Dear Kyra,
You didn’t tell me about an affair, but I warned you about getting too close to Aiden Finlay. I can’t imagine you ever having an affair with him. You’re in the perfect marriage to Jacob—the way things are supposed to be. Whatever mistakes you made before, they’re in the past. You got a second chance at life—start living in the present!
Love you, gotta go,
Linny
I read her message twice. Her buoyant tone feels unfamiliar. She never valued marriage. When she was young, her parents yelled at each other nearly every day. They separated when she was twelve. Linny doesn’t believe in tying the knot. Or at least, she didn’t four years ago.
What changed her mind? She’s always wanted the best for me, and even I could see that Jacob had more faith in me than I might have deserved. People change in four years. People change in one year. People can change in only one month. I sit back, the dizziness setting in again.
I send a quick message. I’ll try, Linny. But first I need to clear up some things in my past. Did Jacob and I ever argue? Was I ever unsure of our relationship? Thank you, miss you, I’ll be in touch soon, and I sign off, wondering why I’ve asked her these questions. No, I know why. I go back to the bathroom, run my fingers along the indentation in the door, right beneath the chrome towel rack. I didn’t see the dent before, because the towels were in the way. Nothing comes back to me, no suggestion of how the dent was made.
I head down to the beach, walking south this time on a new path, to shake off the headache. Maybe today, the Tompkins anemone will magically appear. But the creature has other plans. I’m beginning to wonder if it even exists. Red sea cucumbers, barnacles, mussels, and sponges cling to rocks. Occasionally, a spate of purple jellyfish washes up on the sand, their sails no match for the wind.
A Dungeness crab watches me from a rock. It doesn’t move as I approach. I lift the crab and the shell of its back splits apart to reveal nothing inside—only a complex of empty chambers. The crab has been molting, shedding its shell. The real crab is long gone.
The wind calms as I round a bend to a protected beach. This is the way to Windswept Bluff, where the old man might live—the man who thought he recognized me. Far ahead, a boat is anchored to a dock. Makeshift wooden steps lead up the cliff into the woods. Someone’s standing at the top of the steps, a dark silhouette of a man. He descends toward me, moving stiffly in a black, hooded raincoat. I wave at him, and he waves back. As he reaches the bottom step, I see that he is the man from town, the man who approached me at Mystic Thyme.
“Hello!” I say. “Remember me?”
“I’ve been watching you walk down this way,” he says.
“You could see me from around the bend?”
“I watched from up there.” He points up the steep, rickety wooden steps to the top of the cliff.
“You do live close to us,” I say.
“Windswept Bluff is up there, dirt driveway, only one house. Mine.” He marches toward me, bent forward as if his back hurts. “Who are you? Where do you live?”
“A bit north of here.”
He’s close now, giving off a strong scent of wood smoke. He peers closely at my face, a sudden spark of recognition returning to his eyes. “You left him, then?”
“Left whom? My husband? No, I didn’t leave him.” The tide laps at my shoes. The earth tilts, then rights itself. I can’t get dizzy now, not when I have to walk all the way back along the beach.
“You should leave him,” the man says. “Go, right now.”
The wind ripples across the ocean, shivering through me. “You’re saying I should leave Jacob? I don’t understand.”
His expression shifts to a startled frown. He blinks, rubs his eyes, and looks at me again. The wind roars in my ears. “Hell, I’m sorry. I . . . I must be dreaming. I need to go.” He starts to move past me toward the dock.
I follow him. “Hey, don’t go. Not again. You said I should leave him. What did you mean?”
“You look like someone else, that’s all. I get mixed up these days.”
“Who? Tell me what you know about me.”
He looks at me, and I can see he’s embarrassed, as if he was caught with his pants down. “I’m sorry, my memory is faulty sometimes.”
“So is mine,” I say with urgency, feeling a strange affinity with this man. I point to the scar on my forehead. “I forget things. Sometimes I don’t remember what someone told me a week ago. I hit my head.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “I wish I’d hit my head, but I’m just old.” He strides out onto the swaying dock. I’m not sure I want to brave it.
“I’m Kyra!” I call after him. “Could we talk?”
“Doug. And sure, yeah, we can talk.” He looks at me again. His eyes are haunted. “You remind me of someone from a long time ago, that’s all. Years and years have gone by.”
“The memory makes you sad.”