He pulls me closer, one hand trailing up my back and through my hair. “No,” he replies.
His mouth meets mine again. Not even the phosphorescence is enough to distract me from a kiss that seems to encompass every second of remembered and forgotten time. My hands cradle his face as he carries me deeper into the water, my mouth trailing along his cheekbones—strong contours, familiar even to the part of me that can’t remember him. His lips explore my neck and my back arches, my legs falling from his hips and my feet finding the sand beneath the water. I burrow my face into his chest, holding him in a hug so all-encompassing it transcends the need I’ve had, all this time, to “know.”
And then … from another place and time, stark, bright flashes of light and knowledge.
Not now.
My lips find his again, but the pictures won’t stop. I try to push them away and focus on this profoundly beautiful moment in time, but my mind glitches and a barrage of glittering stills and moving scenes flood my consciousness.
“Stop it.”
He pulls back instantly.
“Not this!” I launch us back into the kiss. But there they are again, thousands of images crowding at once, in an overwhelming rush of remembering.
And now the pain.
Suddenly, my head is exploding with pressure. I stop kissing him and moan, my hand shooting to my temple.
“Evie, what is it?” He takes my face in both of his hands. And, as he looks at me, water churning around us, first light creeping above the horizon, I know it’s finally safe to pull toward me all the knowledge I’ve been resisting.
“Why did I quit my doctorate?” I ask him.
“You want to discuss your doctorate? Now?”
He doesn’t know I’m on the verge of some massive breakthrough. The neurologist I saw at the hospital said this is how it can happen. All these random flashes of memory can give way to it flooding back suddenly, and I’m sure I’m right on the brink.
“What was my thesis topic?” I ask.
He seems confused. “We didn’t really know each other then. You weren’t talking to me, remember? Sorry. I know you can’t remember. I can barely think after that kiss.”
“Drew, please! This is important.”
He struggles to recall the information. “Something about linguistic fingerprinting? Idio-something? I’m not the linguist, Evie.”
“Idiolect?” I say. “Someone’s patterns of language use.”
He leads me out of the water again and onto dryer sand, so we can have this conversation without being pounded by waves.
“Your father always got the order of adjectives wrong,” I tell him.
“Yes, we’ve been over this. We have this wild suspicion he murdered my mother, but all we’ve got to go on is a wedding speech.”
“Yeah, but in my nightmare last night, I received an anonymous letter someone sent to my office at the university.”
The more I dwell on this, the clearer it’s coming into focus. My office. Piles of paper with my research. The envelope. No stamp. No return address. It wasn’t a nightmare. “‘You’re an interfering, young, conniving, dangerous woman …’” I say, all our previous suspicions refracting through this one crystal memory.
“Is that what it said?” Drew says, suddenly far more intrigued.
“The speech, the note, and now this letter. No wonder I’d writtenAdjective orderin that notebook in my podcast studio.”
“What else did the letter say?”
“‘Pull your research. Pull your research, Evie, or …’”
My blood runs cold.
I look at Drew and know my face is an open book. Suddenly,everythingcrashes back in and I feel panicked and sick. “Oh my God,” I cry.
