The Twilight Wife

by A. J. Banner

  “Are you on any medications?”

  “I was, but I stopped taking them.”

  “Do you remember what they are?”

  “Two antianxiety medications and a sleep aid. Do you think I should still be taking them?”

  “You made a good decision to stop taking them. Some medications can actually impede the return of your memory.”

  A sense of calm returns to me. “So you think it’s okay.”

  “Yes, I think it’s perfectly okay. In fact, I recommend you stop taking the medications.”

  “Wow, thank you.” My shoulders relax. “But why would a doctor have prescribed the meds if they interfere with the return of my memory?”

  “I can’t answer that,” she says. “Maybe your anxiety trumped everything else at the time.”

  “I have been anxious, so worried about everything,” I say. “I would love to understand things, like the dream. I’m in churning waters. The current is strong. I’m disoriented. I don’t know which way is up.”

  “Are you having trouble breathing in the dream?”

  “I think so. But I’m not suffocating. I’m definitely scared. Worried . . .”

  “Are you alone?”

  “I don’t know. I’m swimming, looking for someone. I don’t know who it is. It must be Jacob.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “No,” I say. “What do you feel the dream represents? Could it be related to the accident? Could my dream have actually happened?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But maybe it didn’t. I used to be able to follow my intuition, but now my intuition is muddled at best.”

  “We’ll get back to that intuition. This has been a difficult time for you.”

  “I don’t have an internal compass to rely on. I can’t help feeling my memories are still here, but my mind doesn’t want to remember. Could that be the case?”

  “Absolutely,” she says. “It’s possible.”

  “So even though the doctors said I would probably never remember everything, I could remember? They could be wrong? I mean, some moments are starting to come back. I’m remembering.”

  “You definitely are,” she says.

  “Is there a name for it, when your mind doesn’t want to remember . . . suppressed or repressed memories?”

  “Do you mean there could be a psychogenic component to your memory loss?”

  “Psychogenic.”

  “Things your brain chooses to forget. Absolutely.”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to remember? Could something bad have happened?”

  “Something traumatic? Certainly—”

  Someone rings her buzzer.

  I glance at the clock. “The time went by so quickly.”

  “My next client is here. Do you want to come and see me again?”

  “I think so,” I say. “Yes. But I don’t want to tell my husband . . . He’s trying so hard to fix all this for me. Plus, I don’t know, this feels like it’s mine. Coming here.”

  “Sure, of course.” The buzzer reverberates through the room again. She gets up, smoothing down her sweater. “We have so much more to find out. Don’t you agree?”

  “I do,” I say, getting up, too. I’m oddly disappointed that our session has to end.

  “Do you remember buying massage oil at Mystic Thyme?” I say in the afternoon, as Jacob drives us down the main road to explore our old haunts. I have not told him about my session with Sylvia. My talk with her feels like a special secret.

  “The soap shop? We went in there a few times,” he says, looking over at me.

  “I was wearing a beautiful cobalt dress. What happened to it?”

  His eyes sadden. “That was one helluva dress, but it’s gone. You spilled tea all over the front. You were mad about that. It never came out.”

  “Not even with stain remover?”

  “It was ruined,” he says. “But wow, you remembered the dress.”

  “It was last summer. We were here on vacation. I loved being here with you. The island felt like a dream. But I also had an underlying restlessness, a strange pull to go back to the mainland.”

  “You were a workaholic.” He turns left at a sign reading Island Wetlands Preserve.

  “It felt like more than work. I needed to set something right, correct something.”

  “Like I said, work,” he says, parking in the lot next to an interpretive sign. “You were a teaching assistant. Professor Brimley expected too much from you.”

  “Professor Brimley. I vaguely remember him.”

  “He gave you too much to do for what you were being paid. You had to develop lesson plans, grade papers. You were pretty stressed out. Come on. Let’s walk.” He takes a pair of Audubon binoculars from the glove compartment, and we walk the trail through the wetlands. The rustle of grasses soothes my soul. Nobody will come after us here, he said to me, holding my hand.

  “Who would come after us?” I say.

  “What?” He gives me a startled look.

  “You said nobody would come after us here. Were we fugitives?” I smile to lighten the words.

  He laughs. “From city life, yes.”

  “Was I recovering from something?”

  He gives me a sharp look. “What makes you say that?”

  “I needed spiritual healing, according to Eliza at Mystic Thyme. She gave me a bottle of essential oils.”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Nothing at all? There must have been.”

  “Trouble at work, maybe?”

  “Trouble with us?” I say.

  “You keep going back to that,” he says. “I’m starting to think you want us to have been in trouble.”

  “I’m not saying that.” But maybe I’m looking for cracks in our relationship, flaws that might have compelled me to stray from our marriage.

  “Then what are you saying? I told you we were good.”

  “Okay, we were good, then.” On the rest of the loop trail, I fight the urge to ask more questions. I focus on watching the blackbirds, towhees, and the mallards in the pond. In this wetlands reserve, Jacob and I could be the only two people on the planet.

  After the hike, he drives me out to Windy Reef Park, where we view the sea lions congregating on the rocky shore. We hear them barking before we spot them. “Amazing lookout point,” I say. “I had no idea.”

  “You called this the Magical Nearshore. You taught me that term.”

  “Nearshore, the volatile confluence of sky, land, and water. I love that you remember.”

  “How could I forget? The nearshore was always your favorite place to go.”

  My heart warms to this man who wants only to make me happy. “What about you? What’s your favorite place to go?”

  He looks into my eyes. “Wherever you are. That’s the only place I want to be.”

  “Perfect answer,” I say, as we climb the trail. I take off ahead of him, toward a high cliff bounded by a wooden railing. “That must be a spectacular viewpoint.”

  Jacob catches up, grabs my wrist, and pulls me back. “Don’t go up there. You could fall.”

  “I’m not going to stand at the edge.” His grip becomes tense and I look down, startled.

  “You get dizzy,” he says. “You never liked going up there. You were afraid of heights.”

  People have jumped off the cliffs around here, Nancy said. I’m not going up there.

  We were here with Van and Nancy. The sun shone brightly on the water. Wild roses were in bloom, and tiny white flowers dotted the blackberry vines.

  Half the people who jumped were probably pushed, Jacob said.

  Drowning someone would work better, I said. No way to prove it was murder.

  Did I really say that?

  “Do you see the orcas?” Jacob says now, pointing out to sea. He doesn’t seem to notice the shock on my face. He doesn’t know I’m remembering. He must think I’ve been watching the fins gliding through the waves.

  “Those are Dall�
��s porpoises,” I say faintly. “They’re much smaller than orcas.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  “I’m also cold. Let’s go.” I turn and rush back along the trail toward the parking lot, stumbling a little in my haste.

  “You okay?” he says. “Dizzy again?”

  “I remembered being on that trail with Van and Nancy,” I say as we get into the truck. “You said most people who jump off cliffs here were probably pushed.”

  He frowns. “You’re right. I did.”

  “I said drowning someone would be the perfect murder.”

  He laughs as he slides the key into the ignition and starts the engine. “Wow, what a weird thing to come back to you.”

  “Just that piece of the conversation.”

  “We all got to talking about ways to kill someone and make it look like an accident. You mentioned drowning someone. Van said Nancy could get rid of him just by kissing him . . . after eating a clam. The conversation got morbid. Hey, don’t look so worried. It was all in fun.”

  “I’m not worried,” I say, but on the drive home, I grip the door handle, my shoulders tense. Sylvia’s words echo through the passing shadows. Do you mean there could be a psychogenic component to your memory loss? . . . Things your brain chooses to forget. Something traumatic.

  What if my brain is choosing to block out not trauma, but something else altogether? Impossible. I have to dismiss the thought. I have to believe what Jacob is saying. The conversation was all in fun. Just because someone talks about murder, doesn’t mean they intend to actually kill someone.

  “Could you drop me at Nancy’s school?” I say on the way home.

  “That memory worries you,” he says, glancing at me sidelong. “I told you the truth about it, about what we were all talking about.”

  “I know you did,” I say, forcing a lighthearted tone. “I just want to see if the classroom environment brings anything back to me.”

  “You’re not trying to ditch me?” He gives me a pleading look, half in fun, half serious.

  “I’m ready to divorce you here and now. Let me out and don’t come back for me.”

  For a split second, he looks shocked, then my face breaks into a wry smile. His shoulders relax when he realizes I’m joking. “Jesus. Don’t kid like that.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’m not going to divorce you, okay?”

  “Good. You nearly gave me a heart attack.” He veers right, looping around back to town, pulls up in front of an old white church, the sign reading Mystic Island Day School. “I’ll pick you up in an hour?”

  “Make it two,” I say as I get out of the truck. “Give me time to escape to the mainland.”

  “You’ll need more than two hours to go that far.”

  “After I talk to Nancy I want to take a walk.”

  He hesitates, then nods slightly. I close the door and watch him drive off around the corner. I linger outside in the wind, wondering what I’m really doing here. I do need time to think, to regroup. I could keep walking down to the beach, bypassing the school altogether. But I came here for a reason, so I go inside, closing the door quietly after me.

  Class is in session. The students are a mix of ages between maybe six and thirteen. The walls are a pale forest green, decorated in roll-down world maps. Old-fashioned globe lights hang from the ceiling.

  Nancy stops speaking and waves at me. “Kyra!” She turns to the students. “We have a surprise guest speaker.”

  “I didn’t come here to teach—”

  “I don’t know how many of you remember Kyra Winthrop from last summer, just before school ended. She got you all excited about marine biology. Let’s give her the floor, shall we?”

  I shake my head. “Oh, I don’t—”

  “Come on up.” She motions me forward.

  Before I know it, I’m standing at the front of the class, facing a sea of eager kids. What am I doing here? I take a deep breath and smile around at the rapt young faces. How do I begin?

  “Raise your hand if you think marine biology is all about saving the whales,” I say. “Or training marine mammals.” My voice comes out rusty, unpracticed.

  A few hands shoot up.

  “I thought so. I might call myself a marine biologist, but there’s really no such thing.” I’ve done this before.

  The kids stare at me with puzzled faces. The hands drop.

  “You’ll specialize!” I say and their eyes light up again. “You might become a marine invertebrate zoologist, or maybe a marine phycologist specializing in algae and seaweed or in conservation of a particular species. Or you might be an ichthyologist. Does anyone know what that is?” Who is this person, speaking to these children? Who am I? How do I know these things?

  A pretty girl with a blond ponytail raises her hand. “Someone who studies fish.”

  “Correct,” I say.

  “I knew it!” She grins, revealing a missing front tooth.

  “Did you know the male sea horse carries the eggs in a pouch for ten days before he gives birth to miniature sea horses?”

  “Whoa,” the kids say.

  “A sea cucumber under stress will spew out internal organs—but will eventually grow them again. Not like us!”

  Mouths drop open, and the questions come fast and furious. How do they grow new organs? What does a sea cucumber look like? I keep the kids enthralled with strange marine facts. The audience of faces begins to shimmer and fade. I’m standing behind a lectern in a large lecture hall with tiered seating. The students saunter in carrying backpacks, college freshmen. I adjust the microphone, straighten my notes on the lectern’s sloping surface. My heart hammers. I’ll faint before I can even start speaking. Then I see him, standing at the back of the hall. He’s in a crew neck sweater and jeans. Aiden Finlay, cheering me on. You can do it, he mouths to me.

  “Kyra?” Nancy says. She hurries to the front of the room and turns to the students. “All right, everyone, let’s give Mrs. Winthrop a huge hand. What do we say?”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Winthrop,” the kids say in unison, and there’s a flurry of movement as they zip backpacks and grab their coats.

  “Are you okay?” Nancy says to me.

  “I zoned out, I’m sorry.”

  “You stopped talking and stared at me like I was someone else.”

  “In my mind, you were.”

  “Who was I?” she says, searching my face.

  “Someone I used to know. A guy who came to watch me teach at the university.”

  “I look like a guy?”

  “No, not at all. It was just being in the classroom . . .”

  “Old boyfriend?”

  “I’m not sure. Did I ever mention anyone to you?”

  “Other than Jacob? Not that I know of. But you remember teaching. That’s good.”

  “I also remembered a hike with you and Van. Out to Windy Reef Park.”

  “We did go there last August.”

  “I need to ask you something about that outing.” We wait until the students have gathered their coats and backpacks and have left for the day, then I tell her about what I remember, about our discussion of methods of murder, what Jacob said about the way the conversation played out.

  “I do remember,” she says, nodding. “It was a strange discussion, but he’s right. We were joking around.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Did we go back to Windy Reef Park again after that?”

  “No, you were gone by September. Jake came back this past spring to fix up the house. We didn’t see much of him. He was busy getting the place renovated. He said you were moving here.”

  I flinch at her nickname for Jacob. “I didn’t come with him?”

  “You were teaching. He was so focused on the remodeling, he wouldn’t even come over for dinner. When he sets his mind to something—”

  “I know what you mean. He’s focused on writing his novel now. But he took time off to show me around today.”

>   “I wish Van would do something so romantic. At least he brings me gifts from his dives.” She points to a delicate ceramic vase on her desk. “He got this one from a fourteenth-century shipwreck.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  The coins are from a Spanish galleon, Aiden says to me. He’s showing me old, rusty coins he retrieved on a dive. I’m giving one to Jacob for his birthday. Don’t tell him. So Aiden Finlay is a diver. He’s standing close to me, too close, his arm brushing mine. He’s in a turtleneck, and he gives off the faint scents of soap and pine. He hasn’t shaved in a couple of days. You like it? He scratches his chin. I’m growing a goatee. Do I look like an outlaw?

  I laugh and say, Do outlaws have goatees?

  He leans down toward me. This one does. He moves in closer. I catch the minty scent of his breath. Anticipation rises in my chest. Where are we? Not here on the island. I hear the distant rush of traffic, or is it the rush of the waves? The background fades into gray, indistinct shapes, but the details of his face come into focus. His bushy brows, the light flecks in his brown eyes, the wavy, deliberately unkempt hair descending into a perpetual five o’clock shadow. His intense gaze makes me feel like I’m his only concern on the planet. And then . . . he steals a kiss. So quickly, I don’t have time to pull away.

  Am I surprised? Startled? Do I kiss him back? Did I? Or did I step away from him, putting distance between us? Maybe I said, I can’t do this, Aiden, I’m a married woman. Or did I kiss him back, pull him toward me? The truth is, I have no idea what happened next. The moments break apart and fly away in the wind.

  “Earth to Kyra,” Nancy says, waving her hand in front of my face.

  “Sorry. I was spacing out again.”

  “More memories of an old boyfriend?”

  “No,” I lie. “I was thinking I could use a walk. If you have time. I’ve been spending too much time alone with Jacob.”

  “I was hoping you would say that.”

  After she locks up the school, we head down to the beach, a quiet stretch of sand curving along a protected bay.