At just after three, the doorbell rings.
I’ve been sitting on the couch most of the afternoon with Ziggy. After my meltdown this morning, Camila took me and Ziggy on a walk around the neighborhood. I was already feeling better after finding out that Lucy would be visiting, but the fresh air did wonders. After a walk around the block with my dog, I didn’t feel as much like a prisoner anymore.
And now Ziggy is sitting next to me on the couch, his chin on my lap as I stroke his head absently. I don’t feel like doing much. After all, what can I do? I can’t start reading a book because if I don’t finish it by the end of the evening, I’ll have forgotten everything about it. I mentioned to Camila that I might want to try cooking something for dinner, but she acted like I might burn the whole house down if I tried to do it alone. The only way she would consent to it is if she were with me the whole time.
And that brings me back to the issue of the doorbell. I can’t open the door because of that pesky lock. Even though I know my best friend is on the other side of the door, and I desperately want to see her.
“Camila!” I call out.
Camila sprints down the stairs, wiping her hands on her skin-tight blue jeans. “What’s up, Tess?”
“Can you open the door?” I ask her.
Camila digs around in the pocket of her jeans for a set of keys. She fits them in the lock to the front door. When I see Lucy’s familiar face, I almost burst into tears. I run over to her and throw my arms around her. I can’t stop hugging her. And then I really am crying. I’m quite the waterfall today.
“Lucy!” I sob. “It’s been the worst day ever!”
I take a step back to look at my gorgeous best friend. Like her eponymous namesake in I Love Lucy, Lucy has shockingly red hair—it’s her signature color. She had more freckles in college, but she’s careful about staying out of the sun, so they’ve faded. But if you squint at her face, you can still see the pale dots all over her skin. And if she goes in the sun, forget it. Freckle city.
Lucy and I met on our first day of college. I had been nervous about leaving home for the first time, and my father’s lack of emotion over this momentous event didn’t make me feel any better.
But Lucy was the opposite. The second I walked into the room we were assigned to share, with the matching beds and dressers at either side, she ran over to me and enveloped me in a big hug. I’m so excited we’re roommates! And I was excited too. It was wonderful to live with somebody who I could laugh with, have fun with, and even occasionally study with. (Very occasionally—neither of us were stellar students.)
Okay, Lucy isn’t perfect. Like if you meet her for lunch or coffee, she’s guaranteed to be anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes late. And occasionally, forty-five minutes to an hour late. And she never believed in me when I mentioned starting up my company. But in her defense, she was just trying to protect me from what she believed was a bad business venture. It’s not her fault she was dead wrong. Lucy looks fantastic today. Her red hair is glossy, she has maintained her trim figure, and the eyeliner she’s wearing makes her eyes pop. Harry used to sometimes make comments about the amount of makeup she always wore, which always stood out in comparison to my bare face. D’you think she owns stock in a cosmetics company?
he’d say, just before I would elbow him in the ribs.
The fact that Lucy looks like somebody who came right out of the pages of the fashion magazine makes me feel all the more self-conscious about my own appearance. I
smooth out my too-short hair and my fingers linger on the scar, as I wonder if it’s visible to her.
“Tess, sweetie.” She grabs my shoulders tightly. “You look so pale. What’s going on?”
“I…” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, gulping for air. “Can we sit down?”
Ziggy has vacated the sofa to make room for Lucy. I don’t understand what Graham was talking about when he said Ziggy chews up the furniture. Ziggy is like the most well-behaved dog ever. Sometimes I feel like he knows me better than anyone else in this house. He certainly wouldn’t have offered me pomegranate juice to drink. Lucy ruffles Ziggy’s fur, and he licks her hand.
“I just don’t understand how this happened to me.” I touch the scar on my scalp again—it feels so strange, like it’s not quite my skin. “I know there was a car accident…”
Lucy crosses her legs and I notice her shoes—Manolo Blahnik. She’s always wanted a pair of those. “Yes, last year. And ever since then, you’ve been having so much trouble with your memory. Graham has had to take over at My Home Spa. And I’ve been stepping up as much as I can.”
“So it’s like this every morning? I’ve forgotten everything from the day before?”
“Usually.” She picks at a thread on her designer slacks. “You have better days sometimes. But the last month has been rough. Before that, you seemed happy most of the time when I saw you. But now you’re always crying. And you seem…”
I lift my eyebrows. “I seem what?”
“Scared. You always seem scared of something.”
She isn’t wrong. But who wouldn’t be scared in this situation? Every morning, I wake up next to a stranger. In my own bed! In his underwear!
“Lucy,” I say, “what happened to Harry?”
She frowns. “That’s another thing. Every time we talk, you ask me about Harry. You used to just occasionally ask
about him. But now, it’s like you’re desperate to see him every day.”
My eyes fill with tears again. “The last thing I remember is him getting down on one knee and proposing to me…”
A smile twitches at Lucy’s lips. “Right. The keyboard proposal. That was… um, cute.”
“It was so romantic!”
“It was signature dorky Harry.” She rolls her eyes. “If that’s what you like…”
“Harry and I are supposed to be married by now.” I sniffle loudly. “If I woke up next to him every morning, I could deal with all this. But Graham…”
“Graham is nice.” She sounds almost exasperated. I wonder how many times she’s had this conversation with me. “He’s a good guy. So much better for you than Harry.”
“Maybe…” But as she says those words, something flashes in my head. Something about Graham. But I can’t quite grab onto it. My memory has become so frustrating.
“He cares about you a lot, Tess.” She lowers her voice a notch. “Also, he’s really handsome, don’t you think so?”
“I… I guess so.” Yes, Graham is attractive. But when I look at him, I feel nothing. “In my head, I’m engaged to someone else. Someone I love. So even though Graham is nice and he’s handsome…”
“He’s not Harry.” I nod miserably.
Lucy crosses her legs. “Has Harry tried to contact you at all? Like, on your phone?”
“What do you mean?”
She glances around, as if checking to see if somebody is listening in. “Like, has he sent you any text messages? Or tried to call you?”
“I don’t have a phone, so…” Lucy frowns. “You don’t?”
“Graham pointed out that I would probably lose it. And he let me use his. He gave me my father’s number this
morning and I tried to call him.”
“Yes, but—” Lucy starts to say something, but abruptly stops. She chews on her lip, looking across the sofa at me. “Graham didn’t give you a phone to use this morning?”
“No…” My stomach sinks. “Are you saying that he usually gives me a phone?”
She hesitates. “No, not at all. That’s not what I’m saying.”
But Lucy is a terrible liar. Whenever she’s lying, her whole face turns as red as her hair. I’m beginning to think that I did have a phone. And for whatever reason, Graham decided he didn’t want me to have it anymore.
And then that memory comes back to me. A little tiny snippet of Harry’s voice whispering in my ear.
Graham has a desk upstairs. There’s a drawer that’s always locked, and you said you think that’s where he’s keeping whatever he’s giving you.
My head snaps back, shaken by the memory that just came back to me. Is that real? Or is it a figment of the imagination of my damaged brain? After all, the letter I wrote to myself claimed I hadn’t seen Harry in years.
But it felt like a real memory. It’s the first memory I’ve had today that has felt real. That has to mean something.
“Lucy, does Graham have an office upstairs?” I ask. “Uh, yeah. He does.”
I lean back against the couch, not sure what to think. Is there something upstairs locked in Graham’s desk drawer that I should know about? If so, what?
Is there a reason I keep losing my memory every night, beyond my head injury?
No. It can’t be. My husband isn’t drugging me. I can’t believe that could be true.
Could it?
