“Marcus—”he gestures for Marcus to follow him “—we need to go now, sir. They are waiting for your return.” The worried expression on Grady’s face tells me Marcus has probably not done the right thing by returning here.
With hunched shoulders, Marcus strides past Grady and then he’s gone without another word.
I allow my eyes to drop to the floor. I shake my head.
“Pale pink is definitely not your colour, Dorothy,” Sammy says nervously.
“Don’t do that,” I mutter.
“What?”
“Don’t act like nothing has happened.” The room goes deathly quiet as I lift my eyes and catch Mosby’s soft smile.
“Well, what do I say, Abi?”
“You say nothing. Shut your mouth and don’t say a word—that’s what you do. You were supposed to be my best friend, but you’re not. You’re my worst enemy.” I take a step away from Sammy.
“Abs, don’t speak to her like that.”
“Let her go.” Sammy reassures.
I run up the staircase and slam the bedroom door.
“Fuck you,” I scream as I throw myself against soft bedding, and then curl into a tight ball.
Betrayal tastes like shit!
TWENTY-NINE
Ruse
Working up the nerve to exit the room I’ve holed myself in for more than two hours is harder than I’d first thought it would be. As I pace the floor, my mind runs wild with thoughts of Marcus and our time together this morning. Breakfast in a bra, the look in his eyes as my chest moved in and out while I ate. Marcus telling me to leave and go back to the coast outside the courthouse right before I repeated the last words he’d said to me. Fuck knows when he said them, but he did. Sweet, sweet words.
Visions of our bodies naked and entwined together on his bed make my stomach flutter. “You’re mine.” Those words were spoken so confidently. “Do you want to know what else we used to do?” His wicked smile will be embedded in my soul forever. What do I do now?
Stopping, I grab the doorknob and rest my head against the door.
“Are you going to talk to me yet?” Sammy’s saddened voice asks from the opposite side. I picture her in the same position as me.
“Are you going to tell me what I want to know if I do?”
“I’m going to tell you what I can.”
“Why does it have to be this way? The secrets?”
“Because it’s what’s best for you.”
“Says who?”
“Says me, the doctors, Mrs. M.”
“Doctors?” What doctors?
“Come out, Abi, please.”
“What did Marcus do to me? What did he do that would make me erase him from my memory? What did he do to make you lie to me?” There’s an eerie silence falling between us, and my heart beats at a more frantic tempo.
“He didn’t do anything, Abigail. It was you.”
My jaw drops. I gasp.
“Come out, Abs, please come out.”
“I’m scared.” I’m beyond scared, I’m fucking petrified.
“So am I.”
Turning the door handle, my stomach flips and I’m instantly nauseated. I feel even worse when I see the tear-soaked cheeks of my Sammy before me.
Lunging forwards, Sammy wraps her pale white string-bean arms around my neck and holds me tightly. I’m surprised by her strength.
“I love you. I’d never do anything to intentionally hurt you. Everybody did what they thought was best for you. Even Marcus. I’m sorry I’ve been keeping this from you, but it’s because I love you that I did.” Her grip tightens. “There’s a reason you forgot. It was you who decided it would be this way.” Her blubbery words are spoken so quickly, it’s as if she can’t get them out fast enough.
“But why?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers, pressing her cheek against mine. “I don’t know.”
***
The afternoon sun is hot, so Mosby, Sammy, and I pull three of the lawn chairs under a shady tree and stretch out, admiring the beauty of the lake.
“This place is something else,” Mosby says, holding a beer in hand, condensation beading along its sides. “Who the hell owns it?”
“Marcus said it’s Mr Sims’s, and they stay here when they are in town. I can see why. There couldn’t be a hotel nicer.”
“It’s like something from an olden-day movie.” Sammy giggles.
“That’s what I said.” I take a large inhale. “We’re here now …” I swallow hard. “Oh where do we start?” I take a sip from the glass of pink lemonade Ginger put together with the liquids from the fridge.
“The beginning, maybe?” She sounds unsure.
“When did I meet Marcus?”
“Fuck,” she breathes. “The day your dad died.”
“That can’t be true.” I shake my head.
“It is.”
“Where? How?”
“I can’t,” she says quickly, turning her body on its side so she’s no longer looking out to the river.
“Why?”
“You need to remember that on your own.”
Huffing, I turn my body to face her, so we are both lying on our sides in the chairs. “Sammy?”
“Yes.”
“That was seven years ago.”
“It was.”
“Before Mike.”
“Yes, you met Mike not long after your accident.”
“What accident?”
“I can’t tell you, Abigail—”
“Because I have to remember it on my fucking own.” I glower.
Sammy closes her eyes and takes a lengthy inhale. “It’s for the best.”
“Whose best? Yours?”
“No, yours.”
“None of this makes any sense.”
“I know it doesn’t, but I’m trying to tell you.”
I sigh. I take a long breath. “Marcus said what I remembered today was the last thing he said to me before he left me. When was that?”
“A few days after you woke up and couldn’t remember who he was. It was heartbreaking. You remembered everybody. Me, your mum, our friends—even Brussels, your mum’s cat. Rest in peace, psycho kitty. You remembered what school you went to, your professors at the university … but not Marcus, and not the accident.”
“A few days after I woke up, after an accident … was I in a coma?”
Sammy nods.
“How old was I?”
“You were thirty days away from turning twenty when you had the accident.”
“How can you be so precise?” I’m fearful of her answer.
“Because your dad died thirty days before your eighteenth birthday, two years earlier on the same date. We thought we’d be losing you forever too.”
“Hang on, so Marcus and I were together for two years?”
Sammy nods, again.
“But I have memories in that time. Why isn’t Marcus in them?”
“We don’t know. You erased him. You have what they call retrograde amnesia. The doctors think you erased memories of anything and anyone who came into your life the same day as your dad died.”