“He was an asshole!”
“He was complicated, and fighting against centuries of prediction. He choseherover everything else. The fact you know so much about this story is…” I exhale a soft, smiling sigh. “Intriguing. I’m not sure if I’ve had this conversation with other men in the past, but if I did, I don’t know that they would know anything besidesKiera Knightley is hot.”
“I have sisters, and one of those sisters likes women just as passionately as she likes men. In fact, I’m pretty sure Raquel’s sexual fluidity was Kiera Knightley’s fault. Ultimately, Darcy was a prick, and Elizabeth should’ve smacked him for his judgmental bullshit.”
“He was under a lot of pressure! He needed to be certain his choices were right, not only for himself and for Elizabeth, but for his sister, too. Georgiana required protection from the very society that admired Darcy. If anyone was an asshole in this story, it was Wickham.”
“Mmhm.” Teasing, Ollie snags a paperback copy of Oliver Twist and flicks through a few pages. “You wanted to read a story with my name as the hero? Shucks. I’m honored.”
I snatch that one, too, but for completely different reasons. “I don’t think I’ve read this one before. But every time I take a peek, I keep seeing…” I find the right page and turn the book, pointing toward a name that may as well be highlighted bright yellow. “I can’t stop seeing her.”
“Rose Maylie?” He leans closer and reads a passage insilence, then, taking the book—gentler than I was—he flips a couple of pages along. “She’s the aunt, right? It’s not a romantic relationship.”
“Right.” I nibble on my bottom lip and study him while he reads. His firm jaw clenching and unclenching under the harsh overhead lights. Not because he’s mad. Simply because it’s a thing he does. “I don’t know why I keep coming back to her. But there’s something there… something tickling the back of my brain.” Shrugging, I reach into the paper bag and pull out a two-hundred-piece puzzle with a forest design on the front of the box. And under that, another, but with a world map instead. “Why’d you bring me puzzles?”
“Got you card games, too.” He snaps the book closed and grabs the bag, digging his hand into its depths and pulling out a pack of Uno. And after that, a standard set of playing cards. “You need to exercise your brain if you want it to reboot and start working again. Playing low-pressure memory games could be the jumpstart you need.” He sets the Uno pack on my table, and scooping up everything else—the books, puzzles, even my coloring book and pencils—he compiles it all and sets the pile on my bedside table.
Coming back, he tears the Uno packet open and shuffles the deck. “Finish your pudding before I do, ‘cos I’m starving and jittery, and I really wanted the chocolate.”
Frowning, I pick up the cup and peek inside at the half-eaten contents. “I wasn’t even all that hungry. If you wanted chocolate, you should’ve given me vanilla.”
“But we’re still learning who you are and the things you like. If your instincts told you to pick the one you picked, who am I to interfere?”
“It’s just pudding!” I dig my spoon in, careful not to spill on the cards he divvies up between us, but instead of sliding the heavy silver into my mouth, I offer it across and warm under his happy gaze when, without a word, he opens up and accepts.
“So…”Stop blushing, stupid! “Today marks eleven days since I arrived here. Eleven days is kind of a long time, huh?”
“Mmhmm.” He tosses cards, one after the other, until we each have seven, then setting the leftovers down and flipping one—a yellow four—over, he twists and snags the television remote, turning the TV on and flicking through channels. A weather reporter chatters on one. The news—the police are looking for the suspects of a shooting a few towns over—on another. He flicks through cartoons and sport and, eventually, stops on a channel spruiking the benefits of a vacuum cleaner with a cyclone something and a HEPA something else.
Call us now and secure your low, low pricing.
“I don’t wanna miss seeing your interview.” Setting the remote down,he comes back around and picks up his cards, organizing them in one hand and considering his options. “I’ll remove your stitches today, too. They’ve been in long enough.”
“Good. They’re itchy and annoying.” I don’t know if he expects me to have forgotten how to play the game—I don’t even know ifIexpected to have forgotten—but I set a yellow reverse on the pile, then a yellow skip, and with a smile, I toss a yellow pick up two down last. Settling back against my pillows, I grin. “Guess I didn’t forget this.”
“That’s how it’s gonna be, huh?” He picks up two cards, then tosses down a yellow five. “How are you feeling about your news debut today?”
I shrug and lay a blue five on top of his yellow. “Nervous, I suppose. It feels weird to think about all these random people knowing who I am after this, especially when I don’t even know who I am.” I shrug. “But it’s for a good cause, right?”
“It’sdefinitelyfor a good cause.” He peruses his cards and lays a blue nine on the pile. “If the right people see it, they’ll bring us the answers we’re looking for. Not knowing is torture forme. I have no clue how you’ve made it this far without screaming.”
“I have, haven’t I? Screamed,” I clarify, setting a red nine on top of his card. “I was thinking, just before you came in here, how my life feels like a sensory deprivation experiment. The room is bland. The view out my window is bland. I have no friends, no phone pinging with text messages. I watch the news sometimes, but none of it means anything to me because I’m not a part of the world like everyone else is. I’m just sitting here… on pause. I considered asking for a radio so I could listen to music during the day, but then I worried it would drown out the sound of the nurses’ sneakers on the floor in the hall. The food is mostly the same, three meals a day. I don’t even have to change my own sheets or clean or do anything except rotate now and then, so I don’t get bedsores. The highlight of my day is whenyoustroll in, and even that happens less often lately.”
“The winter makes for stupid injuries and a bustling ER.” He counters my red nine with a red pick up two. But then he stops and smirks. “Sorry.”
I consider countering his move with another pick up two, forcing him to collect four. But I decide against it and add to my dwindling collection. “Is it crazy to think someone might claim me… but they might be someone I wouldn’t normally choose to be around, but we don’t know that, since I can’t remember, so then we’re at this person’s mercy? Or someone who doesn’t know me at all, but they have a weird desire to try their luck and see what they can get away with? How can we possibly know to trust whoever comes for me?”
“We’ll research the hell out of them. Question them. Test them.” He mustn’t have any red cards, so instead of putting anything down, he picksup from the stack. “I’ll be your first line of defense, and even though I personally think Billy’s an asshole, I know firsthand he’s decent, and he’s not gonna hand you over to just anybody. We’ll verify every single person who calls up about you, and we’ll make them prove your relationship.” He stops and meets my eyes, his bright blue stare somehow all-seeing, all-knowing, despite not knowing me two weeks ago. “Whatever happens after this, whoever comes looking, nothing changes without deep consideration for what’s best for you.” He leans across the table and places his hand over mine. “Even if theperfectperson steps forward, you’ll have plenty of time to adjust, because whoever they are, they won’t mind going slow. That’s love.” He squeezes my hand. “If they love you, they’ll do everything they can to make you comfortable.”
“On February first, in the cold, dark hours mere miles outside a small town called Plainview, a mystery was born.”A woman’s voice bounces from the television, her plump, strawberry blonde hair taking up an easy seventy percent of the screen. That is, until a picture of a busted fender and sprayed blood staining otherwise untouched snow replaces her.“A woman stepped onto the road and into the path of a vehicle that would forever change her life.”
Ollie’s jaw grits and firms, the muscles in his cheeks flaring as displeasure rolls off the man in waves. “They’re running with the cinematic version, I see.”
“A woman known only as Jane Doe has taken up residence in the hospital with multiple serious wounds, though none more serious than the head injury that stole her identity and delivers us to our mystery. Jane has lost all recollection of who she is. Where she came from. Why she was on the road. And if she had a destination in mind, that’s gone, too.”
They trade out the image of Barbara’s car with the video of me instead, right here in this room, where the scrapes along one side of my face slowly heal, and my nails, still chipped and broken, somehow look a thousand times worse on a fifty-inch flat screen television. “Ugh. I thought I looked nice the other day. Brushing my hair and teeth made me feel pretty. But…” I scrunch my nose and watch, horrified as the woman on the screen nervously chews her nails. “Jesus. I must’ve been an absolute troll before that long shower.”
“Televisionalwaysmakes us look worse than we really are.” He lowers his hands to his lap, cards facing up, so I’m treated to a view of everything he’s got—including threepick-up-foursand a single color change card. “They intentionally made you appear sickly and wounded. Putting a beautiful, unmarked woman on the news wouldn’t sell the story nearly as convincingly.”
