Her voice raises and it throws me off at first. Hell, sure we had our fights, but Lucy was a second grade teacher and she rarely lost her temper or ever raised her voice. I always said she had the most patience of anyone I ever met.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to not know anything?” She rises up from the rocks and walks back toward the inn. “I thought we shared something. That you’d tell me. You are my husband.”
“Was!” I yell. “I was your husband until you walked out on me. I’m sorry you got flung from a horse and can’t remember that, but do you have any idea what I’ve been through this past year? The love of my life left me without anything more than a ‘you just don’t make me happy anymore.’”
Her shoulders fall and she slowly pivots around to face me. “I don’t remember any of that.”
“It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
She crouches and buries her head in her hands. “You hate me!”
Fuck me. My jaw tenses and my fists clench at my sides. “I don’t hate you. I—”
“Lucy!” Susan screams from the balcony of the inn, then rushes down the stairs toward us.
“Fucking hell,” I murmur.
Lucy’s head flies up. “So you hate her too?”
I shake my head and don’t answer because Lucy doesn’t remember the hell they put her through. All she must remember are her parents from when she was younger. I’m sure not going to be the one to help her figure this out.
“You can’t just take her like that,” Susan says when she reaches us, trying to catch her breath.
Mandi is right behind her, along with my stepbrother Jed. He sighs and gives me that look to say this sucks.
Yeah, tell me about it.
“I didn’t take her,” I grind out.
“You expect me to believe that? You have a new girlfriend, why don’t you just keep moving on?”
Lucy stands, and her mom wraps her arm around Lucy’s shoulders.
“Susan, you’re being unfair,” Mandi says. “I was there. Lucy wanted to talk to Adam.”
“I did, Mom,” Lucy says.
I blow out a breath and run my hand through my hair, pulling at my neck to relieve the tension building there.
Susan ignores Lucy’s comment. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you inside.”
“She’s not ten,” I say.
Jed groans.
Mandi sighs.
Susan stops and turns around. “Your animosity toward me isn’t going to help her.”
“Maybe a call from Idaho would’ve been helpful.”
“Okay, let’s go.” Jed puts his arm around my shoulders, as if I’m drunk or something.
“Listen to your stepbrother, Adam. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.” She walks away, Lucy’s eyes filled with questions.
Once they’re gone, I sit down and lean back, staring at the sky and wondering how the fuck I got here. Jed falls down next to me and Mandi follows. No one says anything. They don’t give me advice or tell me what to do. They just lie there and let me collect my thoughts.
How can Susan Davis find our family so despicable? We’re there for one another all the damn time, which is more than I can say for her.
My mom is still fast asleep when I slip out of our room at the inn. This time I left her a note and told her I’d have my cell phone on me. For the past two months, I’ve tried to keep up running since it clears my head and allows all the pressure of remembering anything to disappear.
Thankfully, Mandi isn’t at the reservation desk. I’m pretty sure the guy who is there knows who I am though, due to his furrowed brow when I wave and walk out the doors. At least in Idaho, I didn’t always feel like everyone knew more about me than I did. Was I nice to the guy or were we childhood enemies? Who knows?
I put in my earbuds, scroll through my running app, and turn on my music. I’m in this whole grunge music phase. My mom says she doesn’t remember what kind of music I listened to, but she doesn’t think it was this dark. I’d like to ask Adam, because I think he’d know, but he doesn’t seem too willing to share information with me.
I start off on my run, hoping I don’t get lost in the woods and eaten by a bear. I’m not sure how much time passes, but I’m running up a hill, about to cross over a two-lane road to continue on the wooden trail, so I slow to a standing jog and look both ways. There’s a slight hill to the right. I’m about to step on the pavement to cross when a Cadillac whizzing by makes me backstep. All I see is white and blue hair through the windows. I shake my head and jog across the street, hoping to get back into the zone again.
The Cadillac’s wheels screech to a halt, the back fishtailing slightly. I glance over my shoulder, pulling my earbuds from my ears to see if something happened or if I need to sprint for my life because it’s an ax murderer.
“I spilled my coffee!” a woman yells.
The car door opens, and I take my cell phone out of the side of my leggings, prepared to call the police. My thumb hovers over the nine.
My fear relaxes when Ethel, Adam’s grandmother, climbs out of the Cadillac. Not only is it nice to see her, but it’s nice to know who she is as soon as I do.
“It’s all over me!” the other woman yells.
“Relax, I’ll get you another one.” Ethel shakes her head.
“My car or my clothes?”
“Shh, you old bat, my granddaughter’s returned to town.” Ethel opens her arms and crosses the street boldly, as though the oncoming cars will just stop for her. “Lucy!” She hugs me. “Oh, my Lucy. I heard a rumor you were back. Figures the one year I miss the night before tourist day. The struggles of getting old.” She leans in and covers her mouth. “Constipation is a bitch.”
“Good to know,” I say, hugging her back, thankful that I remember her.
“I knew you couldn’t forget me.”
I laugh. “It’s good to see you, Mrs. Greene.”
“I’m hard to forget.” She winds her arm through mine, walking us back to the car. “Come on. Dori and I are headed into town to celebrate tourist day.”
I stop in the middle of the road and slide my arm back out of hers as politely as I can. “I’m not ready for all that commotion just yet.”
“Oh, completely understandable.”
The passenger side door opens, and a blue-haired woman gets out. I feel as though I should know her.
“Lucy,” she says. “How nice to see you.”
“Thank you.” I smile.
“I’m Dori. You know, I have a granddaughter-in-law who’s a doctor. You should go see her. She’s brilliant.”
“She’s a family doctor, Dori, not a head doctor,” Ethel says.
“Don’t knock Stella. She has more of a degree than you have,” Dori says.
These two are something else.
“Sorry, Dori’s in a bad mood,” Ethel says to me.
“I wasn’t in a bad mood until you spilled coffee all over me.” She looks down at her pants that match the blue in her floral shirt. The outfit seems to pull the blue in her hair out more.
“Because I saw Lucy.” Ethel smiles brightly at me. Maybe she’ll explain to me the whole situation between my mom and Adam.