My mom looks caught off guard. “It’s veggie crumbles. I made sure to get the ones you like.”
Sam scoops the carnitas onto the four tortillas on his plate. “Sorry to break it to ya, sister, but you don’t eat meat anymore—not even bacon.”
I just look at him. “Stop it.”
“I’m serious. I wouldn’t joke about bacon. Ever.”
I roll my eyes. “Right. I know I said be normal, but you can stop messing with me now.” I almost want him to be messing with me, because I hope I would know something like that about myself.
“No, he’s right, honey,” my mom interjects.
Or maybe I wouldn’t. “What? Since when?”
“This whole last year. Started last summer, after you watched that documentary . . . what was it called?” She looks to my dad, who just shrugs as he spoons beans and rice onto his plate. “Anyway,” she says, “it’s actually been good for your dad and me too. I’ve been branching out with my cooking, we’ve been eating healthier . . .”
“Thank you for waiting until I left to pull that, by the way,” Sam says.
I sit there, still holding the bowl of veggie crumbles that my mom has made just for me. I don’t even know what I eat anymore.
“Eat whatever you want,” my dad says.
We all go quiet. I look down at the bowl of tofu, or whatever it is I’m holding. This is what the me they’re talking about would eat.
“I . . .” I can feel them watching me, waiting to see what I’ll do, and I decide to be that Liv.
I scoop up a heaping spoonful of the veggie crumbles and put it on my tortilla, and it’s like a reassurance that all is right in their world, and dinner can go on.
We pass around the plates, spoons clinking against them as we serve ourselves, and it all seems very normal, but none of this feels normal to me. I watch everyone carefully, trying to make sure I don’t do anything I usually wouldn’t do, or eat anything I no longer eat. I’m relieved when no one corrects the generous scoop of guacamole I put over the veggie crumbles to make them edible.
“So,” my mom says with a bright smile. “I’ve been doing a lot of research online about posttraumatic retrograde amnesia, and the general consensus is like what Dr. Tate said. The more you’re surrounded by the familiar—people, places, and your regular routines—the better chance you have of your memories starting to come back to you.”
There’s a loud buzz from the kitchen island, and we all look that way as it buzzes again.
“Do you need to get that?” my mom asks my dad.
He shakes his head. “No. Not right now. This has been going on all day long.”
I stay quiet, feeling like I’m missing something. The phone stops buzzing.
My mom puts her hand on mine and looks at me with her smile still in place. “Anyway, I was thinking that after dinner maybe we could get out your yearbooks? Or videos? We have all your volleyball games, and graduation, of course. And I think we may even have the video from before your last prom, when the limo picked you up and you all took pictures here.”
Sam glances at me, then puts his big hand on top of both mine and my mom’s, mimicking her in his good-natured way. “Or . . . we could just let her chill and enjoy her first night home,” he says. “You know. Let her ease back into things.”
Yes. Yes, please. I’m more thankful for my brother in this moment than maybe I’ve ever been.
“I mean, at least until I put her back to work.”
I look at him. “What?”
“Oh, that’s another thing you may not remember. As of this summer, I’m your boss.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sam looks at me like I’m crazy. “Man, this is gonna take some getting used to.” He smiles. “At the Fuel Dock. Where we’ve worked every summer for the last three years. I start back early tomorrow, since I’m home anyway.”
I look at my dad. “Is he telling the truth?”
“Yes.”
“We work together?”
“Yes.”
I look at Sam. “What do I do there?”
“Mainly take orders and deliver food to the boats. But we may have to rethink that one if you don’t remember your way around. We can see how it goes when you come back next week.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” my mom says. “She needs a few days to rest and be home, and to get reacquainted with things.” She looks at me now. “So when you’re feeling up to it, maybe we can start to walk you through a few pictures of those big moments, with your friends, and with Matt . . .”
The corners of her mouth turn down, and she leaves his name hanging in the air between us all. I tense.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just—he’s been calling, checking up on you, and asking if . . .”
If I remember him yet.
I remember his face there in the hospital, apologizing over and over, pleading with me to forgive him for not being able to get me out of the car, and not understanding why I didn’t know him. I still don’t understand all the details of what happened. I set my empty fork down. “Who pulled me out of the car?”
“What?” my mom asks, but I know she heard me.
“At the hospital—when Matt came to see me, he kept saying sorry that he couldn’t get me out.”
“I know,” my mom says. “I wish he wouldn’t feel so guilty about that. He’s been apologizing to us, too.”
I look to my dad. “So . . . who pulled me out of the car? Was it the Harbor Patrol?”
He glances at my mom, finishes chewing, slowly, then shakes his head. “No.”
“Then who?”
My mom shifts in her seat. My dad clears his throat. Sam stuffs half a taco into his mouth.
“You guys. What?” I look around the table, trying to figure out what is going on. “Who got me out of the car?”
When my eyes land on my dad, he finally answers. “A kid named Walker James. I don’t know if you’d remember him.”
Walker . . .
The note. I know the name from the reporter’s note. But when my dad says his last name, I know it from somewhere else too. I reach back, beyond the big stretch of emptiness, to the names and faces I do remember.
Walker James . . .
“He lives on one of Charlie’s old boats at the marina. Saw your car go off the bridge and hopped on a fishing boat to go help.”
I try to take in what my dad is saying, but at the same time, from the place in my brain that still remembers, I can see a face. It’s the face of a boy, twelve or thirteen years old—one I didn’t know, but would see around school or town, always with an older group who usually hung around the skate park or outside 7-Eleven.
“Did he . . . was he the one who . . . ?”
My mind tries to form a picture from these new details, and my hand goes to my chest, where I can feel the squeeze of pain with every inhale. I remember what Dr. Tate told me about the CPR and my broken ribs. For the first time, it feels like it’s something that actually happened.
My dad nods. “Yeah. He jumped in and got you out. Started CPR and kept you going until the paramedics arrived. We’re lucky he was there and that he knew what to do.”