Blame

by Jeff Abbott

  Laurel said, “That’s so unfair. You know I care. It’s your choice not to come home. This house was what I have left of your father and you—the you that you were.” Her voice trailed off. “I’m sorry, Jane. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I’ll go up to my room for a bit, then I’ll get out of your hair. Thanks for the sandwich.”

  Her mother followed her up the stairs to the room, as if worried a memory might jump out and surprise her. She went into her room; it was clean, tidy, had been dusted, but was otherwise unchanged from when she had left it to go first to St. Michael’s, and then, when she flunked out and couldn’t bear living next to the Halls, out onto the streets. A stack of books at the bedside—last summer she had finally worked up the courage to read memoirs of people who had entirely lost their memories: a Texas housewife who had a ceiling fan fall on her head, an Arizona businessman who slipped in an office bathroom, and a Norwegian man who had fallen from a ladder. These seemed ludicrous ways to get a devastating amnesia, but they were heartbreakingly real. They never remembered anything from before their accidents. Sometimes their lives healed and their families stayed intact, other times they did not. She wondered how her story would end.

  She sensed her mother follow her into the room. She nearly turned and asked her mother, Why do you have that note? Why didn’t you ever tell me? Do you know what kind of trouble David was in?

  What if she knew and she had never told Jane? Why, to shield her? As if things could be worse. Laurel’s attempts to protect her—the lie about the deer running onto the road—had backfired badly.

  “You see the room’s ready for you,” her mother said. “I want you to stay. Isn’t this a nicer option than a hospital? You can pretend the Halls aren’t next door. We’re all very good at avoiding each other.”

  “I figured it out,” Jane said, turning to face her. “Something went out of you when Dad died. It died in you, too. And I guess you feel I’ve exceeded your amount of grief you expected to have in your life, and I’m sorry for that, but as much as I hate not having my life be what I thought it was going to be, I can’t stay here with you. I can’t live next door to the Halls. I’m sorry you’re choosing a house over me.” Burn it down, she thought. Burn the house down, then Mom would have to move. It was insane, but at times, the thought seemed to make perfect sense, and that frightened Jane.

  She walked past her mother, and Laurel said, “I’ll give you money if you’ll go into that hospital. If you let them help you.”

  “A hospital won’t fix me.”

  “You’re depressed because you’re homeless,” Laurel said. “You won’t be homeless at a hospital. You could write your stories. I’d visit every day. You could get your life back on track.”

  Jane pivoted the conversation. “You know what you could let me have? The Toyota.” It was a car she bought Jane when they were optimistic she would soon drive again. “I could use it right now.”

  “For what?”

  She didn’t want to explain herself or the Faceplace page. She didn’t want Mom looking at that.

  “I thought, now that I have a place to stay, I might try to get a job. I would need a car.” The lie slipped out, so easy, so bold, and would surely be Laurel-approved.

  “I sold the Toyota. We didn’t need it, what with you not driving and not living here.”

  Great. Jane started down the stairs.

  “You’re telling me a white lie, Jane. You’re not thinking about a job. Why do you need a car?”

  Jane didn’t answer. She walked to the garage. Yes, there was only her mom’s aging red Volvo there.

  “If you can’t get your head together, I’ll have to take action. Jane, I would have you committed rather than see you on the street.” Laurel said this to her back, iron in her voice.

  Jane turned to face her. “You would really do that?”

  “For your own good. No school will take you again until you’ve gotten your life back on track. What will you do without an education? You’re one hit off a crack pipe from turning into a street whore or a druggie or I don’t know what.” She stopped as if aware she’d taken a step too far.

  “The vote of confidence is inspiring.” She went out the front door. She wanted the fresh air. Matteo Vasquez was gone, and she wondered for a moment if her mother had seen him, sitting in his car. She thought not. Mom would have mentioned it.

  “Jane?” her mother called to her.

  “What?”

  “I love you. Please don’t go. Please.” But she didn’t step forward, she didn’t chase Jane down the driveway to embrace her. “Everything I’ve done. Or am doing. Is to protect you.”

  Doing? “I love you, too, Mom, I really do,” she said. But she thought: I don’t trust you.

  David’s note meant something. It had to, tucked away, protected, preserved. She wasn’t ready to tell her mother she had it. Perhaps it could be leverage with the people on her list. A passport, of sorts. David had been in trouble and she meant to find out what kind of trouble it was.

  14

  SHILOH ROOKE HAD finally picked out the ring. He’d stopped by the jewelry store three times, summoning his courage. Buying the ring was as good as asking Mimi if she would be his wife. It was a step you couldn’t take back. Once the ring was in his pocket, then soon it would be on her finger, and then it would be forever. One woman, forever. He liked the novelty of that.

  He went inside, the saleswoman smiling at his now-familiar face. He bought the ring, put it into his pocket with a shaking hand.

  “She’ll love it,” the saleswoman said. “You made a thoughtful choice.”

  “Thoughtful.” It wasn’t a word applied a lot to Shiloh and he liked the sound of it. He didn’t even wink at the saleswoman, which would have once been his standard response. Marriage changed a man in the best way, his father had told him, and now Shiloh wanted to believe that. He stopped at a high-end grocery, where he never normally shopped, picked up the customized picnic lunch he’d ordered—Brie, flatbread crackers, peeled shrimp and remoulade, roast beef sandwiches with horseradish, potato chips that were somehow artisan, and a bottle of rosé wine that was pink but the catering lady promised it would be delicious and not sweet.

  He and Mimi both worked crazy schedules, but they both had today and tonight off, so…Here goes. He drove over to Mimi’s apartment, knocked on her door.

  She answered the door and he raised the basket over his face, then lowered it with an excited grin. She looked furious. Beyond furious. He tried a confused smile.

  “Hi, babe,” he said. “Am I late?”

  “You’re right on time,” she said, “for me to tell you to get the hell out of here. I never want to see you again.”

  “Meems?”

  “I know about all your other women,” Mimi said. “I saw your sex tapes.”

  He thought the earth was going to open and swallow him up. He tried to speak and it came out as an awkward laugh, and from her expression that was fire on gasoline. Deny? Accept? How could she know? He tried another dodge. “What’s happened?”

  “What’s happened is that someone sent me a flash drive with your little sex tapes, Shiloh. We’re done.”

  But I have a ring for you. I love you. “Mimi, no, wait, that’s all over…”

  “So you admit it.”

  He knew his next words would make or break him. “I wasn’t used to dating just one woman. OK? And I made some bad choices, but I love you, Mimi.” This couldn’t be happening. It could not be happening. “I brought all your favorites. I brought this pink wine…”

  “Choke on it. You screwed around and you recorded yourself with these women. Did they know they were having sex on camera? I bet they did not.”

  “Please. I bought you a ring. This morning.”

  For a moment her anger ebbed, and then the fury surged back. “Then you’re in the return-policy window. Don’t ever call me, or text me, or contact me again.”

  “Who sent this to you?” Shiloh could hea
r his rage and grief exploding from his voice. He would kill whoever it was. Kill them.

  “It was anonymous. Good-bye. Have a nice life.” She slammed the door in his face and then he could hear her sobbing on the other side of the door. He thought of kicking in the door, to plead for forgiveness again. Instead he leaned against the door as if all the strength had fled from his body.

  How could anyone have the recordings? He planned to get rid of them once Mimi said yes. They were in a lockbox under his bed. Someone had to have known about them. But he had never told anyone, and none of the twelve women had known.

  “This isn’t over!” he screamed at the door.

  He left the picnic basket behind, like a pathetic peace offering, and stumbled back toward his car. He had taken a dozen steps, when he heard her door open, and two more steps, when he felt something hit the back of his head. He stumbled, looked down at the ground. The wheel of Brie. Next she threw the box of ridiculously expensive flatbread crackers, next the bottle of wine. She had a good arm and the bottle of rosé exploded across his car’s hood.

  He got into the car. She ran toward him, throwing the basket, and it landed on the hood of the car. He drove away, with the broken bottle and the basket skittering off the hood and into the road. He made it two miles before he pulled into an office parking lot and pushed back the tears. In their place he let a hot rage build.

  Who could have done this to him? He had no enemies. Well, just guys he’d tangled with over the years, but they were all morons who couldn’t pull this off. He had stopped dealing the black-market prescription drugs two years ago, and he hadn’t worked as muscle for any of his friends who dealt in a year. He could not imagine any of the women he’d seen while dating Mimi betraying him with this level of sophistication. It had just been screwing around, nothing more. And he was sure they didn’t know they’d been filmed.

  Someone hated him enough to ruin his life.

  But he would find out, and he’d find a way to make them suffer.

  15

  Jane’s Book of Memory, written in the

  days and weeks after the crash

  What I wasn’t prepared for was disbelief. Not about the suicide note. Not about Mom’s ill-fated deer story.

  About my amnesia.

  Every day was a gauntlet.

  A girl, stopping me and Kamala on our second day back at school (Kamala had been assigned to help me, since we had several classes together and she assured me we had been good friends forever, and yes, she and David had dated, but she was sure that suicide note was some kind of misunderstood bit of scribbling, and after that first day I was just so grateful that she was standing up for me, her, the person who could have hated me the most). But I couldn’t help that people were staring at us walking together. I saw hands cupped over whispering mouths, gossiping heads touching each other. Everyone knew me, and I felt like I hardly knew anyone.

  “This is so generous of you, Kamala. Hi, Jane.” The girl who spoke to us had warmth in her voice for Kamala and a coolness for me. I could hear the drop in her voice. “Do you really not remember things? Like Jason Bourne in the movies?”

  “Of course she’s lost her memory,” Kamala said. “Most of it. It’s coming back, slowly.” She put an arm around my shoulder. She did this a lot when I first came back to school, as if she could cocoon me from the painful uncertainty, the stares, the whispers. And to send a signal, I suppose, that I had her loyalty.

  “Really? I heard, but I didn’t think it was true.”

  “I remember my childhood years,” I said. My voice sounded so dry. “Not so much high school.”

  “You think it would be the reverse,” the girl mused. “I don’t remember what I ate for dinner last week.”

  “Morgan.” Kamala sounded like her patience was wearing thin. “She doesn’t know you. Or anyone she didn’t know in elementary or middle school. It’s like she’s still fourteen. I thought name tags, for our classmates, might not be a bad idea.”

  Forcing everyone to wear name tags. Morgan had spoken to me, but a lot of kids just glared at me. Because of David, of course. He was dead and I was alive and compared to him I was a nobody. I suddenly, very badly wanted to go home. But I had to do this. I had to.

  “Name tags,” Morgan said. “That would be a great service project for me.” And she left, like she’d been given a job.

  There was more of the same as we navigated from the student center through the hallways.

  “Jane, this is Claudia Gomez. She went to middle school with us.”

  I nodded. But Claudia had changed so much; she had gone from being kind of mousy to vibrantly pretty with a kind smile. We transform into new people in those years from middle to high school. “I remember. Hi, Claudia.”

  “Hi. Did you really lose your memory?”

  No, I just thought in the aftermath of our friend’s death this would be a great conversation starter. Or a funny joke. Ha, ha.

  “Yes. The last three years.”

  “Wow. I’d like to forget freshman year.” And Claudia moved on, as if I were contagious.

  Kamala eased me out of the hallway traffic. I could feel stare after stare after stare. Like rocks being thrown, or bullets. “I’m embarrassed for our classmates.”

  “I’m not optimistic about this.”

  And I shouldn’t have been. The variations of greetings I got:

  “Of course you remember me!” (Yes, but the last time I remember you, we were in eighth grade.)

  “Jane! This amnesia thing is a rumor, right?” (No. It’s a curse. I am like Snow White, except the curse continues after I wake up from my sleep.)

  “Jane, sweetheart! Hey, baby, how you doing?” (“Baby”? Is he an ex-boyfriend? He was kind of cute. But I also thought Mom or Kamala would have mentioned a boyfriend, or that he would have shown up at the hospital.)

  The rest of that charming hallway scene went this way:

  Kamala: “She doesn’t know you, Parker.” (Her voice coated in ice.)

  Parker: “Well, Jane, we’ve been dating awhile.” (Leaning close.) “More than dating. Meet me in the parking lot after school and I’ll show you what you like.” (Lowers voice.) “Because you’re not going to get many other offers these days.”

  Me: (Speechless, confused, and angry at myself for being speechless.)

  Kamala, shoving him: “The concussions have caught up with you, moron. Get away from her.”

  Me, standing, shivering, realizing, You are at the mercy of all these people. And some of them are going to think it’s a joke.

  Parker: “I’ll give you something to remember, Jane.” (Wiggles his tongue at me.) “You won’t forget me.” (And then laughing and high-fiving with his friends, like he’s accomplished something of lasting value.)

  The hot little rage demon in me that Mom had warned me about decided to dance out of the bottle. “I do remember, Parker!” I yelled at him. “I remember how tiny and quick it was. Thanks for the reminder.”

  Kamala’s jaw dropped. I shrieked this down the hall at Parker, LOUD, and he froze, and then he came back toward me, muttering “you little murdering whore” and then this big blond wall of a boy stepped between us, put his hand on Parker’s chest, and told him to stop it. It was Trevor Blinn, the boy who’d visited me in the hospital but seemed to have nothing to say.

  Parker tried to dodge around Trevor and then suddenly Parker was pushed up against the wall and Trevor was whispering in his ear, low and soft and even in the sudden hush that fell across the gathered students, you couldn’t hear it. I noticed Trevor was wearing a knee brace, but he didn’t seem bothered by it in pushing Parker into the wall.

  “Get off me,” Parker said when Trevor was done whispering, and then Trevor stepped back and Parker eased away from him. He stared at me and then went back to his friends. I kept staring at him. Murdering whore. I still felt weak from the wreck, but at that moment I could have punched him, again and again. It was an awful thought and I wondered if it was a thought th
e old Jane would have had.

  Trevor looked at me. He said nothing. Then he looked at Kamala, like he was angry.

  “Thanks, Trev,” Kamala said. “Thanks for standing up for her.” I realized she had her hand on my arm.

  “What are you doing, Kamala?” he asked her. As if I weren’t there. “What are you doing?”

  “Helping our friend,” she said, her voice suddenly icy. She put her arm around my shoulder. “She needs me right now.”

  Then he gave me a long look. I said, “Thank you, Trevor.” He just nodded and walked on, limping slightly with his leg brace, settling his backpack more firmly on his shoulder.

  “He got bigger from when I remember him,” I said. “What happened to his knee?”

  “Football.” Then Kamala said, “Yeah, I figured you really do remember.” Only after a moment did I realize she thought I actually remembered an encounter, ugh, with Parker.

  “Gross, no, I don’t. I just wanted Parker to shut up.”

  “But your memory about the deer, that’s true,” she said. “Right?”

  And so this was a big moment about lying, and I made my choice, because I’d realized something.

  If information was power, then they all had sway over me. I didn’t know before two minutes ago that Parker was vicious or that Trevor was the kind of friend to truly stand up for me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s hazy, but yeah.”

  “Oh, good. You let me know what else you remember.”

  “I will.” I wished I remembered more recent memories of Trevor. I needed my friends. But he didn’t seem interested in renewing our friendship.

  “Forget Parker,” Kamala said. And then she said, “Oh, I did not mean that word choice.”

  “I know.”

  “You remember me, right, Jane?” an anxious-sounding girl said, stopping and staring into my face. “We met freshman year.”

  “She doesn’t remember,” Kamala said, already tiring of the novelty. “She does not remember, OK?” Raising her voice in the hallway. The bell sounded; we were late, the gawkers were late, teachers coming into the hallways to see why kids were not hurrying in, still talking about the fight that almost was over the school’s biggest mental freak.