“You stealing my client again?” a booming voice echoes.
“Shut up, Beans. She’s new here.”
Beans? Like the vegetable? I turn to see a guy in his mid-twenties with a long goatee and a shaved head.
“Is that what you told her?” he says, his eyes on me. “I remember you.”
“No . . . Not likely.” I shake my head. There’s no way.
Is there?
“That’s what he says to all the pretty girls,” Ivy warns.
“No. I remember you. You came in a few months back—in the winter, I think—and I did your tattoo. But . . .” His head dips to the side and he frowns. “You didn’t have that scar back then.”
I glance at Amber, feeling my eyes widen. Is this really happening?
“Prove it. What’s the tattoo?” Amber tests.
“A round symbol, on your pelvis.”
“Water.” It’s barely audible as it escapes from my mouth.
“Yeah.”
My blood doesn’t know whether to drain from my face or race through my limbs, and so I end up feeling both faint and hot. If I was really here, then. . . . “Did you photocopy my license that time, too?”
His mouth curves into a frown. “Yeah. We always do.”
There’s a paper in this shop with the old me on it.
I lunge for him, grabbing on to his arm. “Can you please find it? I need that photocopy.”
“What for?”
“Just, please . . .” I beg, tears springing to my eyes.
His eyes shift to Ivy. “It’ll take me awhile.”
“If you want, I can have my dad, the sheriff, here in fifteen minutes to help you do it,” Amber says, holding up her phone. “Of course, he’ll probably close you down for the rest of the day. Maybe tomorrow, too.”
Beans doesn’t look happy, but he holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
I trail him as he rounds the desk and, using a key hanging from a chain affixed to his pants, he opens the filing cabinet. “Date? Name?”
“Just look for my face.”
He stares at me for a long, hard moment before simply nodding to himself. His fingers begin rifling through the pages and I’m temporarily distracted by the letters tattooed on his hand.
Beans = knuckles.
Oh my God.
It was a clue. Dr.Weimer’s exercise wasn’t pointless after all.
“Are you okay?” Ivy asks, stepping in to take my elbow as my knees wobble.
I can’t manage more than a nod in return.
It takes only five minutes to find my past, fit neatly on an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch sheet of paper.
“You were here in November,” Beans says, holding up the paper in the air.
I feel Amber’s hand settle on my back as I reach for it, my own hand trembling as I look at the black-and-white face staring back at me.
“Alexandria Petrova,” I read out loud, swallowing against the rising nausea that threatens as I hear myself say it for the first time.
I know that name.
It’s there, inside my head. I can feel it—my real name—trying to break free of its shackles.
I scan the rest of the information. “I’m twenty-two. I lived in Portland. There’s an address. Right here. This is where I lived,” I choke out. I could drive there. I could go right now and find . . . what? “Why can’t I remember any of this?”
The truth is right here. Am I not supposed to have some great epiphany now? Should this not trigger something? Why is my brain still denying me?
Somewhere in my haze, I hear Amber ask, “Do you remember if she came in with anyone?” I’ve forgotten that Beans and Ivy are even in the room.
“Uh . . . yeah. That’s the license plate number, written on the bottom. I took it down because you were pretty banged up when you came in. You said he didn’t do it, but I wasn’t sure.”
My eyes snap to Beans. “He? Who was I with?”
“Uh . . . the guy driving the car.”
“Can you be a little more specific?” Amber demands, at the same time that Ivy smacks him in the arm and mutters, “Come on.” She’s obviously picked up on the fact that something here is very wrong. “What did he look like?” Amber presses.
“He looked like a guy! Hell, I don’t remember. You two left in in a black car. Old-school muscle car, you know?”
My hands go for my throat, which is starting to close up.
No, it can’t be.
“A Barracuda?” I manage to get out in a hoarse whisper.
“Yeah. I think that was what it was.”
His words feel like a solid punch to my chest.
“My dad will get the truth out of him—I swear it, Water. I mean . . . Alexandria. I mean . . . Oh God.” Amber’s hands shake as she races up the Welleses’ driveway, nailing each pothole with her little red Mini in her rush.
I’m not crying. I’m not talking. I’m barely breathing, my chest laboring with each inhale as I frantically claw away at the recesses of my mind, looking for Jesse in there. And all I can keep thinking is how stupid I am, how he’s been right there in front of me. This entire time, my heart was trying to tell me what my mind still refuses to: I didn’t know someone like Jesse.
I knew Jesse.
I knew the smell of his skin, the taste of his mouth, the sound of his voice, the feel of his dark gaze on me.
“Why?” I whisper.
“We’re going to find out. I promise.” Amber reaches out and takes my hand, squeezing it as she continues racing down the driveway. She looks green. I doubt I’m much better.
By the time we pull around to the back of the Welleses’ house, heading for the two figures standing by the garage, I can barely feel my body. My hands open the door, my legs hold my weight, my muscles pull me out, but none of it registers. All that registers is that the guy facing me, with his arms folded over his chest and a smile on his face, knew who I was all this time.
And hid it.
Who does something like that?
A guilty person, that’s who.
The question is, what is he guilty of?
“Water! How was the movie . . .” Jesse’s voice drifts.
For just a second, time seems to hang still, as my heart pounds with a slow, aching rhythm against my chest, as I stare into those intense dark eyes that drew me in from the first moment I saw them, when he stormed into my hospital room under false pretenses. That was no accident. Jesse was there to see me.
His face pales. He knows that I know. I see it.
“Don’t you mean Alexandria?” Just a whisper, and Jesse flinches from the impact.
He pushes his hands through his hair. “I . . .” He swallows hard as he grapples for words. “I was going to tell you tonight. I swear.”
“Why not five months ago!” Amber screams. “What is wrong with you? How could you do something like this to her? To Mom and Dad!”
Jesse’s eyes ignite with rage as he lashes out at Amber. “You have no f**king clue what you’re talking about, Amber.”
“No?” Tears stream down her cheeks. “Well, how about you enlighten us? I’m sure Dad would love to know that you’ve been lying all this time.”
I hear them but I don’t see them, my gaze glued to Jesse’s face. “Did you do it?”
Four simple words. And only one answer that won’t kill me right here where I stand.
“What?” It takes Jesse a few seconds to figure out what I’m asking, and then his face screws up with horror. “No!” he yells. He takes a step forward and I instinctively take three steps back.
No . . . that’s right. It was my husband who did this to me. I wouldn’t have been married to Jesse without his family knowing. But that leaves . . .
“Oh my God.” I clutch at my stomach as the pieces from my dream click together. “You were the other guy. The one I was protecting.” The father of my baby.
His throat bobs with a hard swallow and I have my answer.
“Can I please see that?” Gabe takes the photocopy of my ID that flitters between my fingers, hanging like a loose thread next to my thigh. He’s strangely calm.
“Dad! He knew her. He’s been lying to us this entire time!” Amber cries out.
“No, he hasn’t.” Meredith suddenly appears, walking around me until she’s at Jesse’s side. Where did she come from so suddenly?
“You knew?” Amber asks the question I can’t, her words a punch to my windpipe.
Meredith’s crystal-clear green eyes settle on me for a long moment. “We’ve known all along.”
“We’ve . . .” Turning to Gabe, I watch him drop his gaze and squeeze his eyes shut. Just like he did that first day in the hospital. I realize now that that wasn’t from the sight of me. That was guilt.
Meredith edges forward, one arm still around her son, her free hand reaching for me. “We did what we thought was best, for your safety and for our son’s.”
All this time. They let me linger in this purgatory, building a new life that would never be real, wondering who out there would want to hurt me so badly.
Wondering what I had done to deserve this.
“Did you know who did this to me?”
Jesse’s eyes never leave my face, but I watch Gabe and Meredith, the exchange between them . . .
They know.
A new hollowness takes over my insides, one borne of betrayal.
“We never thought your memory lapse would last this long,” Meredith calls out, her eyes glossy with tears. “And then you started getting settled in here, and you were doing so well in your new life. We couldn’t figure out how to tell you. And then you and Jesse . . .” Her brow pinches together. “Seeing you together again, and so happy.”
Together again? “What do you . . . You met me before?”
There’s a long pause before she nods.
This can’t be happening. I stumble backward, the urge to vomit overwhelming.
“Water, just wait.”
“It’s not Water,” I choke out. “Water isn’t real. She never was.”
Away. I need to get away.
“Alex!” Jesse shouts, his voice cracking.
I don’t stop. I run toward home—or whatever it is now—not caring about tripping or my leg buckling or anything except surrounding myself within a set of walls. I see Ginny standing halfway between her house and the fence line.
Without thinking, I run to her.
“How much did you hear?” I ask between sobs. I didn’t even know I was crying.
She heaves a shaky sigh. “Enough.” Her arm reaches around my shoulders in a very non-Ginny way; a way that I need right now. “Come on.”
She leads me up her stairs, across her porch.
And in through her front door.
THIRTY-FIVE
Jesse
then
“Don’t be nervous. They’re going to love you.” I give her hand a squeeze as we cut a path up to my parents’ house, the thin layer of snow crunching under our boots. The sheriff’s car sits in its usual spot, my mom’s sedan parked next to it.
Alex and I have kept in close touch through texts these past two weeks, as we finalize plans. When she mentioned that Viktor would be heading to Seattle on business for the weekend, I told her to pack a few bags. And then I called my mother, to make sure that my parents would be home.
I haven’t figured out how I’m going to break the news to them—that they’ll have a tenant on their property beginning next weekend. I guess I’ll let them fall in love with her first. It shouldn’t be hard.
I’m pretty sure it took me only one night.
Of course, the whole “and she’s pregnant with her husband’s baby” topic would complicate things. I’m just going to have to lie and tell them that it’s mine. I’m still not sure if I’m ready to admit to them that she’s married. She made sure to leave her ring in her purse.
My mom greets us at the sliding door into the kitchen, in jeans and a sweater, looking nothing like the esteemed surgeon and every bit like the mom who used to bring Cheez Whiz sandwiches to me on those lazy summer days while I sat perched on the workbench, watching my granddad tinker with his Ford truck.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Alex.” My mom squeezes Alex’s shoulder in greeting, her smile broad and genuine. Besides the odd friend of Amber’s that I dated—and inevitably got bored of—my parents have never met any of my girlfriends. When I told her I was bringing Alex up to meet them, there was a good five seconds of dead silence on the receiver.
“This is Jesse’s father, Gabe,” my mom says, sliding her arm around my dad’s waist.
“The sheriff, right?” Alex says, taking his extended hand.
“Just Gabe around these parts.” He’s smiling. It’s rare to see him smile, period, and damn near impossible when it has anything to do with me.
“It’s too bad Jesse’s sister, Amber, isn’t here to meet you, but she’s working.”