My head hurts, straining to make sense of this place where I once belonged.
I touch the TV remote, the ironing board in the narrow closet, the bar of soap beside the sink, but they threaten to reveal images of the people who have stayed in this room before me, of maids and crying children and one-night stands. My talent is returning to me in bursts, a jarring staccato of glimpses that I don’t want.
It’s sat dormant for so long that the creeping-back-in of memories that aren’t mine feels like a terrifying intrusion. We only just escaped Pastoral, and my mind is still a little cracked, bruised, and unsteady. I’m still not sure who I am.
So I lie awake, alone in a bed that smells like something I’ve forgotten how to describe: like metal, like bleach that doesn’t come from the earth, and I stare at the low ceiling thinking of Calla. Of strangers gathered around her, of needles poking her flesh, and the clicking of machines.
In the morning, there are no officers waiting for me in the lobby—even though they said they’d pick me up first thing and drive me to the hospital. I stand for a while beside the checker-patterned lobby chairs, staring out at the hotel pool. It’s still early, and only a single woman is reclined in one of the lounge chairs, reading a book beneath the shade of a large umbrella, the shivering blue rectangle in front of her winking up at the clear sky.
Several feet away, the lobby TVs are making my ears ring with an ad for a bathroom cleaning product, and then a women’s sanitary pad, and a storage unit facility that offers the first month free. Clean and organize. Clean and declutter. These slogans feel like insects nibbling at my eardrums.
I start to move toward the sliding lobby doors, needing an escape, when I hear a name bellowing from the TVs: Colette.
I pause and crane my head back, listening to the voice warble from the speakers, wishing I could turn the volume down two clicks. It’s a local news station, a man with silver hair and a woman with unnatural blue eyes, peering out through the TV screen. “… the woman and her baby were taken to the hospital yesterday after having fled a remote part of the forest about an hour south of here. But it wasn’t until early this morning when the identity of the unknown woman was discovered. Authorities have determined that she is indeed Ellen Ballister, the young actress who vanished eleven years earlier from her home in Malibu. And since then had been believed to be dead.”
I feel the ground beneath me sway just a little. A man walks through the sliding doors into the lobby behind me, glancing up at the TVs. He shakes his head and tilts his gaze to me. “Hell of a story, ain’t it? Her husband said she left a note eleven years ago, saying she was going up the coast, needed a weekend away, but she never came home. Somehow ended up in those woods. Has amnesia, they’re saying. Can’t recall what happened to her.” He shakes his head again, but there is a wink in his eyes, like he’s thrilled at the spectacle of such a story. “She even had a baby with another man in those woods. You can’t write this shit. Fucking crazy.”
The man stares at me a moment, waiting for me to respond, to nod in agreement, but I offer up not even a twitch of an eyelash. Somehow Ellen Ballister found herself in Pastoral—maybe she went in search of it, like Maggie did, or maybe she found it on accident (which seems unlikely) but either way, just like us, she forgot who she really was. She forgot she was someone else outside those walls.
But now she’s returned, with a newborn baby.
I turn away from the TVs and the man, and stride out through the doors. Word has gotten out, and I suspect it won’t be long until they come asking questions of Calla and me.
* * *
A young officer is standing beside his patrol car just outside the lobby doors, hands in his pockets, eyeing the hotel pool like he’d rather be floating faceup, smeared in sunblock, than waiting for me.
“Sir,” he says to me, not using the name I gave police yesterday: Theo. Maybe they suspected it was a lie, or at least not entirely truthful, so they’re waiting for the rest of the story to reveal itself. For me to fess up.
He opens the passenger door, not forcing me to sit in the back, and we pull out of the hotel parking lot. I’m careful not to touch anything inside the car—I don’t want to see the faces of those who’ve been arrested, handcuffed, and forced into this automobile.
The clouds are low and suffocating overhead, but the day is mild, slightly humid, and smelling of car exhaust. My police escort isn’t the talkative type, thankfully, and we sit in silence as we pass a handful of fast-food restaurants, a coffee hut, two hardware stores, and a church. It’s a small town, but it feels dense, the buildings crushed closely together, houses divided by fences.
I feel like I’m not in my own skin, watching it all whiz by, but after another mile more, we arrive at the hospital at the top of a sloped hillside.
The young officer with the short haircut and bored eyes gives me a nod when I open the door. “I’ll wait for you here.”
Calla’s hospital room is on the second floor. All bleached-white surfaces and ticking machines. Her eyes lift when I enter the room, and she holds out a hand to me, tears already wetting her eyelids.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, my mouth against hers.
She shakes her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Not your fault.”
“I should’ve gotten the gun from him quicker. I should have told you to run.”
Again she shakes her head, smiling. “I wouldn’t have left you alone anyway. You know how stubborn I am.”
I nod and she pulls me down to kiss her again.
“I wanted to come see you last night but they wouldn’t let me.”
“Doctor says I can probably leave tomorrow. Or the next day.” Her mouth falls flat and she looks pale, weak, but she’s alive. “The bullet wasn’t deep, just between my ribs. I should heal fine.”