What would it be like to be that free to believe?
To cling to something—a memory, a trick of the eye, the same thing—even in the face of logic and reason.
The afternoon had turned chilly and she wished she had her jacket with her. She’d stalled in making the new one several times now but felt like if she had the original one, if she were able to put it on, she might feel like herself again.
She walked back to where she knew the initials would be and ran her fingers over them—the prick of the splintered wood on her thumb—and had a physical memory of what it had felt like to kiss him, how amazing and terrifying to connect with another human being, with him.
He’d loved her once.
She’d loved him.
What was love if not a kind of forgetting?
A forgetting about the inevitability of loss.
Or was love more a kind of remembering?
Remembering how badly we need to be needed, understood.
Remembering that maybe it was the whole reason we were here.
Had she been the one to x those letters out?
Had Adam?
It didn’t matter.
She’d save herself.
It turned out she very much liked being alone.
So she planned on doing that for a while.
When she was alone she felt free and in control, even if the only thing she was in control of was herself.
Maybe the remembering and forgetting of love would come later, down the line, when she was ready.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Sarah.
This is the house.
There was a sketch attached.
Scarlett opened it, zoomed in on it.
Nothing familiar about it at all.
Then another photo came through.
A face.
A remarkable likeness of Ryan’s girlfriend.
Younger, sure, but definitely her.
Miranda, was it?
Why was Sarah sending her a drawing of Miranda?
Did Sarah even know Miranda?
The text followed:
This is the girl.
/
/
/
/
What girl?
Oh.
No.
/
/
/
Lucas
The guard unlocked the gate and let Lucas through. Ryan had hands in his shorts pockets, looked tired around the eyes.
“You actually got the money?” Lucas said.
Ryan nodded but looked baffled. “It turns out there’s a fair amount of savings. Like Dad had applied for all these artist grants and had won a bunch and made some good investments and it adds up. I’m not sure what’ll be left once we’re done paying a lawyer for you. But—”
“It won’t come to that,” Lucas said.
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“I’m not sure. I just—I need to go over everything again. We’re missing something.”
Miranda was idling in the car just out front and switched over to the passenger seat—climbing across the center console—so that Ryan could drive.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“Better now,” Lucas said. “Sashor actually came to see me and said they have a theory they’re pursuing now that the whole thing started with someone trying to erase our memory of the shooting.”
“What?” Ryan said.
Miranda said, “That’s crazy.”
“Apparently it’s not that crazy. Chambers pointed to a bunch of studies where scientists have successfully erased traumatic memories.”
“Maybe you should try hypnosis,” Ryan said. “Kristen did, right? Maybe you’ll remember something that will clear your name. Maybe you’ll remember what your tattoo means.”
In the backseat, Lucas rolled his eyes. “Kristen remembers a wooden owl. Not the most useful information.”
“Maybe you should try it anyway,” Ryan said.
“Why are you suddenly all fired up about all this?” Lucas asked when Ryan stopped at a light.
“Why aren’t you?” Ryan shouted. “You’ve been charged with murder.”
“I didn’t do it!” Lucas shouted.
“How do you know?”
“I just”—How did he know?—“he’s not the guy. I’d know. We’d know. This guy, there’s no connection to Anchor Beach or to anything.”
“You don’t know anything,” Ryan said.
That SUN’S OUT, GUNS OUT shirt was still hanging there in the shop window in town.
They weren’t that far from the house.
He could walk the rest of the way.
“Thanks for the support.” He got out of the car at the next light and headed for the gift shop.
Inside, he wound his way through overstuffed racks, lost in a hedge maze of T-shirts and baseball hats and gnomes on beaches and sea-shells with googly eyes.
This was what people wanted to help them remember? Flamingo snow globes? LIFE’S A BEACH coffee mugs?
The only souvenir he had from his whole life was inked into his skin. It had, over the last week, healed nicely.
And yet . . .
“Can I help you?” A girl with fake blond hair with a purple streak in it sat perched on a barstool by the register reading a magazine. She barely looked up.
“That shirt in the window,” he said. “‘Sun’s Out, Guns Out.’”
“What size?” She moved to get up.
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to buy one. I just want to know . . . what does it mean?”
“It’s like a muscle-head thing,” she said.