by Maggie Way
“I’m telling you this because I don’t know what to do. I know you’re in love with her, Carl, so I’m asking you to tell me what you would do, because I know you would never hurt her,” John said. “I’ve been hiding this from Gretchen so far, but it’s getting harder to do. Should I just tell her?”
Closing his eyes, Carl pressed himself into his chair. The corner of his mouth twitched and his right hand trembled so slightly it was almost imperceptible. John began to worry about whether or not he was in Carl’s direct line of sight in case he decided to tackle him.
“This woman in your memories,” Carl said quietly, “do you know her name? Or has she said yours? Anything that tells you who you used to be?”
“No.” Thankfully. “I don’t know why, but I only see the memories. There’s no sound. She’s never spoken to me. I have no idea who the woman is, or who I used to be before the accident.”
“Do you think you’ll figure it out before the wedding?” Carl asked.
John shook his head. “The first really vague memory happened only a couple weeks after the accident. There’s never been any sound and I don’t think there ever will be. Plus, the memories are always pretty short and vague, and don’t give me any clues about time or location. Besides, if this woman were going to find me, I think she would have done it by now. Maybe we weren’t together anymore before the accident, or maybe she isn’t even alive. Either way, she’s not going to find me. It’s been too long.”
“You realize what you’re giving up, right?” he asked.
John knew all too clearly what he was giving up. There might not be any sound in the memories he’d recovered, but the passion and emotion they carried with them were too potent to ignore. “Yes, I know what I’m giving up, but I’ll give it up willingly for Gretchen.”
Carl struggled with himself. Gripping the edges of his chair, he took a deep breath and let it out. When he opened his eyes, John could see the torture in them. He clearly hated John for coming to him, but John thought he understood why he had. They were two men who loved the same woman, and despite hating each other for that very reason, they forced themselves to put it aside to protect Gretchen.
“Don’t tell Gretchen any of this,” he whispered. “She won’t be able to forget it. She’ll postpone the wedding and want you to figure out who this woman is, because it will tear her apart to know that she might be taking you away from someone else. She’s too kind to think of herself first.”
John nodded. That was exactly what he had thought, but he’d worried he only thought that out of selfishness. Hearing Carl, a man who had nothing to gain from John’s happiness, agree with his own thoughts, lifted a huge weight from his shoulders. Telling Gretchen wouldn’t do any good. She would postpone the wedding, for what? For another couple months of John seeing the woman but getting no closer to finding out the truth of his past? There was no point.
“You won’t tell Gretchen about this, right?” John asked. Carl was still in love with Gretchen. Good man or not, it was hard to trust him that much.
For some strange reason Carl grinned that horrible grin of his. John stood up warily and Carl followed. “Of course I won’t tell her, John,” he said. He was still smiling. Walking to his front door, John had no choice but to follow him. Carl opened the door for him, but John didn’t leave yet.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because,” Carl said, “I feel like I owe you one.”
That was news to John. “Why would you owe me anything?”
His smile doubled as he grabbed John’s shoulder and pushed him out onto the porch.
“Because I kissed your fiancée and told her I was in love with her. That’s why.”
Then he shut the door in John’s face.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The Right Choice
Searching the table for the keys, John spotted them next to his cell phone as it began to ring. He picked up the keys and moved to answer it.
“Just let it go to voicemail,” Gretchen said as she rushed past him to the door.
They had dinner reservations in half an hour.
“Give me a minute, Gretchen. It might be the Fields. They were supposed to call as soon as they got the final count for their company dinner.”
Gretchen put on her best pout, but stood still to wait for him. John threw her a thankful look and answered the call. “This is John,” he said.
“John,” a woman’s voice replied, “this is Melinda Velasquez, from Channel Four News. I interviewed you last year after your accident.”
“Melinda, of course. How are you doing?” he asked, wondering how she had gotten his number. Gretchen gave him a questioning look. John shrugged. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, I was looking through some of the pieces I did last year and realized it’s almost been a year since your accident and I was wondering if I could come back down and do a follow up,” she said. “Some of our viewers have written us emails asking about what happened to you.”
“We’re doing really well, Melinda. Gretchen and I are actually getting married next month,” he said.
Melinda laughed. “You’re kidding! I told Hal you two were going to hook up. He owes me twenty bucks,” she said. Apparently Hal was in the same room because she yelled the news to him. “So, John, how about another interview? The viewers will love this.”
“Just a minute, Melinda, let me talk to Gretchen,” he said. She told him to go ahead and John muted the phone.
“It’s Melinda Velasquez, that reporter who interviewed us after the accident,” he said. Gretchen nodded in understanding. “She wants to come back for another interview, tell the viewers what’s happened to me since the last time they saw me. What do you think?”
Smiling, Gretchen said, “Sure. That would be fun, as long as we do it before the wedding. It will be too crazy afterward.”
“Melinda?” John asked. She said she was still there and he continued. “We’d love to do the interview as long as we can do it before the wedding. We’re leaving on our honeymoon right after and then we both have to get back to work as soon as we return.”
“When’s the wedding?” Melinda asked.
“April third.”
John could hear some indistinct mumbling as Melinda tapped away on her keyboard. “Okay, I’m in Las Cruses next weekend, Santa Fe two weekends from now, and I’m working a big political event here in Albuquerque on the twentieth, but I could do the Friday before that. That would be March nineteenth.”
“March nineteenth?” John asked Gretchen.
She mentally checked her calendar then nodded. “I can get a sub for that day,” she said.
“That sounds great, Melinda.”
“Wonderful. I’ll call you next week with the details, okay?” she asked.
“We look forward to hearing from you,” John said before ending the call.
Gretchen grabbed John’s hand and started pulling him toward the door.
“That was unexpected,” he said.
Gretchen nodded as they walked to the car. “I’m surprised she even remembered us.”
“Yeah, me too. Even during the interview last year she didn’t seem all that interested in our story,” John said.
“I had such high hopes after the interview that we’d find someone who knew who you were,” Gretchen said.
John opened her car door for her and closed it once she was in. As he walked over to the driver’s side he remembered how angry he’d felt when the interview hadn’t worked. Now he had a completely different emotion. Fear. It lasted only a moment. If no one in New Mexico knew who he was the previous year, why would they know who he was now? John was still struggling with the returning memories on a daily basis, but he passed off the idea that the interview would complicate things for him. At least they only covered New Mexico. Any more area and he might be in trouble.
With the wedding only two and a half weeks away it was getting close to crunch time for John. He had just finished his last cater
ing job before the wedding over the weekend and was putting all his effort into finalizing the menu for his own reception and planning some practice sessions for Ethan and Melissa just to make sure they could make all the dishes themselves. John had hired another server to help them and Jeremy was coming home during his spring break to head up the crew. The interview coming up in two days only added to his stress.
Gretchen was just as busy. It seemed she spent more time at the seamstress getting fitted for her wedding dress than she did with John. He wasn't sure why she needed to be measured and pinned so many times, but he knew better than to complain. When Gretchen wasn't running back and forth between appointments, she was on the phone with Desi coordinating people and deliveries. When they had the chance to breathe, they usually ended up collapsing on the couch to do it.
Which was what they were doing at the moment.
Something was playing on TV, but John wasn't paying attention. Gretchen dozed on his shoulder as he flipped through a book she’d left on the coffee table. The novel turned out to be too much of a romance for his taste, so he set it back on the coffee table without disturbing Gretchen.
Turning his attention to his favorite subject instead, John shifted so Gretchen was lying on his lap, and brushed her hair away from her face. Her lips curled into a brief smile as his fingers trailed across her skin. He watched the slight expressions that flitted across her face as she slept and wondered what she was dreaming about. He hoped it wasn't Carl.
His parting comment the day John had talked to him about the memories irked him every time he thought about it. It had been almost painful not to demand Gretchen explain why she hadn’t told him about Carl kissing her the moment it happened, but he knew without a doubt that Carl had been the one to initiate it. Gretchen was likely embarrassed and didn’t want to make John dislike him more than he already did. Besides, he was hardly the one to judge her for keeping something from him. John had been lying to her about the memories almost from the beginning of their relationship.
Harsh ringing from one of their phones left in the kitchen ended the moment of watching Gretchen sleep. It was probably another reminder about something for the wedding. John wanted to let it go to voicemail, but Gretchen was startled by the noise and pulled herself up off his lap. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes and looked toward the kitchen.
“Lay back down,” John said. “I’ll get it.”
Gretchen smiled and trailed her fingers along his leg as he stood. John walked to the kitchen, annoyed at the interruption, and picked up the phone. “This is John.”
“John, this is Melinda,” she said. “There’s been a change of plans with the interview on Friday.”
Great. Changes in their carefully laid plans were the last thing they needed. “What kind of changes?” he asked.
“Time, location, and the person doing the interview,” she said.
Wasn't that everything? “You’re not doing the interview anymore?” he asked her.
“No. It kind of got away from me,” she said. “I told my boss about the interview after I talked to you and apparently he mentioned it to the station manager, who got really excited about it, and somehow your story kept getting passed up the ladder until it reached the top.”
“The top?” he asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means the Today show, John.” Melinda laughed into the phone. “You and Gretchen are going to be on the Today show Friday morning. One of the hosts heard your story and just had to have you. They’re going to call you any second to set up your travel itinerary so I should let you go. I just wanted to give you a heads up.”
“Uh, thanks, Melinda,” John said. She must have ended the call, because it rang again a few seconds later. He was too shocked to answer it. The phone rang again, bringing Gretchen into the room with a puzzled expression.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“The Today show wants us to come on their show,” he said.
Gretchen looked at the ringing phone in his hand and grabbed it. The ringing stopped and Gretchen started talking. Watching her grow excited as whoever she was talking to laid out their plans was a surreal experience. John read the notes Gretchen wrote down about the flight on Thursday, the next day, and what hotel they would put them in, but all he could think about was how many people would be watching the Today show on Friday morning.
Doing the interview with the Albuquerque news channel, which reached less than a million people and had already failed once to produce anyone who knew John, was all fine and good. It was safe enough. The Today show reached the entire county, hundreds of millions of people. If the dark haired woman from his memories had any interest in finding him still, it would give her the perfect opportunity.
Setting the phone down on the table, Gretchen bounced up and down with excitement. “The Today show, John! Can you believe it?” she said.
“No, I can’t,” he said slowly.
It was usually pretty hard to dampen Gretchen’s excitement, but John’s complete lack of enthusiasm caught her attention.
“John, what’s wrong?” she asked.
“I don’t think we should do the interview.”
Gretchen frowned and glanced at her scribbled notes. “Why not?”
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said. “We still have so much to do before the wedding. Having Melinda come here wasn't too big of a deal, but going to New York? I don’t know, Gretchen.”
“But, John, this is probably the only chance like this we’ll ever have. Millions of people will hear your story,” she said.
“Yeah, I know, Gretchen. That’s exactly the reason I don’t think we should do it. What if someone does recognize me?” he asked.
Gretchen shook her head at him. Hands on her hips, she stared John down. “That would be wonderful, John. You would finally know who you are.”
“I already know who I am, Gretchen,” he said.
“But what if you could find your family, your parents, maybe, or your siblings? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have some of your family at the wedding?” She was still determined to reconnect him with his past. She did it because she loved him, but it was a misguided desire.
“Okay, yes, finding my parents would be great, but what if someone else found me?” he asked. He didn’t want to say it. He wanted her to figure it out without him having to bring up the memories.
Thankfully, realization dawned on her. “You mean a woman?”
John nodded.
“But, John, it’s been a year.”
Walking over to him, she put her arms around his waist and hugged him. “John, I want to believe there were people in your life before I found you who are looking for you. But it has been a year. Wouldn’t someone have found you by now if they were going to? We tried the interview last year and the website and the newspapers, and we got nothing.
“As much as I hate to admit it, maybe you didn’t have any family still living. Maybe your friends tried to find you but couldn’t. And if there was a woman in your life and she didn’t find you, she probably either moved on or isn’t worth finding anyway,” Gretchen said. “And besides, even if some woman from your past showed up, I know you wouldn’t leave me for someone you don’t even know anymore. I trust you, John.”
But what if it wasn't just some woman? John had seen the reception hall, the bouquet in her hands. If he was married to another woman, how could he not try to find out what they once had together? Why would his wife not have found him, though? As John poured over the memories he had recovered, he recognized that he was quite a bit younger in them. Maybe the woman was already gone. The possibility remained, but making Gretchen understand his reasoning would require him telling her about the memories. The risk of losing Gretchen seemed so much bigger than the risk of the memory woman finding him.
“I trust you, John,” Gretchen repeated as she laid her head on his chest.
She wasn't going to give in. If John went missing tomorrow, he knew Gretch
en would never give up looking for him. He could see why she would say that John not being found meant there was no one looking, because he could picture her scouring the country to find him. John could also understand, however, that he was one person in hundreds of millions in the country. What if you could look for a year and never find anything?
Locked in indecision, John held onto Gretchen. The problem with that theory was the same one John had been stumped by from the very beginning. He couldn’t imagine going somewhere so out of the way that news coverage wouldn’t reach Gretchen to tell her where he was without first telling her where he was going. Every memory John recovered of the woman told him they loved each other deeply, but that must have been past because he couldn’t come up with a scenario where he would end up so far away from her that Gretchen’s efforts to find his family wouldn’t have reached her without her already knowing where he was planning to be.
She would have found John if the memory woman still loved him. It always came back to that.
“Okay, I’ll do the interview,” he said.
He could only hope he was making the right choice.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Rushing Back
Walking into the lobby of the hotel, Gretchen could barely contain her excitement. The grand foyer was incredible. John thought he should have been impressed by it as well, but something seemed vaguely familiar about it. He didn’t have time to contemplate it, though, because Gretchen pulled him up to the concierge desk with an excited bounce. The woman standing behind the desk greeted them warmly then asked if they had reservations.
“John Palmer and Gretchen Gesner,” Gretchen said.
The woman typed it in and then looked up with an extra pleasant smile. “Guest of the Today show? How exciting,” she said. “Do you mind if I ask what you’re going on the show for?”
