As I grabbed a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt upstairs, the thought of Lily being here in the house with me made me smile, and I headed back to the kitchen, where she stood by the sink with her back to me, staring out the window.
When I approached, she turned around and the light streaming in behind her lit up her hair like a golden halo. Man, she was beautiful. My belly clenched, which was ridiculous considering we’d dated for ages, but as heat rose to my cheeks I crossed over to the cupboard and pretended to look for something so she couldn’t see my face. Spending the night with her had felt relaxed and comfortable, like being with a good friend I happened to also find very attractive. I’d wanted to kiss her on more than one occasion, but what would she have thought if a man who claimed to have no memory of her tried to get it on anyway? No clue how good or bad I’d been at relationships before, but either way, it would’ve been a crass move. Thankfully, Lily interrupted my thoughts of what kissing her might have led to by asking if I wanted to have a look at the garage so we could finalize the plans, and we headed outside.
It didn’t take long for us to move Maya’s workbench, band saw, sander and nail gun out of the way so I could get a proper look at the framing Maya had worked on a while ago. She told me she’d made a start after I’d left only to abandon the project midway, her motivation having disappeared. It gave me another reason to do this for her because I sensed my departure had affected her even more deeply than she cared to admit. I grabbed my tape measure and some chalk I’d found, ready to mark the outline for the new shower pan. As I looked at the cracked tiles an image hit me. Maya laughing at the old pattern as she removed them and threw them into a pile in the corner. I pressed my eyes shut. I’d worked in here with my father, not her. It had to be another false memory, another stupid confabulation, just like when I’d believed he’d loved soccer.
“What’s this?” Lily said, pulling me out of the thoughts.
When I looked over, I saw her pointing to the floor where she’d rolled up the tatty orange rug I’d tripped over the other day. I frowned at the sight of a trapdoor in the floor. It was about three feet wide and had a large, rusty metal ring.
“Let’s find out,” I said, pulling the door open to reveal a thin wooden ladder propped against the top frame, and which disappeared into the darkness.
Lily pressed the switch on the inside of the trapdoor and within an instant the faint glow of a light bulb emanated from below. “I’m going to check it out,” she said, her face full of excitement, and she clambered onto the rickety ladder with me following behind.
What turned out to be a kind of storage room underneath the garage was a little over a hundred square feet, and apart from a few dusty shelves, a broken lamp and some empty beer bottles in the corner, there was nothing inside.
“Well, this is a bit disappointing,” Lily said. “I was hoping for treasure or an expensive wine collection or something. Oh, well...” She made her way up the first couple of rungs of the ladder before looking at me over her shoulder. “Are you coming? Ash...?”
Her voice faded away as the scent of the earthy ground filled my nose and lungs, the musty air taking me back to the decrepit house I’d hidden in next to the petrol station, and the flashback I’d had of someone playing hide-and-seek.
“Maya,” I whispered. “It was Maya.”
“What do you mean?” Lily stood next to me now, her hand on my arm.
“She wanted to play hide-and-seek with me all the time and I’d indulge her, even though I moaned and complained and said I was too old. I used to hide—” I pointed to the corner “—over there, so when she opened the trapdoor she couldn’t see me.”
“Ash, this is amazing.”
“Providing it happened,” I said, explaining what the doctors had told me about confabulation and false memories, which Lily had never heard of, either, and finishing with, “That’s why I never know if what I’m experiencing is real.”
“Do you remember anything else? Maybe I can help?”
“Blueberry pancakes,” I said with a smile. “For whatever reason, you remind me of blueberry pancakes.”
“From Patti’s,” she whispered. “It’s a café in Brookmount. We’d get blueberry pancakes whenever we went, or you’d bring them to my place, and we’d eat them in bed.”
I scrunched my eyes shut again, trying to force an image, but nothing appeared. “This is almost worse than not remembering anything at all,” I said. “Having stuff come back but not knowing if it really happened, having to verify everything with other people, almost having to ask permission to allow whatever images to stay in my brain. Jesus, it’s so frustrating.”
“But you’ve just experienced a few memories in a row, Ash, that’s huge, and two of them—the paint and the pancakes—are definitely real. More will come if you give it time, they have to. I know it’s stupid to say you should chill out, but...”
As I looked at her, I felt the same sense of calm I’d experienced when we’d sat outside the bar, and again at the motel. “You’re right,” I said, hoping it was the truth, and headed for the ladder. “How about we go to town and pick up the stuff for the garage? Maybe we’ll find a new pancake place, too.”
Lily smiled. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”
An hour later we walked out of the hardware store with some of the supplies we needed, plus an order form for the
