Dear Tess,
I know what you’re thinking. I know how you’re feeling. Because it’s the same exact thing that I was thinking and feeling this morning. So today I am writing you a letter hoping it will help you/me in the future.
So here are the basics:
You have been in a car accident. You were the one driving, and nobody else was hurt. You swerved to avoid an animal on the road and lost control of the vehicle. You hit a tree. The animal was unharmed.
Unfortunately, you suffered a brain injury during the accident. You had a lot of bleeding in your brain and the doctors did what they could. You survived, but you have permanent memory problems. Some days are not that bad. Some days you remember more than others. Other days, you wake up and can’t remember anything that happened in the last seven or eight years. I’m writing this on one of the better days. If you are reading this, it’s probably because you’re having one of your bad days.
If you’re having a bad day, you may not remember Graham. So let me assure you, he has been a good husband to you for many years. You had a beautiful wedding that was the happiest day of your life. He has been taking care of you since the accident. This has been hard on him too, and he’s been trying his best.
If this is a bad day, you are probably also wondering where Harry is. Harry is no longer a part of your life. Trust me, it’s for the best. He wasn’t who you thought he was. He did something unforgivable to you.
If you relax and try to have a good day, you will be much happier. Just remember that the people around you
care about you very much and only want you to be safe. Do what they say.
You are in good hands. Trust me. Love,
Tess
After I finish reading the letter, I read it a second time. And then one more time. After the third time, the stream of water shuts off in the shower. Graham will come out any second. I am seized by the almost irrepressible urge to make a run for it. Before Graham comes out, I could throw on some clothes and run out the door.
But where would I go? This is my home. And I don’t even know what year it is.
The door to the bathroom swings open, and I’ve missed my chance. Graham comes out wearing a towel around his waist. At first, I look away, but then I take a peek. I can’t help it. And…
Oh my God. My husband is hot. He must work out or something.
“Tess?” His light brown eyebrows scrunch together. “Did you read it? Are you okay?”
I nod slowly. “When did this happen? When was my accident?”
“A little over a year ago.”
A year. I’ve been living this way for a year. Waking up every morning and not remembering my life.
He stands there, waiting for me to say something. When I don’t, he goes over to the dresser and starts rifling through the closet. “I’ll get dressed in the bathroom, okay?”
“Thank you.”
He selects his clothing and disappears back into the bathroom as I push away a stab of guilt. I am his wife, apparently, and this is his own bedroom. He shouldn’t feel forced to hide in the bathroom to get dressed. Yet I’m absurdly grateful that he did it.
I put down the letter and rise from the bed. I can’t stop staring at the collection of photographs on top of the dresser. My eyes are drawn like a magnet to the wedding photo. It’s right in the middle, after all.
I pick it up—it’s heavy. The frame is probably expensive, like our bed and our fancy toilet. Part of me is convinced this all might be some sort of crazy dream, but the weight of this photograph feels so real.
This is no dream.
I squint down at the photograph, studying it for traces that it might be a forgery. Harry would know if it was real or not. Of course, Harry is long gone if that letter is to be believed. So it’s up to me.
I look down at my image in the photo. The white dress I’m wearing is absolutely beautiful. It’s a chiffon dress with a double V neck and elaborate beading all over the neckline. It’s silky white and classy, just how I imagined my wedding dress. Like the frame, it appears expensive—how was I able to afford something like that? Is Graham rich too, in addition to being gorgeous?
I study my expression. I’m smiling at the camera, my dark hair swept back from my face. I look happy. And why shouldn’t I be? This is supposedly my wedding day.
But there’s something else there. I look happy, but there’s something off. Something in my eyes.
“Tess?”
Graham’s voice startles me—I hadn’t even heard him come out of the bathroom. The frame slips out of my fingers and crashes to the floor. The glass shatters at my feet.
“Sorry!” I step back, mortified. “I’m so sorry. I—”
“It’s okay.” Graham’s hand is on my arm, and his blue eyes meet mine. He’s fairer than any man I’ve ever dated before—that was never my type. But he obviously won me over. “I’ll clean it up.”
“I could—”
“Don’t worry about it.” Graham bends down and snatches the frame from the floor. The glass has cracked, but it hasn’t come loose from the frame. “There’s nothing to even clean up. It’s fine.” He places the cracked picture frame back on the dresser with the others—it seems oddly ominous now with the shattered glass obscuring my face, but Graham doesn’t seem disturbed by it. “How about this? You go take a shower and I’ll make some breakfast for us.”
“Okay…”
Graham has put on a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and is dressed in a gray suit. The effect makes him look both devastatingly handsome and incredibly important. But I guess he’s not in a rush to go anywhere if he’s willing to make breakfast. It occurs to me he’s been juggling his work obligations and taking care of me. Again, I get that stab of guilt.
“Does the toilet work just like a normal toilet?” I ask. I don’t want to admit how intimidated I am by the appliances in our bathroom. I need an instruction book to relieve my bladder.
He nods eagerly. “It’s very easy to use. It has an automatic flush when you stand up. And it also has an LED nightlight and a seat warmer. It’s programmable, so if you wanted, we could make it open the lid when you approach. There’s also a tornado wash that self-cleans the bowl.”
I stare at him. “What are you—a toilet salesman?”
There’s a flash of something in his eyes, almost like irritation or anger. Of course, he has a right to be a little irritated if he has to repeat the same information to me every single morning. But it’s not like it’s my fault.
Just as quickly as it appeared, the flash vanishes from his eyes, and I’m not sure if I imagined it. He glances at the bathroom. “I know it’s all confusing. Do you need any help in there?”
My jaw tightens. Is this his smarmy way of getting to see me naked? I don’t think so. “I can manage.”
The tips of his ears color and he nods. “Okay then. I… I’ll go downstairs and make breakfast.”
I wait until Graham has left the room before I venture back into the bathroom. Now that I’m not so shaken by the situation, I can take a moment to look around the bathroom. It’s… well, it’s quite nice. Harry and I fantasized about what we would do to renovate the bathroom when we had enough time and money, and this is much nicer than what we had contemplated. It looks like we pulled up the floor tiles as well and the shower is all shiny and new.
I spy a bottle of soap on the sink counter, and it has the My Home Spa logo on it. In fact, a lot of products in this bathroom bear the logo of my business on them. It was an idea that Harry and I came up with together, back when we were in our tiny little apartment, and I was fantasizing about what it would be like to have a spa vacation but somehow do it in our own home. And Harry said, That’s a million-dollar business idea. It was his idea to…
But no. I need to stop thinking about Harry. I saw the note in my own handwriting. He’s not part of my life anymore, and apparently for good reason.
I just wish I knew what the reason was. What terrible thing did he do?
I can’t bear to look in the mirror again, so I strip off the silk bathrobe and my oversized T-shirt, then I step into the shower. I reach for the hot water and…
How the hell do you turn the shower on?
It doesn’t have a knob, like every other shower in the known universe. It has some sort of computerized control system. There’s a screen, which has the time and little animated graphics of raindrops. Then several buttons to the right, but no label saying what any of the buttons do! One has an up arrow, one has a down arrow, one has the number one on it…
Oh God, I really do need help to take a shower.
I punch a couple of the buttons, hoping something will happen. There is a disturbing whirring noise coming from the plumbing, then all of a sudden, spicules of ice-cold water rain down on me. I scream and back away, panicked.
What is wrong with this stupid shower? Why would I install something so ridiculous?
I take a breath as I cower in the dry corner of the shower, trying to figure out what to do. The computerized display now reads sixty degrees. Is that the temperature of the water? Whatever it is, it’s too damn cold.
I carefully venture back into the water as goosebumps spring up on my arms. I tap on the up arrow, and to my relief, the temperature display goes up. The water warms up and my teeth stop chattering. I start to feel more comfortable when the temperature gets close to a hundred, then I crank it up higher, all the way up to one hundred ten degrees. It’s pretty hot now, but it feels good. The tight muscles in my shoulder and back melt under the spicules of hot water. And the headache in my right temple gradually subsides.
I let the water run over my hair. It’s strange for my hair to be so short. I’m used to it running all the way down my back, but I suppose it will be easier to wash this way. I already see a bottle of My Home Spa shampoo in the corner of the shower. It’s vanilla scented, but not that fake vanilla you get in cheap shampoos. This is a real, rich vanilla aroma. Like in a real spa.
As I run my fingers through my hair, I freeze. There’s something on my scalp.
I feel it on the right side of my skull, under the strands of my hair. There’s a patch on my scalp where no hair is growing—a line of thick raised skin that feels strange when I touch it, like the skin doesn’t quite belong to me. I follow the line with my fingers, noticing that it forms a C shape.
It’s a scar.
You had a brain injury during the accident. You had a lot of bleeding in your brain and the doctors did what they could.
I stand there in the shower, my body shaking despite the burning hot water. It’s true. What I wrote in that letter is all true. There’s a scar on my scalp to prove it. I was in a terrible accident, and I had surgery, but it wasn’t enough.
I drop my head, trying to control my breathing as my legs wobble beneath me. You’re okay. Trust the letter. Just accept that this is your life now and go with it.
I blink away the droplets of water in my eyes. And that’s when I notice something on my upper left thigh. It looks like a message written in black pen.
“What the…?”
I step out of the range of the water droplets, but it’s too late. There was something written on my thigh, but the hot running water has already obscured the message. It looks like it was two words. I stare down at the message—I can only barely make out the first word:
Find.
That’s sort of strange. Considering the location of this message, I have to assume I wrote it to myself. I wrote myself a message, maybe last night, knowing that I might not remember anything when I woke up the next morning. The message was obviously important, but it’s interesting that I wrote it in a place where only I would see it. Graham clearly didn’t know about it.
Find. Find what? What is that second word? I can’t even begin to make it out.
Well, great. Whatever message I was trying to leave for myself, I was unsuccessful. Hopefully, it wasn’t too important.
I finish soaping myself up, and by the time I finish my shower, I feel a lot more relaxed. I’ve almost forgotten about the strange message on my leg and whatever I’m supposed to find. My whole brain feels hazy, like I’ve just woken up
from a long sleep, and as long as I don’t try to fight it, the sensation is almost soothing. I recall the last words of the letter I had written to myself:
If you relax and try to have a good day, you will be much happier. Just remember that the people around you care about you very much and only want you to be safe. Do what they say.
You are in good hands. Trust me.
I suppose if there’s one person I can trust, it’s myself. Can’t I?
