“If this is the kind of work you do, I don’t understand why you were at the church. Do you moonlight for the tabloids?”
Silence.
“What were you doing there?”
He frowns. Am I skating too close to an off-limits topic? Next thing I know, he’s pulling off the road again, into a deserted rest stop beside the freeway—one of those places visited only by overwrought travelers who can’t stay awake until the next coffee opportunity, or have a sick kid, or need to discuss something that can’t be said in a moving vehicle, in our case. There’s a battered wooden picnic table and no other signs of civilization. I grab the dashboard to steady myself.
He shuts off the engine and opens the window. The buzz ofcicadas pulses as hot air rushes in and I put my window down too, trying to make the inside of the car feel more spacious. Between the exquisite photography and the erratic driving, I’ve never felt more alive with someone, or more on edge.
Meanwhile, he grips the steering wheel, even though we’re stationary. It’s like he’s buying time, turning words over in his mind in a thoughtful, steady way that only makes me nervous.
“I wasn’t at the funeral in an official capacity,” he explains, eventually. He looks … istorturedtoo strong a word?
Unsettled?
Unnerved.
“Iama journalist,” he reassures me. “But I wasn’t there for the story.”
Even the cicadas go silent as he twists his body to face me. It takes just one second of looking into his intense brown eyes for me to catch up with the fact that I am not the only one here who is suffering.
“Evie, I was there because of my history with Oliver.”
7
Drew
She stares at me from the passenger seat, processing my words. We’ve sat in cars like this before, windows down, the hot breeze a distracting cocktail of her perfume and eucalyptus. We’ve had difficult conversations. I’ve waited while she’s collected her thoughts and I’ve watched them play out across features so familiar to me, they’re etched into my brain. Watching her now—scared stiff, messy bun windblown from having the sunroof up and the windows down, mascara smudged, accusatory expression forming as she realizes what I’ve just admitted—my head is scrambled again, like everything happened yesterday.
“Youknewhim?”
I can see the cogs whirring. I knew her husband: ergo, I can help her get her memory back.
When Evie and I fell out, she made me promise never to speak to her again. She’s already forced me to break that promise once, and here we are again. She might have had a serious knock to the head, and I know she’s lost her husband, but I’m not the savior she thinks I am. I need to quash the hope that’s breaking across her face.
“I can’t help you,” I say quickly, and her expression falls. “It was all a long time ago.”
To be fair, it wasn’talla long time ago, but it won’t help her to know that. There’s not much I could disclose to Evie about the two of us and her husband that she’d actually want to hear. Yet she’s searching my face for details. Scrambling to read between lines that aren’t there, because I’ve worked so fucking hard to erase them.
“What was he like when you knew him?” she asks.
“Evie—”
She wants confirmation of the fairy tale and my whole body aches from holding it back.
One exposure, and he swept you into his orbit.
It was an inevitable collision course.
He reeled you in the way he reeled in everyone: with that deep, inherited cellular knowledge of how to disarm people.
Seeing how hungry she is for him, even when she can’t recall a scrap of an actual experience with the man, only goes to show how powerful he is.
Was.
“I’m sure your memory will return,” I tell her. Memories of Oliver are too commanding to be thwarted by a little bump to the head, at least in my experience. They’ll find a way around the bruises. They’ll forge past damaged neurons, push through whatever carnage the accident caused, and slide sinuously into an area of the brain that will explode into recollection. I know her and I knew him. The amnesia doesn’t stand a chance.
“Why didn’t you go inside the church?” she asks. She’s clutching the strap of the seat belt like we’re still in motion.
