Dear Tori

by Renee Fowler

  “I know you’re not. I wasn’t saying that.” But really she doesn’t know me at all. We’re practically strangers, and we might be having a child together?

  “Let me call this place, and we’ll figure this out,” I say.

  The first thing I do at lunch is call the number on that pamphlet. The second is grab my keys. “I’m running up to the gas station,” I say to Buck. “You need anything?”

  He doesn’t, but I do. I need a cigarette.

  I have Tori back, and my life is just starting to make sense again, but I feel like everything is slipping away from me as I suck down a cigarette that tastes like shit. The next one tastes a bit better, and by the end of it I’m starting to remember what I liked so much about these things.

  ***

  That weird, out-of-body feeling continues the rest of the day. I think I’m still a bit in shock as I ride out towards Tori’s place that evening.

  “Have you been smoking?” Tori asks, scrunching up her nose.

  I’m surprised she can smell over the paint fumes. “Yeah,” I admit.

  Tori pouts. “You were doing so good. What happened?”

  Do I tell her? I have to tell her, don’t I? Part of me wants to. It’s weighing down on me so damn heavy, but maybe I should wait. Why get Tori’s feathers ruffled if I don’t have to? This might not even be my baby for all I know.

  Yesterday everything was perfect, and now my life is starting to feel like an episode of Maury.

  Her arm freezes in the air. Green paint drips down from the roller and splatters on the dropcloth spread out on the floor “Noah?”

  Sighing, I scrub a hand over my jaw. “I got a visit from an old friend today while I was at work.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  She sets the paint roller down in the pan, and looks up at me expectantly.

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “That’s nice,” Tori says.

  “And it might be mine.”

  Tori doesn’t say anything, but the sudden rage on her face says she doesn’t find that last part nice at all. There’s a violent light burning through her green eyes that makes me fear she’s about to punch me in the nuts.

  “It happened before you came back to town,” I promise. “Babe, I haven’t so much as looked at another woman after the day you showed up at the garage.”

  She nods slowly.

  “Tori, say something.”

  “What am I supposed to say?” She picks the roller back up, and starts laying paint on the wall in long, aggressive strokes. “Congratulations? I hope you two are happy together? Is that what you want to hear?”

  “We’re not together. We never were.”

  “Is it the girl that showed up at your place that day?”

  “Yeah,” I admit.

  “She’s pretty.”

  I sigh and roll my eyes. “You’re prettier, and I love you. She’s nobody to me.”

  “That’s a shitty way to talk about the mother of your unborn child.”

  “She might be the mother of my child. She’s not even sure if it’s mine.”

  “I knew showing up there was a mistake,” Tori says towards the wall. “You wrote those letters years ago, and I knew finding you would be trouble. This was all a mistake.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “You had a whole life, and a girlfriend before I showed up.”

  “She wasn’t my girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “She really wasn’t.”

  “I don’t know what to believe right now, Noah.”

  “Look, it was a casual thing, you know? It was just sex. It was never anything serious.”

  “I’m not going to get in the way of someone’s family.”

  “Family? Fucking hell, Tori. Obviously if this is my kid, I’m going to step up and be a dad, but me and her aren’t anything, and she doesn’t even know if this baby is mine yet or not.”

  “Well, if you are the father, don’t you think you at least owe it to this baby to see if you two can figure out a way to be together?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Tori lets out a disgusted huff, and flings the paint roller down to her feet.

  “I already know it won’t work out. There’s no sense in wasting everyone’s time trying to… Tori, I love you. We love each other.”

  “I never said I loved you.”

  “You didn’t have to. I know you do.”

  Her lips flatten together in a pissed off line, and she shakes her head. “No, I don’t. I barely know you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m starting to think I don’t know you at all.”

  “Do you want me to apologize for sleeping with someone else when you were gone for eight fucking years?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then what do you want from me? You asked me to tell you the truth, and I’m telling you the truth.”

  “I don’t want anything from you. I asked you to help me get my memories back, and it didn’t work, so… Sorry to have wasted your time.”

  My hands close down around her shoulders, and I turn her to face me. “You’re really going to stand there, look me in the eye, and tell me you don’t feel this?”

  “The only thing I feel is stupid for breaking my one and only rule in the first place.”

  “What rule?”

  Tori flings my hands off. “I don’t get involved with people who knew me before the accident. It’s too complicated.”

  “You got involved with that weasel Chris didn’t you? You almost married that snotty little fuck.”

  “I didn’t know who he was. He lied to me.”

  “Exactly. He lied to you, and I’m not going to do that. I could’ve easily kept this to myself, and you would be none the wiser, but I didn’t. I told you the truth.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, it doesn’t. Right now I feel like a homewrecker.”

  “How many different ways do I have to tell you? We weren’t together. We weren’t a couple. I don’t know when her birthday is, or what her favorite color is. She already has one kid, and I don’t even know what it’s name is. I don’t know a god damned thing about her.”

  “You really are an asshole.”

  “She wasn’t my girlfriend, Tori. She never wanted to be my girlfriend, and even if she had… Your birthday is June sixth, and your favorite color is green, and you always liked the name Celeste for a girl, and Hunter for a boy. I don’t know any of that stuff about her since she didn’t mean anything to me, because… how could she? I was still in love with you.”

  Tori’s eyes are rapidly filling with tears, and her face softens, but then something shifts. She blinks, and sets her mouth in a rigid line. “You need to go.”

  “Please, don’t let this ruin us.”

  “There is no us.” She reaches down for the paint roller, and lifts it back up in a jerky movement, flinging drops of mint green along her arm. “As far as I’m concerned, there never was an us. I don’t remember you, Noah. You’re nobody to me.”

  Damn, if that doesn’t cut like a knife. It hurts all the way through, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to cry like a little bitch over it. I do have half a mind to drive my fist through that drywall I helped her hang a few days ago, but I’m not going to do that either.

  “This isn’t over,” I call over my shoulder as I stalk towards the door. “We’re gonna talk about this again when we’ve both calmed down.”

  “I am calm,” she yells. “And there’s nothing left to talk about!”

  I slam the door on my way out, and pause at the top of the landing to scrub a hand over my face. There’s a dull thud against the door on the other side, my guess is it’s the paint roller, followed by a short, frustrated shriek from Tori.

  My instincts are screaming at me to go back in there, say or do something to fix this, but I don’t have the words. I’m not sure if w
ords exist to smooth this over. Maybe once I calm down they’ll come to me.

  I stomp down the stairs, stalk over to my bike, and snatch up my helmet. The frustration I’ve been swallowing down all day bubbles up, and I wing it like a football out into the field.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tori

  When the alarm goes off at four-thirty the next morning, I have about five seconds of sleepy peace before the events of last night come flooding back. I would love to roll over and bury my head under the pillow, but I can’t. The cows don’t care that I’m dead tired and heartbroken. They have to be fed and milked. There are two fields of hay that needs to be bailed in the next few days.

  See, Noah did me a huge favor. I don’t have time for him or his nonsense. I’m better off.

  No matter what he says, I think that girl was something to him. Maybe I’m not as smart as I used to be, but I’m not completely moronic or naive. I saw the way she was looking at him that day I showed up to talk to Noah, back when I thought his name was Buck.

  Why did I ever believe him at all? He lied to me from the very start. For all I know, he’s been carrying on with her this whole time.

  In either case, they’re having a child together, probably. He’s going to have a baby, and I’m going to have a barn full of hungry cows come winter if I don’t get my ass in gear.

  The bad thing about life on a farm is, the work never ends, but today I’m counting that a blessing. As long as I keep busy I won’t have to think about why I cried myself to sleep last night. I won’t have to wonder, what if Noah is telling the truth?

  I’m not going to let myself wonder that. It’s too complicated, and my life is already screwed up enough as it is. Noah is better off with her anyway.

  Noah and Natalie. Those names just sound like they should go together, don’t they? She really was pretty too, taller than me, with thick dark hair, and a real figure. I’m short, and too thin. Without the aid of a special bra to accentuate what little breasts I actually have, I look like a child. With all those missing years, I feel like a child in a way.

  I bet Natalie isn’t prone to involuntary fits of rage, and she can probably do simple arithmetic. Even if Noah is telling the truth, and they aren’t an actual couple, I’m sure they can figure out a way to make it work. Either way, he’ll be better off with someone like her, and I’m better off alone.

  I was alone for years before Christian came along, and I did just fine. Someone like me, with all those huge holes in my past, is no good to anyone.

  In the early afternoon I take dad’s old truck to the carriage house, and back it into the driveway. Inside I’m confronted with the mess I left last night. Paint splattered on the faded curtains, but I was already going to replace those. It’s a good thing I was planning on getting rid of this atrocious shag carpet too. The ancient, rickety table is now streaked with green, but that was going in the trash to begin with as well.

  I flip it over, and unscrew the legs, trying hard not to think about the night Noah and I had sex on that table. Our first time, at least our first in my mind. Shaking my head to myself, I recall all the weird talk about impregnating me. Noah probably does that kind of thing with women all the time. He’s probably thrilled that Natalie is pregnant. Maybe it’s some kind of fetish he has.

  I chuck the table legs out the open window, then haul the scratched and paint-splattered wooden top down the steps with a bit of difficulty. Back upstairs I pull down the curtains, and wad them up into a tight ball, then pitch them out the window too. They miss the bed of the truck, and flutter to land near the edge of the driveway. Sweat trickles down my neck as I pull up the carpet along the edges of the main room, and roll it into a thick log. I drag it out onto the landing, and shove it down the steps, nearly toppling over with it.

  I’ve just heaved the carpet up onto the tailgate of the truck when Brandon comes galloping across the field. He stops about twenty yards away and ducks down to retrieve something from the tall grass.

  “Look what I found!” Brandon holds the motorcycle helmet above his head like a trophy. “It looks kind of like Noah’s.”

  It looks exactly like Noah’s, but the visor is cracked now, and the shiny, black surface scuffed.

  Guess I wasn’t the only one ticked off last night.

  Brandon hands over the helmet. Part of me wants to chuck it in the bed of the truck with all the other garbage, but I’m more sad right now than angry, so I place it up front in the cab, and ask my brother if he wants to accompany me to the dump. Of course he’s game, so I call Maggie to let her know he’s with me.

  Eventually I’ll have to explain to Brandon why Noah is no longer hanging around, but not today. I don’t feel up to breaking that news to anyone just yet. My brother likes him a lot, but he’ll eventually get used to Noah’s absence. We both will I guess.

  After a quick trip to the dump, we swing by to buy another gallon of paint, and lastly I take Brandon to get ice cream. We both sit on the tailgate of the truck. He swings his legs back and forth, flashing his scabby shins as the chocolate and vanilla swirl drips down his arm. “Will I be old enough to take a real ride on Noah’s motorcycle after my birthday?” he asks.

  “Probably not.”

  “When can I?”

  “I dunno. You’ll have to ask your mom.”

  “How old were you when you first rode on a motorcycle?”

  “Fifteen, I guess.”

  Brandon’s face scrunches up. “I don’t want to wait eight years and two months!”

  I laugh under my breath. I can only assume the mental math he did is correct. “Maybe you won’t have to wait that long.”

  “Oh, I forgot. Tori, I need some more envelopes.”

  “Already?”

  My brother nods up at me. He’s been sending letters to heaven like crazy, sometimes a few a day. I know Maggie has already filled up a couple of those cookie jars that she keeps sitting around, and I’m starting to have serious regrets about telling him that in the first place.

  Is Brandon going to be laying around on some therapist’s couch one day, trying to unravel this weird compulsion that stems back from my misguided attempt to help him cope?

  I was only trying to help.

  I’m still pissed off about my Dad’s involvement and knowledge of Christian’s deceit, but maybe he thought he was helping me too. I guess he was doing the best he could. In either case, it’s pointless to be mad about it now.

  The past is the past. No one can change it. There’s no sense in dwelling on things you can’t control.

  I used to repeat little mantras like that to myself all the time, back when I was relearning to tie my shoes, and call out colors by sight. Discerning left from right used to be a struggle too. I guess I was about nineteen when Dad showed me that little trick about sticking my thumb out to form an L with my left hand so I could remember.

  It was so hit and miss, the things I kept, the things I relearned with some practice, and the things that are lost and gone forever. There was really no rhyme or reason to it. I could name all the presidents in order, and the states and state capitals. I’m still full of useless bits of trivia, but I have a hard time remembering which order the months and seasons fall, or how old I am, things my six year old brother can do with ease.

  The past is the past. I can’t change it, and neither can Noah.

  What if he’s telling the truth? He got Natalie pregnant before we reconnected. He has never, and will never have a real relationship with her. What does that really change?

  Even if she’s not pregnant with his child, that’s something he’ll probably want one day. He’ll want to be a father, and what kind of mother will I be? I’ll be the kind that can’t help a kindergartener with their homework.

  Maybe some part of me remembers Noah, and even loves him, but it’s not possible that he loves this. Anyone that could love the old me couldn’t possibly be taken with the new me, a diminished shadow of my former self.

  Trying to pull m
yself out of my pitiful and sad thoughts, I wipe Brandon off the best I can with a few napkins, and help him get buckled up in the truck. “It’s kind of late, so I’ll have to grab those envelopes for you tomorrow, okay?”

  Brandon nods and picks up Noah’s helmet to hold in his lap.

  Should I drop Noah’s helmet off to him? He needs it, and maybe he can get it repaired. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I miss him like crazy. He’s better off without me, and I’m better off alone. I repeat that to myself over and over again while I drive.

  When we arrive home, I spot an unfamiliar town car parked in the driveway. From the license plate, I surmise it’s a rental, and I already have a pretty good idea who it belongs to before I catch sight of him.

  Christian climbs out of the car a second after us, like he’s either just pulled up, or he was waiting for me to arrive. “I tried to call you,” he says.

  I shoo Brandon inside the house before addressing Christian. “What do you want?”

  “Can we sit down somewhere and talk?”

  My patience is already thin. The sooner I can get rid of him, the better for both of us. “I’d rather not. Just tell me why you’re here.”

  Christian reaches into the interior of his suit jacket for an envelope, and hands it over. “It’s in regards to a lien on this property from a past due loan your father took out from my family’s bank a number of years ago.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “I wish it was,” Christian says, pressing his lips together like he’s trying to hold back a gleeful smile. “I wanted to give you the news in person.”

  “I bet you did.” I tear into the envelope and pull out the thick document full of numbers that make no sense to me, and legalese in tiny print. “What does this mean?”

  “It means you have ninety days to pay the past due amount, or forfeit the farm.”

  Every single thing in my life is falling apart at the exact same time. “You can’t talk to your dad? Maybe he can give us an extension.”

  “I would love to do that for you, but I’m not sure it would really help in the long run.”