Page 55 of Last Summer

“No more questions.”

“Isn’t that why I’m here?”

“I didn’t invite you to interview me. I invited you to dinner.”

He’s the one who encouraged her to continue her dictation, but she’s not going to mention that now. His eyes remain locked on hers, and with a sigh, she puts away the voice recorder. Nathan exhales.

“Thank you,” he says, standing. “Now let’s eat. I don’t want to reheat our steaks.”

CHAPTER 16

“May I ask a personal question?” Nathan says.

They’d eaten dinner and moved to the kitchen. Ella loads the utensils Nathan rinsed into the dishwasher. He didn’t want her help cleaning, but she insisted. It was the least she could do after the meal he’d cooked. She’d been famished from their hike. She polished off her rib eye and they consumed a French Burgundy. She probably shouldn’t have drunk that second glass and not just because she has to drive back to the hotel on a narrow, curvy road in the dark. Rather, she finds herself wanting to linger longer than professionally necessary.

“Sure.” Ella drops the utensils into the dishwasher basket, mindful the fork tines face down.

“It’s about Damien. What’s his take on your memory loss?”

“I think he resents me,” she blurts before she can stop herself. She lets out a shaky laugh. It’s not lost on her that her answer is the same connection she drew between Nathan and Stephanie.

Nathan’s brows fold. “He told you this?”

“I sense it.” Damien wouldn’t be so unkind. “It’s the way he watches me. I feel like he’s trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. He gets—” She stops midsentence and flashes him a smile when she realizes what she was about to do. What she is doing. To distract herself from saying more, she realigns the glasses in the top rack. The last thing she should be doing while on assignment is complaining about her husband. To another man, no less. One she finds very attractive.

But if she’s being honest, for the past few months she’s felt like a piece of coding Damien’s trying to insert in a software upgrade. How will she respond? Will she crash the whole system? Ruin his program?

Nathan watches her, patient.

“I’m not sad and hurt like him,” she offers up. “Hard to be when I can’t remember what I should be sad about. He thinks I got off easy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think he believes I blocked my memories on purpose.”

Nathan looks intrigued. “Can someone do that?”

“Subconsciously, yes. I read up on it after all this, trying to figure out what’s going on. The mind will block memories, or parts of memories, even alter memories when the person can’t deal with tragedy. My understanding is that the more I talk about it and immerse myself in familiar surroundings and with familiar people, my memories should come back. The thing is, nothing about my being pregnant is familiar—my maternity clothes, the nursery I apparently painted, my medical reports from my routine checkups and the accident, even the bills we had to pay. They didn’t feel like mine.”

“That must have been tough. I remember that about Carson. Paying the hospital bills and seeing his name printed there on the top. Knowing he’s gone and I’ll never see him again. There were all sorts of things I still had to do on his behalf. The worst was boxing up his clothes and favorite toys.” He pushes out a breath. Ella briefly touches his arm.

“I thought that would be difficult for me, too, but it wasn’t,” she says, taking the platter he rinsed and fitting it into the lower rack. “Reading those reports didn’t feel any different than researching an assignment. Same with paying the bills. It was like they were for a distant relative. I mean, I cared, but the emotional attachment I should have with Simon just isn’t there.

“Anyways.” She waves a hand, getting them back to Nathan’s original question. “Damien barely talks about the accident or my miscarriage, so that doesn’t help me either. Sometimes I think he wants to pretend it never happened.”

Nathan makes a contemplative noise, a tremor deep in his throat.

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything.” He hands her a dish and she loads it into the washer.

“You made a weird noise in the back of your throat.”

He sighs and tosses the sponge into the sink, turning to her. “You’ve done what he wants to do. Forget.”

Davie had told her something similar. She should be fortunate. Why does she want to remember something that would only bring heartache? Maybe Damien’s right. Does she really want her memories back?

Yes, because she believes there’s a specific reason she’s forgotten, something she’s not supposed to remember. Damien’s complaint in the hospital keeps coming back to her.

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