You Will Remember Me

by Hannah Mary McKinnon

  When I got back to the house I sat in my car, examining the meds one by one to make sure they were all the same and Dave hadn’t slipped something else in there just to fuck with me. He’d given me fewer tablets than we’d agreed—again, typical Dave—and I decided, moving forward, I’d look for a reliable dealer, an oxymoron if I’d ever heard one.

  I headed inside. Ash was still in the kitchen, and when I heard him whistling softly, I recognized the familiar tune of the Portsmouth Football Club chant immediately. Brad had been an avid supporter and had passed the love of his hometown soccer club down to Ash. “Play Up Pompey” was something the two of them sang on a regular basis if the team did well, and even when it didn’t, and they often watched games together, wearing matching shirts, something Mom and I shook our heads at. “It’s in the genes.” Brad had winked at Ash. “Isn’t it, mush?”

  Ash looked up at me now, stopping midwhistle, and then he actually sang the entire chant. “I remembered my dad’s favorite soccer team.”

  It took me less than a split second to decide which path I had to take on this. I didn’t want to lie to him, but I had to, and my plans had already been set in motion. Some of the little things I’d pretended I’d mentioned and insisted he’d forgotten were only the beginning. My work schedule, covering for Barbara—he’d seen those as tiny, seemingly innocent slipups, but it wouldn’t be enough. That’s why I’d told him the plumbing for the bathroom in the garage had been his and Brad’s work, when it had been Ash and mine. If or when he thought he remembered us working in there together, I’d insist he was mistaken. It would make him doubt himself, and the reliability of any recollection he had. Did I want to lie to him now about the love of soccer he shared with his dad? No, of course not, but I had no choice. I needed to make sure he’d believe me when I explained away any significant memory that resurfaced, and told him it was pure confabulation, something that had happened differently, or not at all. I had to be careful, make sure I only ever lied about something nobody else could contradict. It had to be done.

  I let an empathetic look slide across my face, walked over to Ash and gave him a hug.

  “What was that for?” he said, his body tensing under my touch, making my breath catch.

  “Oh, Ash,” I said, holding him tighter still. “I’m so sorry, but Brad hated soccer.”

  17

  LILY

  After I finished my lunch, had two coffees and worked up the courage, I got back in the car, plugged in the address for Drift and headed to the center of Newdale. My belly contracted as I thought about a possible encounter with Maya, almost hoped it wouldn’t happen so I’d have more time to prepare. I’d find a place to stay for the night and go back to the Cliff’s Head tomorrow, or the day after... No. This wasn’t the time to be a coward. Maya potentially held information about Jack. There was no way I’d return to Brookmount without seeing her face-to-face, and the sooner I could engineer a meeting, the better.

  Drift was located on Main Street, and a large, polished wooden sign with the store’s name carved in italics hung over the bright green door. The lights inside were on, and after I dumped the car a hundred yards down the street because all the other parking spots were taken, I got out and stood on the sidewalk, trying to make my feet move.

  The town was bustling, and I took my time as I walked back to the store, running through what I’d say to Maya. I couldn’t decide if I should use shock and surprise as a method of getting what I needed, or show her a recent photograph of Jack and demand she tell me everything, minus the bull. Maybe I should take a gentler approach, explain my situation in more detail and hope for empathy, or perhaps I’d have to gauge her reaction and take it from there.

  I was about forty feet from the store, and still undecided, when the front door opened. I recognized Maya from her Facebook profile immediately. Her dark hair was cut in a shorter, choppy chin-length bob, and it made her eyes seem even bigger. She was tall, had a good couple of inches on me, and the heels of her black leather lace-up boots were a direct contrast to my canvas flats, making her tower over me even more. She was beautiful, edgy, the kind of person who didn’t take any crap from anyone, someone my parents would’ve glanced at and labeled trouble. I was about to call out her name, but my heart almost stopped when another person walked out behind her. A man.

  Jack.

  They turned in the opposite direction, and I wanted to go after them, but my legs buckled and I stumbled, losing my balance, landing on my hands and knees, the asphalt piercing my skin. Was it really him? Were my mind and the lack of sleep playing tricks on me? My vision seemed to blur and when a passerby stopped to ask if I was okay, I told them I was fine and pushed myself up. “Jack!” I cried, but my voice came out so strained, I barely made a sound. “Jack!”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off him, but he didn’t turn around, didn’t notice or hear me as he continued down the street alongside Maya. I watched, hopeless and pathetic, as he kept walking away. Away from me. I went after them, ignored the stinging in my palms and knees as I ran across the road, narrowly avoiding two cars before finally catching up to them. I reached for his arm. “Jack.”

  In the time it took him to turn around I wondered if I’d gone insane, somehow become delusional. I imagined the embarrassment of being mistaken, grabbing hold of Maya’s boyfriend or husband. Perhaps my desperation had projected what I’d wanted to see, what I’d needed to see, but the split second passed, and he turned around.

  It was him.

  Jack. My Jack.

  A combination of emotions I hadn’t known possible, or could be this intense, flooded my body, swelling up from my heart and spreading across every square inch of me, growing, ballooning, expanding to the point where I thought I’d burst. Fear followed by relief, and then anger, which turned into elation, but that transformed itself into hatred before, finally, settling on love. Jumbled waves of conflicting feelings washed over me, all of them coupled with the knowledge, the absolute certainty Jack was alive. He was alive. He hadn’t drowned. He wasn’t dead. I’d found him.

  My joy shifted back to terror as I panicked. This was all a dream. I’d wake up in my bed in Brookmount, the space next to me empty and cold. If this was a dream, if I was imagining any of this, I never, ever wanted to wake up.

  I reached out to touch Jack’s face, searching for confirmation he was real, but when I stared into his eyes, the smile that had taken over my face faded, and I lowered my arm. He was different somehow. It was him, no question, but something had changed. With the small frown on his face, I almost expected him to reprimand me for being here.

  “Jack,” I said again, a whisper this time. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

  I couldn’t wait any longer, and flung my arms around him, pulled him close, burying my head in his chest. His clothes smelled of a different kind of laundry detergent, but the scent of his skin, the warmth of his neck, were exactly as I remembered. We’d been apart a little over a week but standing in the middle of the sidewalk on Newdale’s Main Street, I realized how my memories had begun to fade no matter how hard I’d tried to cling to them. I wanted to hold him forever, felt his hands on my arms, expected him to pull me closer and whisper my name, but instead he gently pushed me away and took a step back, creating a chasm between us.

  “Why didn’t you come home?” I said, and before he was able to say a word, another surge of anger rose from within. Unable to tame or get it back under control, I yelled at him. “How could you do this? How could you disappear? Why did you say your name was Jack? Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “Hey,” Maya said, putting a hand on my arm.

  I shook her off, my chest heaving. “Why did you leave? Do you have any idea what you put me through?”

  He stared at me. “I don’t know—”

  “What the hell do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “Enough,” Maya said. “You need
to back the hell off, lady. Now.”

  “And you,” I snapped, finally turning my attention to her. “You lied. You told me his name was Gordon, and—”

  “Wait...are you the woman who called the other day?” She looked at me, eyebrows raised.

  “Maya,” Jack said, sounding uncertain. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Listen, I don’t know what you think you saw,” Maya said to me. “I already told you—”

  “I know what I saw. It was Jack—” I turned to him “—or whoever the hell you are.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But I don’t know you.”

  His words stopped me dead, but then I let out a cold, sharp laugh, taking a step back. “Is that honestly the best you can do? I’m Lily Reid, in case you’ve forgotten. What is this? I caught you in a massive lie and now you think you can spin an even bigger one in front of your wife to get out of it?”

  “Maya’s not my wife,” he said, shaking his head, and I laughed again, but it came out as a shrill, practically neurotic sound.

  “He’s telling the truth,” Maya said. “My brother—”

  “Your brother?” I stared at Jack. “You never told me you had a sister.”

  “Stepsister, technically,” he said. “And I don’t know why you keep calling me Jack. My name’s Ash. Asher Bennett.”

  Undeterred and unconvinced, yet confused and angry about what he was doing, and why, I pulled out my phone and swiped through the photos. “You told me your name was Jack Smith. See?” I pushed the screen into his face, flicking through photo after photo. “This is us. Here. In this one. And this one. And this one. You and me. Jack and Lily. We live in Brookmount, in Maryland.”

  Jack looked at Maya. “I got into the trailer in Maryland.”

  “Ash...”

  He ignored her, touched the screen with a fingertip before whispering, “Lily. Lily.”

  The renewed uncertainty in his voice glued my lips together and I looked at him, I mean properly looked at him for the first time since I’d started my rant. His furrowed brow, his lost expression—it was as if he’d never seen me before. This wasn’t right, this wasn’t an act. Something was terribly wrong. I wanted to reach for him again and pull him close, but an invisible wall had now gone up between us, keeping me at even more of a distance, making me feel as if we were strangers.

  “What happened to you?” I whispered.

  “I woke up on a beach in Maryland,” he said.

  “Yes, you went swimming one night after work. You never came back.”

  “I didn’t know where I was,” he continued. “Or who I was. Only that I had to get to Maine. They think I have retrograde amnesia—”

  “What? Oh, my God.”

  “—and ever since I arrived here, Maya has helped me.”

  I glanced at her. “You remembered your stepsister?”

  “No...” he said quietly. “Someone called her, and Maya brought me home.”

  “But your home is in Brookmount. With me,” I said.

  Ash grimaced, face flushing with embarrassment. “I don’t recall anything from before. I want to believe you, and the photos must mean we knew each other.”

  “Knew?” I let out a laugh. “We took them last month.” Tears stung the backs of my eyes and I opened and closed my mouth, unsure what to say. This wasn’t how I’d pictured our reunion in my fantasies. There was crying, yes, but tears of joy, not this, anything but this.

  Maya stepped in front of him. “Ash has been under a lot of stress with his condition and you showing up is making things worse. We need to go.”

  “G-go?” I stammered. “You can’t leave. I need to understand. I want to know why—”

  “Can’t you see you’re upsetting him?” She looped her arm around his.

  “Maya, she knows me,” Jack said, his voice raised. “I need to talk to her.”

  “Ash—”

  “No. Lily, maybe you can help me figure out what I was doing in Maryland.” He didn’t spot Maya glaring at me, but I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was not losing him again.

  “You have a doctor’s appointment,” Maya said.

  “Who cares about Dr. Adler?” Jack snapped in a tone I’d never heard him use before.

  “I do,” Maya said, her voice firm, nonnegotiating. “It’s important, and he’s going on vacation as of tonight. You have to see him. Today. Now.”

  “I know, I know, you’re right,” Jack said with a grimace and I fought back more tears. I didn’t want him to leave, couldn’t bear us being apart any longer. He was alive.

  He lifted his hand a little as if he might reach for mine, but instead of touching me, his gaze dropped to the bracelet on my wrist, the one with the heart-shaped charm he’d given me for our first Valentine’s Day, a look of concentration taking over his face. “We live at...uh...”

  “Twenty-two forty-nine Birch Road,” Maya said. “Come at seven.”

  “I’ll be there,” I whispered, wanting to shove a hand into my chest and cradle my heart as I watched them walk away.

  18

  ASH

  Lily had long disappeared from view, but until she had, I’d watched her stand on the same spot, arms by her sides, as if she were a statue. The image of her—cat-shaped sapphire eyes, bow lips, and long blond hair gently blowing in the breeze—still hadn’t left me. As I thought about her sudden arrival in Newdale, panic rose. What if her departure was just as abrupt? What if this was just too plain crazy for her and I never saw her again? I needed to know what she knew, including why she’d insisted my name was Jack. From the sincerity in her voice and on her face, I had no reason not to believe her, but unless Maya, Fiona, Dr. Adler and even Keenan were a bunch of liars, my name was Asher Bennett. I wanted to tell Maya to turn around, go back so I could talk to Lily properly, but my head felt as if I’d shoved it into a vise and squeezed it for days because the confusion about my identity could only mean one thing.

  “I lied to her,” I said. “Why the hell did I tell Lily my name was Jack Smith?”

  “I don’t know.” Maya stared ahead, her eyes focused on the road, unblinking.

  As I replayed the conversation with Lily in my head, I turned to Maya. “What did she mean when she said you told her my name was Gordon?”

  “Shit.” She exhaled deeply, her knuckles whitening as she clenched the steering wheel. “She called me a few days ago, asked if I knew a Jack Smith because she’d found a photo of me with another guy on my old Facebook profile. It wasn’t you. But I should’ve listened to her. I should’ve realized...”

  “Did she tell you she was in Maryland?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Without warning, my anger erupted, all of it directed at my sister. I turned to her, felt my face contort itself into an ugly mask as I shouted, “Why the fuck wouldn’t you tell me about this? Why didn’t you think it was important? Are you kidding me?”

  Maya swallowed hard and blinked three times and, in that moment, I hated myself for making her look so scared, but I couldn’t help it. It was as if she’d pushed a button I didn’t even know I had.

  “Listen,” she said quietly. “I had no idea she was looking for you. With everything going on it didn’t seem relevant and it must’ve slipped my mind. I’m having a hard enough time dealing with you remembering things that aren’t true and forgetting things I’ve told you.”

  So was I, but right now, mixing up the times of her shifts or incorrectly remembering my father’s favorite sport, which according to Maya he’d pretended to like only for my benefit, both paled in comparison. “You should have told me Lily called,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. “I can’t believe I was living in Maryland, had a girlfriend but said my name was Jack. Why did I lie? What did I do?”

  “You didn’t do anything, Ash.”

  I wanted to
ask how she could possibly know what I had or hadn’t done in the time since I’d been away from Newdale, and even before. Maybe I had done something to drive Celine away. Perhaps I’d hurt Kate somehow, too. If I had, I wouldn’t have told Maya, would I? There was no way she’d have stuck by me if I’d harmed someone. I’d disappeared from town and moved south where I’d given Lily—my new girlfriend, apparently—a false name. Nobody did that unless they were trying to escape from something, not unless they had something to hide. I sat in silence, wrestling with it all, forcing my anger back into a box and shoving it down my throat. “Have you told me everything, Maya?” I said, turning to her. “Did you leave anything out because you’re trying to protect me?”

  “No.”

  “Because if you are—”

  “I’m not.”

  “Are you sure? I need you to level with me, because I can’t go on this way.”

  She reached for my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, her touch feeling like a red-hot poker. “Maybe we can ask Dr. Adler to give you something to help you cope with all this stress.”

  “That’s a hard no,” I said, shrugging her off. “I’m not taking anything. My head’s already fuzzy enough, you said so yourself. Some days I feel like I’m going backward.”

  We drove on in silence until we arrived at Dr. Adler’s, where he ushered us into the same consultation room. When he asked how I was doing, I snapped, “I’m sure I’ve had better days, but I can’t remember them.” I knew I was being a complete dick but really didn’t care. I wanted him to take the bait so I had an excuse to be an even bigger one.

  He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs, revealing a pair of Scooby-Doo socks. When he followed my gaze, he smiled. “Christmas gift from my wife. She does it every year without fail. I have quite the cartoon collection. But back to you, Ash. Your frustration is normal.”

  “Sure, I get that,” I said, “but it doesn’t help much, does it?”