It was hard to swallow the bite of cookie in my mouth, but I got it down with a big gulp of air.
“I’m sorry! I should’ve offered you a drink as well. What would you like?”
“That’s alright. I’d actually like to use your restroom, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Sure, honey.” My eyes met hers. As naturally as that honey was for her to say, it felt a little funny on my end. “Why don’t you use the one that connects to your old room upstairs? Last door on the left. Take your time.”
I nodded and quietly left the kitchen, hurrying my way up the stairs. The second floor hallway opened up over the family room, so the railings ran along one side, the rooms and doors on the other. At the top of the stairs, there was a room to my right and three to the left. I took that long stroll down the hallway, glancing into the only room with an open door, the second from the end. Blue and green paisley linens with floral mums pinned on the wall – Thea’s room.
I didn’t really linger to explore, too curious about my own room. I twisted the pewter knob and pushed the door open. The room was surprisingly bright, considering the dark shade of plum on the walls, but the sheers were white lace, allowing the sun’s rays to shine brightly through the barest of filters. I didn’t realize I had held my breath, and a deep exhalation slowly made its way past my lips.
The furniture was all shabby chic, from the iron headboard on the full-sized bed to the wooden side table and dresser that were distressed and had the appearance of chipped-away paint. I liked it, even as Megan, the room seeming vintage yet fresh at the same time.
I stepped in, my hand trailing atop the dresser, noting its lack of dust. Hanging on the wall were a few homecoming mums of my own and dried dress corsages; a collection of metal mirrors in all shapes and sizes; three wall posters of bands I no longer recognized called The Dandy Warhols, Jimmy Eat World and Fall Out Boy; and leaning in the corner, a vintage guitar that had a hard life. Could I even play that?
Amongst the cluster of frames on the dresser was the same picture Nick had on his bedside table. I held the kissing photo and settled on the bed. Scanning what part of the room I could see, I began to wonder if I ever kept a diary and where I might’ve stashed it to keep private from prying eyes. Of course, that would require it still even being here. Surely my parents, and maybe the police, would’ve searched my room looking for answers. I wondered if at the beginning, they thought I simply ran away, or tried to sneak off to be with Nick for the day. God, I could only imagine the horror of realizing your child had gone missing, and the worry and utter terror they must’ve endured as they scrambled to make sense of it all.
I released a deep breath, my gaze focusing on the trees swaying in the wind outside the window. I heard someone padding across the carpet behind me, and shortly after, Mrs. Whitaker sat down beside me. Mrs. Whitaker. Funny I still thought of her that way, but calling her Mom just didn’t feel right. At least not yet.
“It’s a little overwhelming, isn’t it?” she asked softly.
I agreed with a slow nod of the head. “I thought coming here would help trigger some memories or feelings or something, but…” Nothing. Not even the tiniest tidbit on the edge of my tongue, trying desperately to come to light.
“We’d all love for it to happen overnight, but we’ll just have to take it one day at a time.”
But I hated waiting, hated feeling lost inside my own mind with nothing but false memories to flip through for comfort. Because how could they ever comfort me now when I know they’re all just a bunch of lies?
“So what do you think of your room?” she asked, pulling me from thought. “You’re welcome to take any of it with you that you’d like.”
“It’s really pretty. Soothing to the eyes. Maybe I’ll go through it a little before we leave.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I felt like I was invading Claire’s private space. I knew these things were mine, I just didn’t feel right going through them yet, like I wanted to get to know Claire a little better before I shuffled through the possessions that took her seventeen years to collect, holding onto only the most important items. These were her things, her memories. What right did I have to decide what was important or not?
Wanting to change the subject, I asked, “Is Thea coming?”
“I called to let her know you were here. She was at the grocery store picking up a few things for me, so she’ll be here any minute. You probably don’t know this, but the two of you were very close.”
“Oh, yeah? We didn’t kill each other over having to share a bathroom?” I asked, noticing the partially opened door that clearly didn’t open into a closet.
“Oh, no, you did,” she responded with a smile, most likely recalling one of those days in her mind. “You fought like all sisters did, but mostly, you got along well enough to be each other’s best friend. She fought the hardest to find you. I mean, we all did what we could to find you, but Thea, she’s a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company based here in Seattle. Her region covers several outlying states, and everywhere she went, it didn’t matter how big or small, she spent all her free time talking to people and giving out your flyer. Even when she went across the country for conferences. It didn’t matter where she was, that’s what she did. Day in and day out.”
My eyes began to well with tears and the back of my throat felt swollen when I swallowed. “I didn’t know that.” I licked my lips and released a heavy sigh. “I spent all that time wishing I had someone who loved me who would come bursting through that door to save me.” But no one ever did.
“When I got out, I thought I was alone in the world, and all I could do was hide.”
Her hand suddenly encapsulated mine; it was cool, not unlike my own skin that never seemed to warm on its own. She sat with me a few minutes in silence, seemingly just as comfortable with it as I was, and I began to wonder if she’d ever done this very thing when I was missing.
I heard quick thumps ascending the carpeted stairway, and seconds later Thea came to a halt in the doorway. Disbelief and longing filled her voice as she smoothly said, “Oh, my God.” Her hands clapped together and covered her face, her fingertips joining at the bridge of her nose. “It’s really you.”
I stood up as she advanced, her hands reaching out to hug me, tears threatening to over-moisturize my eyes again as I lightly placed my arms around her. “I knew it! I knew the moment I saw you that it was really you.” She continued on, an excess of tears causing her to blabber her words together, but I was too caught up in something else to decipher her sentences.
There was something familiar about the scent on her neck. I inhaled a long, deep breath through my nose, my mind dissecting the scent, digging deep inside my head, deeper and deeper into the recesses, scratching, scratching, scratching…until it finally found the corresponding memory. In my mind, I saw a cloth doll, with bright blue eyes, freckles in triplicate that formed a triangle above her nose and a smile on each cheek, a red dress with a white frock, and green and white striped stockings. But something was wrong with it.
“Strawberry Shortcake,” I murmured.
Thea wasn’t expecting that, and she pulled away to ask, “What?”
Still dazed in thought, I replied, “You smell like a Strawberry Shortcake doll. But the one I see in my head looks weird. She almost looks like a boy because her hair is so short.”
“Oh, my God!” Thea cried, shaking me roughly with excitement. “That was your doll! You had Strawberry Shortcake and I had Blueberry Muffin, and one day you went and got her without permission. I was so mad at you that I cut all the hair off your doll! I can’t believe you’re remembering something so small!”
“Small?” Our mother burst, standing up to involve herself now. “It devastated her so much she cried for three days straight and stopped eating!” Turning to me, she calmly said, “I wanted to get you a new one but you wouldn’t have it. You said that it would be like killing her, rejecting her that way. So I told you that if you wished hard enough, the doll fairy would come while you were sleeping and regrow her hair. I spent hours trying to scuff and dirty-up the new doll so you’d believe that fairy actually came!”
Looking back at Thea with judgmental eyes, she cried, “So it was no little thing for her to remember. You traumatized her!”
Appalled, Thea’s mouth opened wide and her hands went to her heart. “I was seven! All I wanted was for her to never touch my doll again!”
The look on their faces was so priceless I couldn’t help but laugh as the tears flowed freely down my cheeks. Maybe it was silly of me, but part of me kept thinking this is weird. I barely knew these people. Hell, I sort of didn’t know these people. But another part of me wanted to just let go and accept what the DNA test already told me. That they were my family, even if I couldn’t remember the life I shared with them. Was it wrong that I wanted to have my mother’s arms around me? To hug me and kiss me and tell me everything would be okay? Because inside, it was what I yearned for. Family. People to love me unconditionally. And for that, I tried to lose myself in the moment as much as my heart would allow, trying desperately to push back the uncertainty that lingered inside me. Soon enough, I allowed myself to join in on a three-way hug, listening to them continue to blabber as we wiped away our tears.
Our commotion didn’t break until we heard Nick’s snarky remark. “Oh, Lord. Did I choose the wrong time to head up here or what?”
Thea humorously told him to shut up as my mother made her way past him in the doorway, still wiping her tears, saying she had to get back to cooking the meal or we’d never get to eat.
Thea then reached for the side of my shoulder. “I’m so sorry I was such a bitch. I promise I’m going to make it up to you. I don’t care if I have to pay a thousand dollars on eBay, I’m going to replace that doll for you.”
My hands going out before me, I chuckled and said, “I don’t need the doll. Really.”
“No!” she cried back. “You get your first memory back and it’s me destroying your favorite doll? Hell no! I’m replacing your damn doll!”
“You remembered something?” I had almost forgotten Nick was there, he was so quiet and still.
“Yeah,” Thea said bitterly. “About me being a horrible sister.”
“Oh,” he said. “So you just remembered a typical day in your life then?”
“Shut up!” She hit him on the arm for giving her such a hard time, but the power behind her punch did nothing. She wiped her cheeks clear of tears and added, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go freshen up.” To me, she added, “Use anything in the bathroom if you want. I left some stuff here for when I stay the night, and we always used the same products for everything.”
I gave her a thank you and she closed herself off behind the bathroom door. Nick gently grasped the sides of my head and angled it towards his. “You remembered something,” he repeated, this time with quiet awe. Kissing my forehead, he added, “I told you it would all start to come back.” He gathered me into his arms. “I’m so proud of you, baby.”
I closed my eyes and fully embraced his hug, like his essence was flowing into me and recharging my courage battery. When I reopened my eyes, my line of sight was fixated on the bed, and a smile formed across my face. “So, is this the same bed?”
“Yes, it is,” he said quickly. “Now hush up before your parents hear you.” He pinched my ribs and I swatted him off me. “So have you gone through any of your stuff yet?”
“I’m warming up to it. Maybe you’ll know if something’s important to me.” I pulled open the top drawer of the chest and we peeked inside. I was immediately drawn to a stack of photos and Nick fingered through a bunch of jewelry in a large, square-shaped box lined with crushed velvet.
“Hmm…” he said, but it was really more of a groan.
“What?”
“The necklace I gave you for your seventeenth birthday isn’t here. I bet you were wearing it the day you went missing.”
“Fuckers,” I mumbled. Of course they would’ve taken it, that and anything else on my person that could trigger a real memory. But seeing how I had no idea what I was missing, it was easy for me to shift my focus back to the photos. It seemed to be me with various people I couldn’t recall, save a few with Thea or Nick. “Do you know any of these people?”
He looked through a few with me, saying, “Yeah, these are some of the people you used to hang with from school. That’s Michelle, Sarah, Winnie. A few more I can’t really remember anymore. I hardly knew them.”
“So where are they now?”
Apparently, he’d rather try to eat his lips than tell me, because it took some time for his mouth to let go. “I don’t really know. Some of them continued asking and checking in with your parents, but after a few months…”
“They gave up,” I replied bluntly.
“No,” he said softly. “It’s not that they didn’t care, because I promise you they did. They were just in a better position to let go after awhile.”
Everybody kind of acknowledged that I wasn’t coming back. Except Nick and my family, of course, who never lost hope. “Oh,” I said dismally, dropping the stack of those I didn’t know into the trash. Even if I got my memory back, I had no intention of revisiting lost friendships with people that would always look at me funny. Funny. I suddenly remembered my burns and looked to see if I was exposed anywhere. No one had asked me about them today. They treated me like they probably always had. Well, maybe with a little more fragility, but once again, I found people who loved me for me and didn’t run from the damn burns disfiguring my skin.