“I know about all your other women,” Mimi said. “I saw your sex tapes.”
He thought the earth was going to open and swallow him up. He tried to speak and it came out as an awkward laugh, and from her expression that was fire on gasoline. Deny? Accept? How could she know? He tried another dodge. “What’s happened?”
“What’s happened is that someone sent me a flash drive with your little sex tapes, Shiloh. We’re done.”
But I have a ring for you. I love you. “Mimi, no, wait, that’s all over…”
“So you admit it.”
He knew his next words would make or break him. “I wasn’t used to dating just one woman. OK? And I made some bad choices, but I love you, Mimi.” This couldn’t be happening. It could not be happening. “I brought all your favorites. I brought this pink wine…”
“Choke on it. You screwed around and you recorded yourself with these women. Did they know they were having sex on camera? I bet they did not.”
“Please. I bought you a ring. This morning.”
For a moment her anger ebbed, and then the fury surged back. “Then you’re in the return-policy window. Don’t ever call me, or text me, or contact me again.”
“Who sent this to you?” Shiloh could hear his rage and grief exploding from his voice. He would kill whoever it was. Kill them.
“It was anonymous. Good-bye. Have a nice life.” She slammed the door in his face and then he could hear her sobbing on the other side of the door. He thought of kicking in the door, to plead for forgiveness again. Instead he leaned against the door as if all the strength had fled from his body.
How could anyone have the recordings? He planned to get rid of them once Mimi said yes. They were in a lockbox under his bed. Someone had to have known about them. But he had never told anyone, and none of the twelve women had known.
“This isn’t over!” he screamed at the door.
He left the picnic basket behind, like a pathetic peace offering, and stumbled back toward his car. He had taken a dozen steps, when he heard her door open, and two more steps, when he felt something hit the back of his head. He stumbled, looked down at the ground. The wheel of Brie. Next she threw the box of ridiculously expensive flatbread crackers, next the bottle of wine. She had a good arm and the bottle of rosé exploded across his car’s hood.
He got into the car. She ran toward him, throwing the basket, and it landed on the hood of the car. He drove away, with the broken bottle and the basket skittering off the hood and into the road. He made it two miles before he pulled into an office parking lot and pushed back the tears. In their place he let a hot rage build.
Who could have done this to him? He had no enemies. Well, just guys he’d tangled with over the years, but they were all morons who couldn’t pull this off. He had stopped dealing the black-market prescription drugs two years ago, and he hadn’t worked as muscle for any of his friends who dealt in a year. He could not imagine any of the women he’d seen while dating Mimi betraying him with this level of sophistication. It had just been screwing around, nothing more. And he was sure they didn’t know they’d been filmed.
Someone hated him enough to ruin his life.
But he would find out, and he’d find a way to make them suffer.
15
Jane’s Book of Memory, written in the
days and weeks after the crash
What I wasn’t prepared for was disbelief. Not about the suicide note. Not about Mom’s ill-fated deer story.
About my amnesia.
Every day was a gauntlet.
A girl, stopping me and Kamala on our second day back at school (Kamala had been assigned to help me, since we had several classes together and she assured me we had been good friends forever, and yes, she and David had dated, but she was sure that suicide note was some kind of misunderstood bit of scribbling, and after that first day I was just so grateful that she was standing up for me, her, the person who could have hated me the most). But I couldn’t help that people were staring at us walking together. I saw hands cupped over whispering mouths, gossiping heads touching each other. Everyone knew me, and I felt like I hardly knew anyone.
“This is so generous of you, Kamala. Hi, Jane.” The girl who spoke to us had warmth in her voice for Kamala and a coolness for me. I could hear the drop in her voice. “Do you really not remember things? Like Jason Bourne in the movies?”
“Of course she’s lost her memory,” Kamala said. “Most of it. It’s coming back, slowly.” She put an arm around my shoulder. She did this a lot when I first came back to school, as if she could cocoon me from the painful uncertainty, the stares, the whispers. And to send a signal, I suppose, that I had her loyalty.
“Really? I heard, but I didn’t think it was true.”
“I remember my childhood years,” I said. My voice sounded so dry. “Not so much high school.”
“You think it would be the reverse,” the girl mused. “I don’t remember what I ate for dinner last week.”
“Morgan.” Kamala sounded like her patience was wearing thin. “She doesn’t know you. Or anyone she didn’t know in elementary or middle school. It’s like she’s still fourteen. I thought name tags, for our classmates, might not be a bad idea.”
Forcing everyone to wear name tags. Morgan had spoken to me, but a lot of kids just glared at me. Because of David, of course. He was dead and I was alive and compared to him I was a nobody. I suddenly, very badly wanted to go home. But I had to do this. I had to.
“Name tags,” Morgan said. “That would be a great service project for me.” And she left, like she’d been given a job.
There was more of the same as we navigated from the student center through the hallways.
“Jane, this is Claudia Gomez. She went to middle school with us.”
I nodded. But Claudia had changed so much; she had gone from being kind of mousy to vibrantly pretty with a kind smile. We transform into new people in those years from middle to high school. “I remember. Hi, Claudia.”
“Hi. Did you really lose your memory?”
No, I just thought in the aftermath of our friend’s death this would be a great conversation starter. Or a funny joke. Ha, ha.
“Yes. The last three years.”
“Wow. I’d like to forget freshman year.” And Claudia moved on, as if I were contagious.
Kamala eased me out of the hallway traffic. I could feel stare after stare after stare. Like rocks being thrown, or bullets. “I’m embarrassed for our classmates.”
“I’m not optimistic about this.”
And I shouldn’t have been. The variations of greetings I got:
“Of course you remember me!” (Yes, but the last time I remember you, we were in eighth grade.)
“Jane! This amnesia thing is a rumor, right?” (No. It’s a curse. I am like Snow White, except the curse continues after I wake up from my sleep.)
“Jane, sweetheart! Hey, baby, how you doing?” (“Baby”? Is he an ex-boyfriend? He was kind of cute. But I also thought Mom or Kamala would have mentioned a boyfriend, or that he would have shown up at the hospital.)