Page 59 of Fallen Petal

Chapter 29

Petal

“It’s my birthday?” I repeat in disbelief.

He nods. The smile on his face is cautious and laced with somberness.

“Happy Birthday, Petal.”

I sit there, staring at him while my head is spinning.

“Is this why you brought me down here today? As a birthday treat?”

He whips his head from side to side.

“Does it matter?” he wants to know. “Don’t you think you ought to be grateful, no matter what?”

I narrow my eyes as I catch his gaze, refusing to give him a response.

Four years, he says. It’s been four years since the things I saw happened here. Why, of all things, did I see those images? Why that particular day?

“That day, the memory I saw. You say it was four years ago?”

He nods.

“Was that the last time I was here?”

His expression stiffens and for once, he’s the one breaking eye contact. His gaze wanders, trailing through the open living room next to us while he leans forward, placing his elbows on the table and folding his hands as if to pray.

“It was,” he says. “The last and only time.”

“What happened since then?” I want to know. “Four years is a long time. What happened since that night?”

“A lot.”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, and I don’t remember any of it.”

“Because you didn’t want to.”

I freeze, looking at him with an aghast expression.

Finally. He’s finally willing to tell me.

“What do you mean by that?” I probe, even though I know the answer to that question. Malia showed me. She showed me the girl I was before all this. The girl who made a deal with this man that has no equal.

“I mean that I erased your memory, because you asked me to do it, Petal,” he says, his eyes finding mine with a stern yet benevolent expression. “You came to me, like many others have before. I have a talent. I don’t know why or where it came from, but I’ve had it ever since I was a child. I knew I could make people forget certain things, but I didn’t know how to control this gift for the longest time. It took years to refine it, to develop a technique that allows me to target certain memories and erase them from a person’s mind. Very much like you’d delete a file or an entire folder from your computer.”

I’m holding my breath as I listen, elation spreading throughout my chest as I watch the blanks being filled in. I knew parts of this, fragments even, but now he’s finally allowing me to see the whole picture.

If this is a birthday present, it may be one of the best I ever received.

“How... how do you do it?” I want to know, taking advantage of him being so talkative.

“It’s a delicate procedure and one that comes with a lot of risk. That’s why I charge generous sums for it,” he responds. “I talk to my clients first, long and extensive. About everything. About the things they want to forget and their reason for it, but also about everything else that makes them the person they are. I need to be aware of these intimate details so I know where to stop. Then, I sedate the person, to put them in the right state. And then... I talk to them.”

“You just... talk to them?”

He shrugs. “Basically, yes. I know what to say, how to use their hazed mental state to take the burden off of them. I ask them to tell me all the things they want to forget, and then I add some, relying on what they have told me before being sedated. They walk out with a void, leaving their bad memories behind.”

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