Dear Lily,
Stay tonight & every night after.
I love you.
Jack x
I tore into the paper and ripped open the box, but instead of the ring in the brochure it was a house key, one I instinctively knew was for his apartment. Jack had planned on asking me to move in, maybe even propose, and I’d have said yes to all of it if he hadn’t disappeared. If I hadn’t found out he was a liar. As the future we’d had together crumbled between my fingers, I pressed the box and brochure to my chest, trying not to scream. Scream for Jack to come home. For him to tell me the truth, and, most of all, for this nightmare to be over.
11
MAYA
I barely slept all night, and early Sunday morning, at what Ash and I had long ago baptized stupid o’clock, meaning the sun had scarcely graced the bottom of the skies, I gave up and got out of bed. Once I’d made sure Ash was in his room, and everything that had happened the night before wasn’t a dream or my overactive imagination, I paced the kitchen for a while before going for a run to clear my mind.
Exercise wasn’t something I’d done much of since Ash had left. I hadn’t had the desire or energy, preferring to stay home and work on my driftwood art in the garage. It wasn’t just for the badly needed extra cash my pieces brought in, but also the feeling of satisfaction the work gave me, and the illusion I was doing more with my life than simply letting it pass me by. Barbara, who ran a store in town called Drift and who was charged with selling my pieces, often said she thought I could have a much broader reach if I set up online. Maybe I would now that Ash was back. But first I needed to figure out what was going on with him.
While the rain had stopped, the gray, low-hanging clouds appeared to be in no hurry to make way for the sun, and the crisp air was cooler than I’d anticipated. I went to the back of the yard to the path at the top of the cliffs and turned left, upping the pace, my legs already protesting from the lack of care and attention. I slowed down, deciding on a walk so my lungs wouldn’t collapse, and found a steady rhythm, my feet barely making a sound as they hit the earthy path.
Forcing myself to push some of what I’d seen online the night before from my mind, I focused on what I’d found out about Ash’s potential condition, and the mental notes I’d made. Complete memory loss could have multiple causes, including Alzheimer’s (far too young?), a stroke (no other symptoms?), drugs or alcohol withdrawal (he’d always been antidrugs and drank responsibly), mental health issues (genetic predisposition?), and what Fiona had mentioned, amnesia, which seemed the most feasible but opened up a plethora of possibilities.
Anterograde amnesia was the inability to form new memories, but Ash had mentioned falling asleep in both the trailer and the old house he’d broken into, and when he’d woken up, he’d recalled being at the beach. Transient global amnesia meant forgetting pretty much everything, so it was a contender. However, retrograde amnesia was also the inability to recall past events, and could be caused by a head injury, which Ash had definitely suffered judging by the gash I’d seen last night. I’d read through site after site until the pages blurred and I’d gone cross-eyed. In my mind, if he had amnesia, I ruled out anterograde because the part of his brain that made new memories seemed to be working, but what did I know other than reading up on Dr. Google?
Walking a little faster, I stumbled and tripped when the tip of my shoe caught on a root because I was too busy thinking about what would happen if Ash had one of the other types of amnesia, I got home and he no longer recognized me. Or if he’d had a stroke after all, a precursor to a bigger, more damaging and potentially fatal one. Getting outside was supposed to help my focus. Instead it was turning my brain to mush, making it a soupy mess of terrifying questions, with not nearly enough answers.
When the first raindrop smacked me on the forehead, I cursed myself for coming out in the first place. Ash had been sound asleep, but what if he woke up while I was gone, and ran off again? I was freaking out now, cutting through the forest before bursting out onto the main road, running full throttle, my lungs burning. It took me another few minutes to get back to the house, and well before I ran up the driveway, I saw Keenan’s bright red Subaru WRX parked askew.
“Oh, hell, no,” I wheezed, leaping up the porch steps, and as my fingers touched the door handle, I could already hear the shouting.
“...because you sure as shit should crawl back underneath it,” Keenan yelled. Ash must have said something in reply because Keenan raised his voice again. “Should I take that as a confession, you goddamn piece of—”
I rushed through the door and into the kitchen, where Ash was dressed in jeans and an old sweater, his hair sticking out at different angles. He stood behind the kitchen table as a red-faced Keenan, who held his car keys tightly in his fist, moved in on him.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I roared, and both of them spun around.
“I want answers,” Keenan said, turning back to Ash. “And you’re going to give—”
“I told you already, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ash reached for the back of a chair, looking like he might collapse, his eyes darting from Keenan to me and back again.
“Get out.” I walked over and grabbed Keenan’s arm, but he shook me off. “I said get out. Leave. Now.
