever saw him was when I brought Harry home with me for the first time—we had been dating for about six months and things were getting pretty serious. He’s a good man, my father told me the next time we talked. He’s going to be there for you for the rest of your life.
Well, he was wrong about that one.
I grit my teeth as I stare down at my father’s number on my phone. Why isn’t he calling me back? I don’t understand it.
But I’m not going to make him call by staring at the screen. So instead, I bring up an internet browser so I can google the name of my company.
Harry was right. My Home Spa is a big deal now. It seems like pretty soon after Harry and I got engaged, the company took off. People went crazy for the high-end spa products you could use in your own home. No wonder we had the money to make our house look like something out of a magazine. And no wonder we have the money to pay for Camila to babysit me all day.
Is that Graham’s motivation? Did he want to take over the company so badly, he turned me into a zombie just so he could be the CEO? Would I marry somebody so ridiculously diabolical?
My fingers trace the scar on my scalp. Something happened to me. There was an accident. I just wish I knew what happened next. I only see one small mention of me in the last year, saying that Tess Thurman asks for privacy as she recovers from a car accident.
After I’m done looking up myself, I google the name Harrison Finch. But while my name is all over the Internet, he’s a ghost. I see nothing about him. It’s like after we broke up, he just… vanished. It makes me wonder how I found him in the first place.
I wish he had let me go with him this morning. I don’t want to be back here anymore. I wanted to leave with him. I don’t understand why he was so resistant.
I search my phone for the messages he sent me, but then remember he told me to delete them. I roll up the sleeve of my shirt—the digits Harry scribbled are still there, a reminder of our brief meeting. I close my eyes and feel that little tingle in my arm, remembering the way his fingers felt on my skin. Before I can overthink it, I type the number into my phone and send off a text message:
I miss you.
There’s no response. I stare at the screen of my phone, for five minutes, ten minutes, but still nothing. Did I imagine the entire encounter with Harry? Is that possible? No, it couldn’t be. He wrote his number on my arm—that’s proof! He was there. I know it. I’m not crazy.
Then the reply pops up:
I miss you too, Tess. You have no idea.
And then:
Delete these messages.
I do as he tells me. After all, he has a good point. If someone is drugging me, they don’t need to see these messages.
Camila is still in the kitchen, out of sight. If I’m going to go upstairs and check Graham’s office, now is the time.
She’ll never even know I’m up there.
I shove my phone into my pocket and creep over to the staircase. The house has three bedrooms on the second floor. One for us and one for each of our future children, Harry told me when we were looking at the house. We weren’t engaged back then, but we knew it was coming. We used to joke about the children we might have.
Two boys, Harry would say.
No, I would argue, a boy and a girl.
Fine. A boy and a girl. But I get to name them both.
And then we would compete to come up with the most psychologically damaging names for a child we could think of. At last count, the leading contender for our first child was Purple Monkey Dishwasher Finch. We had almost gotten to the point where we could say it without laughing.
God, I really miss Harry.
I try the doorknob to the room next to our bedroom. The knob turns easily, revealing a guest bedroom. The bed is neatly made, the navy blue bedspread neatly folded, and the pillow perfectly plumped. I wonder if Graham and I used to entertain overnight guests a lot before my accident.
It occurs to me that Graham and I have been married four years, but we don’t have children. Both of us are already in our late thirties, so it’s unlikely that we were waiting to conceive in the future. I’ve always wanted children, and it surprises me that at this point in my life, I still don’t have any. Did Graham want children? Did he talk me out of it? Or did we try and fail to conceive?
I consider asking him later, but the answer would probably be depressing. Anyway, it’s the least of my problems right now. This situation would be so much more complicated if I had a small child to take care of right now. Or if I woke up six months pregnant. I clutch my abdomen protectively at the thought of it.
I try the doorknob to the next room over. Again, it turns easily in my hand. I push the door open, revealing a room
containing a small loveseat, a tall bookcase littered with hard covers and loose papers, and as promised, there’s a mahogany desk in the corner of the room.
I have found Graham’s office.
I approach the desk. Right next to his laptop is a framed photo of the two of us. We’re on vacation, on the beach, looking tanned and happy. It’s… sweet. He wants to be reminded of our relationship while he’s working. The whole thing doesn’t quite make sense. I’m not in love with Graham because I just met the guy this morning, but he genuinely does not seem like an evil person. He seems nice. He’s stepped up and kept my company afloat when I obviously can’t. He’s been taking care of me when he would be justified shutting me away in some sort of nursing home. He even made me breakfast this morning, even though it was horribly burned, and also, I was too scared to eat it.
Is it possible that Graham isn’t drugging me? That somehow I got it all wrong, and I dragged Harry into my delusion?
I look down at the desk drawers. I pull them open one by one. They all open easily and are filled with papers related to my company. Until I get to the last drawer, which is locked.
I rattle the drawer, listening for the sound of pills shaking. I don’t hear anything like that.
I wonder what made me think there was something important in this drawer. Was it just the fact that it’s locked?
I go through the other drawers again, this time looking for a key. I’m sure Graham keeps the key on his key ring, but I bet he’s got a spare. Graham seems like the sort of guy who always has a spare key.
When my phone rings, I nearly jump out of my skin. I fumble to pull it out of my pocket, terrified it’s Graham, and he knows what I’m doing. But it’s not Graham.
It’s Lucy.
