Page 18 of Love and Memories

On the TV, a bachelorette welcomed a bachelor onto a yacht with a scorching kiss, but Bella had just watched the woman say she didn’t see a future with him.

The whole show had her scratching her head. In the last half hour, the woman had kissed at least three of the men on the show, and no one thought this was weird. No wonder statistics about divorce rates were so high. Who valued commitment and fidelity anymore?

Bella looked at her bare finger again. She could have a boyfriend out there somewhere. If she did, why hadn’t he found her by now?

A knock at the door jerked her thoughts away from the missing pieces of her life. “Come in.”

A train of three women entered the room with bright smiles. The last one carried a large vase filled with colorful flowers.

Bella sat up in bed. The soreness lingered, but it wasn’t keeping her down anymore. “Hi.”

The dark-haired woman waved. “Hey, I’m Olivia, these are my friends, Hadley and Anna.”

Anna lifted the vase. “We brought a pick-me-up.”

“And treats,” Hadley added as she rested a food bag on the tray beside the bed.

The flowers were beautiful, and whatever was in the bag smelled like baked bliss. Bella took a second to study each of the women, but there wasn’t any familiarity there. “Oh, um. I’m sorry, but do I know you?”

“Nope,” Hadley said as she plopped down on the end of the bed. “We’re Travis’s friends. He told us about you, and we wanted to introduce ourselves.”

Travis? She hadn’t heard from him since he left Thursday morning, but that was expected. She had his phone number, not the other way around.

She’d flipped back and forth about whether to call him, but she couldn’t ask him for more than he’d already given. Calling him to say she was bored and missed talking to him sounded incredibly lame.

“That’s… so nice of you. I’m Bella.”

Olivia scooted the bag toward Bella. “We didn’t know what you’d like, so we brought a variety.”

Bella opened the bag to find half a dozen pastries individually wrapped in white paper. “You didn’t have to do that. I get meals here at the hospital.”

And that would be all she ate. One of the nurses said they’d found one hundred eighty dollars in the pocket of her jeans, butthat was all she had. It wouldn’t last more than a few hours once she was released from the hospital.

Then she’d have a hefty bill for her stay here. The mere thought threatened to cripple her.

“Yeah, but Tracy’s goodies feed your soul, so eat up!” Olivia said.

Olivia and Anna pulled up chairs and sat around Bella as she raised a cream cheese Danish to her nose. The warmth alone had her mouth watering and her stomach begging for a taste.

“So, Travis said you can’t remember much. That’s wild,” Anna said.

Bella picked up a muffin and sniffed it. Strawberry. “Yeah. That’s one way to put it. It’s frustrating.”

“I can imagine,” Olivia said. “You think your brain doesn’t want to remember the accident because it was so bad?”

“It’s not just that,” Bella said. “I can’t remember a lot of other things. Where I worked. Where I lived. Why I’m here.”

Anna held up a beautifully manicured hand. “Wait, you basically don’t remember who you are?”

“It’s not that crazy. It happened to Camille Harding, remember?” Olivia pointed out.

Anna’s eyes widened. “Oh! I forgot about that.”

Olivia rested a hand on the bed beside Bella. “If it helps, Camille made a full recovery. She remembered all the things that matter, and she got to hit restart on her career. She left corporate law, and now she’s practicing family and civil law like she always wanted.”

“Nothing like a head injury to put things into perspective,” Hadley said.

Anna sat up straighter, and her long blonde hair draped over her shoulder like a golden curtain. “How fun would it be to start over?”

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