Buried Truth

by Caleb Whitaker

Chapter 10: Colonial Park

   

  I swear I just saw her behind a tree. How is this possible? At least I. My thought is interrupted as the woman walks closer to me. From this short distance, the woman’s features are captivating. She is very well dressed in her beige shorts and floral shirt. She is slim built and has long dark brown hair. I have to give Matt credit on this one. She is definitely a looker.

  The woman stops a few feet away and nervously speaks. “I guess you don’t really remember me, but I’m Ryleigh.”

  I don’t really know what to say, so I just nod my head up and down like some kind of mechanical children's toy. I never really expected a girl that looks like her would be the mystery girl from the bar. Someone that looks as beautiful as her being with a guy like me was never plausible; in my mind, it was actually impossible, until now.

  Ryleigh continues in a timid voice, “I’m sorry for everything that has happened. Your mom and dad treated me like one of their own, I wish it didn’t have to end the way it did.”

            I nod again, glancing down at the grass that lies between us. It’s my way of trying to regain my composure even though it probably only makes me look more nervous. Then something she had said sticks out to me. She told me, my mom and dad treated her like one of their own. How does she know them, and why in the world would I bring a girl I just met at a bar to my parents’ house? I’m surprised that I’m not the one who ended up with the aftertaste of death that night.

  In a gruff tone, I ask “How do you know my parents? I don’t recollect ever introducing y’all.”

  Her forehead wrinkles as her eyes squint in my direction. She takes a few more steps forward, closing the distance between us to only a few inches. Her moist breath blows across my neck as she takes a slight exhale before putting her hand on my shoulder. Her eyes meet mine with a look that makes me question myself. I’ve never had such an intimate stare down before in my life that I can remember.

  “Do you really not remember me at all?”

  Her question causes me brief hesitation. I’m obviously missing something, but I can’t quite put it together. “Not really. I guess I remember meeting you at the bar, but that doesn’t explain how you know my parents, or why I would take you to their house after we met.”

  The look she gives me next is the same stare down I would imagine myself giving an insane person running around acting ridiculous, except now I’m the one doing something totally illogical from her perspective. What is her problem? My hand slowly rises to my temple for no other reason than to be in a defensive position in case she tries to slap me. I can see her briefly contemplating something before she finally replies, “We didn’t meet at the bar that night. We met during college this past year.”

  Ok, that was a little unexpected. My sweaty palm runs through my hair, then down my face. “That still doesn’t explain how you know my parents.”

  She tries to cover up her flushed face by quickly turning her head away from my view. “Well, we kinda have been dating for a few months now. So I have met with your parents a few times. Is that a good enough explanation of how I knew them, or do I need pictures?”

  I cut my eyes toward the ground again in disbelief. I have a girlfriend. Wow, I don’t remember any of that. Why don’t I remember stuff from months ago? Is she trying to trick me? She does know I’m having trouble remembering some things. She could be using that against me, but I don’t know why she would lie to me right now.

  There is really no way around the memory issue, so my only option is to level with her about everything. “Ok. I don’t remember any of that. I only recently remember the bar and even it’s only a few memories. What I remember is my friends not really knowing you and me acting as if we just met. So I’m having trouble making all this fit. I guess we could be together, but you could also be playing me for a fool right now. I just don’t think I can believe I somehow have a girlfriend that my friends don’t know, but my parents somehow do know.”

  She stands beside me for a few seconds with her arms crossed close to her chest. Neither of us wanting to say something crass allows eerie silence to seep through the park. The wind blows causing leaves from the tree limbs above us to rustle and fall towards the ground. My fingers brush a wayward leaf from my shoulder as she says, “Hold on I’ll be right back. I need to get my phone out of my car.”

   She gracefully walks, through a dense layer of fallen leaves, back around to her car. I shake my hair out of my face and walk toward a bench a few feet away. The bench is located near the tree that minutes ago shielded a person who had the exact appearance as Ryleigh. Out of compulsion, I carefully walk around the surrounding trees in an attempt to rationalize the mirage. One would think there has to be a natural explanation, or at least a rational one. My life is screwed up right now, but it can’t defy nature, could it?

  By the time I reach the bench, Ryleigh is walking away from her car towards me. None of this makes any sense, and I still have more questions than answers. I don’t know if I can even trust her or not. On her behalf, I don’t know if I can trust myself either.

  When she reaches the bench, she is carrying a cell phone and a notebook in her hands. Vanilla perfume hangs in the open air as she sits down close beside me and speaks confidently for the first time. “If it wasn’t for the awful circumstances, this would actually be an interesting issue going on with your memory.”

  She notices my look of confusion, puts her hand on my shoulder, and then continues, “I’m sorry that probably sounded bad. I’ll just tell you some stuff about us and myself before I get into that. Maybe it will help jog some memories for you. Anyways, we met in college like I said earlier. I was finishing my RN degree…”

            I’m distracted from her conversation by the storm of perplexity that crashes onto my consciousness every time she gives me more details. My nails scrape against the brittle wood of the bench’s underside. “What month did all this supposedly take place?”

  “Well, we met in early November, and then began dating shortly after. We visited your parents a few times, and Christmas was the first. Your mother and father immediately accepted me. When we could, we would go over and eat lunch with them in between classes.”

  “I remember eating lunch with them over the past few months, but I don’t remember you being there.”

   With a smile she replies, “Well, I know given your memory all this might sound like a stretch to you, but it’s the truth.”

  The irony of her using my words to respond to my statement makes me smile. While grinning, I nod for her to continue her tale of our relationship. “We enjoyed watching movies, eating at nice restaurants, and going to sport bars together, like we did the other night. It was sometimes hard but we made it work. You were quite romantic actually, when you wanted to be. Then all this happened, and we lost contact the past couple days.”

  She hands me the phone that she had been holding, “There are some pictures on it from the past few months that you don’t have, since you don’t ever take pictures with anyone on your phone.”

  I take the phone and flip through the pictures. There are several of us in an apartment, a few at a lake, a couple of me outside on the grass with a chess set as my hands raise towards the sky, and several others from a few places that don’t register with me. One photo does register, and it sends chills up my arms. It’s a photo just of Ryleigh. Sunlight is seemingly pouring out of her gorgeous smile. There isn’t anything overly special about the photo except that she is standing in front of a hauntingly familiar tree.

  “Have we ever been to this park?”

  She smiles, “Yes, you planned a surprise picnic for us.”

   My throat closes up on me, causing me to hack into my sleeve of my shirt upon her verifying my question. I push past the thoughts of premonitions and psychics, while I flip through more pictures. Finally, I reach a picture of Ryleigh, my parents, and me at Christmas. We are all huddled up around the tree. Dad is wearing an embarrass
ing red sweater that no man should ever be photographed wearing. I have one arm around my mom’s neck and the other around Ryleigh’s back. The only person missing is Alice. She came into town the next day to avoid me; I guess I could never forget some things. “Ok, you win. We are dating, and you do know my parents.”

  She smiles and says, “Yep. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” But then her smile disappears, “But that brings me back to my original statement. See, you should remember that stuff. I don’t know why you have forgotten things from the past several months. I get the not wanting to remember the other night. That’s probably for the best, but not remembering me at all… that’s a little crazy.”

  I let out a deep sigh contemplating how exactly to respond. For some reason, when she said the word crazy, it cut deep into me. I know it was just a statement of concern on her part, but the way she emphasized it was a little more nefarious than I was expecting from her. “Wow, ok. Um, that is a lot of information to take in. I don’t know how exactly to respond.”

  She leans closer to me placing her dry hand in mine. “It’s ok. We will do it together. We just have to trust each other for it to work. I know with everything you're experiencing that you might be skeptical, but we must be honest with each other.”

  I’m overcome with emotion as I squeeze her hand. The emotions aren’t clear enough for me to truly decide how I feel towards her, but there is something. There is no hiding the strong bond growing between us, but the love I’m experiencing from seeing the photos feels surprisingly superficial for someone that just found their love. Yet I still find myself saying, “If we were together once, then we will do this together now. It is hard since I can’t remember everything but just be patient with me. My biggest concern is figuring out what happened that night.”

  “I will be as patient as ever. We just need to be careful. Besides, each other, I don’t know who we can trust.”

  Our arms fully embrace each other for the first time, my lips near her ear. “You’re amazing. I can’t believe I found a girl like you.”

  She whispers back, “yeah, I’m pretty great.” Then she pulls away, “I just wish none of this had happened. I should have never let it get that far out of hand.”

  What does that mean? My fingers glide anxiously through my hair. The recent change in emotions has gotten my insides so screwed up that I can’t tell what I’m feeling. Love? Guilt? Sorrow? Rampant hate? I don’t know. I try taking a few deep breaths, so that I can calm down and act like my world isn’t upside down.

  I put my hand on her leg and speak softly, “So, what do we do now? I obviously can’t remember much for whatever reason. I think my memory is the key. I would say my memory loss has to do with my drinking except I can’t remember you.”

  She looks at her phone, then back at me. “It’s probably because a lot of the mess from the past few days surrounds me. So, maybe deep down you just don’t want to remember me.”

  What is she talking about? How could this have anything to do with her? I hope she takes this the right way. “What do you mean?”

  She fidgets with the notebook in her hand as soon as I ask her to clarify her remarks. Then her eyes keep looking around in every direction as if she’s waiting for something to happen. She glances down at her phone, then out across the lake once more. What is she doing? She looks scared… “Ryleigh, you ok? I asked what do you mean by saying this mess surrounds you?”

  She glances at me, but then continues to look around. Finally, she shudders, “Um, we need to go, it’s not safe. I’ll tell you more later.”

  I recognize her mood change, which frightens me just as much as whatever is spooking her. I decide not to fight her to much over her involvement. “Ok, that’s fine. Why isn’t it safe though? You think the cops know we are here.”

  She jumps up off the bench and grabs my hand, “No, it’s not the cops we need to be worried about right now.”

  She forcefully grabs my hand as we start walking back towards the car. We are nearing our cars, so I veer off towards my car. She grabs my arm and pulls me towards her car preventing me from making it to my own. The force behind the yank of her hand reminds me of the push from the guy in my parents’ house, assuming he ever existed outside of my mind in the first place.

  She says, “We have to be a little worried about the cops. They probably are looking for your car. I don’t think they know about me, yet.”

  “I think they do, but your car is probably still safer.”

  Standing together by the car with her gently holding my arm, it is clear what is going to happen next. Even though the signs are evident, it still catches me off guard. She pulls my arm once more until my body is touching her. She brings her lips towards mine and it happens. Our lips interlock in what feels like a genuine yet strange kiss. It’s almost the feeling I would expect to experience if forced to kiss my sister. Except this kiss has a taste of passion mixed in with the revolting stench of perversion.

  What was that? My mind goes completely blank for the first time in forever as we stand there in each other’s arms. I don’t know whether to be disgusted or in love. She eventually pulls away without a word and gets in the car with a small yet noticeable smirk. It obviously meant something to her.

  I take a deep relaxing breath upon getting into the passenger seat. After everything that has happened, there is an inkling of guilt floating on the surface of my conscious because despite my confusion, I’m actually happy. So I close my eyes for a few seconds, trying to hide my temporary happiness and prepare myself for whatever happens next. She drives around the lake to the exit of the park as we both sit in blissful silence.