Lost Past

by Teresa McCullough

  She recognized his car before she recognized him. He saw her and popped the trunk, and she had a grateful rush of feeling that perhaps the amnesia was gone, but she sensed uncertainty from him. How odd, she thought. John was never uncertain.

  His thoughts came at her in a rush, and they weren’t flattering. He thought her coat looked like it was worn a few too many winters, and the way she fixed her hair, in a low ponytail, was not only unflattering, it demonstrated she didn’t care how she looked. She should lose a few pounds, because if she were overweight at twenty-two, she might have serious health problems later on. He was never that unguarded with his thoughts in her presence, and her brief flash of resentment closed the channel faster than usual, leaving her confused.

  Linda considered warning him about her telepathy, but she wasn’t sure she trusted this new John. She contented herself by saying, “Your memory isn’t back,” as a statement rather than a question.

  “I recognized you from a picture. Mary said you were going to finish your exams.”

  “I did. I’m not sure how well I did on the last one, but I’m through. Do you want me to drive?”

  He hesitated briefly and then nodded. After she adjusted the seat, left the airport, and drove onto I-195, he asked her, “Why do I usually have you drive?”

  “At first, it was to give me practice. That was genuine. Later, you said you didn’t like driving . . .” She paused as she moved into the correct lane to get onto I-95. “I don’t drive very much, and I really do need the practice.” There was a period of silence.

  “You were going to say?” He wasn’t looking at the road, but at her.

  “You want to watch people when you talk to them,” she said wryly. “Like you’re doing now.”

  “Is it intrusive?”

  “No. Not for most people. They like that you’re paying attention to them. You pay attention to everyone, except Mary.”

  “Why didn’t I pay attention to Mary?” he asked with surprise.

  Linda smiled with real pleasure, because it was unusual for John to ask her for information. “You never told me, and I never asked.”

  “But you know?”

  “I think so.” Actually, she knew the answer, because John didn’t always guard his thoughts. “You didn’t want to break up my father’s marriage.” John was an attractive man, but somehow he avoided attracting Mary. He also avoided attracting Linda, which Linda realized was an interesting feat. She loved him as a parent, but didn’t love him as a man. It wasn’t until she went away to college that she realized she never developed a crush on John, which was surprising, considering she went through adolescence with him living in the same house.

  She paused long enough for him to respond, and when he didn’t, she continued. “You disappeared into the background for her. You were Dad’s friend, but never in competition with Mary. You were a parent to Tom and me, in spite of the lack of age difference.”

  “You’re twenty-two and I’m thirty-four,” he said with a bit of uncertainty.

  “That’s what they say.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “No. I think you’re older, maybe much older. I know it doesn’t make sense, because you could go to graduate school and no one would think you were a returning student.” He was surprised by this observation, and Linda wondered if her statement was silly. John always seemed so mature, as if he belonged in her father’s generation.

  “Perhaps I wanted to portray an image with you as well.” He was clearly not certain.

  “Of course you did. You’re always acting, but this is something deeper. I don’t know what it is.” When he didn’t jump in after she paused, she continued, “Acting is an exaggeration. It wasn’t really acting; you were forcing yourself to be a certain way, not pretending to be that way. I’m glad to see you still have the same mannerisms. You know when to be silent to get people to say more.” Acting was definitely an exaggeration, because she never heard him think he should pretend to be something he wasn’t. The closest he came and the one time she caught a thought about Mary, it was a fleeting, She’s coming. I should clean the sink later. She’ll be going to bed in an hour. He stopped cleaning the sink, but the next morning, Linda saw it was clean.

  Linda’s thoughts were interrupted by John saying, “I haven’t said enough now. I should be asking how you are doing and saying kind words about your father.”

  “Why?” she said with genuine surprise. “You don’t remember him, do you?”

  “No.”

  “And you know how I’m doing.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You read people, me better than most,” Linda explained.

  “But I should ask how you’re feeling to give you a chance to express it,” John said.

  “I’m sort of on hold, not really believing, not disbelieving. I go back and forth between reaching for hope and trying to grieve. I believe he’s dead, because common sense says so. I believe he’s alive because I can’t believe he’s dead. He’s my father, damn it, and he may have been too busy to spend much time with me, but I love him and I can’t give him up because someone said a plane crashed.” She realized her voice was becoming almost hysterical, but she shouldn’t have to tell John this. He understood, he always understood. She was a bit ashamed of her outburst. “Is that what you wanted?”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “You understood before I said anything,” Linda said.

  ***

  “You’re always acting.” John remembered Linda’s words that evening and tried to make sense of them. It confirmed Arthur’s message and what he was discovering about himself. In a way, it also confirmed his thoughts earlier when he wondered if he were an actor or a salesman. Apparently he was both, selling the image he acted, to everyone but Arthur. He also sold himself as a source of knowledge about psychiatry without actually giving direct information. Why not just tell people and why couldn’t he be himself with others? Who was “himself?”

  Linda obviously wasn’t completely sold on his image, but he didn’t know if anyone else guessed, well, whatever he didn’t know about himself. He felt he had a real connection with Linda: parental, not sexual. On the other hand, her brother Tom, who recently drove from medical school, quickly forgot that John lost his memory and dropped into the familiar relationship. There was no uncertainty on Tom’s part. Why was Linda different?

  Whatever the answer was, he felt more comfortable asking her about her mother. Natalie Saunders was a stay-at-home mother who inexplicably disappeared. The only clue was a broken lamp and an unlocked front door. Arthur was on a plane to a physics conference and the children were at school. Arthur was suspected, of course, because the husband was always suspected and he could have hired someone, making his alibi meaningless. He opened up his finances to the authorities, and if anyone was hired, it was hard to figure out where the money came from. Natalie took care of the family’s money and kept meticulous records. She was an accountant when Arthur met her. Arthur spent very little money and could hardly have squirreled away very much from the pocket money he carried. He didn’t even buy lunch because Natalie packed lunches for him.

  Of course, other scenarios were considered, but no one who knew Arthur Saunders considered him dangerous. He enjoyed exercising, but it was obviously to stay in shape, not to become a fighter, in spite of an occasional self-defense class. He was small and wiry and, by all accounts, a very gentle person.

  It was even considered that he might have done some research for someone else and “sold” his results for murdering his wife. He produced spectacular results every three or four years, but had a dry period that ended with the paper he was presenting when Natalie disappeared. Nothing was published by anyone else in his field that was a reasonable candidate for this bizarre scenario.

  The police were polite to Arthur, because he was an important person, but they investigated him thoroughly. Arthur didn’t resent this, because he realized they wouldn’t spend much time
searching for other leads, until they eliminated him as a suspect.

  John asked Linda if her dad told her this. She said he hadn’t, with a mulish look that suggested further inquiry would be unproductive. He asked her what happened next, rather than pursue the source of her information.

  Mary Chen came into Arthur’s life three months after Natalie’s disappearance, and she moved in about five months later, but as Linda said, “Dad told me a few weeks after Mom disappeared that there was no hope of her being alive. He knew she wouldn’t have left voluntarily. She never would have deserted us. Besides, even if she did, she would have told all of us. She must have been kidnapped and killed by someone who wasn’t doing it for ransom. The body was disposed of somehow.”

  After hearing that, John wondered about Arthur’s character. He was unable to build a picture of him. He had a photograph from one of Tom’s emails, but it didn’t help. John saw a small man with dark hair and a pointed nose who looked his age, which was fifty-one. By all accounts, they were best friends, although they were nearly a generation apart.

  ***

  “I don’t think I want to stay here,” Linda said to Tom. They were in her bedroom, which was Arthur’s study when they were gone. Linda sat on the captain’s bed whose drawers were full of the possessions she didn’t bring with her to graduate school. Not being overly sentimental, she wasn’t sorry that her property was ruthlessly pruned when her father sold the home she grew up in. She recognized the reality that she didn’t have the storage space to keep what she didn’t need. The move gave Linda an excuse to discard her mother’s well-used gardening gloves and dictionary. These mementoes had no use because Linda used an online dictionary and didn’t garden. She kept photographs of her, but they took little space. Her mother didn’t wear jewelry and her clothes wouldn’t fit Linda. She kept her collection of annotated gardening books, enjoying looking through them to see comments such as, “This didn’t work,” or “Does well in a southern exposure.” Mom considered knick-knacks to be dust catchers and owned nothing that wasn’t practical.

  “It will be crowded,” Tom replied. Linda knew Tom was referring to John’s apartment. Mary previously told them that her mother and brother were flying in from California the next day. There was no discussion of where they would stay, but Linda and Tom both assumed Mary would prefer to have her family in the condo.

  They both paused. Linda didn’t want to say what she was thinking, but the channel opened, and she heard Tom thinking the same thing. Saying it wouldn’t make things better, but worse. Usually, she told Tom when she read him, but there seemed no point this time. With their father almost certainly dead, they lost all connection to Mary. She was their stepmother in name only. Arthur was their father, but he was so involved with his research that he spent little time with them. Since Linda was twelve and Tom was fifteen, John had been their parent.

  As Tom pulled out his cell phone, he glanced a question at Linda. She nodded and the channel closed gently as Tom called John and invited himself and his sister to stay with him starting the next night. Neither of them commented on the fact that they were moving to a much more crowded location. Mary looked relieved when they told her, and seemed surprised when Tom said, “You don’t mind if we leave most of our stuff here?”

  Later, when they talked it over, Linda said, “At least she’s not kicking us out immediately.”

  “She may not accept the fact that he’s dead,” Tom replied.

  “I don’t. Not yet, at least.”

  “He was always a realist and would want us to accept it. I mean, they found bodies. No one could have survived the crash. Remember how he was about Mom? He told us there was no hope,” Tom said.

  “That was weeks later,” Linda protested. It was years later that she understood more of why her father didn’t believe her mother left voluntarily. The morning she disappeared, they made love, and once he thought about it when Linda could read his thoughts. Linda knew her father believed that they had a solid marriage based both on companionship and sex. Linda felt she was intruding by knowing about the sex, but she couldn’t turn off her telepathy.

  “You mean you think he could be alive? Do you have a connection?”

  “No, but that’s only good for a few miles at best.”

  Sensing people was pretty constant, if they were within range, but actually reading them was limited to a few minutes a day, and the only people whose minds she could read were Tom, John, and Dad.

  CHAPTER 5

  John found time to replace his cell phone. He reported his confiscated phone as lost, and arranged a new password for his voice mail on his landline. John was surprised at himself for automatically agreeing to let Linda and Tom stay with him. John tried to analyze why he did so. His apartment was small, and two guests seemed excessive, but John thought it natural they come. Tom slept on the floor in John’s bedroom on an air mattress he brought. Linda had the couch. In consideration of his recent injuries, both Tom and Linda vetoed John’s suggestion that he give up the bed to one of them.

  It felt right to have Tom and Linda with him, and John expected to object to the crowding, but didn’t. He didn’t understand why he didn’t resent the intrusion. He found he actually preferred them to be there than for him to be alone. It was not as if they gave him comfort, because he was comforting them.

  Linda and Tom fielded a number of condolence phone calls from friends and calls from reporters. Some reporters called John as well, although he refused to give them any information. The next morning, they read the various articles about the crash and watched it on the news.

  Cara called, saying abruptly, “There’s something on YouTube you should look at. I’ve emailed you the link.” She hung up before he could respond.

  YouTube had a copy of a satellite phone call recorded during the plane crash. The passenger called a friend and let voicemail record the call. Much of it was unclear, but John had no trouble identifying the language in the background as Vigintees. There was a voice-over of a passenger saying four men boarded the airplane in midair and took a man off the plane.

  While Tom and Linda questioned if this was fake, they recognized Arthur’s voice. Their attention quickly returned to the recording. Linda reached over and replayed the interrupted section.

  After it finished, Tom said, “It’s Dad, but I don’t know what language he’s speaking.”

  Linda turned to John and asked, “What are they saying?”

  John was surprised at Linda’s question, but clearly, Tom wasn’t. How did she know he understood, and why wasn’t Tom surprised she knew? He decided to ignore his own questions and answer Linda’s. “They are telling him to come with them and he is refusing. He wanted them to save all the passengers.”

  Linda asked, “What language is it?”

  “I don’t know the word in English. I don’t know anything about it, I just understand it.”

  John’s phone went off and caller ID identified Eric Schwartz. “I am going to deliver Arthur’s message to the FBI,” Eric said. “I didn’t erase it. Actually, I never erase any messages.”

  “Of course,” John replied. “If you send them to me, I’ll translate.”

  After telling Tom and Linda about Eric’s phone call, realizing he was disobeying Arthur’s warning, he said, “Your father told me I should continue acting as I had been, rather than behave naturally. I don’t have a clue as to how he knew I wasn’t acting naturally, but I apparently gave him some information about my past.”

  “You’re going to tell the government everything?” Tom asked him.

  “Yes. I’ve told you and I’ll tell them.”

  “And you don’t have any secrets from us?” Tom asked, with a glance at Linda.

  “All my secrets are so well hidden that I don’t know them myself,” John replied wryly.

  The authorities arrived less than two hours later, and took John to a very secure-looking building. After descending to a subfloor and going down a corridor, John was escorted into a r
oom obviously designed for interviews, with a window that was mirrored on his side. He was left alone in the room with Special Agent Wilson who was seated at a table and didn’t rise on his entrance. “I would like you to listen to something,” he said in the pleasant baritone he remembered from his hospital interview. Wilson pressed a button on a recorder and Arthur Saunders’ voice was heard in the background.

  “Can you translate it?” Wilson asked.

  “Yes,” John answered promptly. He made his decision hours ago. “The first speaker says, ‘What are you doing? You’re killing people.’ Can I hear the recording again?”

  “Just a minute.” Wilson stepped out of the room and seconds later, another man entered with him. He was introduced simply as Kowalski, but John quickly surmised he was a linguist. Kowalski was probably only a half a dozen years older than Wilson, whom John guessed to be about thirty, but where Wilson moved with the grace and strength of someone who worked out regularly, Kowalski moved as little as possible and acted like getting out of a chair was the most exercise he ever did. They made an odd couple, with Kowalski’s pale flabbiness and long unkempt hair contrasting sharply with Wilson’s muscled body, dark brown skin, and shaved head.

  After finishing with the brief translation of the satellite phone call, Wilson played the recording of Arthur’s phoned warning, which John translated. Kowalski and John analyzed the translation word for word. He gave a translation of each word and discussed tense, case, and rules of grammar. Kowalski said at one point, “I notice you don’t pronounce the words the same way as Saunders did. Why?”

  “He has a thick accent.”