“I never gave up,” he says, his voice rough and gritty, like he’s trying to stop his tears before they fall. “I knew I’d find you. But this… You really don’t remember me at all?”
My fingers flutter over the bandage around my head. With all my heart, I want something—anything—to come back to me. A laugh, a smell, a touch. But there’s only a gaping maw where a life should be.
“I’m sorry.” Will he get angry now? My shoulders curl inward, and I try to make myself as small as possible.
“No, darlin’. No. This isn’t your fault. Not at all. You’re alive. That’s all that matters. We’ll figure out the rest. No matter how long it takes, I’ll stay with you. If you’ll let me. There are hundreds of pictures on there. You can swipe through to see more of them.”
Tears sting my eyes, unexpected and sudden. For what I’ve lost. For the pain etched on AJ’s face. For the strange fluttering in my belly of something I ache to remember.
I look at him—really look. There’s a softness around his eyes, lines made deeper by worry and time. But there’s also love. So much of it, I can almost feel it filling the space between us.
He needs me to say something, but I can’t, so I focus on the phone in my hands. The next photo is a candid one of me in a room with a dozen easels.
AJ narrates as I swipe. “You taught art classes at Austin Community College. Oil painting, beginner drawing, watercolors… All your students loved you. And my God. You’re so damn talented, Grace.”
Next, we’re at dinner. Margaritas in front of us. Laughing again.
“That was at a steakhouse on Sixth Street. We were celebrating my birthday.”
I’m working up the courage to ask him when his birthday is—and when my birthday is—as I swipe to the next photo.
Oh, my God.
I’m sitting on a wooden deck in a light blue dress and boots, laughing. A golden brown and gray puppy with striking blue eyes has her paws on my shoulder.
The phone falls to my lap. A single sob escapes my lips before I cover my mouth with my hand.
“Grace, do you remember her?” AJ asks. All that hope is back in his eyes. And a whole lot more. But this time, I feel it too.
“Tinker Bell?” I whisper.
“Yes, darlin’. Yes. But we started calling her Belle once the vet told us how big she was gonna be. She’s almost eighty pounds now. When you…disappeared—” he swallows so hard, I can hear it “—she spent months sittin’ by the door all day, every day, waitin’ for you to come home.”
The idea of that sweet puppy, my puppy, thinking I left her is too much to bear.
It doesn’t even matter that I remember her. Only fragments. Snatches. Her bark. The way her fur felt under my fingers. Tiny moments of joy. I lose the battle with my emotions and start crying so hard, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop.
“Fuck. I’m a dumbass. I shouldn’t have told you that…” AJ balls his hands into fists on his thighs so hard his knuckles crack. “Can I hold you? Shit. You’re not ready?—”
But I am. I need him to, even if I still don’t remember a thing about him. Before I find the words, he plucks the phone from my lap and swipes to another picture.
“Take a look at this one.”
He’s trying to distract me, and I’m so damn grateful for it. With the sleeve of the hospital robe, I swipe at my tears until the screen comes into focus. We’re younger. So much so, the picture is a little grainy. But the joy on our faces is clear enough. AJ is in a black tuxedo. I’m wearing a strapless white gown and a single strand of pearls.
“That was our wedding. Almost eighteen years ago. September twenty-third. But our anniversary’s the twenty-first. We wanted to get married on the first day of fall, but that was a Thursday, and the minister almost laughed us out of his office. You didn’t want anything fancy, but your mama had her heart set on a big, formal shindig. I think she’d been planning it since the day you were born. So we went down to city hall on the twenty-first and had the justice of the peace marry us.
“We kept it a secret from everyone. Until I done fucked up on our ten-year anniversary. I got you a crystal picture frame with our wedding date etched on it. The twenty-first, not the twenty-third. I’d just made lieutenant. I’d faced down murderers, drug dealers, even helped the FBI with a couple of terrorism cases, but I was positive your dad was still gonna beat my ass.”
The right corner of my mouth twitches slightly at his tone. Almost half a smile. But it fades too quickly. “I don’t remember that either.”
AJ rubs his hand over his chin, the stubble rasping against his palm. “You will, darlin’. I know you will.”
He spends hours talking to me. Telling me about…us. But only thin wisps of memories flit through my mind. I can’t hold onto them for more than a second before they’re gone again.
I wish I could work up the courage to ask him what happened to me—why he spent the last three years looking for me—but all I can manage are the softest acknowledgements when I know he expects them.
When I saw our wedding photo, I thought I heard him say, “I do.” Just a distant memory. But was it real? Or wishful thinking?
