“Y-yesterday?” I said, still thinking about the wrong date on my phone.
Michael went very still. “Claudette… what’s the date?”
I told him, and watched his face for whatever was coming.
“What year?” His voice dropped to something quiet and careful.
I told him that too.
He didn’t say anything right away. Just looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read. Then, carefully: “That was a year ago, Claudette.”
“What?” I breathed, his words confirming the date I already saw on my phone.
“No.” The word came out automatically. “No, that’s not—that can’t be right.”
“What else do you remember?”
I tried. Really hard, pushing my brain to find something, anything that came after sitting at my desk pulling numbers for the quarterly report.
Nothing.
Just blank space where an entire year should be.
“I don’t—” My throat was closing up. “There’s nothing. It’s just gone. How does that happen? How do you just lose a whole year?”
“Hey.” Michael moved closer. “Look at me.”
I couldn’t. I was staring at my hands, at the ring on my finger that I didn’t remember getting, at proof that I’d lived through time I couldn’t access.
“Claudette.” He said my name, and I looked up. “It’s going to be okay.”
“How is this okay? I lost a year, Michael. An entire year.” I gestured at the certificate on the stand. “And apparently in that year I married you, which—why would I do that? Why would you?”
“Because we wanted to,” he said simply, eyes steady on mine.
I stared at him in disbelief, “We wanted to?”
“Yes. We got married yesterday,”
I was still too shocked even after he’d just confirmed it. “Michael, I would remember if we—if there was something between us. If we were—” I couldn’t even say the words. “I would remember.”
“You don’t remember the past year,” he said gently. “So maybe your memory isn’t the best judge of what happened.”
He wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t make it less terrifying.
My phone started vibrating on the nightstand.
I grabbed it, grateful for the distraction.
Twenty-three missed calls from Jack.
I blinked at the number. Twenty-three? Why would Jack call me twenty-three times?
Texts filled the screen too.
Jack
‘Where are you?’
