Page 1 of One Last Night

PROLOGUE

Memory is a tricky thing.

In many ways, we define ourselves by our memories. Who we are is little more than a distillation of who we have been, the many droplets of our past condensed into the glass of our current self. Eventually, our glass is full, and we sit, elderly, left with nothing but our memories.

Something so critical as memory ought to be reliable. One ought to be able to think about one’s past and know that their thoughts are at least in general an accurate representation of the experiences one has had. Sure, the details might be foggy as time passes. A name might be misplaced here and there. A date might shuffle between one month and the next or even one year and the next. But by and large, one should be able to think of one’s past and know that the picture they see is generally complete and generally true to reality.

When memory betrays us, the effect is jarring. One must not only question one's record of events but—if the betrayal is great enough—one's own sense of self.

My memory has betrayed me so often lately that I wonder at times if the woman I think I am is the woman who truly exists or only a construct formed from the fragments of an incomplete mind. Am I a full glass, or am I only a small puddle left behind from a glass that shattered long ago?

“Mary?”

I stiffen and press my hand to my heart. According to Dr. Berat, I’m in excellent health, and my heart is strong, but I turned fifty-three last week, and at my age, I would prefer not to strain that organ any more than I must.

The owner of the voice that startles me winces when he sees my reaction. “Sorry, Mary. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Normally, I would snap at him good-naturedly. Friendly banter is the highlight of our relationship. At this moment, however, I am too out of sorts from what I’ve discovered to do so. “That’s all right, Sean. I was just… distracted.”

A look of concern comes to his face. He’s been with me long enough now to know what I mean when I say that. He gestures at the open shoebox on our bed. “Those letters are from Annie then?”

Annie Wilcox was my younger sister. Or possibly my younger sister. She disappeared from the apartment we shared one afternoon over thirty years ago. I assumed when I was younger that she had been caught and murdered by some fiend, but I discovered recently that she had run away on her own accord and survived for at least two years, traveling the country and enjoying adventures.

Well, experiencing adventures. I suppose I can’t know for sure that she enjoyed them.

I spent twenty-eight years convincing myself I had moved on from the past, but as middle age replaced my youth, I realized that I was far from over her loss. I’ve spent much of the past three years looking for her and trying to find out how she spent the last three decades of her life.

No, that’s not true. I’ve spent half of those past three years looking for her and half of them distracting myself with the mysteries of other families so I can have an excuse to avoid the mysteries surrounding my own.

But her mystery keeps thrusting itself back to the forefront of my mind.

“Yes,” I tell Sean. “Well, no. Not from her. From me. To her. I… I didn’t know they were still here.”

Sean crosses the room and sits on the bed next to me. He wraps his arm around me and kisses my forehead. That isnormally enough to slay any dragon that plagues my thoughts, but today it doesn’t rise to the challenge.

“Have you read them yet?” he asks.

I haven’t read them, nor have I told him the entire truth about their existence. I didn’t know they were still here because I didn’t know they wereeverhere. I didn’t know they were ever here because I didn’t know they ever left my apartment.Ourapartment. Mine and Annie’s.

“No,” I reply. “I haven’t had a chance.”

Another lie. According to my cell phone, it is two-fifty-nine p.m. That means I've been sitting in this exact spot for nearly three hours. On occasion, when experiencing extreme distress, I will go into a dissociative state and awake with no memory of how I spent my time.

That is not the case this time. This time, I am fully aware of every single second that passes while I stare at letters that I forgot I had written and try to work up the courage to gather more droplets of the memory I’ve left behind.

“Well,” he says, reaching for one of the letters. “Let’s have a look together, shall we?”

“No!” I shriek, tearing the envelope from his hands and flinging it against the far wall.

Sean pulls away from me, and now his concern is mixed with sternness. “Why not? What’s wrong, Mary?”

“I… I want to read them alone. By myself. At least at first. Please understand. This is very personal for me.”

Sean understands very well how personal Annie’s mystery is to me. He also understands that my reticence when it comes to her is sometimes motivated by a desire to hide the past rather than reveal it.

As in this case. I have lied to him once more. I don’t want him to read those letters, and I don’t want to read them eitherbecause I am not at all certain I’ll like what I learn. Not about Annie, but about myself.

That is why I fear my memory. The more of my memory that returns to me, the more I see that my sister and I did not enjoy the perfect friendship I thought we did. I fear that if I remember more, I’ll have to come to grips with the fact that I was no friend to her at all.

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