Page 49 of Velvet Deception

I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I led any danger to Sofia or Ramon, and that, more than anything, compelled me to figure out the truth.

Fingering the small oval metal pendant of her necklace, I zoned out and revisited the blip of a memory that had broken through. When I saw her holding it, the golden-bronze metal reflecting the brightness of the twinkling Christmas lights strung throughout the room, I was punched with a flashback.

Not one, but two of those very same Our Lady of Chiquinquira images. I’d seen them before, and not long ago. My perception oftime was sketchy with my memories, but I knew, somehow, that I had seen that same metal image recently.

Maybe the night I had been knocked out.

As quickly as the memory struck, it slipped away, damning me from knowing the significance of it. The only other details that came with the memory of seeing the Our Lady of Chiquinquira jewelry was that it had been two. As earrings. And the person wearing them had a bloody face.

Who was wearing them?

Why were they bloody?

What was happening?

I shook my head again, bewildered by how little I could still know. Teased by the possibility of recalling anything about the night I was knocked out, I strained and focused, grasping and lunging for any wisp of a hint or clue.

All that left me with was more frustration. More darkness and the void of nothing. I couldn’t force myself to connect whatever I’d experienced before with what I did after.

I can’t sit around like this.

I shot to my feet, restless, and went into Sofia’s room where “my” clothes were stored. She’d gotten most of them from a donation-type of a thrift shop, and I appreciated all of them. What I grabbed right now was the sweatshirt with a decent-sized hood. If I went out of the house, I felt better about using a disguise.

Wait.

Disguise?

I was certain I wore them before.

Leaving the house to go to the market for a few things for dinner, I mused about why that word stood out to me now.Disguise. When would I have worn a disguise? And why? Was that doctor’s coat a disguise?

Excitement burned through me as I neared the possibility of remembering something again, this nagging insistence that I was on to something, just like I’d felt when I spotted Sofia’s necklace with the Lady of Chiquinquira pendant.

What is it?

What am I not seeing?

Certain that I was getting closer to unlocking my past, I braced myself for what it would be like to remember it all. No matter who I was in my previous life, I would not let it challenge or dispute the peace I’d found with Sofia and Ramon. The peace and bliss that I would not give up.

At the market, I caught sight of a man almost immediately. He stood out for no other reason than my conviction that he was familiar.

I recognized him. Not his name, but his face.

I paid for the few items I’d come for and set them in a bag. My motions were all done absentmindedly. Dazed and in a zone, I watched the tall, muscular man across the market aisle.

As if my direct stare on him alerted him, he glanced up and spotted me.

Yes. I know him.Yet, I didn’t. Who he was remained a mystery, but deep in the core of my brain, I recognized that he wassomeone I once knew. He was a representation of someone I’d spoken to before that night I lost so much of my past.

A slow smile crossed his face as he made eye contact with me. Then a crooked, shocked expression replaced it.

He recognizes me. He saw me.And he knew who I was.

This could be it. This just might be it, the moment when someone who knew me from before could now update me about who I was supposed to be.

He stalked over toward me, and I didn’t wait to approach him.

The closer we got, the more I saw of him. Without stalls and people blocking a direct line of sight to him, I could notice more details.

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