I watch from the top of the stairs as my mom shoves the front door shut.
“Who was that?” I ask without coming down. I don’t like strangers. Or unexpected visitors.
Mom climbs the steps and gives me a tight smile. Her dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and her face is lined with worry. I wonder again what happened to my easy, carefree mother with her broad smile and easy laugh. And when did it happen? During the last three years while I was living my life in Jackson Harbor? Or after “the incident,” as they call it? After she was called to a hospital in Michigan, where I was lying helpless, beaten black and blue, and in a medically induced coma while they waited for the swelling in my brain to subside?
“No one,” she says. “It was no one.” She steps forward and sweeps my hair behind my ear, tucking it back as she studies my face. “How are you feeling today?”
I shrug. “Good.” The truth is that I’m tired, and everything takes more effort than it should. I go to physical therapy three times a week, where they attempt to restore the strength I lost while I was lying in that hospital bed. “But who was at the door?”
Her expression tightens. “Friends of Colton’s.”
I freeze, fear making every muscle in my body contract.
“Don’t worry. I sent them away.” She squeezes my shoulder and shakes her head. I recognize the look in her eyes. She’s transformed into the fierce mama bear who’s been walking around with her hackles raised ever since I was discharged. “You’re safe, El. I promise you.”
Tears sting the back of my eyes. “What do you think they wanted?”
Mom folds me into her chest. “Breathe, sweetie. They’re gone, but I don’t think they were here to hurt you.”
I drag my bottom lip between my teeth. “You don’t know that.” What if they were here to scope out the house, to plan how they’ll break in later? What if they’re in contact with Colton and tell him where he can find me?
My fears are irrational, and I know it. If Colton was looking for me, wouldn’t he check my mother’s house first? But I can’t help the terror that claws at me when I think of my life in Jackson Harbor.
“It doesn’t matter. I sent them away.”
I nod. “Thank you.” I know I sound weak, but in this one area, I’ve allowed myself to be.
“I’m going to make some lunch,” she says. “Come downstairs when you’re ready.”
I nod, grateful to return to the safe haven of my childhood bedroom.
I’ve had two weeks back at home trying to come to terms with what everyone tells me: that I have three years of my life that I can’t remember. The doctors expect most of the memories will come back in their own time, but I haven’t even seen a hint of the missing pieces.
I’m not sure I want to.
Before, I would have imagined retrograde amnesia would feel like looking at a picture with a section blacked out. Instead, it’s more like someone cropped the picture, cutting away all signs of the last three years. If no one had told me, I wouldn’t have even known anything was missing.
I have so many questions about the years I lost on the night of the incident. I had an entire life in a city I can’t remember. A house. A job. A fiancé. Some days it all feels like an elaborate joke. How could I have been planning to marry a man I can’t even remember meeting? The last I remember, I was working for an art dealer and traveling the world. My job was my everything, and my future looked so bright.
But everything changed sometime during those missing years. By the time they found me, unconscious and barely breathing on my living room floor, I was a different person. I was a struggling real estate agent who’d exchanged a lavish life of art for piles of debt, and I was engaged to a drug addict who nearly beat me to death. How could things have changed so drastically?
I have so many questions about the place I’m told I lived and the life I’m told I had, but I want nothing to do with any of it. I was given a second chance, and I’m not going to ruin it by chasing ghosts from a life that almost killed me.
I walk to the window and frown when I see a blue Mustang parked in front of the house. A beautiful brunette leans against the passenger-side door, and a broad-shouldered man stands in front of her. Are they the ones who came to talk to me? The woman is thin—not frail but lithe, like a ballerina. She wraps her arms around herself, and the wet streaks on her face glisten in the sun.
The man dips his head and presses a kiss to the top of her head. Are they together? Or maybe brother and sister? I can’t tell, but clearly she’s upset and he’s trying to comfort her.
Friends of Colton. They don’t look like drug addicts, but can you tell that by looking at someone?
The woman looks up and catches sight of me in the window. Her mouth opens, as if she’s gasping, or maybe as if I’ve hurt her—as if seeing me looking at her hurts her. How’s she connected to the man I was supposed to marry?
The man turns, following the woman’s gaze, and when his eyes meet mine, the intensity on his face makes me gasp. I put my hand to my chest, pressing against the strange ache there, as if the hammering beat of my heart is code that can provide the answers I’m so afraid of.
“The Young and the Restless is on, honey,” Mom calls from the kitchen. “Come watch with me while I get lunch ready?”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I call, but I can’t take my eyes off the man outside.
He presses his fist to his chest, and I wonder if he feels it too—this unlikely pull I have toward him. He’s gorgeous. Dark hair and the scruff of his shortly trimmed beard. From here, his eyes look almost black, but I wonder what they’re like up close. Do those eyes know my secrets? Does he know what happened that night? Or why I fell in love with such a bad man?
He takes his phone from his pocket, dials, and looks at me as he puts it to his ear. When he pulls it away, he holds it up and shakes it gently. Call me. The words are on his lips. Mouthed or said, I don’t know. But I feel them. Then he’s saying something else. I miss you.
Is that what he said? I can’t tell.
That doesn’t make sense. I don’t know this man. I know he’s not Colton. Not Colton, who almost killed me, but his friend. He’s someone from Jackson Harbor begging me to call him and telling me he misses me.
Does he miss me as a friend or something more? It couldn’t be more if I was supposed to marry Colton, so why does it feel like more? Why is he looking at me like he’d knock down the walls of this house to get to me? Does he know I don’t remember? Does he know I almost died?
Does he know how much I’ve lost?
I put my hand to my stomach—to the womb that cradled the child I’ll never meet, to the space that failed to protect the only piece of my old life I want to hold on to.
The man turns away and opens the car door for his companion, and a shiver rushes through me. He goes around to his side and climbs in.
When the car pulls away, I open the top drawer of my dresser and take out my cell phone. Are there answers on there? Messages from the life that’s nothing more than a ghost haunting my days? I stare at the black screen with shaking hands, but I can’t make myself turn it on.