Tell Me a Truth (The Story Series Book 5)

by Tamara Lush

  “And you’re saying your life is now over that you have a wife and child?” I whispered. I set the bowl and spoon down on the counter instead of doing what I wanted: hurling it at him. With control, so as not to upset Charlotte, I looked my husband in the eye with a hard glare.

  “N-no,” he stammered. He swallowed. “That didn’t come out the right way. I’m sorry.”

  “I spent the worst nine months of my life, alone with your child, all the while wondering where you’d gone. Fearing you were dead. I had given up hope. It nearly killed me.”

  He nodded and chewed on his lip. “I’m trying to process that, too. I’m starting to feel some guilt.”

  I nodded. More silence. I wanted to scream.

  “So a doctor will be over this morning to do a paternity test. They’ll swab Charlotte’s cheek. It shouldn’t be uncomfortable at all. I’ve paid for rush processing, and we should know by tonight.”

  He turned and walked out of the room, leaving me with my mouth hanging open. His coldness was so foreign, so unwelcome. Devastating, even.

  Was this some sort of karmic punishment for my night with Colin?

  My hand flew to my forehead, trying to rub away the headache that had bloomed. Charlotte repeated her new word “mama” over and over, and I stared at her sadly.

  Never had I imagined that Caleb wouldn’t believe a word I said.

  It was then that I remembered something that only added to the awfulness: today was our one-year wedding anniversary.

  * * *

  Later that night, after Charlotte was in bed, the doctor brought over the official results of the paternity test himself. That was the benefit, I supposed, of being part of the King family. Instant access to everything, I thought grimly.

  After a few pleasantries, the doctor left. As Caleb opened the envelope, I went out onto the terrace with a glass of wine and sat on a lounge chair, staring at the darkening Florida sky. A storm was on the horizon.

  Caleb walked out and handed me the paper. “She’s mine.”

  No shit, I thought.

  “I don’t need to look at it to know that.” I tried and failed not to sound snappish. I swirled my pinot in the glass. Maybe I’d drink too much tonight, to forget.

  Caleb sank into the lounger next to me and extended a hand to my bare knee. His fingers lightly touched my kneecap, and I felt the familiar flame of desire ignite within my body. I reminded myself not to be angry with him, but at the crazy, illogical situation that had brought us to this point.

  “Laura had a good idea.” His fingers lingered on my knee.

  “Let me guess: she wants us to go to counseling.”

  “How did you know?”

  I smiled sadly.

  “Of course. You know about her panic disorder and her history in therapy.”

  I nodded. “She encouraged me to go when you were missing.”

  “Did you?”

  I chewed on my cheek and paused before answering. “No, not exactly. I initially didn’t want to share my problems with a stranger. But I had decided to go, right before you came back. Thought it would be good for me.”

  He took his hand away from my knee, and I wanted to grab it and put it back. “How about now? Are you opposed to it?”

  My eyes met his deep blue ones. “I’m not opposed to anything that will get us back to the way we used to be.”

  Leaving my wine on the table, I stood up and walked to the terrace railing. Caleb joined me, our shoulders touching. His warmth spread through me, and I nearly turned to take him in my arms. But something stopped me. Maybe it was a hesitation coming from him or uncertainty on my part or exhaustion.

  A gray storm cloud came closer, bathing everything in a pale, colorless light. Florida was ugly when it wasn’t sunny, I thought as I looked along the flat landscape pockmarked with buildings and palm trees.

  “My family built a lot of this.” He extended a finger at the lights carpeting the horizon. In the distance, a flash of lightning sparked. Then another and another. As the storm bloomed in the distance, the sky went white-hot and gave the earth a negative blackness. “That stadium, my grandfather built that. And see that newer courthouse, the one all lit up, next to the old one? My father had a hand in that.”

  He pointed way in the distance, at an Orlando suburb filled with high-end mansions where Colin lived. “That was all swampland until we developed it.”

  I know, I wanted to scream. But didn’t.

  We didn’t move, instead looking out at the sprawl, so much of it created and inspired by the King family in Central Florida. It seemed unfair that Caleb knew about his family and his childhood and his legacy, but not about me.

  I started to tremble. “It’s our anniversary,” I said quietly. “We were married one year ago today at the Ringling Museum. It was the best day of my life. A perfect day. Then three months of bliss and nine months of hell.”

  He glanced at me quickly, then his eyes returned to the horizon. Somehow, Caleb was right next to me, but he might as well have been back in Brazil, missing, for all the connection we were making. Or weren’t making.

  We stood in the moist night air, in silence, watching as the storm came closer.

  Chapter 5

  The therapist’s office was in a medical office park, a low-slung, non-descript kind of building. It was similar to the outside of the BDSM club Caleb and I once went to.

  “This looks like—” I stopped myself.

  “Like what?” Caleb shut off the Mercedes.

  “A place we once went together.” I realized with a start that he might be alarmed to know the kind of kinky sex we’d shared, so I held back from saying anything more. Caleb had once told me that I was his wildest, most uninhibited lover, and I didn’t think it was proper to reveal the depth of our sexual past so soon after him arriving home. Maybe I’d talk it over with the therapist first.

  “Hmm.” Caleb frowned and climbed out of the car.

  The therapist’s name was Dr. David Santamaria, and his office was small and cozy, packed with Cubist art prints and glossy magazines and stained-glass lamps. There were two chairs and a brown leather loveseat. In the corner, an Irish setter lay atop a green dog bed.

  “That’s Conan.” Dr. Santamaria pointed at the dog, who lifted his head drowsily, then fell back asleep. “I find him to be a soothing presence for clients, mostly because he naps a lot.”

  I giggled out of nervousness. Yet I somehow felt almost instantly at home with all the clutter and the rust-colored dog. Caleb liked cleaner, more sterile environments, and I wondered if he felt uncomfortable among the haphazard stacks of books in the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Caleb kept his books alphabetized at home, and come to think of it, I’d let our shelves get unruly in the past nine months. I made a mental note to organize the bedroom bookcase.

  I noticed Caleb looking around curiously, as if he’d landed on a different planet. I guess he had, in a way. The doctor talked of confidentiality and his treatment philosophy. As it turned out, he specialized in couples therapy. I wondered if Sarah and Laura had come here and, if so, why Sarah hadn’t told me.

  I sank into the loveseat, and to my surprise, Caleb sat next to me instead of in the chair.

  “So, Caleb, your medical doctor and I had a chance to chat a little about what happened to you. I’m aware of the situation, but would you like to let me know any more about it? While Emma’s here? Just to get the story off your chest. As a starting point?” The doctor was in his mid-fifties, with gray hair and an encouraging, kind smile.

  This wasn’t so bad. My shoulders relaxed away from my ears.

  Caleb blew out a breath. “All I can say is that I came to in a hospital in Brazil, speaking Portuguese. I was very hazy, foggy. I didn’t feel like myself or like anyone. After what seemed like a long time, I began to have memories of my childhood and my family. It was frightening as hell, honestly. And I was physically weak for many months because I guess I’d been hit by a car, on top of the problems with the malaria m
edication. They put me in a mental hospital of sorts, but it was also more of a halfway home. There wasn’t anywhere else to put me—they didn’t think I had any skills for a job, and I needed some monitoring because I hadn’t quite remembered how to do basic tasks, like cook. Eventually I gained my strength back and relearned things. It was like being a child again.”

  I plucked a tissue out of a holder on an end table as I listened.

  “Then it was as if my entire life came flooding back. I remembered my parents and my brother and sister. I remembered my name and what I did for a living. I remembered my wife, Tara, had died about two years before, and I had an inkling of an idea that my company was planning a development in Brazil. Of course, when I told my doctors this, they didn’t initially believe me. They thought I was hallucinating.”

  The doctor exhaled and shook his head. “And how did you convince them? Your doctor here didn’t tell me any of this. We focused mostly on the pharmaceutical causes of your amnesia, the malaria medicine.”

  “Yeah, thankfully, one of the younger doctors in the hospital had seen a similar situation once before, with a European backpacker who had suffered severe memory loss after taking a certain malaria medicine. He was the one who also did a lot of Internet searches and discovered that, indeed, I was missing.”

  “Oh God!” I exclaimed.

  “What?” Caleb looked alarmed.

  “The last time I spoke with you. The last couple of times, right before you vanished. You said you had headaches, you didn’t feel well, and you thought you might have food poisoning. That was probably the malaria medicine.”

  Caleb intertwined his hands and glanced at me. I sniffled. He angled his body closer to me and I was hoping he’d take my hand, but he didn’t. I rested my palm on the cushion space between us. Maybe he’d take the hint. I so wanted to comfort him, and yet, I held back as he continued to speak. Or maybe I wanted to comfort myself and didn’t think I deserved it, since I hadn’t been able to help him. Since I’d kissed his brother.

  Guilt flaring within me, I shoved that thought out of my mind and concentrated on Caleb’s words.

  “So while I remember nearly everything from my childhood, from high school, college and my twenties and most of my thirties, it appears I don’t recall the last few years. Which would be difficult enough, but knowing that I’d gotten married to Emma—” Caleb kept his hands resting on his thighs. “—and had a baby. God. That’s a lot to get used to in a matter of a few days.”

  “Of course it is,” the doctor said. The way he spoke was noncommittal, non-threatening. I liked it.

  Caleb sighed. “I’ve been talking to my family and looking through the scrapbooks and photo albums Emma has made. From everything I’ve gathered, we were perfect for each other.”

  Dr. Santamaria turned to me. “Emma, what would you like to say? Would you say that’s accurate? How would you characterize your relationship before he left?”

  I babbled and waved my hands around as I spoke, something I always did when I was nervous. “Our relationship was pretty perfect. We had an immediate connection from the second we met. And that connection was unbroken until…well, until now. I mean, we’d have little squabbles, about him working too much or expecting me or the housekeeper to pick up his stuff. He likes the house a certain way, I hate to clean. Normal stuff. But everything else between us was incredible. We’re soul mates.”

  I caught him staring at me, and my heart shrank. Why couldn’t I read his expressions any longer? I quickly added, “We were soul mates. I’m hoping we still are. I don’t know anything anymore. I’ve been pretty depressed for months. Really depressed, my best friend says.”

  Caleb looked at me with something akin to concern, and in his eyes, I saw a flash of the man I used to know. Decisive. Caring. Worried about me.

  Caleb held up his index finger. “In my job as CEO of the King Group, I rely on facts and results. If something’s going well, if something’s profitable, we don’t tinker with it. We stay the course. Apparently at one time, I loved a woman and was happier than I’d ever been. And that woman was Emma. So I’d like to see how I can get back to that place. That’s what makes sense to me now.”

  “I want us to be what we were,” I cried.

  Dr. Santamaria interjected gently. “It’s obvious that Emma still has those feelings for you and is willing to try to work things out. So you’re both motivated, which is excellent. Many of my clients who come in, one or both of the parties aren’t particularly motivated to make the relationship a success.”

  “I’ll bet you probably get more court-ordered clients than ones who lost their memories from malaria medication,” Caleb said dryly. I giggled through my tears.

  The doctor talked for a while about the mind and its elasticity. How memories can be false and slippery and often created and recreated by the stories we tell ourselves over the years.

  “And when love comes into the picture, that’s where things get interesting.” The corners of Dr. Santamaria eyes crinkled. “Being in love activates the same parts of your brain that certain drugs do, like cocaine or Ecstasy.”

  I felt my face get warm. So that’s what had happened to Caleb and me. He was like a hit of Ecstasy to my brain.

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  Dr. Santamaria smiled and made a circle in the air with his finger. “So the pleasurable feelings of love release dopamine in the brain, like drugs. And brains need dopamine to make memories. It’s like a big, fat pleasure loop: you fall in love, the brain is rewarded by making dopamine, the dopamine causes you to make a memory.”

  Caleb stroked his chin. “So, what you’re saying is, we need to make memories together to trigger the dopamine in our brains so we can fall in love again?”

  “Yes, and there might be more. Maybe. Caleb, if dopamine is triggered in your brain by Emma, it’s possible your memories of her might return. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s worth a try.”

  I sat on the edge of the sofa, excited. “Could we speed this process up with drugs?”

  Dr. Santamaria tilted his head. “We could, and we might at a certain point. But I’d like to see how it might work organically. We don’t have to rush it. Let’s see what happens when the two of you have new experiences together, alone. And of course with your daughter, too.”

  “So do things together as a family?” Caleb asked.

  “Yes. Definitely. But I also have some ideas for you and Emma.”

  “Like?” I asked.

  “Well, first, I need to ask a question. And please forgive me for being so forthright, but this is such an acute case, I feel like total honesty is needed before we proceed. Caleb, I understand that you don’t think you know Emma. But are you attracted to her when you look at her? Sexually, I mean.”

  Caleb looked at me, and a conspiratorial smile unfurled on his face, which made me giggle. I could swear he was flirting with me. He then turned back to the doctor. “Of course I am. After I walked into my condo and hugged my brother and sister, I saw her. I thought she was my brother’s girl and was damned envious, actually. I even wondered for a second how I’d seduce her away from him.”

  I cleared my throat. An interesting urge, given everything that had happened between me and Colin and Colin and Tara. Like a damned soap opera.

  Dr. Santamaria laughed. “Okay. Good. It would be much more difficult if you returned and felt no sexual attraction to Emma.”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of strange. I’ve been staring at her and I get lost in her beauty.” Caleb’s eyes flashed at me. I shot him a wry grin. “And then I remember we’re married and I panic.”

  My smile turned to a grimace. “You…panic?”

  Caleb shrugged. “It makes me anxious not to know how I ended up here, with you. It has nothing to do with you as a person or how attractive I think you are or how charming you are. It’s disturbing not to have memories of you. Of my wife.”

  My jaw dropped, but Dr. Santamaria held a hand out to stop me. “Emma, this is commo
n with people with memory problems. He needs to work through this. The good news is, there’s a spark there.”

  “I’m glad to hear there’s at least a spark.”

  We all paused awkwardly. Another thought came to me. If Caleb wasn’t the same man mentally, had he also changed in other, more concrete ways?

  “I have a question.”

  The two men looked to me.

  “Caleb, did the malaria medication affect you physically?”

  He scowled. “Not really, no. I don’t think so. The car crash and being in the hospital made me weak, but I feel a lot stronger now. A little fatigued sometimes.”

  “Maybe this isn’t appropriate to ask.” I pressed my hand to my chest.

  Dr. Santamaria interjected. “There are no inappropriate questions here if they’re asked with love.”

  I nodded and turned to Caleb. “So you’re still able to, um, become aroused?”

  Caleb blinked, then grinned. “I don’t think that part of me has been affected at all.”

  I nodded. “Good to know.”

  The doctor laughed softly. “Getting those kinds of questions out of the way early is healthy. Good job, Emma. So here’s my plan. We’ll see each other weekly, but you have homework. Caleb, you say you’re going back to work, but I’d advise against doing so right now. Your business is running without you and can do so for the next several weeks if possible. You need to concentrate on your personal life, your family, your mental health. Maybe stay out of work for the rest of the year. During the holidays.”

  Caleb made a hmmm noise, like he was unsure of the recommendation.

  “Your homework in the next week is to touch. And to kiss. Fool around, if you want, like teenagers. If you feel comfortable.”

  I stifled a grin. Warmth flared through my body.

  “I want you to start tonight or tomorrow, if you want, by holding hands. Practice holding hands and also hugging.”