Page 42 of Help Me Remember

“Hey, maybe that’s a sign your memory is starting to come back,” she said, smiling. “Though I can’t say I’m an expert on the subject.”

“Well, I don’t know what I’m the expert on, so you have one up on me,” I told her lightly.

She clicked her tongue. “I really do not envy you. That’s gotta be hell, not knowing who you are.”

I followed her as she began to walk but kept from telling her the truth. The real hell wasn’t so much the lack of knowledge, it was fearing the truth. From the moment I woke up, I had cause to wonder if I really wanted to know the truth. Everything outside Eric’s stories about me had just gone to prove how right that fear had been.

“Right, here we are. Sorry, it looks like we’re booking you, but it’s the best camera we have for official pictures.” She pointed toward a wall where my height would be marked. Despite her assurance, I felt a slight twinge of wariness, which I quickly smothered as I sidled over to the wall to stand before the computer with the camera aimed in my direction.

“I would joke and tell you to smile, but you’re not a very smiley person from what I can tell,” she informed me.

“Not really,” I said, staring straight ahead.

“Despite how stressed and high-strung he seems, your friend seems the friendlier type.”

The corner of my mouth crooked up. “He’s friendly and kind. He’s just not a big fan of cops.”

“Well, considering what neighborhood he’s from, I don’t blame him. There’s not a whole lot of love for the force down in that neck of Port Dale,” she said sadly, then smirked at me. “Now, how about you get rid of that smile you suddenly found when I brought up Eric?”

If she was trying to kill my smile fast, she had done so in spectacular fashion. Though she also managed to earn herself a glare right before a small light on the camera blinked a couple of times, and she laughed.

“Alright, don’t bring up that you like Eric or you’ll get a look that could kill if given enough power. Got it,” she said, reaching into her pants to pull out her phone.

“I don’t like him,” I protested, even as I knew it was a damned lie. But I wasn’t going to have that conversation with her, no matter how safe it was relative to everything else. The best I’d managed with Eric so far was almost to kiss him and then actually kiss him. Whatever that meant was still something we would have to figure out, preferably together.

“Right,” she said, looking at her phone and rolling her eyes. “Jesus. I hope you’re not a cop, especially one with a partner.”

“Why’s that?” I asked as I watched her swivel her phone to snap a picture of the screen she was standing in front of.

“Because they’re like nagging grandmothers half the time,” she said, tapping her phone.

“What’s your partner nagging you about?”

“Oh, wondering if I was going to send your picture to him.”

“Why…would he need that? I thought you were sending it to a database.”

“I am, but he’s insistent that people in the city might recognize you, and he wants a copy to spread around.”

The faint tickle I recognized as that quiet voice in the back of my head started. “Wouldn’t you have done that already? Like with the one you just took?”

She shrugged, shoving her phone back into her pocket. “Yeah, but he’s being weird, and when he’s being weird, it’s better to just go with it and give him what he wants. Otherwise, he gets all pouty, and I have to put up with that, and no one likes to deal with a pouty man.”

“That feels like a pointed comment,” I grumbled, shoving my hands in my pockets, trying my best not to look sullen.

“Only a little,” she said with a wink. “Now, c’mon, let’s see if we can find Eric somewhere.”

“Sure,” I said with a shrug.

Without the distraction of conversation, my mind immediately settled on her seemingly innocent comments about her partner. Patterson had seemed intense and interested in the story Eric was telling but more prone to simply watching. I couldn’t fathom why he would need his own picture of me when Officer Fitz was already going to send it everywhere she could.

“Here you are,” she said, opening a door and motioning me in. “This will be your home away from home, at least for a few hours. Not sure what’s going to happen next, to be honest, but we’ll see what they find at Eric’s house.”

I stepped into the room, finding what had probably been a conference room once but now looked more like a break room. A card table stood against one wall, littered with a stack of magazines and books. A small fridge was shoved into the corner, and there were a couple of cots against another wall.

“Nothing fancy,” she said, sounding a little apologetic. “It’s mostly used for people who do double or triple shifts and want to catch a break. The actual room for us to sleep is right next to the road, and despite how it looks, the walls in this building aren’t the thickest.”

“Makes sense,” I said, turning to face her with a frown. “I thought this was where your partner was taking Eric.”