When She Remembers

by Hope Jones

  ***

  Henley

  GRAHAM WALKED OUT of the house, a content smile on his face and happier than I had seen him since the night I was in the accident.

  When he first woke me up by nuzzling my neck, everything seemed to be the same as it was before we fell asleep. When he continued to kiss and call to me, I had realized that I remembered him doing it a thousand times before.

  Graham had to be at work at least an hour before I had to leave, but normally, he’d wake up at least two hours before. He’d wake me up by kissing my neck, calling to me softly and demanding a kiss before he walked out the door.

  When I realized I remembered the thousand times he did it before, I thought back to everything and realized I remembered it all.

  The first night we met, how I was completely uninterested, but still intrigued by Graham. The first time we kissed, the first time we made love, his proposal and the days afterward spent in bed full of bliss. I remembered the tears that streamed down his face when I first walked into the garden where we got married. I had looked at it for the last two weeks, trying my hardest to remember that day, but always coming up blank.

  That memory wasn’t blank anymore and it was the happiest one.

  I had always heard that watching the bride walk down the aisle was a magical moment, but there was something about watching the groom’s face when he got the first look at his new wife.

  The stories I had heard of that turned out to be true, and I was over the moon we captured that moment, always having it to look back on.

  With all my memories back, I texted Mom to come over as soon as she got up and then left the bed myself.

  Making quick work of showering, I finished and threw on a pair of Graham’s sweats that almost fell off me they were so big. I paired it with one of my white tank tops and threw my hair in a messy top knot.

  Bounding down the stairs, I wanted to make coffee, but remembered that if Graham were doing things the way they were before my accident, there would be a cup ready in the microwave.

  Of course, my husband never disappointed.

  My mug was sitting exactly where it was supposed to be.

  The doorbell rang ten minutes later, and I opened it with a smile, my mom’s eyes staring back at me.

  “Hey, Mama,” I greeted, opening the door wider for her to enter. “You know you don’t have to ring the bell, right?”

  She shook her head and told me, “I wanted to give you and Graham enough time to be decent before I barged in.”

  My mouth hung open in shock and I flustered for what to say.

  Mom looked at me and snorted. “Honey, don’t act like I don’t know what’s going on. Tuesday keeps me informed and the latest information is you and he have been getting mighty close.”

  “What Tuesday doesn’t know is, I have my memories back now,” I quipped, attempting to change the subject from my sex life to something tamer.

  “What?” Mom yelled, whipping around and rushing to me.

  “I woke up this morning and realized I remember everything,” I told her, beaming.

  “This is amazing!” she said, shaking my arms and rattling my brain before pulling me into a tight hug.

  “I know.”

  We hugged for a few moments and then moved to the kitchen to sit down and drink our coffee.

  “The last few Thanksgivings have been all over the place. Last year was at your house, but I was wondering if we could do Thanksgiving and Christmas here, since the house is finally renovated.”

  I gazed around my kitchen, remembering all the hard work we put into everything. Graham did the majority of the work, only calling someone for plumbing and electrical help. He insisted he knew how to do everything and wanted to be able to call the house ours.

  He did a fantastic job with it. I couldn’t be happier with the results.

  Earlier this week, we scrubbed the walls in the living room and then painted over what was left of the red letters, so even the living room looked normal again.

  “Oh, I’d be delighted to have the holidays done here. I’m getting too old to do all the cooking and decorating by myself. You’re taking a load off my shoulders by offering, baby.”

  Thanksgiving was in a week; therefore, I would have to get a move on with decorations and cooking.

  I texted Tuesday and let her know that we would be doing the festivities here and to call me when she got off work later that day.

  Mom and I chatted about nothing and everything, sipping coffee and enjoying each other’s company when the front door cracked open.

  Rising to my feet quickly, I rounded the corner of the kitchen and saw a woman standing in my house, the splintered front door behind her.

  She was also holding a gun.

  The woman was Olivia.

  “What the hell?” I asked her.

  Every time I had seen Olivia prior to this encounter, she was well-kept and didn’t have a hair out of place.

  This time was completely different.

  The button-down blouse and slacks she was wearing were wrinkled as if she slept in them. Her hair was matted and sticking straight away from her head. Her eyes were wild and glassy, like she was on drugs. She looked like a mad woman.

  She smiled like the cat that ate the canary and said, “Oh, well, hello.”

  Mom chose that time to come around the corner, stopping just next to me and gasped, horrified.

  “Who is that?” Mom whispered to me, trying not to make any sudden movements so she wasn’t shot.

  “Her name is Olivia, she works for Graham,” I whispered back, holding my hands up in a placating gesture.

  I had just gotten my memory back that morning; I was not about to lose my life by trying to play the hero.

  “If you’re looking for money, I don’t have any here. You’re more than welcome to take my jewelry but you need to leave afterward,” I told Olivia. She appeared to be on drugs so maybe she needed money to afford her habit.

  “I don’t want your money!” she screamed, waving the gun around and causing me to jump, almost coming out of my skin.

  “Okay! Okay! What do you want?” I asked, trying to keep some calm in my tone.

  “I want my family back together,” she said, looking between Mom and me. “It seems like that wasn’t too hard,” she finished, smiling evilly.

  “I don’t understand,” I mused out loud.

  Mom gasped again next to me and told Olivia, “I do. Why don’t we sit down and talk about this?”

  My confused gaze turned to Mom and she had a look of shock, but also love written on her face.

  “Yes, we need to sit and have a discussion. Move!” Olivia said, pointing the gun in the direction of the living room.

  Mom and I moved to the living room and I tried to silently get her to tell me what was going on, but she shook her head and ignored me.

  Olivia directed us to sit on the couch, both of us doing so without a word. She stood across from us, the gun trained on Mom and Olivia’s hands shaking violently. She stared at the wall behind us and everything came into focus.

  “Lacey?” I asked timidly.

  Her eyes snapped to mine, and the gun moved to face me, something I was grateful for. I didn’t want Mom to get shot for something she had no real control over.

  “Don’t call me that!” Lacey yelled, gripping the weapon tighter.

  “Okay, I’ll stick to Olivia,” I told my sister with a wobbly smile. “Why don’t you put the gun down and we can talk about everything?” I suggested, nodding my head to indicate the coffee table.

  “I’m not putting the gun down. I want to hear from our mother why she gave me away but kept you,” she spat, the word mother having acid attached to it. Lacey looked at me with a hatred I had never seen before.

  Mom inhaled deeply before telling Lacey the same story she told me not so long ago. Lacey listened quietly, pacing back and forth, occasionally grabbing a handful of hair and tugging hard enough to make me grimace. It was quite obvious
she was mentally unstable and needed help.

  “You’re lying!” Lacey screamed when Mom finished, turning the gun back on her and panic started setting in. I couldn’t live without my mom. I wasn’t about to let Lacey, my deranged sister, kill my mother in my house that I had worked hard on with my husband.

  “Lacey, I need you to listen to me,” I pleaded, her wild eyes focused on me and she moved the gun back to my face. “That’s a good girl. I need you to put the gun down and talk to us. You’re scaring Mom,” I told her, throwing a hand out to show her how shaken up Mom was.

  “She should be scared!” Lacey growled. “She should be as scared as I was growing up.”

  My heart broke for her. She must not have had a good life. Mom didn’t know her life would take a turn for the worse. None of this was her fault.

  “Lacey, put the gun down and tell us why you were scared.”

  Lacey let out a small sob, covering her mouth with her hand.

  I was attempting to get the gun away from her and stall. She busted down the front door and a silent alarm had been tripped; the police would be in my driveway in less than ten minutes.

  Lacey didn’t drop the gun, but she did talk to Mom. “The parents you gave me to were great, but they died when I was seven. No one wanted an older girl, always looking for babies, so I was put into foster care. My parents didn’t have any family left for me to go to. I started developing anger issues, which caused problems with my foster families. None of them wanted me after a couple of months, so I bounced around from home to home. Each family got worse and worse. They started beating me, burning me. Any form of torture your mind can conjure up, I endured. You didn’t give me to a better life. You didn’t even come looking for me!”

  Lacey was fuming, pacing the floors again, but luckily the gun wasn’t pointed at anyone.

  “I didn’t know, my beautiful girl. I didn’t know,” Mom whispered, tears streaming down her face.

  “You don’t get to call me that! You lost that right,” Lacey snarled, moving to get in Mom’s face, but I stepped in her path.

  Lacey pressed the gun to my chest and growled, “Move!”

  “I can’t let you hurt her,” I told her with a sad smile.

  “Henley, you need to get out of her way. The problem she has is with me,” Mom pleaded, standing behind me and gripping my shoulders to shove me out of the way, but I stood strong in my position.

  “I’m not moving. Lacey is not going to hurt you. Isn’t that right?” I asked looking pointedly at Lacey.

  She stepped back a little, grabbed her head in both hands and screamed. Several moments later she looked back at us, her spine straightened, and she pressed the gun to my chest again, directly over my heart. My breaths were surprisingly calm considering the situation and the immediate threat to my life.

  Mom whimpered and Lacey’s eyes snapped to her. The gun moved, beginning to aim for Mom’s head, but I shoved Lacey away and a loud bang filled the small room.

  Pure adrenaline coursed through my veins, and I rushed Lacey, knocking the gun out of her hand and punching her until she wasn’t conscious.

  Running back to Mom’s side, she looked at me in horror.

  “Mom, are you okay?” I asked, quickly looking over every inch of her body, not noticing any bleeding.

  “Oh, my God!” Mom gasped at the same time my legs gave out from under me and I fell to the floor.

  Some of the adrenaline left my body, and I felt a white-hot searing pain in my chest. I moved my hands but couldn’t feel anything. Touching my chest, I brought my hand up and noticed the dark red.

  I was bleeding.

  Lacey shot me.

  My vision started tunneling, and Mom fell on her side next to me.

  My arm flopped back down, no longer having the strength to hold it up.

  “Mom,” I said, my voice flat, weak.

  “I’m right here, baby, I need you to stay awake for me,” she said, brushing my hair off my face.

  It took me a moment to realize, but my eyelids started dropping. They were heavy and hard to keep open.

  “I… don’t think I can,” I mumbled and even to my own ears, my words sounded slurred.

  My breaths became shallow and I started gasping for air.

  Why was it so dang hard to breathe?

  “Henley!” Mom yelled, but I barely heard it, her voice was so far away.

  ***

  Graham

  I RACED DOWN THE DRIVEWAY, not giving a fuck if the ruts messed my truck up. I was stacking tires when an alarm started dinging on my phone, alerting me that someone had broken in the front door.

  Considering what happened last night with Henley’s car, my spine went stiff. I didn’t stop to tell Jim I was leaving, just got in my truck and broke all kinds of traffic laws trying to get home. On the drive, I called Detective Rogers and he was already on the way. The expensive alarm system I paid for doing exactly what it was supposed to and alerting the police.

  My house coming into view, I saw the front door kicked in and threw the car in park, not bothering with turning the engine off.

  “Henley!” I heard screamed through the house and ran even faster.

  I looked through the house with hurried movements, trying to find the source of the voice. Skidding to a stop in the living room, I looked around horrified. Olivia was sprawled out on the floor, not moving. My mother-in-law was bent over my wife’s body.

  And my wife.

  My wife was lying in a pool of blood.

  I bent down, seeing a bullet wound slowly leaking blood in her chest.

  “What happened?” I demanded from Margaret.

  “Lacey came in, Henley was trying to keep me from getting shot and the gun just went off. Before she fell, Henley knocked the shit out of Lacey. Oh my God.”

  Henley’s head turned my way and she looked at me with dazed and confused eyes.

  “Graham?” she asked, but her voice was so low it was hard to hear.

  “I’m here, baby, I’m here,” I assured her. Applying pressure to her wound to stop the bleeding, I grimaced at the feel of my wife’s life leaking through my hands.

  Henley cringed and mumbled, “Ow,” before her head fell to the side.

  “Henley, you need to stay awake,” I yelled, hoping to get through to her.

  “It’s hard,” she whispered back.

  “I know it is, but you have to,” I insisted.

  Her bleak eyes came to me, and she looked at me sadly. “I wouldn’t take anything back, you know?”

  “Don’t do this, Henley. Come on, baby, you have to live.”

  I knew what she was doing. She was saying her goodbyes. I was not going to let my wife die on my watch. Why did she have to play the fucking hero? She just got her memories back and we could finally begin to heal, and she had to play goddamn savior.

  “I love you more than words,” she whispered, and her head lulled to the side, her eyes going dark.

  “Henley!” I screamed. “Goddammit!”

  A flurry of activity started happening around me, but I only had eyes for my wife. Tears sprang to my eyes and I didn’t even try stopping them. Sobs were coming from Henley’s mom next to me, but I ignored them and yelled for an ambulance.

  Suddenly, two EMTs squatted next to me, one of them being Sam, Tuesday’s husband. They hooked all kind of machines up to Henley and hearing the flatline of my wife’s heart crushed me. Sam shoved me out of the way and began CPR. I fell on my ass, not paying attention to what they were doing to her body anymore. I couldn’t watch.

  Instead, I focused on Detective Rogers cuffing Lacey and reading her her rights.

  Anger coursed through me and I surged to my feet, sprinting until I caught up with them. Not giving two fucks what the detective said, I grabbed Lacey by her throat and slammed her into the wall.

  “You fucking killed my wife!” I fumed, enjoying the feeling of her struggle to gain the same breaths my wife just expelled.

  Lacey’s fear-fille
d eyes stayed on me the entire time. If she looked away, I was scared I would snap her neck.

  Normally, I would never even consider harming a woman, but I didn’t see her as a woman. I saw her as a murderer. The murderer of the most important person in my life.

  Two officers pulled me off Lacey, holding my arms back so I couldn’t lunge at her again. They forcefully sat my ass on the floor and told me to calm down. I didn’t want to be calm. I knew if I calmed, pure agony would fill my entire being until I was weighed down.

  “Vano!” Sam yelled across the room.

  I peered at him through wet lashes and saw he was no longer working on my wife but loading her onto a stretcher.

  “Yeah?” I hollered back, hope infiltrating that she wasn’t dead.

  “Get your ass to the ambo, we need to go.”

  Sam didn’t have to say anymore. I was already racing to the back of the ambulance, my wife not far behind me.

  Chapter Twelve

  Graham

  SITTING IN THE SAME waiting room as I was a month ago when Henley had her accident, I waited for a doctor to come out and give me any news. Margaret was next to me, giving me a reassuring squeeze every now and then, but it did nothing to calm my nerves. Tuesday was on the other side of me, sniffling and Sam next to her. They were just as worried as I was.

  Sam told us the bullet didn’t hit her heart, but it was likely close. It seemed a major artery was nicked, and she had to have surgery to fix that.

  Henley had been in surgery for several hours now, but Sam explained that it could take a while since it was a complicated one.

  “Family for Mrs. Vano?” a doctor asked the room an hour later.

  I rushed to his side eager to hear what he had to say.

  “I’m Henley’s husband,” I told him, and he nodded, putting his clipboard under his arm and turning to face me fully.

  “Mrs. Vano had to undergo a very complex surgery to remove the bullet and stop the bleeding. It took several hours because her blood pressure kept bottoming out from blood loss, but she’s out of surgery and in recovery now. She probably won’t wake up for a couple of hours, but we can take you to see her, one at a time,” the doctor said and my heart filled with joy again. My wife was alive and in a recovery room instead of the morgue.