Blame

by Jeff Abbott

  “And of course you’d pick today to talk to me.” She turned and walked away. Fast.

  Kevin Ngota hurried along beside her. “Yes. Because I thought today might be difficult, so you’d be open to a new approach.”

  “Please leave me alone.”

  “I believe I can be of help to you…”

  At that she stopped. “Oh, thank goodness. My hero. You’re who I’ve been waiting for. Everyone else has tried to fix me and has failed. But, hurray, here you are.” She threw up her hands in celebration.

  “I mean no offense. My understanding was you are not currently seeing a therapist.”

  She took a step back. “So a counselor and a stalker. You’re a double threat.”

  “No, no, I just asked around. I’ve never done this before. I’m botching it quite badly and I truly do want to help you.” He had a charming smile. Jane could see that but was not swayed by it.

  “I’m not interested.”

  “Talking it through could prompt memories…”

  “And by that you mean it would give you quotes for your master’s thesis.” She turned away and then stopped, turned back to face him. “How do you even know about me?”

  “I learned about your accident when I started looking for people in Austin who had traumatic amnesia. ‘The Girl Who Doesn’t Remember.’ I read those articles.”

  “Yeah, not a fan of those stories. Matteo Vasquez got addicted to that headline.”

  “Well, I read his articles on you. I learned you were a student here.”

  “You can understand why I don’t want to talk about this. I think it’s unethical that you approached me.” She had found that nearly any shrink or doctor flinched, automatically, at an accusation of being unethical. It would normally deflect them and put them on the defensive, and then she got her way.

  “It’s only unethical if you’re currently seeing a therapist, and you’re not. I honestly believe I could be of help to you. Your friend, Adam, he told me that you were no longer in therapy. This could be a new start for you.” Kevin handed Jane a note with his e-mail and phone number. “Think about it. It’s just you talking and me listening.”

  Adam. Trying to help, and making things worse. She appreciated everything he did for her but sometimes she wished he’d just back off. “What, so your ears are better than anyone else’s? The doctors said if I haven’t gotten all the memories back by now, I’ll probably never remember.”

  “That might be true of a physical cause. But yours could be an emotional block, because of losing your friend, and the period of your lost memories begins soon before your father’s death. Many amnesiacs regain those lost memories. In London I successfully worked with a man who had lost ten years. You only lost three years.”

  He managed to make her condition sound mild, and normally she would have gotten angry, but now she laughed. After her morning with Perri Hall and Kamala Grayson, she laughed.

  Bolstered by her smile, he continued: “And the memories could return if you’re emotionally repressing them, Jane. It might not be the physical damage. Wouldn’t you want to know?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said, her voice flat as stone. “You can pretend my memories are going to pop back into place, but they haven’t. They won’t.”

  He lowered his voice. “Jane, people said the crash was an attempt to kill both yourself and David Hall. Because of this note, in your handwriting, that was found in the debris. That you must have written it earlier that evening and then acted upon it.”

  She stared at the ground. She could just walk away, but she had to find a way to discourage him. “I obviously have no memory of writing that note. No matter what anyone else suggests.”

  “That’s still OK, Jane.” Kevin Ngota used her name, again and again, like it was a tip he’d gotten from a book, to create a connection. “We could try a range of approaches. You could talk about the experience of not remembering. How your amnesia affects your life, your choices…”

  “There’s nothing you could do for me.”

  “Hope is scary, isn’t it? It can crush you as much as lift you up.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Contact me if you would like to try.”

  What was she going to do after she proved it was Kamala harassing her? What was the next step in life? Couldn’t she try again? It wasn’t like her calendar was full. “Sure. I’ll try.”

  The bell tower chimed noon. He didn’t make a big show of her saying yes. Mr. Persistent had turned into Mr. Cool.

  “Three o’clock today, will that work? I’m in Fletcher Hall, room two-eleven.”

  “Today I went to my friend’s grave. I went to the crash site. There were…people there who don’t like me at all. They still blame me. They think it wasn’t an accident. One of them tried to hurt me. The other is smearing me online.” As soon as she said it, she knew she sounded paranoid, she could hear the insistent fear in her words.

  Kevin Ngota’s smile had narrowed. “Then let’s talk about that, if you like.”

  She nodded. And then he turned and walked away.

  If you like. Maybe she’d go, maybe she wouldn’t.

  Jane pulled herself through the window into Adam’s room. He was at class or at lunch. She lay down on the bed, and Kevin Ngota’s words sent her to shivering.

  Hope is scary, isn’t it? What could he know, with his nice smile and his intact brain, his sense of self never disturbed, about hopelessness?

  She took off the sunglasses. She put them carefully on Adam’s side table and put her arm across her face. Beautiful darkness. No one looking at her. No one pointing.

  No one blaming.

  Jane opened her eyes.

  Hope. Hope can crush you.

  7

  Jane’s Book of Memory, written in the

  days and weeks following the crash

  This is about my first night home in my old room. It was like sleeping in a hotel where you have never been, and the walls are weighted with pictures from someone else’s life. But it’s your life. So they tell you. But do they edit the story for you?

  I remember there was a reporter named Vasquez, a young, geeky man from the Austin newspaper waiting for us outside the house, asking if I had remembered anything more about the accident that had killed my next-door neighbor, and Mom got out of the car and screeched at him that he was trespassing and she would file a restraining order, and my head hurt so bad suddenly, I thought I would have to crawl to the door. The pain was blinding. I’d just made a brief reentry into this world and now I was going to leave it. I went to my knees. Vasquez said to Mom, “Ma’am, your daughter is fainting,” so then she had to stop yelling at him and help me. She kept bellowing at Vasquez, although it felt like nails in my brain when she did that.

  Vasquez asked her about the suicide note. That had become a story because they hadn’t found it right away, the police had only found it the next day. It was in police custody as evidence and not to be discussed, but then the story leaked. This crash had been all over the news. Lakehaven kids. Kids of parents prominent in the high-tech community, Austin’s business jewel. A famous so-called “mom blogger” who had once drawn hundreds of thousands of daily readers a few years ago. Next-door neighbors. Childhood friends. Vasquez ended up writing three articles about me, a newspaper series he would call “The Girl Who Doesn’t Remember.” This was when all these book titles with “girl” were big and I guess he was trying to ride the wave. Or score a book deal off my misery. I’m sure he’s nice, to the people who know him.

  We went inside and Mom slammed the door. More nails in the brain. I didn’t recognize anything. It was terrifying. My memories of my early life had only just begun to return, rising like scant bubbles to the surface of my mind. I (sort of) knew my mother now, and she had told me my father had died—after I had remembered him and asked for him twice.

  I stared at the stairs, and the walls. This was just a new place that wasn’t the hospital. Mom started babbling. “This is the
window where you used to wait for your father and me to come home from our jobs. We had an au pair then; she was from Sweden. Do you know that there’s a country called Sweden?”

  I probably nodded.

  “And here was where you fell down the stairs and bumped your head…I wrote a very popular piece about that on the blog when it happened…oh, gosh, do you think you hurt your brain then, maybe that’s why your memories aren’t coming back now, oh, I need to tell that to the doctor, I completely forgot”—like she was the one with amnesia—“so does any of it seem familiar?” So much expectation in that last word.

  “A little,” I said, because it seemed to mean so much to her. Dr. K warned me not to lie about memories, but she needed to try living with this “Mom” person, who was constantly demanding that I test my memory, which was like catching smoke. Mom went to the window and looked outside, peering past the curtain to see if the reporter was still there.

  “I don’t like him. Not at all,” she said quietly.

  I wanted to ask about the note. I decided to wait until we were settled.

  I stood in the den. Looked around. Suddenly I could picture toys on the floor and a Christmas tree in the corner, a hazy image…but I didn’t know where my room was.

  I wandered into the kitchen, to the breakfast nook. This seemed more familiar—the smells of food, me sitting at the dinner table while Mom typed in her office—yes, there it was, through the French doors, her antique table and her computer. I remembered her office. A little swell of joy opened in my chest.

  “Do you still write the mommy blog?” I wasn’t asking from memory; she had talked about it while I lay in the hospital bed, working it into conversations with an odd pride.

  “You always called it that. Never just ‘the blog’ or by its title, Blossoming Laurel.” An edge in her voice.

  “Sorry. The blog.” I thought the title a bit too cutesy, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  “Not since the accident. Too many people felt I hadn’t been a good mother…” Then she stopped. “I’m tired of writing it. Of writing about you. You didn’t like it as you got older.”

  I felt a vague unease when I thought of her blog, but I didn’t know why. That was for worrying about later. I went back to the front; the reporter was still out there, but standing away from our yard.

  I took a step toward the stairs and Mom realized, maybe, that I should be the priority. I looked at her and wondered if she’d slept at all in the past week.

  She enclosed me in a hug. “You remember your room, I’m sure. Let’s go see it.” I followed her up the stairs. I paused at the family photos on the wall. Me, as a baby, as a toddler, as an elementary school student. And a man.

  “Is that Dad?” I asked. She hadn’t yet shown me a picture. She didn’t have one on her phone, hadn’t brought one to the hospital.

  She nodded. “Do you remember him?”

  “I knew it was him. Before I asked. But…I don’t see him, like in a movie of my memories, doing anything yet.”

  My dad. He had a blondish beard in some and was clean shaven in others.

  “Jane? Do you remember me yet, or do you call me Mom because I told you to?” Her voice was tense.

  “I remember you, Mom,” I lied, because it seemed to matter, and she was all I had right now, and with time, little moments of the past with her were beginning to take shape, to clearly appear. Her office, the smells of dinner in the kitchen. But only scattered bits.

  “Tell me something you remember.” She sounded insistent.

  I grabbed at the smoke in my brain and came up with: “You sitting at your desk and writing Blossoming Laurel on your computer while I ate dinner.”

  It was vague, but it was enough. And apparently accurate. Mom tried a bright smile, and then trudged ahead, determined to get me to my room.

  You’d think the place I spent the most time would send a resounding boom of memory through my head. It didn’t mean much. The room was medium-sized, with a bed and movie posters. I remembered where the bookshelf was. The movie posters on the wall meant nothing to me.

  “You like movies,” Mom said. “You said you might want to be a screenwriter one day. Or write for video games or television. You’re a very gifted writer, Jane, like me, and you will be again.” As if any gifts I had might be lost along with the memories.

  “You mentioned that,” I said. It was weird that I felt like I had to keep her calm, when I was the one in crisis. There was a movie poster from Casablanca (a black-and-white movie, how odd), from The Piano (a musical, maybe?), from The Hours, with three women staring back at me. I knew none of these films. I wondered if I would like them now. Would my tastes change if I couldn’t remember what I liked?

  I had not remembered the room’s location, but I immediately recognized my bedspread. The arrangement of books on one shelf, unchanged from when I was younger. I knelt and studied the titles. I recognized them all. I realized, with a jolt, that one was missing. My favorite: A Wrinkle in Time. How could I remember that book but not all my friends or my own father’s passing?

  But the book was gone. Was I imagining that I thought it should be there? It was an odd thing to notice, but I was clinging to any recognizable sign that this was the home I knew. Why was it so important? Why?

  “Where’s my copy of A Wrinkle in Time?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, honey, I’m sure it’s around here somewhere. You remember that’s your favorite book?” Hope sweetened her voice.

  “Yes. Meg and Charles Wallace and Aunt Beast and Camazotz. I remember the whole story.”

  I thought she was going to cry, maybe in relief. If I could remember fictional people and places, more memories of what was real would surely soon return.

  Below the shelf of books was a line of video games: more of the puzzle-solving variety than first-person shooters. I pulled one out at random, with two cartoonish, big-eyed girls on the cover: SPYGIRLZ! I smiled.

  “You and David used to play video games together,” she said, then bit her lip.

  I stared at the game. Remember, I told myself. Remember. You played it with David. But nothing. I put it back and moved away from the games.

  On the shelf were sketchbooks. I pulled one down. It was designed for drawing but I’d filled it with stories. Several pages were full of three-panel comic strips with sarcastic teddy bears. “You and David made comic strips just for fun, when you were little. He drew the pictures and you wrote the stories. I wanted to send them to the newspaper, they were so cute. He drew very well, he wanted to major in art, but Cal and Perri would hear none of that.” I studied the drawings: cutesy bears, confident superheroes. He was talented.

  I moved to the other side of the room. Photos of me, with other kids, were stuck on a blue corkboard above my desk.

  And a picture of my dad. Dead from a gun accident. Now Mom had to tell me twice that he was dead. She carried a heavy load, I was aware now. I wondered how she would get through this nightmare—and what I would do if she didn’t, if she couldn’t cope. Her strength seemed, well, as variable as the wind.

  “You made me buy blue, although I wanted to get you pink,” Mom said, pointing at the corkboard. “You might like the pink better now.” As if my amnesia was a good way to enforce her decor choices.

  “The blue is fine,” I said. I didn’t want her to alter anything in this room. This was a moment of my old life, untouched since the accident. This was a map to me and my past few years. The last time I’d been here I’d had no idea that my life was about to evaporate. I looked at the pictures on the shelf. The framed ones seemed to be reserved for adults. Me and Dad. Me and Mom. Not Mom and Dad together. I wondered, What was their marriage like? Did they love each other or did they have troubles? I have no idea. How odd not to know. Then to the blue corkboard. Most of these were with high school friends. Standing awkwardly in a group, the girls in pretty dresses, the boys in suits or ties, all of us by a pool.

  “Homecoming,” Mom said. “Do you
remember that?”

  I knew the tall, broad-shouldered blond boy next to me was named Trevor Blinn, he’d come to see me once in the hospital after I woke up. He seemed quiet and slightly scared of me, like he didn’t know what to say, but he had brought flowers and I’d watched him give my mom an awkward hug. I didn’t want anyone hugging on me. I was still physically so sore from the accident. An old friend, although he’d certainly gotten taller and bigger since I remembered middle school.

  But he made a memory tickle.

  “Husky jeans.” I pointed at Trevor. “When we were little. A girl with a big red bow in her hair made fun of Trevor having to wear husky-sized jeans, and I was so mad at her, we got into a fight on the playground and I snatched that bow right out of her hair. I got sent to the principal’s office and the boys teased Trevor about me fighting for him. Fourth grade?”

  “Yes,” Mom nodded. “You remember.”

  “Well, I remember that one incident. Don’t get too excited. You picked me up at school.” The words came in a rush. “You took me home and talked to me about it and then wrote about it in your blog. But you got me pizza for lunch, and Trevor’s mom called to say she was sorry I’d gotten into trouble.” A memory, slick and clear and newly born. “And David and I did a comic strip about a girl who fights bullies and called it Bowsnatcher!” I thought I would faint. Memory, bright and clear and full. Overwhelming.

  “And you still hate giant bows.” Mom pressed her hands to her mouth in happiness.

  I didn’t recall my feelings on that important fashion issue. I looked closer at the homecoming picture. Adam was on the other side of the group, smirking; I knew his name from his hospital visit but remembered nothing about him. How could I forget that handsome smirk? He had announced, as if nothing was wrong with me, “I know you don’t remember me, but you will, I’m your friend who’s a bit of a jerk.”

  The pretty dark-haired girl next to me was Kamala. Our heads were nearly together, our smiles matching. [Written in the margin in a different color of ink: In two more weeks many more childhood memories of Kamala and Trevor would start to rush back, but I didn’t know that then.]