Truth and Consequences

by Sarah Madison

  “So not happening.” The look he gave me was decidedly sour, but a little wistful as well. He tightened his lips as though swallowing words he didn’t have permission to say. “Bad enough that you suggested Charles had characteristics in common with a serial killer. Mother is a bit suspicious of our relationship as it is. I think it’d be pushing things a bit for us to sleep in the same bed downstairs.”

  “Would it be such a bad thing? Her knowing, that is?” Yeah. I’m a grown man here. An FBI agent, to boot. There was no way I sounded hurt when I asked him that.

  He briefly caught his lower lip in his teeth, and his face closed down behind unseen barriers. Then his expression inexplicably softened. “Hey. I’m only just now admitting this to myself, okay? We live together in San Francisco, but we don’t make a big deal about it. Nancy is the only one of my friends here who knows, and she only guessed after you were injured. I just need a little time to….” He gave a helpless shrug.

  I tipped my head to one side and gave him my best stink eye. “Right, right. You were so far in the closet you couldn’t find your way out.”

  He laughed at that, which uncoiled a little knot of tension in the back of my neck. “Hell, I was so far in the closet I was in the next room.” Deftly changing subjects, he indicated the book under my arm. “Something Wicked This Way Comes. Excellent choice.”

  I’d like to be the something wicked coming his way. I imagined John and me fooling around on his mother’s couch in the basement. Kissing John so I could remember what he tasted like. Feeling his stubble rasp along my jaw. Pulling at his clothing so I could get to all that golden skin. John, bent over the arm of the sofa, that tight little ass in my hands as my cock nudged his crack…. The fantasy practically burst into flame, it moved so hot and fast through my mind. Sudden desire flooded my dick. Well, at least one thing was working right postcoma. I was a good boy, though, and didn’t mention my wicked thoughts. “I don’t know where your mother has any right to throw stones. She’s sleeping with Charles, right?”

  A little flush spread over John’s cheekbones, and he shifted a little. Probably uncomfortable with the idea of his mother having a sex life. His next words seemed to confirm that. “Don’t remind me. I’d rather not go there.”

  “You obviously didn’t see the extra toothbrush in the holder in the bathroom. No wonder he’s put out with us.” It struck me as funny that John’s mother was pretending she wasn’t sleeping with Charles while John was pretending he wasn’t sleeping with me. Really. These uptight Southerners.

  “It’s a different generation. Besides, you were an uptight Southerner once yourself.”

  There it was again, that echo of my thoughts. Creepy. Like we were some old married couple who could finish each other’s sentences—only he seemed to finish my thoughts, instead. “Yeah, but I got over it.”

  A speculative gleam lit John’s hazel eyes. “Are you saying you broke bad when you were a teenager?”

  I snorted. “Far from it. When I got kicked out of the house, I moved in with my granny. She accepted me as I was, but she also expected me to make something of myself. I worked my ass off to pay for school and got scholarships to get me through college. At the time, I thought I wanted to be a forensic scientist.”

  “You’d have been good at it.”

  I shrugged. “Too easy for me, I guess. I wanted more than life behind a microscope.”

  “So you’re remembering more about your past, then? I mean, like the stuff about your family?”

  I got the curious sensation John was inching onto a frozen pond, testing to see how thin the ice was. I spread my hands wide, palms up. “Yes and no. Some of it is there for the taking, the rest….” I mimed a puff of smoke evaporating into the air. “Even when I remember things, they don’t always feel like they happened to me. Sometimes it just feels like something else I’ve read.”

  He nodded as though he’d expected that answer. Well, I’d said as much earlier. Why would my answer change now?

  “Do I seem different to you? I mean, different from the guy you knew before?” I didn’t add “the guy you fell in love with,” but it was sort of implied.

  He hesitated, and that spoke volumes—only in a language I didn’t quite understand, as though I’d only taken beginner’s French and had booked a flight to Paris.

  “Yeah. You’re different. Not in a bad way. But different.” The smile he gave me was meant to be reassuring, I’m sure. It came at me from a sideways tilt of his head—a little shy, a little rueful. I think I would have been more comforted by it if it had stuck around.

  “Different how?”

  His face took on the pained expression of someone trying to pass a kidney stone. Maybe that’s what articulating his thoughts was like for him—something forced out under excruciating circumstances.

  He gave me a narrow-eyed glare. “I don’t know. Different. You were Jerry. Now you’re Lee.” He shrugged and straightened out of his propped-up pose in the doorway.

  “Who do you like better?”

  “Well, that’s a loaded question if I’ve ever heard it.” He leaned back with his hands raised, as though guarding against the heat from an open furnace door. “Talk about your no-win scenarios.”

  The words Kobayashi Maru blipped across my mind, and it seemed to me if there were anyone who could navigate his way out of a no-win scenario, it would be John. It didn’t hurt that I could instantly picture him in those tight black pants and boots, with that gold uniform top from the movies.

  Tucking his chin, he shot me a wry glance. “If I say Jerry, you’ll be upset because you’re not entirely him anymore. If I say Lee, you’ll worry that you might turn back into Jerry once you get all your memories again. If you get them again, that is.”

  “What if I never regain all my memories? What if I’m always… different?”

  “Hey.” One side of his mouth lifted in a ridiculously seductive half smile. I bet if he’d asked me to go out in the street and play in traffic, I would have done it. Rob a bank. Make nice with Charles. I would have done anything to be on the receiving end of that smile. “I liked you the way you were. You were irritable and precise and a big know-it-all, and sometimes you could be a royal pain in the ass. But you were also funny and sarcastic, and I loved that.”

  “Um… thanks? You might want to work on your bedside manner.”

  He laughed, took my arm for a light squeeze, and then let it go. “I like you now too. In many ways, you’re more relaxed, more willing to say what you really think about something. I can’t help but wonder if that’s what losing your memories has done for you. You’re not carrying the weight of them around with you anymore. Maybe this is who you’re really meant to be.”

  “The implication there being that getting my memories back would be a bad thing.”

  He shrugged helplessly, the right shoulder coming up slightly higher than the left. “No. It just is what it is. I’m going to accept whatever I get. What do you want?”

  You. In my bed. Right now. Which, of course, was not what I said. “I’d like to feel as though my memories were something I’d lived, rather than something I read about in a book a long time ago.”

  He nodded, thinning his lips briefly. “Okay. So you grew up in Halifax. Right? The one in Virginia, not North Carolina, I mean. That’s not that far from here. A straight shot down 360 from here. We could do it in about two hours. How about you and I go there this weekend, when I get off work? We can look around, see your hometown, make some of your memories real to you.”

  “Go to Halifax? There’s not a whole lot there to see. Fishing holes and water moccasins. I’m sure you’d be all he-man happy with a tent and no air-conditioning, but I’ve sort of gotten over being sucked dry by mosquitoes and living on baked beans, if you know what I mean.” I decided it was time for full disclosure. “Actually I didn’t live in Halifax. I just tell people that because it was the nearest town that registered on a map. I grew up in Greenbrier.”

  “Never heard
of it.”

  My turn to shrug. “No one has. I bet Google hasn’t heard of it either. Blink and you’ve missed it. And unlike our neighbor, South Boston, we can’t even lay claim to a speedway.”

  “Sounds fun.” This time his smile was that of a man anticipating dental work. Without anesthesia.

  “We don’t have to go. I haven’t been back there in years.”

  “We’ll think of something to do this weekend,” he said with indecent haste. Then he turned speculative. “Though I guess the speedway could be kind of fun.”

  “They aren’t going to let you drive, if that’s what you’re hoping.” From the way his face fell, I knew it was. “We’ll have to do some shopping first—unless you’ve had Amy send us some clothes along with the cats. I don’t know about you, but I only packed for a business trip, and I’m running out of clothes.”

  “Yeah. Me too. Besides, you’d freak out if we veered out of Internet range. Speaking of which….” He fished a slip of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. “That’s the password to the wireless network here. I know how important the Internet is to you.” Amusement colored his voice like a desert sunset. “Why don’t you go downstairs and get settled? I’m going to run out to the store and get some cat food. We should probably make an early night of it. I need to be in the Richmond office first thing in the morning.”

  “Right.” Without warning, I suddenly felt as though I was in the trash compactor scene from Star Wars and the walls were crushing me. I was utterly exhausted from trying to climb the piles of slimy garbage and certain there was no escape from the doom headed my way. Defeated. My therapist had warned me to expect this kind of thing and to weigh everything with the knowledge that it was normal for head-trauma patients to feel this way. That it was a momentary reaction—part of the recovery process—and it wouldn’t last forever. I got the strong impression that she was trying to protect me against suicidal thoughts. It was pretty overwhelming, just the same.

  I looked down at the touch on my arm. I had the oddest sense that this wasn’t typical, that John was making an exception about touching more than usual, and that this was a good thing.

  “Go on downstairs. You’re tired and you should go to bed. I won’t be gone long.”

  I nodded, overcome with weariness.

  In the basement, the furniture was comfortably arranged: a pull-out sofa bed, a large-screen television attached to cable, and a convenient bathroom, where a litter box was already established for the cats. I was tempted to chase John down and tell him to pick up a second box, because Oliver didn’t like to share, but they’d be all right for now. I assured the cats that dinner was coming soon and unpacked my few belongings. I had a couple of long-sleeved, white shirts—including the one I was wearing, with the sleeve split to go over my cast—and a pale blue one, as well as a second suit that was nearly identical to the one I was wearing. My suitcase looked as though it had been packed by a schizophrenic. A ridiculously wide assortment of over-the-counter medications and grooming products were carefully packed in airline-approved travel bags on one side of the case, while the clothing was jumbled every which way. I suspected John had packed my bag from the hotel. I had nothing suitable to wear in the unseasonably warm weather and only one pair of khakis for “casual” clothing. Presumably my overcoat was a total loss due to blood.

  A scene from the hospital flashed into my mind. Me reaching into a bag in the cupboard of my room and discovering my discarded clothing, cut off by the emergency staff and reeking with the metallic odor of old blood. I placed the memory where it belonged, with the events that took place postcoma, and set it aside. I could find it again if I needed it, and that was all that mattered.

  Obviously I was going to have to go shopping at some point. Thank God for the Internet. I could get almost anything I wanted online, but there were some things I needed sooner rather than later. I’d have to talk to Mrs. F about the local shops.

  I set up my laptop and connected to the Wi-Fi. My cell phone was powered down, and when I turned it on, it needed charging. While I searched my bag for the charger, the phone caught up with missed calls and messages, chirping and buzzing as the data rolled in.

  I had four text messages. The first was a monthly notice to pay my cell phone bill, and I wondered how many outstanding bills I needed to catch up on. The second was a tweet from someone named Jane. It was a picture of a seriously pissed-off looking cat, with a funny, snide caption underneath. It was followed with a DM from her, asking if I was all right. I would have to answer that, as soon as I could come up with an appropriate response.

  The fourth, dated several days before, made me frown.

  Where is it?

  I didn’t know what to make of it. The text had no name associated with it, and I didn’t recognize the number. I thought about responding with “where is what?” but something held me back.

  The headache from earlier in the afternoon was approaching the level of an ice pick shoved through the eye, and I decided I’d had enough drama and excitement for one evening.

  Chapter Three

  THE DOOR to the upstairs opened, and the cats ran eagerly to the bottom of the stairs, only to stop abruptly and stare. Oliver puffed up and bolted under the couch. Phoenix held out a bit longer, rubbing her face along the bottom step, only to retreat when someone came down the stairs.

  It was Jean.

  She paused on the last step. “Do you have everything you need? It’s cooler down here than in the rest of the house. I can bring you an extra blanket, if you need one.”

  I thanked her, assuring her that I had everything I could possibly want or need and that her hospitality was unquestioned.

  “Good. Well, if you think of anything… aspirin, something to drink. There’s bottled water in the fridge upstairs….” She obviously didn’t want to leave.

  I wondered what it was she was afraid to ask me.

  Phoenix reappeared and wound herself around my legs but still kept a wary eye on the stranger in her world.

  “Oh, what a pretty little thing.” Jean suddenly relaxed, came all the way down the stairs, and sat on the bottom step. She held out her hand and rubbed her fingers together. “Here kitty, kitty.”

  Phoenix, ever hopeful of some dinner, oozed close enough to sniff Jean’s fingers, but ducked out when Jean tried to pet her. She retreated toward me and flopped over on her side. Her plume-like tail flicked as she watched Jean.

  I saw the orange-and-white cat, but at the same time, I saw the tiny kitten she’d been, soaked in gasoline and about to be set on fire by a bunch of boys. I could see John’s rage as he crashed the circle of kids tormenting the kitten, scattering them like Moses parting the Red Sea, with the same kind of biblical wrath. I couldn’t help it. I sucked in my breath. It was the first clear memory I’d had of my time with John, but when I tried to grab on, it slipped out of my grasp.

  Jean never noticed. She was smiling at the cat. “She’s quite the princess, isn’t she? Where did you get her?”

  I swallowed and concentrated on being present in the here and now. “We found her as a kitten. Some boys were torturing her, and John stopped them. He—” I broke off. How could I tell John’s mother that he’d been marvelous and terrifying, all at the same time?

  She looked up at me sharply. “John never did like meanness.” Her tone was mild, but she locked gazes with me and held the contact for a long time.

  “He’s a good man,” I said, feeling that my statement was completely inadequate. “A good agent, but a decent human being as well, you know?”

  “No. I don’t really.” Her voice was sad. “I don’t know him as well as I should.”

  “Well, damn.” I was deliberately emphatic. “I was hoping you could fill me in on the gaps.”

  She laughed, and I thought that she deserved better than Charles. She reached for the railing to pull herself to her feet, and I moved swiftly to help her stand. My granny raised me to be a polite boy.

  She took my h
and with the grace of royalty and allowed me to help her up. “I suspect you’re a decent human being too, Lee Parker.” She had the Flynn smile, and I was charmed. “If you need anything, just let me know.”

  “I will. And Mrs. F? Thank you for letting us stay here. I know we’re inconveniencing you, but I really appreciate it.”

  Her face softened, taking at least fifteen years off her age. “My dear boy. It’s no inconvenience at all. I’m so pleased to have this opportunity to relearn my son. And please, call me Jean.”

  Yeah. That wasn’t happening. Like I said, my granny raised me to be polite. Nicknames were allowed, as long as they indicated respect.

  She hesitated, and again, I had the strong impression she wanted to ask me something. Instead, she smiled, patted me on the hand, and turned to go back upstairs.

  I think, if she’d known me better, she would have kissed me on the cheek. The funny thing is, I wouldn’t have minded if she had.

  The next time the door at the top of the stairs opened, it was John with several grocery bags, including a large one that had a second litter box, bless the man. The cats came out with a rousing chorus of “Feed Me Now” as John set the bags down on the table at the foot of the stairs. He pulled the pop-top off a can and divided the contents into the small bowls he’d purchased. “What do you think? Feed them in the bathroom?”

  I nodded. “You know how messy they can be.”

  He shot me a sort of delighted look, and I got the feeling he was pleased that I’d remembered something non-work related from my—our—past. I started to say something about perhaps not feeding Oliver all of his dinner. As we stood in the doorway and watched them chow down, I figured if feeding him was a mistake, we’d find out soon enough. The weird thing was, John hesitated as he was putting food in the bowls—like he was trying to decide how much to give Oliver—and yet he went ahead and gave the cat his usual amount. As the cats wolfed their food, he rinsed out the cans and placed them in one of the grocery bags, no doubt for recycling. I approved and then wondered if that was something he’d learned from me. From us living together.