by Hillary Avis
Please, let him be in here.
The table of contents didn’t let her down. She found “Rye, Allison” and “Rye, Paul” there, one after the other.
She eagerly turned to Paul’s chapter, her hands trembling and her heart quaking in her chest.
“He couldn’t believe his ears. The sound of her voice was like music...” Allison was suddenly cold. She rubbed her arms to warm up, conscious of people moving quickly past her, their terse comments to each other echoing around the room.
“BP good.”
“Weight forty-two sixty-two.”
“Apgar nine.”
A baby’s cry rose thinly over the bustle, and Allison’s heart swelled. Mine.
A woman wearing pale pink scrubs and blue nitrile gloves thrust a squirming bundle into her arms. “Here you go, Daddy.”
Perfect. The baby was perfect. Her eyes were squeezed shut, just folds of skin, and her pink lips were pursed as though she were considering whether or not she wanted to be born. Allison leaned and pressed her forehead against the baby’s. “Welcome, sweetheart. I’m so thankful you’re here.”
She looked over to the hospital bed, where—
White-hot pain seared through her eyes, forcing her out of the memory.
Chapter 23
Allison gasped and dropped the book where she stood, pressing her fingers against her stinging eyelids. As she waited for the residual sensation to subside, she wondered why the book had pushed her so roughly out of Paul’s memory. The other memories she’d read had just faded when she reached the end. Something was different about this one.
When her vision returned to normal, she stooped to pick up the book and leafed through it to find her place, hoping to pick up where she’d left off. She knew that in the next line, she’d see herself, a new mother in a hospital bed, through Paul’s eyes. She found the place, near the end of the page, and started reading again.
“He looked over to the hospital bed, where—”
She stopped, unable to continue. The facing page was a new chapter, titled “Alexander Shubert.”
She peered closer at the gutter between the two pages. Nothing seemed amiss until she ran her finger along it. Faintly, she felt a ridge between the pages and then a sharp, delicate pain. She jerked her hand back and instinctively sucked her finger before pulling it out to examine the tip, now crossed by a shallow, stinging paper cut. A fat drop of blood welled and she put her finger back in her mouth as she stared at the book.
A page of Paul’s memory—the page that showed her face, her identity—had been removed. Cut out. Excised. And it had to have been deliberate. The page was cut so neatly and so close to the binding that no one would even notice it was gone unless they happened to read the memory.
She put the book on the table and ran back through the kitchen to the pantry, scrabbling through the books until she found Baking Bread. She turned to the pumpernickel rye chapter, found her own memory of learning how to make it, and then flipped past it, holding the book close to the window so she could look in the gutter between the end of her memory and the beginning of the next one.
Sure enough, the stubby ends of three missing pages were there, the cuts neatly offset so the pages would lie flatter and the removal would be less noticeable.
“Those have to be Paul’s.” The sound of her own voice was jarring, though it was barely above a whisper. Someone had deliberately removed this memory, too, only they’d taken the whole thing this time. This was why Paul couldn’t remember the bakery. Or at least, he couldn’t remember baking pumpernickel rye. But what about the memories he did have—the older ones?
She left the book on the counter by the sink and ran up the stairs to the front bedroom, yanking open the closet and falling to her knees as she opened the glass cabinet and slid First Real Kisses from the shelf. She held her breath as she located their names in order: Rye, Allison; Rye, Paul.
She resisted the urge to look at hers and flipped straight to Paul’s chapter, expecting to find only the faintest evidence that the pages were ever there. But to her surprise, she found it. His name was written in bold curlicues across the top of the page.
“Freckles were sprinkled across her face like stars. He reached his trembling hand out to touch her cheek...” Allison found herself staring into the huge brown eyes of a pretty teenager who sat next to her on the porch swing. Michelle. The name popped into her head. She was a lifeguard at the pool in Elkhorn and her galaxy of freckles had grown more dense over the summer because of the sun. Allison thought she looked more beautiful than ever.
Michelle stood up abruptly and went to the porch rail, staring out at the dark pasture. “It’s a nice night for a walk. We could go down to the creek.” She glanced back over her freckled shoulder at the living room window, where Allison knew Michelle’s parents were keeping a disapproving eye on them.
Allison swallowed. In the deep shadows of the willows along the creek, no one would see them. They’d hardly be able to see each other there, in the dark. Maybe it’d be less embarrassing that way, in case they somehow did it wrong and bumped teeth or bit each other’s lips or—
Allison snapped the book shut, her cheeks burning.. She couldn’t bring herself to read the rest of the memory, partly because she didn’t need to know what it was like to kiss Michelle-with-the-freckles and partly because, for the first time, she felt like she was invading someone’s privacy by reading his memories. His private thoughts, his insecurities. His desires.
It was silly of her. After twenty-five years of marriage, she and Paul had shared so many embarrassments and humiliations that nothing could change her opinion of him. But it felt wrong to pry into a memory that wasn’t relevant to her own life. Still, she had to check the end to see if any part of it had been removed. She turned to the last page of his memory, her eyes deliberately unfocused so she could avoid reading the words on the page, and felt in the gutter between his chapter and the next one.
Nothing. It was smooth, two hills of paper meeting as they should. The memory was whole.
She put down the book, her mind reeling.
Why hadn’t this memory been removed? This one was easy to find—Paul’s name was right in the table of contents, not buried in the pumpernickel rye chapter. And yet this memory was completely intact, and the Baking Bread memory was completely gone. And the memory of Emily being born was only half-removed...why?
Her blood chilled as she realized the common denominator. An infant Emily was there in the memories—but Allison wasn’t. As soon as Paul had looked toward the hospital bed, the bed where Allison was, the memory was gone. Cut out. Slashed out, judging from the pain Allison felt when she tried to read the pages.
She couldn’t get around it—the fact was, someone had deliberately removed Paul’s memories. Not all his memories, but all his memories of her. Of their life together—their business, their home, their marriage.
But why? Why would anyone want to steal that from him?
It was nearly midnight, so she went to bed and lay there, Pogo curled at her feet and the covers pulled up to her chin, and stared at the ceiling. Her mind couldn’t let go of the mystery, and she didn’t want to dull her thoughts with her usual dose of sleeping pills.
Who had cut Paul’s memories of his life with Allison from all the books in the library?
It had to be a former guardian. No one else knew about the library, at least not according to Myra. And nobody else would have the time to go through all of the books looking for Paul’s memories. Though Allison hadn’t yet gone through the books to confirm that his memories were removed, she knew very well the extent of his memory loss.
He didn’t remember their family. He didn’t even recognize Emily. He didn’t remember his business, his baking skills, his recipes. Even when his body returned to old habits, kneading and shaping imaginary dough, that didn’t take a foothold in his memory and remind him of his profession. All that was just gone.
The morning that it happened, Paul wa
s already gone from the bed when she woke. His space was cold, but the pillow still held the indent of his head. She’d snuggled under the quilt, wiggling her toes to enjoy the last bit of warmth before she got up to help him in the bakery.
But when she’d finally thrown off the covers and made her way downstairs, the bakery was dark, the ovens empty. She knew instantly that something was terribly wrong. She’d dialed Bobby Higgins at home, she was so worried.
“Sorry to wake you, but Paul is gone. I can’t find him anywhere.” Her voice sounded frantic even to her own ears.
“How long have you been looking?” Bobby’s voice was groggy and stiff; she’d woken him. Of course, like any normal person he was asleep at five o’clock in the morning.
“I haven’t looked,” she said urgently. Then, realizing how stupid that sounded, she added, “But I know something happened to him. I know. He left for his walk and he didn’t come back. He’s always back by now.”
“Well.” She heard rustling on Bobby’s end of the line. “I guess I’m up. I’ll take a cruise around town and see what I see. Don’t you worry, Allison. He probably just stopped to help someone in a bind. That’s the kind of thing he’d do.”
It was the kind of thing he’d do. Allison took a few deep breaths after she hung up the phone, her hand pressed against her fluttering heart. Then she’d gone to work making quick breads to compensate for all the yeasted dough that hadn’t had time to rise. She was up to her elbows in muffins and scones and banana bread by the time Bobby Higgins showed up with Paul in tow.
“Oh, thank God!” Allison threw her arms around Paul. But instead of dropping a kiss on her forehead like she expected, he patted her on the back, a puzzled expression on his face. She dropped her arms to her sides. “Are you OK?”
“Yes, I’m fine, thanks.” He turned where he stood, staring around the Ryes & Shine. “You know, my grandparents had a bakery in this very building. Are you the owner?”
Maybe that was the moment that her heart froze. Or maybe it was the next day at the hospital in Salem, when Paul was getting every kind of scan known to medicine and they were all coming back normal. Everything’s fine, the doctors kept saying. Everything’s going to be fine.
But it wasn’t.
He couldn’t remember her at all. Even when she told him for the twelfth time, “I’m Allison Rye. I’m your wife,” and showed him their matching wedding rings and her driver’s license, he just shook his head.
“I don’t understand. I’ve never been married.” He twisted off his ring and handed it to her.
“Look, you have a dent where you’ve been wearing it. You have a tan line.” She touched the place on his finger and he jerked his hand away reflexively, the way you would if a stranger touched you without permission. Maybe that was the moment her heart froze, there in the neurologist’s waiting room.
She swallowed. “Let’s just see what the doctor says.”
But the neurologist, Dr. Khan, shook his head even as he ushered them into his office. “I’ll be honest. I can’t make heads or tails of these scans. I don’t see any events. No evidence of an aneurysm or stroke, no tumors, no frontal lobe deterioration. Paul’s brain is healthy, as far as I can see.”
“Something happened.” Allison crossed her arms, her thumb rubbing against the band of Paul’s ring that she held cupped in her hand. “We went to bed last night as husband and wife, and this morning he can’t remember the last twenty years.”
“There are many avenues to explore,” Dr. Khan murmured, his eyes darting away from Allison. “I can refer you to a good psychiatrist.”
Paul stood up, shaking his head. “I don’t need a shrink.”
“Sometimes when people are unhappy with their lives...” Dr. Khan trailed off apologetically. “The brain is a powerful organ.”
Allison leaned forward across the desk, fear rippling under her skin. “Paul’s right. This isn’t in his head. There has to be another explanation.”
“Sure.” Dr. Khan nodded. “Sometimes our tests don’t reveal all the answers. We’ll keep trying. In the meantime, see Dr. Northrup. Both of you.” He pushed a business card across the desk.
The psychiatrist. Allison shoved the card in her purse and stood up. Dr. Khan looked relieved to see them go.
They went back to see him five or six more times, as many times as their insurance would cover. They went to see the psychiatrist, but it was Allison who ended up in his care, not Paul. How could anyone stay sane when their spouse of twenty-plus years woke up every morning without a clue who was sleeping beside them?
Every day she had to tell him who she was, who Emily was, where he lived. Where they lived together. Some days he cried. Some days he argued with her—it was impossible; what kind of scam was she pulling? Some days he didn’t believe her and just left. He’d head out the front door and just walk and walk. Down to the creek, up to the hills, across people’s open fields, or just around town.
What could she do besides call Bobby Higgins to find him and bring him back again?
What could she do besides move him somewhere safer to live, somewhere he couldn’t get out and wander, somewhere he didn’t wake up every day and find a strange woman in bed with him?
What could she do besides bake bread and serve customers as well as she could on her own, let the counter help go, sell their car to pay the vendors, reduce the hours the bakery was open, whittle away the business until finally the Ryes & Shine was nothing, just a building with a door and her empty life inside?
Her heart ached for all they’d lost. Their business, their home, their relationship.
All those memories had been cut out—she was sure of it now. Someone had taken the time to make all that happen. It couldn’t have been a break-in at the library, some slash-and-grab page burglar. Someone had spent hours—probably hundreds of hours—going through the books, finding Paul’s memories, reading them, and removing certain ones. They left him his first kiss and his first child, for some reason—but they’d taken almost everything else he held dear.
When she’d tried to teach him the things he’d forgotten, like their address or even her name, it didn’t work. He couldn’t remember. Maybe when his new memories tried to write on the excised pages, they had nowhere to go, so just...poof. They weren’t recorded.
She shuddered and pulled the covers over her head. In the safe darkness of her blanket cave she finally faced the thought that terrified her the most. If the page thief was a former librarian, it could be Myra. Her Myra, the woman who’d become such a close friend and confidante over the last two years, might be the person who had caused her so much pain.
Was the timing right? She racked her brain, trying to remember whether Al had died right before or right after Paul moved to Golden Gardens. That was when Myra had taken guardianship of the library, right after Al died. But Allison hadn’t paid much attention to her back then, when she thought Paul was only there temporarily. Myra was just the nurse and an occasional bakery customer. The details of her personal life weren’t Allison’s concern. All her energy was spent on Paul and his complex schedule of specialist appointments and experimental therapies.
Not for the first time, Allison cursed herself for burning Myra’s guardian pages. This would all be so much easier if she could see into Myra’s memories of her time here at the library.
But maybe that was all part of Myra’s plan to hide what she had done. When she explained how to take over guardianship, she was so insistent that Allison remove and burn the pages with her memories immediately. She’d even sent a text when she could tell Allison hadn’t ripped them out yet. Maybe that wasn’t standard protocol for a new guardian. Maybe new guardians were supposed to keep the pages as a reference and not burn them at all. Maybe in following Myra’s directions, Allison had been complicit in covering up a crime.
How could she have been so blind? So trusting? So stupid?
Tears began to leak from her eyes, soaking the cotton pillowcase beneath her cheek. She’d
lost everything—her home, her business, the love of her life—and now maybe her closest friend, too. Sobs racked her frame and Pogo stirred, nosing his way under the covers to lick her tearstained face. His small gesture of canine sympathy just made her cry harder until, exhausted, she fell into a deep sleep, her arm around his soft, furry form.
Chapter 24
Wednesday
Allison woke, refreshed, with excitement bubbling through her veins—it was her twenty-fifth anniversary!—before she remembered the events of the night before and her heart sank. How could she visit Golden Gardens and look Myra in the face after what she’d learned?
Pogo whined where he stood by the bedroom door, looking expectantly at her over his shoulder. Did dogs have shoulders? Not really, but the effect was the same. He wanted to go out. Allison fumbled in a suitcase for her robe—she really needed to unpack already—and made her way downstairs. She let Pogo out and went to make coffee, but was dismayed to find that the jar of grounds was empty.
Great. Well, just another line on the grocery list for this afternoon. And in the meantime, she’d make do with tea. She put the kettle on the stove and poured Pogo’s food into his bowl so it’d be ready when he decided to come in—whenever that might be.
She was just about to sit down with her cup of Earl Grey and yet another peanut butter sandwich when she heard him outside, barking insistently. With one hand, she tightened her robe, then slipped on her outside shoes and went out to wrangle him in. It was too early in the morning for that kind of noise, and she didn’t want to make enemies of the neighbors. He wasn’t anywhere in the back yard, though.
Her stomach knotted. Had he slipped under the fence? But then a sharp bark drifted from the side yard and she quickly located him where he stood on his hind legs, braced against the fence and barking at Taylor, who was shimmying from his bedroom window toward his perch in the old oak tree.
