Laney listened, her face neutral. She seemed to be consciously withholding judgment, as if someone were telling a joke that might be offensive and she was waiting for the punch line to see which way it landed. Her reserve made him talk faster, wedging words between words, embroidering his statements, spinning the tale as best he knew how, trying to paint for her the state of his life, the edge of madness he’d haunted, the constant uncertainty.
Finally she broke in. “You don’t remember anything.”
“Like I said, it’s coming back. Some of it. And I’m hoping that now that we’re together . . .” He broke off, realizing how lame that sounded.
“You’re not joking.”
“No.”
“This isn’t some weird game.”
“No.”
“Last Christmas, when I roasted a chicken and we lay in the backyard looking at the stars. You don’t remember.”
“No.”
“Our wedding day, on the beach in Maine.”
Slowly, he shook his head.
“The day we met.”
“I’m—I’m sorry. It’s not something I chose, believe me.”
She turned away. “Do you remember me at all?”
“I . . .” He took a deep breath. Guilt and shame had been constant companions for the past week, but now they found new ways to twist within him. “I know that I love you. I have certain things, images, little . . . vignettes, I guess, that come to me. I don’t control them. But I can tell how precious you are to me.”
She made a sound that might have been intended as a laugh.
“I realize how that . . . especially . . . I mean, you know.” He gestured at the twisted bedding.
“That’s what you were trying to say in the elevator.”
“Laney, I’m so sorry. If I could turn this off, get rid of it, I would. It’s been tearing me apart ever since I woke up on that beach and realized I didn’t know how I got there.” He reached out to touch her, stopped before his fingers made contact. Held them there for a moment, and then lowered his hand. “I know this much,” he said quietly. “Even when I didn’t remember anything at all, I knew you were out there. I knew that I had to get back to you. I followed a television show, a fantasy, across the country. I chased you before I knew your name. I was trying to get home. And home is you.”
She knit her fingers together, palms up—this is the church, this is the steeple, open it up, see all the people—and spoke to them. “You need a doctor. It could be a brain tumor, or an aneurism—”
“No,” he said. He told her about the MRI clinic, the radiology tech shrugging, saying, Man, you want to see a doc, up to you, but this is your brain, and there ain’t nothing wrong with it. Physically, at least.
“It could be something else. Something that doesn’t show up on an MRI.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you know about medicine? I mean, if it’s not physical, then how did this happen?”
“I’m only guessing.”
“Okay.”
“I think maybe my brain was trying to protect itself.”
“From what?”
“From . . . dying.”
“Dying? What do you mean?” She turned suddenly, her eyes gas-burner blue.
He looked away.
“Daniel?”
“I don’t know for sure. I think maybe I was.” He sighed. “Maybe I was trying to kill myself.”
“What?”
“I don’t know—”
“Trying to kill yourself? What are you talking about?”
“Well, I mean, it’s . . .” He tried for a sheepish grin, failed miserably, turned away again. “It’s my best guess of how this all started. My amnesia. I thought you were dead, and so I tried to kill myself.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, all right? I don’t remember. All I know is that I thought you were dead, and next thing I can put together, I woke up on the beach where we got married. So I figure that I was . . .” He shrugged. “Lost. Miserable. And I ran from L.A., and kept running until I made it to the beach. I had a gun with me, and I’m guessing maybe I planned to use it on myself, but then decided to swim into the ocean instead. That seemed more fitting, somehow, and—”
“Asshole!”
Daniel blinked. “What?”
“Was that supposed to be romantic, all Romeo and Juliet? Did you stop to think for half a second what that would do to me? Did you?”
“Well, I don’t remember. But seeing as how you were dead at the time, I’m going to guess not.”
Laney looked like she wanted to keep yelling, but his words threw her. She shook her head. Laughed emptily. “Yeah.”
“I’ve been feeling this terrible guilt, I mean, just unbearable guilt and shame. Ever since I woke up. And these dreams. One in particular that keeps coming back, where I’m standing in front of this dark tunnel, and there’s something horrible about it, something I can’t take back. Which would make sense if I tried to kill myself, wouldn’t it?”
“A tunnel?” Something flickered across her face.
“Yeah. Somewhere made out of concrete, and there’s a tunnel.” “And that’s all you remember?”
“Of the dream? Yeah.”
She nodded slowly. “So you don’t remember anything about Bennett.”
“No.”
“Nothing from the last couple of weeks?”
“No.”
“Nothing? At all?”
He cocked his head. “Is there something—”
“No, I’m just getting used to this.” Laney looked like she might continue, but then she closed her mouth, gave him an empathetic wince. “It must be scary.”
He nodded. They sat for a moment. Daniel said, “So who is he?”
“He’s . . . a nightmare. My nightmare.”
“What does that mean?”
She stared at her hands again. It took an effort of will not to fire questions at her, to just wait for her to be ready.
“I started modeling when I was fourteen. Small stuff, local. Ads for the kids’ clothing store in the mall, that kind of thing. But when I was seventeen I went to this casting call for Abercrombie. There were a couple of hundred girls there, and that was just in Chicago. Somehow they picked me. It was a national campaign, in all their stores. Suddenly I was a capital-M Model. I got an agent, and she got a lot of calls. My dad didn’t know what to do about it, but I was almost eighteen, and he knew he could only put it off for a couple of months, so he gave in. I spent that year flying all over the place. Making ridiculous money. Seventeen, and I made more for a week’s work than Dad brought home in a year at the garage. I thought life was one big adventure. Beautiful clothes, famous people, fabulous parties. And at one of them, I met this guy.”