by Hillary Avis
“We have a history. I’ll leave it at that.” Michelle struggled to her feet and paused next to her chair, leaning on her cane. “Tomorrow I’ll put in a request for the return of my paper. You can start packing up the books while we wait for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn at the sheriff’s department.”
“You’re going to request the return of the memory pages, too, aren’t you?” Allison bit her lip worriedly.
“I suppose you still think you can get Paul’s memories back in his head? I have bad news for you—”
“It’s none of your business why I want them,” Allison snapped. “They’re Paul’s memories and he deserves to have them back. Anyway, it will work.”
“Oh? Then what if he remembers something that you’d rather he didn’t?”
“I assume you mean his hypothetical affair with Elaine. Even if that were true, which it isn’t, that would mean ninety-nine things I want him to remember and one I don’t—I’ll take those odds. Trust me, I’m well aware of what the alternative feels like. Are you?”
Michelle blinked owlishly. “Am I what?”
“Aware of the alternative. What if you don’t get the torn-out pages back, and they’re returned to Elaine?” Allison shot back, anger heating her tongue. “She’ll have a lot of time to think in prison. She’ll eventually figure out that she can use the used pages just like the blank paper. She can roll them into a pen, like I did. She can bind them into books and write in the margins. She’ll have everything. So don’t get petty and only ask for the blank paper back from the sheriff, Michelle. You’re playing with fire, and you know how fire and books get along.”
“They don’t,” Michelle said sourly. “You take care of your business and I’ll take care of mine. I’ll send Taylor over with moving boxes tomorrow to help pack the library.” She clumped down the hall toward the front door.
“I have to work tomorrow,” Allison called to her receding back, but Michelle let herself out without acknowledging that she’d heard.
Chapter 24
Wednesday
“Bad news,” Myra said as she buzzed by the activity tables on the way to deliver morning meds. “I’ll tell you when you’re done with that.”
That was playing referee for a simple game of cards that had devolved over the last twenty minutes into a brawl between Mr. Simon and Lilian.
“That’s enough of your nonsense,” Lilian grumbled. “This rule and that rule and this rule. I’m sick and tired of—”
“Following the rules?!” Mr. Simon’s glasses slid partway down his nose as he shook his fist at her. “What’s the point of a game if you don’t follow the rules? We might as well mud wrestle!”
Allison chuckled, imagining them going at it in the ring like a pair of elderly MMA fighters. “Settle down, you two. This is just for fun, remember? We’re all friends here.”
“Butt out, honey,” Lilian said sweetly.
Mr. Simon’s head bobbed in agreement, sending his glasses for another ride. At the end of their abrupt journey, they dangled from his ears, the lenses resting just under his chin. He squinted at Allison across the table. “Get your own argument. This one’s ours.”
Allison giggled and, after replacing Mr. Simon’s glasses on his nose, left them to it. They clearly were having some flavor of fun. She searched the room for Myra’s bright aqua scrubs. She was dying to hear about what was going on that Myra had dubbed bad news. Hopefully the baby was OK. But Myra was nowhere to be seen, still in one of the residents’ bedrooms, maybe, or in the kitchen.
She turned to check the kitchen and crashed into Paul. He caught her elbows with both hands, steadying her. “Whoops. Where’s the fire?”
She shook her head, suddenly self-conscious, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Nowhere. Just clumsy. Sorry.”
“Miss me?” He winked at her, still grasping her arms.
“No, I was looking for—you know what? Yes.” She let him pull her into a hug, wrapping her arms around his waist as he rubbed her back through the light cardigan she’d worn against the morning chill. She needed this—the reminder that he was the person she knew, deep down, not some corroded version of himself that Michelle had concocted.
She couldn’t help wondering about what Michelle had implied last night, though. Something had happened between them. Something bad. She knew their parents had discouraged their relationship to keep the founding families at arm’s length from each other, but she’d never heard what really went down. And from the way Michelle had cast suspicion on Paul, maybe it was worse than she’d imagined.
She checked the clock—it was only a few minutes until her shift was over, anyway. “Can I ask you something in private?”
He nodded and they moved to a sitting area near the entrance, away from the other residents. She sat down next to him on the striped loveseat, unsure how to begin. When she didn’t start talking right away, he nudged her. “Don’t be shy.”
She took a deep breath and let it out again. “OK, so you and Michelle Crisp dated in high school.”
“Hoo boy. Here we go,” he chuckled, rolling his eyes. “It wasn’t a serious thing. Just a kid thing. You have nothing to worry about.”
A corner of her mouth quirked. “I appreciate the reassurance,” she said drily. “What I’m curious about is what happened between you at the end, when your parents forced you apart?”
Something in his posture changed. He shifted in his seat, straightening as he cleared his throat. He shook his head, his gaze focused somewhere behind her in the middle distance. “I don’t remember, sorry. It was a long time ago.”
He was lying. Her heart squeezed painfully at the realization that he was hiding something from her. Months of testing after his initial memory loss meant that she knew exactly when his memories stopped—age thirty, more than a decade after he and Michelle broke up. But she couldn’t argue with him about what existed inside his head and what didn’t.
“Maybe it’s one of the memories Elaine tore out,” she said carefully, though she didn’t believe her own words.
He nodded, his attention back on her. He gave a wan smile. “Maybe so.”
“We’re going to get them back. Your memories, I mean,” she said, her voice breaking slightly. “We’re working on it, I promise.”
He patted her arm awkwardly. “I know. I appreciate it.”
Why did his words sound so hollow? Was he worried about what she’d learn once she read the pages? But if the pages were missing from his memory, he couldn’t know what she might read? She rubbed her forehead, confused.
Paul squeezed her hand, hard. “I’m afraid,” he said abruptly.
“About what?” She searched his face for answers. Finding none, she asked, “Are you afraid we’ll fail?”
“No.” His reply was almost inaudible. “I’m scared it will work.”
Allison reeled. She jerked her hand away from his, blinking back the hot tears that rushed to her eyes. She choked out, “You don’t want to remember?”
“Of course I do. But that doesn’t mean I’m not scared. What if I remember stuff that changes things?”
“Of course it’ll change things, Paul. You’ll be able to live independently. You’ll be able to do things you love. You’ll be able to drive and go hiking and make yourself a sandwich, for God’s sake.” She leaped to her feet and stood in front of him, her hands on her hips, fury making her chin wobble. “You’ll be able to remember all the good times we had. All the memories we share.”
He nodded, his face solemn. “Exactly. What if, when I remember, it changes things between us? I like how it is now. I like how, when you walk into the room, I lose my breath. I’m so drawn to you, but I can’t imagine it was still like that after twenty years of marriage, was it? We were probably tired of each other.”
“Twenty-five,” she corrected. She leaned toward him and grasped his face in both her hands. “It was still like that, you idiot. Do you think I came to visit you every day for the last two years because I
wasn’t madly in love with you?”
He leaned his head heavy into her left hand and closed his eyes, twining his arms around her waist as she stood between his knees. “I don’t doubt your feelings for me. I just don’t know what was going on in my head. I don’t want to stop wanting you.”
She dropped a kiss in the middle of his forehead. “You won’t. Trust me. You don’t know you, but I do. I know us.”
Or at least, she thought she did.
“IS BABY ISAAC OK?” Allison asked.
Myra’s back was to her as she counted out cutlery onto the trays on the counter. “Oh, yes, he’s doing great. Nursing like a little piglet.”
Allison sagged against the cabinet behind her. “Good. When you said bad news, I was worried.”
Myra chuckled and finished her count. “Seven, eight. Sorry. It’s just Odetta is driving me up the wall.”
“Who?”
“Miz Patterson. We’re on first name terms now.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Myra pulled a face and Allison giggled. “You’re still upset about the kitchen?”
“It’s not just the kitchen. It’s everything!” Myra gestured wildly. “She’s organized the hall closet, the linens, under all the sinks. She even sorted the kids’ toys. Next it’ll be my clothes closet. I’m thinking about putting a lock on it.”
“Heaven forbid your closet be organized.”
Myra crossed her arms over her aqua scrubs, frowning. “How would you like it if strangers marched in and rearranged your pantry? I’ll answer for you—you’d be ticked off!”
“Come on now. I’ve seen the insides of your closets,” Allison teased. “She’s just trying to help.”
Myra’s frown deepened. “She’s trying to comment on my housekeeping. It’s not like I don’t know how to organize—I just don’t have the time. I’m beat when I get home from work, and on the weekends I want to play with the babies. Odetta’s retired; she’s got all day to alphabetize the spice rack.”
“Exactly! So let her. She’s being helpful in the ways she knows how, and it wouldn’t kill you to accept her help.”
“She could ask first,” Myra grumbled.
Allison nodded. “She could. But think of it like a gift. Nobody’s going to ask you, ‘Can I get you a cashmere sweater for Christmas?’ You’d probably say—”
“That’s not very practical,” Myra interrupted.
“See? And yet you love that red sweater Crystal got you last year. You wear it every chance you get. Odetta’s doing the same kind of thing—she’s trying to gift you. Maybe you can learn something from her.”
“I know how to organize,” Myra said, pulling out a drawer to show Allison like she was Vanna White showing off a Wheel of Fortune prize. She was right; the contents were very tidy. “See? I don’t need lessons.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant you could learn how to accept help. You never let anyone take care of you.”
“It’s my job,” Myra said, her voice thick with emotion. “It’s just the way it is. My whole life, I’m the one taking care. I’m used to it. And right now it seems like I can’t keep anything together. I mean—”
“I bet Al took care of you.” Myra pressed her hand to her chest and nodded wordlessly. Allison went around the center island to give her a hug. “Well, he’s not the only person who loves you and wants to help you. I do. Sounds like Odetta does, too. So let her transform your house into some Martha Stewart situation. Let her watch those grandbabies while you go on a date with your mystery man. Let her fuss over Crystal so you can put your feet up after work. She’s not going to stay forever, is she?”
Myra bit her lip and then tossed her a guilty grin. “I guess not. But I still don’t want her in my undie drawer.”
Allison giggled. “No—you should definitely get a lock for that.”
Chapter 25
When she got home from work, she found Taylor where she had left him, lying on his belly on the living room rug. This morning, he’d been gleefully entertaining the bouncing crew of puppies by rolling tennis balls across the floor, but now the puppies were absent, presumably sleeping off their earlier escapades in their pen. Instead, Taylor had a memory book spread open in front of him and was reading, so absorbed in a memory that he didn’t hear her enter.
She shook his shoulder gently to jar him out of the book. When he looked up at her, surprised, she asked, “What are you reading there?”
He flipped the book over so she could see the cover. Learning to Read. “I was looking in it for memories of my mom. She was a first grade teacher.”
“Did you find her in there?”
He shook his head sadly and motioned to a jumble of books in the moving box to his left—the ones he’d already checked, presumably. “Not yet.”
“I know one she’s in.” She hurried to retrieve a book from the dining room and returned with it, setting it down on the carpet beside him.
He turned his head to read the title on the cover. “Ninth Birthdays?”
She nodded. “Your parents were at your party, right? You’ll find your memory of it in there.”
“I already remember that in my head,” he said bitterly, tossing both books onto the box of discards. “I wanted to see something I don’t already know.”
“There are so many books in this library. I’m sure your mom is in a lot of them,” she said, injecting as much encouragement as possible into her voice. “I’ll help you find her.”
He just glowered at her. “You can’t help if you aren’t the guardian. You won’t be much longer. Grandma says you have to go. And we have to go, too.”
Allison nodded, swallowing hard. “That’s true. We have to move the library so it’s safe, and we have to move ourselves out of town so our memories are safe.”
“Well, I don’t want to! I want to stay here. My friends are here. My mom and dad—” He squeezed his eyes shut, his voice choked to nothing, before he tried again. “My mom and dad are here.”
He must mean buried here, in the small cemetery next to the Episcopal church. “You can still visit them, even if you live in Elkhorn. It’s not that far.”
“Grandma can’t drive.”
“I’ll drive you,” she said. “I’ll give you my phone number and you can call me any time.”
“You won’t even remember once your pages are torn out,” he said quietly.
Her mouth dropped open in surprise and she sank into the sofa near him. “Of course I’ll remember you.”
“You won’t remember this, though,” he said, gesturing to the books. “You won’t remember about my parents. You won’t remember anything important.”
“I will,” she said, thinking of Elaine’s diary. “I’ll write it down so I can read it and remember.”
His mouth pressed into a thin, disbelieving line as he stared at her. “I mean you won’t know where the new library is. Grandma will make sure of it. And then I’ll never be able to read the books again. I don’t know how she thinks the watcher is going to watch all the way from Elkhorn, anyway,” he added bitterly. “She thinks she’s following the rules, but she’s not.”
He looked so troubled that Allison wanted to wrap him up in a hug, but she knew too well from Emily’s adolescent years that snuggling an angry pre-teen was the surest way to drive them out of the house. “Have you been reading the books while I’m at work?” she asked. “Is that why you spend so much time over here?”
He jutted out his chin defensively. “I take care of the puppies, too. They just sleep a lot.”
“I know. I was just curious.”
He nodded, but he was clearly still wary of her line of questioning. “I only look for my mom and dad, though. I just want to see them.”
She understood that pull all too well. The memories were so vivid that they felt real. It was time travel, inhabiting someone else’s body and having a loved one back, if only for a few minutes. Addictive. But, like a drug, it wasn’t reality. “Your own memory is the best place t
o see them. You said it yourself: you already have them in your head. No matter where you live, they’ll be with you. You don’t have to be afraid of losing them.”
He stared at the floor for a minute, silent, and then raised his head to stare at her, his eyes burning. “If you really believed that, you would just find a new guardian. You don’t want to lose the library, either.”
He was right, but she had different reasons than he did. She wanted to put Paul’s memories back where they belonged, not because she was caught up in the past but because she wanted a future. But she had to let even that go when the alternative put everyone and everything she loved at risk.
“It’s too dangerous to stay here. There are bad people who—”
“I know about them,” he said impatiently. “That’s what I’ve been looking for when I’m reading, not just my parents. I know we can find them in the books. And if we can find them, we can stop them, right? We can call the police, like you did, and they’ll take the bad guys to jail.”
She wished it were that simple. “There are some answers that aren’t in the library,” she said. The sharp yelp of a puppy in the dining room caught her ear. “I think someone’s up from their nap. Let’s have some lunch and then see if your grandma had any luck down at the sheriff’s department.”
After the puppies were fed and cleaned up and Taylor had devoured not one but two peanut butter sandwiches, Allison added ten bucks to his growing stash in the cookie jar on the windowsill and walked with him over to the yellow house next door. Michelle waited for them in a rocking chair on the porch, her purse still looped over her arm from her morning errand at the sheriff’s office.
“Any luck?” Allison asked as she mounted the steps.
Michelle gave her a dark look as she motioned for Taylor to go inside. She waited until the front door closed behind him and then said, “It’s worse than I thought.”
“Are they being sticklers about what was written on the original burglary report?” Allison had seen a copy of the report in Kara’s apartment when she’d stopped by to feed Pogo, and it had only listed paper, office type as the stolen goods. They might not turn over the other boxes. “You can always say that you didn’t realize everything that was taken at the time.”
