“Really?” I called after him in disbelief as he began riding back to the stables. He was going to let me go that easily, after all that we’d been through?
I stood there staring after him, unsure of what to think. I had imagined something like this happening, especially after the way he reacted to my news about visiting my old home with Charles, but to have it actually happen was too much to bear.
He hadn’t seen the last of me; I wasn’t going to give up that easily, but I wasn’t going to run after him in tears. If he wanted me to build my own life, than I would. I would go see Charles and figure out what made me happy, just as he told me to do.
I put on my clothes and hopped on Butterscotch, trailing after the path his horse’s hooves had made in the grass.
Chapter Twenty-four
It felt strange not waking up early and going to work after having established that routine over the past few weeks. I felt like I had to do something productive while I waited for Charles to come pick me up. Victor had left for work hours earlier, and Karen and Betty were doing their usual routine of preparing food and tidying.
I paced around the mansion the entire morning; my bags were already packed and sitting by the door. Karen and Betty had adamantly told me that there was no work for me to do and that I should just relax.
There was absolutely no way I could relax. I was so nervous my hands were shaking.
I had been sitting in the parlor staring at the grandfather clock, watching the seconds tick by, when I heard the expected knock at the door and quickly shuffled over, bags in tow.
When I reached the entrance, I saw that Charles looked almost as nervous as I was. He had a baseball cap in his hands that he was kneading absent-mindedly. The worn t-shirt and faded blue jeans he wore made a startling contrast to the formal clothing Victor preferred. It was refreshing, in a way.
“Thanks for picking me up,” I told him. “I can’t quite drive myself around yet.”
Charles smiled. “You used to love driving.”
“Really?”
He nodded. We stood in awkward silence for a few seconds. I didn’t know what else to say and by the look of it, neither did he.
He put his hat back on his head. “So you told me that you’ve been drawing and painting?”
“Victor gave me an art room. I’ve got a few paintings upstairs if you want to take a look.”
“Yeah, of course.” He paused. “I have to ask though, is Victor here?”
I pressed my lips together. “No, he’s at work.”
“Okay, good. I didn’t want to—” he began, but stopped short when he noticed my glare.
As Charles followed me to my studio, I wondered whether or not Victor would mind that I had brought a guest here without his permission, but I decided it didn’t matter anymore. Our contract was over, so I guessed I could do whatever I wanted. I wasn’t sure if that extended to doing whatever I wanted under his roof, but he wasn’t around to stop me.
On the second floor, I opened the door to the brightly lit room where I spent most of my time when I wasn’t working at the Lotus Gallery. A few of my paintings were hung on the walls and there was one still on the easel, a work in progress.
Charles was silent for several moments after we walked in. He paced around the room, looking closely at the various paintings I had hung up. “Your style is a lot different than before,” he said after he had gotten his fill.
“It is?”
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know a lot about art, but the work you have now seems more urgent and definitely more abstract. Honestly, I think you grew a lot as an artist, even if you don’t remember the process.”
I stared at my art thoughtfully. “Do you still have any of my old work?” I asked him.
“Mom and Dad’s house is exactly the same as when you left it,” he said. “The only change is the work from your apartment in San Francisco. I put it all in your room.”
My own apartment. It was hard to picture living in a space that wasn’t in the cold, dangerous streets or in Victor’s plush mansion. “Where in the city was my apartment?” I asked curiously.
“The Mission. You loved it.”
The Mission. I wondered how many times I passed by my old apartment while I was homeless and had absolutely no clue. How close were Charles and I before the accident? Was I just across the street when he cleaned out my apartment?
It felt strange to be so close, yet so far from everything I once knew. It seemed like a cruel joke. I had lost everything and spent two years convinced that I never had anything to begin with. Except my art. I had retained my passion for the art world even if it didn’t do me much good while I could barely eat, but I’d been building anew for so long that I worried I might never be able to access my old memories.
I turned back to Charles. “I’m ready to leave,” I told him. “My bags are in the foyer.”
***
Charles’s car wasn’t as nice as any of Victor’s vehicles, and he wasn’t quite the same expert driver that Victor was—or Oscar, for that matter—but I still felt strangely comfortable as he navigated to our parents’ old house. We were on the freeway before he spoke again, apparently the nerves had returned.
“So, do you enjoy working for Victor?” he asked, somewhat awkwardly.
“I did,” I replied quietly. “I don’t work for him anymore, though.”
“You don’t?”
I took in a deep breath. “No. I no longer have to answer to him, accompany him to parties, any of that.”
A struggle of emotions came across his face as he processed what I’d said. “So did you sleep with him?” he asked under his breath, as if afraid to broach the subject again.
I laughed with a volume that surprised me. “What do you think?”
That shut him up for a moment, and I relished it. I appreciated that he was trying to be protective, but I was a grown woman.
“Are you happy to be free of him?” His voice was tight and restrained.
“Why should I be?”
“I’m sorry, I just thought that—”
“That I was being imprisoned by him?” I asked him bitterly. “No, it wasn’t like that. I enjoyed being with Victor. He was good to me and—” I paused. How could I put this delicately?
“So you were together?”
Were? Have been? Where were things? My entire life was a jumble the more I thought about it. What I had previously thought of as pointless to even think about consumed my mind once the contract had ended. Charles didn’t need to know about that, though.
I sank into my seat and leaned my head back. “I have no idea. We both have a lot to figure out.”
Charles’s silence was enough to prove his point.
After a few minutes, he started talking again. “Can you understand why I was skeptical of him?”
“I just don’t think you should have been so presumptuous. You didn’t even give him a chance.”
He glanced over at me, seemingly taken aback, before gluing his eyes on the road. “What’d you expect? You disappeared for years without word and suddenly you’re pictured in every tabloid with one of the wealthiest men in the country. I thought he was taking advantage of you, Caitlyn. It never occurred to me that you had no recollection of your life.” His voice cracked as he gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white from the strain.
I was stunned. Although it must have been obvious to Charles that I had lost my memory after he’d actually found me, I had never considered that, before that day, he thought I’d abandoned him.
“It’s true that Victor has been taking care of me,” I said. “But I’ve got my own job now, I can start taking care of myself.”
He pursed his lips before talking. “I did go two years without acting as the older brother, maybe I was just feeling a little overprotective when I first met him.”
“Older brother?”
“Yeah, by about five minutes.” He gave me a smile. “I love you, and I just want what’s best for you
. I’m sorry if I came off as overbearing.”
“I understand. But Victor doesn’t handle threats very well. You’re lucky you got away with it this time.”
“All right, but I wasn’t the only one being defensive during that dinner.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said.
I looked out of the car window at the blur of the city moving by, tired of thinking about Victor.
Charles spent the rest of the car ride talking about his life at graduate school, but I couldn’t focus. I was afraid that I would never remember my own life, and even more afraid that I would.
***
Twenty minutes later we exited the freeway to a quaint town by the bay. It was strange to be in a place other than a large city, or Victor’s mansion. The laid-back atmosphere and cool, sunny weather were charming. Charles drove me through a neighborhood of two-story houses. Minivans of all colors were parked on the street and in driveways, and all around us children were playing. The scene was vastly different from Victor’s stark and empty estate, and it warmed my heart to see friendly young faces all about, enjoying the sun.
After passing by dozens of houses, Charles parked the car in front of a garage of a light blue house. “This is it,” he said. “The house we grew up in. Welcome home again.”
I got out of the car and stared down at two mosaic stepping stones in the grass. In the middle of both of the mosaics were a pair of handprints and footprints. The name Caitlyn was written on one and Charles on the other. I imagined Charles and I as children, sitting down at the kitchen table with our parents next to us as we made these mosaics. Did something like that actually happen? He walked up to me and looked down at the stones without saying a word.
“Is it hard for you to be back here?” I asked him quietly.
He gave a half shrug. “It’s strange. The pain is always there, but it gets easier and easier to cope with as time goes by.” We walked up the short pathway to the front door. A small stone sculpture of a frog stared back at me from the freshly cut lawn.
“Who takes care of the lawn?”
“I have a crew come out here to keep up appearances even though I’m out east. The house is mine—well, ours now that I know you’re alive.” He unlocked the front door with a house key and opened it. “You have no idea how good it is to know you’re alive,” he said, turning to me for a moment before entering the house.
I was definitely alive, although it was odd walking through a house that I felt I had never been in before. Yet, the framed pictures of me and my family that hung in every room told me otherwise. I stared at the pictures wordlessly, trying to wrap my mind around what was happening. Panic settled over me as I began to think that it was a huge mistake to have come here, that I wouldn’t be able to remember anything. Mixing lives like this seemed dangerous.
“We have scrapbooks filled with pictures,” Charles said. He tossed his car keys into a bowl by the front door and took off his sneakers. “If you want we can sit down and go through them. Maybe it’ll trigger something.”
I nodded, staring at a framed picture of my teenage self holding a paintbrush in my hand. My clothes and face were splotched with colorful paint. I looked so happy in the picture, like I didn’t have a care in the world. I probably didn’t. Why would I at that age, when I knew nothing of terror, abandonment, and survival? To grow up was one thing, but I had survived without a foundation for years before finally finding some stability. I needed to see my old art; it was the only thing I knew I would feel a connection to. “I want to see my bedroom first.”
“Of course. Upstairs. The second door to the right.” He paused. “God, I’m glad you’re okay. It’s just so weird telling you where everything is when we lived here for most of our lives.”
I gave him a smile in response, unsure of what to say, before I walked upstairs and wandered into my room. The walls were painted a light purple. A canopy bed lay in one corner of the room with purple sheets tucked tightly over it, a few stuffed animals lined up neatly next to the pillows. I walked over to the bed and picked up a card lying on top of it. It was a graduation announcement from a little over two years ago. My hands shook as I dropped it back onto the bedspread. I looked at the walls where, in some other lifetime, I had hung up paintings. The style was similar to my own, but Charles was right. It was calmer. They were the paintings of a girl who hadn’t really lived yet. I had definitely grown, even if my life had been brutally interrupted.
A vanity mirror sat near the window and taped around it were pictures of me and a group of people who I assumed were my friends. In the picture, I was kissing a young man with short brown hair. Was he my boyfriend? I tried to remember his face, but I ran up against the same familiar wall I found whenever I tried to remember my past. There was nothing there.
It was all so surreal.
I slowly walked back downstairs and watched as Charles pulled a stack of scrapbooks from a cupboard underneath the TV. “Here, sit,” he said as he dumped the books onto the coffee table.
I sat down on the couch and pulled a scrapbook from the pile. The words Caitlyn and Charles Baby Pictures had been written on the cover in elegant, loopy handwriting. I opened to the first page and was greeted by an image of two newborn babies, one wrapped in a pink blanket, the other in a blue one. Next to the babies were two smiling faces, a man and a woman. The woman was no doubt my mother; we had the same honey-brown hair that fell in waves around our shoulders. I touched my own hair as I looked at the picture. I also had my father’s large, dark eyes, but his were slightly squinted from his giant smile.
“I miss them,” Charles said as he looked at the pictures from over my shoulder.
“They look happy,” I murmured.
“I feel so guilty for what happened. I’ve been to countless therapists who assured me that the accident wasn’t my fault, but I haven’t been able to accept it. If I hadn’t acted like such a child and ran off right before your graduation ceremony, they would never have died. Nothing anyone says will change that fact. And now that I know everything you went through—” I looked up at him and saw his eyes were swollen with tears. “Everyday I wish that I could go back in time and change how I reacted. Mom and dad would still be here. You would still be yourself...”
I couldn’t imagine what it felt like to have my entire family ripped away from me in a single moment. It had happened to me, and still, I couldn’t fathom it. Just thinking about the tragic fate of the people in that photo made my heart sink with despair. This family wasn’t mine, and it was.
We spent the rest of the evening flipping through various scrapbooks, Charles reliving our childhood while I discovered it. When Charles went to his room for the night I considered just falling asleep on the couch, using the quilt draped over the back as a blanket. Instead, I decided to try sleeping in my old bed in the hopes that it might trigger my memory.
I walked upstairs and looked around the bedroom again. I didn’t want to sleep in my street clothes, so I pulled open the mirrored doors of the closet and peered inside. Dozens of dresses, shirts, and sweaters in all sorts of colors greeted me, and I lightly trailed my hands over the fabric. So this had been my style before Victor began picking out my clothes for me. Underneath the dresses was a chest of drawers. I opened it and found neatly folded pajama pants and shirts.
Of course, they fit me perfectly.
I crawled under the covers. The fleece sheets were soft against my skin, the comforter light and airy to the touch. I hadn’t imagined I could feel so comfortable in such an unfamiliar bed.
I had taken my cell phone out of my pocket and placed it on the nightstand before I changed into the pajamas. Now that I was lying in bed next to the nightstand, I noticed a blue passport next to an alarm clock with what appeared to be a plane ticket inside.
I reached over and grabbed the passport, flipping it open to the page where two tickets to Paris were tucked away. I guessed I was going to use these for a post-graduation trip, but I wondered who the seco
nd ticket was for.
As I put the passport and tickets back on the nightstand and glanced at my phone again, I noticed a diamond ring peeking out from behind a small stack of books. I picked it up to look at it, examining its smooth, unscathed band, and determined that it hadn’t been worn. As I considered slipping it onto my ring finger I had a thought. Would Victor answer if I called him? I squirmed in my bed as I remembered our lovemaking session during the picnic. The thought of his warm naked body against mine caused a surge of heat to swell between my legs.
Damn it, I needed to stop teasing myself. Victor was miles away. I wasn’t going to see him for days.
And even then, I wasn’t sure he still wanted me.
I shook my head against the pillow. Of course he would want me back. Ending the contract didn’t necessarily mean he would sever all ties between us.
Did it?
I should call him. I reached over to grab my phone, just to be sure. I took a deep breath and scrolled through my very short list of contacts until his name popped up. I pressed call and waited for the phone to ring.
He picked up almost immediately. “Hello?”
“Victor,” I said, suddenly feeling shy. It was as if I hadn’t lived with this man for months.
“Dove?”
“Hi,” I said lamely.
“Why’re you calling me?” I tried not to let the bluntness of the question upset me, but it did sting a little.
I took a deep breath. I could either hang up now or stay on the line so that I could hear the sound of his voice. “I miss you,” I told him, deciding I couldn’t go the rest of my trip without speaking to him.
“You just saw me yesterday,” he said coolly, and I blushed at my imprudence. “Why are you calling me, Dove?” he repeated.
I sighed. “I wanted to hear your voice,” I finally said. “I’m in bed all alone and I just wanted to hear your voice. I’m sorry if I bothered you.”
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