by Hillary Avis
Sharon’s dark-fringed eyes bulged slightly, making her look like a constipated llama. “Ma’am. The United States Postal Service makes the rules, not me. I could lose my job.”
A burst of air left Allison in frustration. She’d have to find some other way to get Zack an address in Remembrance and his memories in the library. She stormed out and sat in her car in front of the post office, ignoring Sharon peeking out between the blinds at her while she messaged Emily.
“Call me when you get a break. It’s urgent.”
She stowed her phone in her purse and drove home, drumming the steering wheel with nervous energy. When she parked at the curb, she spied Michelle watering the plants in her front yard and a flash of orange T-shirt on the porch—Taylor, supervising glumly.
“Good news,” she said as she got out, slamming the car door on her way to the picket fence.
Michelle looked up from the flower bed she was spraying. “You convinced Emily to come down early?”
“No. But I went to the jail and had a talk with Elaine. She agreed to plead guilty to the murders.”
“How’d you pull that off?” Michelle turned off the water and leaned to coil the hose up near the house.
“Gave her a taste of her own medicine,” Allison said grimly. She knew Michelle wouldn’t approve of her methods, but she had to want some kind of retribution for the deaths of her son and daughter-in-law. “I told her I’d tear out her memories of Zack if she didn’t plead guilty to killing Tim and Dara.”
Taylor hopped down from the porch and came over to the fence. “She killed my parents?”
“I don’t know,” Allison said quietly. “I don’t think so. It’s not in the books.”
His face reddened and he gripped the points of the fence, his jaw working as he formulated his response. “Why’s she in jail, then? If the bad guy is still out there?” he finally said, his voice cracking at the end.
“Even if she didn’t do it herself, she was the one who planned it,” she explained gently. “Her son is the one who actually—”
“You don’t know that.” Michelle hitched her way across the lawn and stood behind Taylor, resting her hand gently on his shoulder. “We don’t know anything, really, despite your meddling. It’s just a guess.”
Allison swallowed. “I thought you’d be happy. Once Elaine enters her plea, we won’t have to watch her. At least there’ll be some justice.”
“I won’t be happy until the library’s safe,” Michelle said tartly, avoiding Allison’s eyes. She tugged Taylor’s shoulder and he reluctantly turned away, following her back into the house, though he dragged his feet. He looked back at Allison as he mounted the steps, his eyes full of questions.
“Come see the puppies later,” she called, hoping she could answer some of them when Michelle wasn’t there. But Michelle shut the door firmly behind them, and Allison didn’t know if Taylor heard her invitation or not.
Her phone buzzed in her purse as she walked back to her house. A call from Emily.
“What is it? Is something wrong with Dad?” Emily sounded slightly out of breath.
“He’s fine.” Allison opened the front door and was momentarily distracted by the four adorable faces staring at her down the hall. Scratch that. Three adorable faces. The fourth—the red-collared puppy—must have escaped again. She scanned the entryway and living room for any sign of the pup, then made her way to the dining room.
“Well, what going on?” Emily’s impatient voice rang in her ear. “What’s so urgent?”
“Well, I was thinking. What if you and Zack rented a place down here? A little weekend crash pad in Remembrance. You’ll be planning your wedding down here, visiting Dad. A studio would be a good home base and probably cheaper than getting a room at the Dream-a-Lot every weekend.” Allison crouched to look under the dining table. No puppy. She used the edge of the table to pull herself back up. “Plus, Zack could see his mom.”
“I told you, Zack’s having her case transferred up here for the trial.”
Allison moved to the kitchen. The pantry door was ajar, so she peeped inside. A bag of dog biscuits left over from fostering Willow had been pulled off a low shelf and chewed open, the contents—or what remained of them—strewn across the small floor. The red-collar puppy was passed out among the crumbs, his belly stretched taut. Total food coma. A giggle erupted from her mouth before she could stop it.
“What’s so funny about that?” Emily’s irritation was palpable through the phone.
“It’s not. I got distracted.” Allison held the phone to her ear using her shoulder and gently scooped up the puppy, returning it to the pen in the dining room. “What I meant to say is that there won’t be a trial. I went to the jail and had a talk with Elaine. She’s going to plead guilty.”
“You what?”
“That’s why you and Zack should get a place here. It’s pretty close to the state prison.” She straightened her neck, rubbing away the crink in it with her free hand. “Kara lives in a newish apartment complex that has furnished units. They’re nice. I can set up a tour if you want.”
Emily sputtered in her ear. “I cannot believe you. You went to the jail?! I just—I can’t deal with this right now. I have to work.”
The phone beeped. Call ended.
Allison tried calling her back, but it just went straight to voicemail.
It seemed like the harder she tried, the worse she made their relationship. Instead of being closer to getting Zack’s memories into the library, she’d pushed Emily further away. The worst situation she could imagine was one where Emily believed Zack and didn’t believe her. Maybe Michelle was right. Maybe Emily needed to know everything as soon as possible.
But that would mean Paul might never get his memories back. It didn’t seem likely, now, anyway. She couldn’t put them back in the books. The torn-out pages were just stories, not memories. Their whole life together might as well be fiction.
Allison blinked away the tears that threatened to overflow. Silly to mourn it all again. But she was just one big walking bag of tears these days—it didn’t take much to send them spilling out. Maybe she should take a bath, squeeze a puppy, and cry herself to an early bedtime. Her hopes, her already paper-thin hopes, were disappearing before her eyes.
She didn’t have Paul’s memories back, and even if she did, she couldn’t put them back where they belonged, and even if she could, she didn’t have time to figure out where they belonged. Nope—she had one page, one pen, and one week. Unless she was willing to just write new, made-up memories into Paul’s head, she’d just be Emily’s friend, forever on the fringe of her own family. And she wouldn’t even know why herself, because her own memories of the library would be gone once a new guardian took over.
She started upstairs but stopped with her hand on the rail. Maybe she didn’t have to make up new memories. She had a memory—a torn-out page that was now glued into Crushes. Maybe she could just copy it into the book rather than reattaching it! She dashed back to the kitchen and fumbled around in the cutlery drawer, feeling through the chopsticks to find the pen, and then, hardly daring to breathe, found the book she’d repaired.
Or tried to, anyway. The library didn’t seem to think she did a very good job of it. Thankfully, Crushes had a few blank pages at the back. Her hand trembling, she carefully printed Paul’s name in the table of contents and began transcribing the memory, flipping back and forth to get the wording and punctuation exactly right, carefully to keep her handwriting neat so the memory would be as close as possible to the original.
When she finished, she set the pen down on the table next to the book, breathless, and sat back in her chair. The memory was in the book for real, now. The question was—did it make it into Paul’s head?
She wouldn’t know until she saw him again. And maybe, this time, he’d see her, too.
Chapter 12
Thursday
Allison spread out the puzzle pieces in a single layer on the broad expanse of the activity
table. The pieces were large, sturdy, cardboard ones with bright colors that thrummed with happiness. Designed as a floor puzzle for children, it was just the right size and complexity for the group. “Let’s work on it together,” she said to the seniors assembled around the table, injecting as much cheer and enthusiasm as she could into her voice.
Most of them appeared disinterested, some nodding off in their wheelchairs or in their perches on the seat of their walkers, but she knew that once she got them going, they’d enjoy sorting the pieces by color and finding ways to join them, especially the residents like Lilian who were still pretty sharp.
“Let’s find all the edges,” she suggested, holding up a sky-blue piece with a straight side as an example. Lilian rolled her eyes and began pushing the pieces around. Next to her, Mr. Simon stretched as far as he could to pluck an edge piece from the center of the table. She smiled at him encouragingly. “Good!”
“What about me?” Lilian complained. “I’ve found four and I don’t get a pat on the head?”
Allison jokingly reached out, pretending to pat her hair, and Lilian frowned deeply at her, leaning away, although one corner of her mouth crept up slightly. “Stop it, child. This is a fresh set.”
In her peripheral vision, Allison noticed a flash of blue that matched the puzzle piece in her hand—Paul wearing his favorite shirt, hovering off to the side, watching. Julio must have washed it yesterday after the muffin mess.
“Join us?” she asked him, moving to the side so he had room to stand at the table next to her. To her surprise, he did. Usually he was less interested in her enrichment activities than the other residents, perhaps because his memory loss wasn’t the organic kind—or perhaps because he experienced too much cognitive dissonance when he spent time near her.
He stood so near she could feel the heat of his arm bridging the tiny gap between them, the electricity of their closeness palpable. To her, at least. She stole a quick glance at him and found he was looking back at her.
“We’re doing a puzzle,” she said stupidly.
Lilian snorted. “No, we’re mopping the floor. See? Mop, mop, mop.” She trailed her fingers through the pieces, breaking apart the ones she’d joined. A laugh rumbled out of Mr. Simon’s chest and his glasses slipped off his bald head, landing on his nose. Now it was Lilian’s turn to laugh, and the men and women around them joined in, giggling for no reason. Allison grinned—now they were getting into it. The whole point of these activities was to engage their minds and bodies. The actual puzzle wasn’t the point—it was the connection that was important.
Paul cleared his throat and touched her forearm, his fingers light as a butterfly. “Can we talk?”
“Of course.” Her reply came automatically, professional, the same way it would to any of the residents who asked her that, but his fingers burned into her skin. She held perfectly still, afraid that any movement might scare him away.
“In my room?”
She swallowed, nodding, catching Julio’s eye as she followed Paul to his bedroom. She held up two fingers—two minutes, she mouthed, and pointed to the puzzle crew at the table—and Julio nodded at her. He’d supervise in case they needed help.
The instant they were through the doorway, Paul rounded on her. “I remember,” he said bluntly, his eyes raking her up and down. “I remember you. This morning, I woke up, and you were just there.”
Her breath left her body, her hand flying to her mouth. Stupid tears, always right there under her skin, waiting to erupt.
“I know you,” he said leaning in, his gaze intense. She nodded mutely, her eyes still spilling over. He pulled her over to sit next to him on the bed, sweeping her tears away with his thumbs while he waited for her hiccupping sobs to draw down.
Finally she was able to speak. She told him everything, again, from the beginning, using the plainest language she could. It took more than two minutes, but she was barely conscious of Julio hovering in the doorway periodically, checking on them. She might get fired for this, but she didn’t care. The memories were pouring out of her like a waterfall and she couldn’t stop talking, not when Paul was so thirsty for them.
When she finished, she looked up at him, expecting to see his eyes clouded as they so often were when she caught him up on twenty-five years in less than the same number of minutes. But they were clear and shining, as though the information had finally made sense of the scattered jigsaw of his mind, at least a little bit. She’d helped him find the edges.
Now she just had to fill in the middle.
“I THINK THIS ONE IS Wilson,” Taylor said, lifting the green-collared puppy onto his lap. The little dog whimpered until Taylor grabbed the tennis ball from the pen, flashing the Wilson logo at Allison before giving it to him to chew.
“Good name.” She shot him an approving smile as she gathered up the books from the dining table and reshelved them, her heart skipping like a schoolchild.
Paul remembered her. She was in his head for good, now—at least a tiny bit. And if his memories of Emily were any indication, he could build a whole new web of memories around this single one, much how the indeterminate tomato plants in the front garden filled and then overwhelmed their cages, disguising them in a shroud of foliage and yellow blossoms.
Or maybe—she barely let herself hope—she’d be able to find Paul’s box of memories and copy them into the books before Michelle found someone new to take over as guardian of the library. The beauty of copying the memories rather than reattaching them was that she didn’t have to copy them into exactly the same book they’d been torn out of. She just had to put them somewhere close, which would save a ton of time.
“Has your grandma found any good candidates to be the new guardian?” she asked, keeping her voice casual.
“She’s making a list for you to choose from, I think.” Taylor’s voice was disinterested, all his attention on the puppies. Wilson growled, tiny but ferocious, as the blue-collared puppy tried to steal the ball from him. Taylor clucked his tongue and pulled her away, tempting her with a small rope toy instead. She ignored it and charged back toward her brother, batting the ball out his paws and sending it bouncing under the dining table. Taylor giggled as he scrambled after it. He emerged from under the table and awarded the ball to Wilson before rummaging around to find another ball for the blue puppy. She gave a miniature woof of satisfaction when he handed it to her. “Maybe I should give her a tennis name, too.”
“Billie Jean?” Allison suggested.
Taylor wrinkled his nose. “Who?” Of course, he hadn’t heard of a player whose peak was forty years before he was born. Billie Jean King was at the top of her game when Allison was still a kid.
“Maybe Venus or Serena,” she amended.
“Serena.” Taylor’s voice was firm. “I like her. She doesn’t give up.”
“Are you going to call her sister Venus, then?” Allison sat down on the floor next to him and gently nudged the yellow-collared puppy who was splayed out on the floor, sleeping. The puppy didn’t even crack open her eyes. “I’m afraid she’s not much of an athlete.”
Taylor’s expression softened as he watched her sleeping. “She might grow into it.”
“Venus it is. Now what about Mr. Braveheart here?” Allison grinned at the red-collared puppy, who was digging furiously at the floor next to the wire pen. “Maybe we should call him Taylor. He’s always looking for an escape route. It reminds me of how you use your bedroom window as an exit.”
Taylor flushed, his eyes trained on the floor. “I’m not brave.”
“Sure you are. You walk on top of fences and climb those tall trees all the time. I don’t know many people brave enough to do that.”
“I do that because I’m scared of snakes. That’s the opposite of brave.” He stood up abruptly and stuck out his hand. “Ten bucks.”
“What?”
“Ten bucks. For watching the puppies today,” he said impatiently.
Allison retrieved her purse from the entryway and fou
nd two five-dollar bills in it. She smoothed them before handing them over. “Your price went up, huh?”
“I stayed longer.” He looked at the money in his hand and then back at her. “Are you working tomorrow?”
She shook her head no, and he gave a deep sigh.
“What is it?”
“Can I come over anyway?”
“Of course. You can come over and play with them any time.”
He eyed her skeptically. “You’re not going to pay me, though, are you?”
She laughed and ruffled his hair, and he made a face at her. “You know what, I think I have some errands to run. If the Dog Wizard does some leash training with them while I’m gone tomorrow, I’ll make sure he earns a few pennies.”
“OK,” he said gruffly, his hair flopping over his eye. He stuffed the bills in his pocket and was gone before she could ask him if he’d decided on the red puppy’s name.
Chapter 13
Friday
It was the kind of weather that made people choose June for their wedding. Clear blue sky, birds twittering in the trees, and a gentle sun that slowly warmed the cool morning into a glorious afternoon. Allison rolled down her window as she drove out to the Patterson farm, feeling as light as the summer day.
What had begun as an excuse to leave the house so Taylor could earn his keep as Dog Wizard had morphed into a full-fledged New Baby Visit. She’d baked fluffy vanilla cupcakes and filled them with lemon cream, topping it all off with a glorious pile of frosting and sugared violets. They were glass-case worthy. And she’d stopped by The Big Day, the wedding boutique, to pick up a cake stand for Isaac, Jr. It was a strange new-baby gift, but it was kind of a Rye family tradition.
When Emily was born, Paul’s father had given her one. It was simple glass, with a short pedestal. The clear glass lid had no ornament, save the ball-shaped handle on top. Allison had puzzled over it when she unwrapped the box—it seemed more like a wedding gift than a new-baby one—until she read the card.
