Page 20 of Forget Me Not

“There was a girl,” he starts slowly. “She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Wound up being thrown from the cab. She was in bad shape when we found her. Hand was nearly severed off. Gashes from the windshield everywhere.” He shakes his head, searching the ground as if they hold answers, or maybe just a better image than the one he’s just painted for the both of us.

“But she made it...right?” She had to have. She’s alive. I know she is.

The officer lifts his eyes to meet mine. “I don’t know.”

I shake my head back and forth, trying to clear the thoughts screaming inside my mind. “What was her name? Do you know her name? Anything that might help me find her?”

He shrugs helplessly. “It’d be in the accident report.”

“How do I get that?”

“DMV. Have them pull up your driving record. Accident would be on there.”

The golf ball at the pit of my stomach grows into a medicine ball with the weight to match. I don’t know if I’m relieved or terrified. That report could hold the answer I’ve been looking for all this time. Or it could give me one I’ve been avoiding. Maybe that’s why I can’t remember. She could be dead. Could have died in my truck. While I was driving. Certainly would give a new perspective on why everyone who’s supposed to love me has been lying to me since I woke up.

“Thank you.” I clench my jaw to keep from saying anything else. Or worse, ask any more questions I can hardly stand to hear the answers to.

He does his best to encourage me with a sympathetic expression I’m sure he’s had to use more times than he cares to remember in his line of work, then gets back in his patrol car and drives away.

I should do the same. I should get in my car and drive. To the nearest DMV. Only I can’t. I just walked away from the woman I’ve loved for the last three years. The woman I was prepared to promise my whole life to. I was pulled away by something stronger than her. If I find out it’s been a ghost pulling the strings to my heart all along, I’m not sure what I’ll do. I may attempt to forget all over again.

Cooper

“Is he with you?” A frantic voice demands of me before I even manage to grumble a hello. It’s dark. Sometime between three a.m. and sunrise. Two fifty-seven was the last time I glanced at the clock. After two and a half hours of checking it every three minutes, I still remember. Even half asleep, I remember. And it pisses me off. Because sleep was hard to come by and I couldn’t possibly have gotten more than three hours’ worth yet.

“Cooper!” The voice is impatient. It’s always impatient. I haven’t heard it in seven years but it still sounds exactly the same.

“Hi, Kerri,” I mumble, struggling to sit upright in my bed and possibly form coherent thoughts. On second thought, I’m probably not even awake. Hell, if I’m talking to Kerri it’s gotta be a dream. Or a fucking nightmare. Guess time will tell.

“I don’t have time to play games with you, Cooper! Just tell me he’s there. Tell me he’s with you so I can take a freaking breath and stop having a heart attack.”

I reach for the chord of my lamp and find the switch. Kerri is dramatic even on the most average of days, but this seems excessive even for her. It’s time to wake up and really pay attention.

“What are you talking about? Who is with me?”

“Reed! Who the hell else?”

Reed.It’s like the sound of his name electrocutes me, one shot straight through my entire being. I’m both wide awake and in absolute agony all at once. I haven’t heard his name in years. Not spoken by anyone else at least. On days when I miss him most, I whisper it to myself and it gives me comfort. Hearing Kerri say it, it’s anything but.

“This isn’t funny, Kerri,” I whisper into the receiver. I have to wage war with the Jupiter sized lump in my throat just to get the words out.

“Damn it, Cooper! You’re not listening to me,” Kerri screeches and the sound tears at my ear drums nearly as hard as the words do at my heart. “Reed is gone! Disappeared. Night before his wedding. No one knows where he went. His friends are calling it cold feet. Mom and Dad think he’s had some sort of a mental break, some sort of lingering brain damage no one knew about, it’s all bullshit. Cooper...I think he remembers.”

My breath catches in my throat and I choke, coughing so hard I can hardly think about anything other than how much suffocating right now would suck. He was getting married. To someone else. Nightmare. Definitely a nightmare.

“Cooper?!”

“I’m sorry,” I croak. “Just inhaling my shock. It didn’t go down so well.”

“He’s really not there.” It sounds like she’s telling herself. She won’t believe me, but if she says it out loud, she’ll accept that it’s true. “And you had no fucking clue. God, I’m sorry.”

“Kerri?”

“Yeah?” Her tone is empty. Hollow. She’s much better when she’s frantic. It gives her energy. This, this is the kind of Kerri I findreallyscary because she seems fragile. And if she breaks, I don’t know who’s around to pick up the pieces. At this time of night, probably no one. Unless Kerri’s suddenly become the cuddling type and I seriously doubt that. Kerri loves sex, but hates intimacy. She never has her overnight guests stay ‘til morning. And she never has guests that come back more than once.

“Why do you think he remembers? I mean...did something happen?” I won’t have hope. I won’t get excited. I won’t. I can’t.

“I can’t explain it, Cooper,” she says quietly, tears filling her voice. “I just know it. There was something in his eyes the last time I saw him. It was like he was there. Inside. Stuck. And he knew it. He’s never known it.” She sucks in air and it sends a loud swoosh over the phone line. “He looked sad, Cooper. Sad...and terrified.”

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