Page 2 of Thorn

The two women scowled at her.

“I lived here,” Juliette insisted. Her attention turned to the polished mahogany door. “You don’t need a key to get in. You just bump your hip into the door, and it pops open. When I came home from school, I was supposed to pretend to use a key, so no one would know.” I moved over toward the door and looked at the woman who had come from the apartment. “May I?”

She lifted her hand to give her permission.

Juliette grasped the door handle and bumped her hip into it. The door popped open, just as she had been told it would. The only way Juliette knew that piece of information was she had beentold. Juliette had no childhood memories of her own. But, still, she felt victorious and looked up with a laugh. See? She was right. Juliettehadlived here.

The women started speaking back and forth in very quick French, and Juliette couldn’t follow along with their words mashing into each other like that. The range of their agitated voices was too high a pitch, and their mouths moved too fast from pursed lips for Juliette to read them.

Madame Gigot turned and shooed Juliette away. Literally took her two hands and shooed her away. Then Madame Gigot lowered her tone enough that Juliette caught the next sentence. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but you need to go now before I call the police.”

Juliette saw that the woman who had come out of the apartment stood with her hands on either side of the doorframe as if to bodily block Juliette from entering. Juliette hadn’t planned on going in, even if invited. She had no pictures of what the inside of the apartment had looked like. And it would be all different anyways, Juliette thought as she scuttled down the stairs. After the fire and all.

The concierge said there hadn’t been any fires...

The concierge should know such things. Would she lie? Maybe that hadn’t been disclosed when the new owner had bought the apartment.

What if there really hadn’t been a fire. What if her father had fabricated that story? Then, what happened to the photos, the souvenirs, the things one accumulated over time? A precious doll. A beloved book. A diary, maybe. Something that would spark a true memory for her?

Juliette felt robbed as she burst through the massive front door, back out on the street. She felt lost. She rubbed her fingers through her hair, feeling the scar that ran along the side of her scalp from the surgery that had saved her life, but had stolen her past.

All she had besides her physical scars was a series of flat images that she remembered like photographs from an album.

Juliette turned left, walking towardPlace Capitole,begging her brain to remember something.Anything.

Chapter Two

Juliette

Toulouse, France

Saturday, 9:00 a.m.

The cab stopped in front of a house. It was small. Neat. And blended in with every other house in this neighborhood.

Juliette looked into the rearview mirror to catch the taxi driver’s eye.

“This is it.” He pointed at the house with a plaster cat sitting on the steps. He had a deep resonant tone that Juliette could hear well enough, though his accent was strange to her ears and that presented its own comprehension problems. She held out her credit card and asked him to add a ten percent tip.

There was a woman standing at the picture window, holding back the curtain and peering out at the taxi. She was too young to be Juliette’s grandmother.

Juliette pulled up her memory-picture of this house and yes, it included the same orange plaster cat on the stairs in exactly the same spot. All those many years ago…It’s odd that nothing had changed since I was young.Nothing.It’s all exactly as it’s always been.

Those thoughts weren’t comforting to Juliette.

As a matter of fact, it set her on edge. It made her feel confused and dizzy. More so than normal. Confusion and dizziness were part of her disability. She’d been in an accident with a traumatic brain injury. But she was lucky. So very lucky. Her father was one of the world’s foremost neuroscientists. He had done decades of research into PTSD and brain injuries. Because of her dad, Juliette had gotten cutting edge help.

Her fingers travelled up to the scar hidden by her long, honey-blonde hair. Because of her father’s expertise, Juliette had at least recovered some pictures.

And now she’d get to go talk to her grandmother.

Juliette hoped this trip back to her childhood would spark memories for her. Make her feel more whole and less like someone who had plopped, fully-formed, into this life.

The taxi driver cleared his throat and waggled her credit card at her.

Juliette sent him a nervous smile as she took it back and tucked it into her wallet. She swallowed as she released her safety belt.

“Hey, do you want me to stick around for a minute?” the driver asked. “Make sure everything’s okay?”

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