Melanie Strohen died shortly after Sabrina had been born, and though she was sad that she never knew her mother, she didn’t know what it was like to have her around. Jonathan, however, still grieved her loss and must have loved her because he never remarried.
“I don’t know … do you … do you think she’d be proud of me despite me being so … you know.”
Jonathan pursed his lips. “Being what?”
“I mean … I can’t leave the house without having a complete breakdown. I can’t talk to anyone. It’s like something’s wrong and—”
“Sweetheart, no.” He gripped her shoulders harder. “There’s nothing wrong with you okay? It was the accident.”
Yes, that was it. The day everything changed, at least, that’s what she was told. “But why can’t I remember it, Dad?” Her anxiety began to rise as it always did when she tried to recall what happened. Her right hand closed into a fist, and she used her thumb to rub her ring. “I remember everything before that. But why can’t I recall—”
“It’s probably some kind of safety mechanism in your brain,” he reasoned. “Blocking out the trauma. It was a terrible accident. All those people …” He tsked and shook his head. “You must have seen some terrible things when your bus overturned. You were the only survivor.”
She’d heard the story over and over again. Yet, nothing clicked in her brain. There wasn’t even a glimmer of a memory in her mind of that time, only before or after. She couldn’t even remember which bus it was or where she was going. It was like her life stopped and skipped a whole section. But then again, maybe he was right. She’d read books and articles about selective amnesia, and how trauma could somehow trigger memory loss, along with a host of other conditions like anxiety and depression. “I … maybe someday … I mean, today I managed to get out.”
“Y-you did?” His eyes widened.
“Yes. I ran out of cookies, and you know I had to go and—”
“You shouldn’t—I mean, sweetheart, next time just give me call, okay? I can run over and bring you whatever—”
“Daaaaad.” She removed his hands from her shoulders. “You run a multinational corporation. I don’t think your shareholders would appreciate a CEO who runs out of the office in the middle of the day to run errands.”
He harrumphed. “You’re my daughter and my number one priority.”
She turned away from him, hoping to hide her face. “I know, Dad, I know.” That was the kind of father he was. He’d never missed a recital, a school play, or a graduation while she was growing up. She enjoyed the attention, of course, being an only child and him being her only parent, though after the accident, he seemed to get even more protective. Even suffocating in some ways.
“And what’s this? New project?”
She whirled around, her eyes widening in horror as her father reached for the curtain that partitioned off one corner of her studio. “Dad, no!” she cried as she practically flew across the room to get between him and the curtain. “I mean, I’m not ready to show that yet.”
His brows snapped together. “Are you all right, Sabrina? You look pale.”
“I …” The blood indeed, felt like it was draining from her face. “I’m just you know … tired.”
He placed a hand over her forehead, like he did back when she was a little girl and complained of a fever. “You don’t have a temperature or anything. You need to get rest, sweetheart.”
“I do, I sleep pretty soundly, though”—she couldn’t help the chuckle bursting from her lips—“I think the ghost is back.”
“The ghost?”
Relieved that her father had forgotten about what was behind the curtain, she linked her arm through his and led him back into the living area. “Oh, I guess I haven’t told you,” she said. “Well, I didn’t want you to worry about your investment. If you ever do think of kicking me out, it might be hard to sell this place once your prospective buyers find out it’s haunted.”
Now it was father who turned pale. “Haunted?”
“Yeah … sometimes things move in the middle of the night.” They sat on the couch and she smoothed her hands across the buttery soft suede. “Like, I’ll leave a cup of tea by my bedside, and the next morning, it’ll be knocked over on the floor. Or sometimes I’ll fall asleep here on the couch, and when I wake up, I’ll have a blanket on top of me.” And then there was that scent that seemed to linger … chocolate with a hint of mint, like the smell of her favorite cookies. It happened again yesterday morning. There was a lingering scent in the air, like someone had been there next to her bed.
“I’m sure it’s just you being forgetful, sweetheart.” He took his phone out, and tapped on the screen. “So, what do you want for dinner? I can have my driver pick up anything you want.”
“Oh.” Food. Yes, that would be nice. Her ghost momentarily forgotten; she tapped her finger on her chin. “How about Chinese? From the usual place?” She kept telling herself that one of these days she was going to start to diet, but since she never really went out or even saw anyone other than Jonathan or Barbara, there didn’t seem to be any immediate need for her to lose weight.
“Egg rolls, right?”
“Yes, please.”
As her father called his driver, she glanced back at her studio. The tension from her shoulders drained, but still, it had been too close for comfort. Jonathan could have pulled the curtain aside, and well, she just wasn’t ready for him to see those. It was hard enough for her to display that first painting for an exhibition, and even
