“But who is she?”
“Who’s who?” Erik walked over and grabbed the towel resting on the back of the other chair.
I jumped, having been so lost in thought I hadn’t noticed his approach. He shook out the towel with one hand before wiping his face with it.
“Oh, uh... the woman in the book.” I held it up.
My favorite genre was mystery. Sometimes cozy, sometimes something more sinister. It just depended on my mood.
Erik sat down and stole a kiss. I chuckled.
“Tell me about it,” he said. “Maybe I can help solve the mystery.”
I hesitated. Telling Erik the events too closely might tip him off, and I did not want him to become so worried that he wouldn’t let me out of the house.
He frowned. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” I waved him off. “I just want to figure it out on my own. You know I get obsessed.”
The frown faded, and he rubbed the back of his head as he chuckled. “Right. I forgot how determined you are to solve the cases.”
The ball of tension in my chest faded. “Exactly!”
He drank some lemonade and got back to work, leaving me to the book. I pretended to read, but the incident kept playing over and over in my head. Who had that man been? And what would have happened if Cooper hadn’t stepped in? The need to solve the mystery rushed through my veins. Maybe it really had been a case of mistaken identity. Well, it had to have been. My name wasn’t Sandra, and it never had been.
Erik wouldn’t have renamed me.
But I knew so little about what happened before the accident. No friends, no family. Not mine or Erik’s. We stayed relatively isolated. No one came over, and there was nothing about my life prior. Why did Erik hide that information? Yes, he wanted me to not dwell on it, but despite what he said, surely there must have been people in my life.
I had never really thought about it so deep before, but every time I brought up, Erik quickly moved into another conversation. Another topic, and somehow it quickly faded from my mind. I wondered why that was... but didn’t dwell on it too much. Maybe I just hadn’t wanted to know about my past as much. It seemed likely, because whatever happened before the accident, I would never recover. So why dwell on it?
Even now, it seemed like knowing about my past wouldn’t end in anything good. I couldn’t get that man's hateful stare out of my mind. I couldn’t forget the way he looked at me. Like I was a woman back from the dead. That resonated with me, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get it out of my head.
The sound of the hammer cracking against wood made me jump. The book fell from my lap, hitting the concrete floor. Erik didn’t realize it as he continued working.
I couldn’t remember ever feeling so unsettled. It was probably just because of what happened. Maybe I’d been in conflicts before, but I hadn’t been since after the accident. So my skills were most likely rusty. I had to learn how to deal with it all over again. Most likely, I was just overreacting. I wished I could talk to Erik about it, but I knew if I did, he would be the one to overreact.
Instead, I picked up my book and opened to my most recent page, trying to forget about what happened at the supermarket.
4
A few days later, Erik left for a business trip. He’d be on the west coast for a few days for a work conference. He gave me the emergency cell phone. An old flip-style that did not access the internet. That made it difficult to do any research about the man in the supermarket.
But talking to Erik helped ease the pain of him being gone. If he stayed away too long, a physical ache formed in my chest. It pulsated with the rhythm of my heart. I couldn’t explain it, and when I told Erik about it, he said it was just because I loved him so much. I missed him so much it hurt.
He wasn’t wrong about that.
Every time he came home, the ache disappeared, replaced with a desperate need to have him inside me. The second he walked through the door we’d shed our clothes and fall to the floor, so desperate for each other’s touch we couldn’t even make it to the bedroom. The first time we joined when he came home, well, it was never slow and sensual. Instead it was rough, primal, and by the end of it I usually had a bruise or a scratch. Sometimes even teeth marks. They were never unwanted. I relished in each sensation from Erik’s touch. The roughness of it heightened the pleasure, and somewhere in the mix of it I would always want more.
I waved to him as he pulled out of the driveway. Even now, just watching him go I had to squeeze my thighs together as a pulse of need shot through my core in anticipation of his return. When the car disappeared down the street, I walked back inside, shutting and locking the door behind me.
The house grew big with no one else there. So full of room that I could breathe again. Except anxiety lingered in my chest. Memories of the supermarket still pressed against the front of my mind. It almost consumed me as much as wanting to know about my past. I needed answers, and while Erik held the secrets of my past, I could still try to find out the truth about the man in the supermarket.
Plopping into a chair, I huffed and leaned back, my gaze going up to the ceiling.
To the air vent.
Where I had hidden Cooper’s business card.
If Erik had found it, he’d have been furious. I should have thrown it away as soon as I left
