“Get off me!” I back down the rickety steps. Behind me, the sea roars in a fury. The wind whips my hair into my face.
He lunges for me, and I step to the side. He trips down the stairs and grabs the railing, but the rotten wood gives way. In an instant, he’s plunging down the cliff, yelling, flailing, reaching for something to hold on to, but he finds nothing. He seems to fall forever in slow motion, unable to gain a foothold. When he reaches the bottom, he’s motionless, his body lying at an odd angle on the rocks.
With a deafening groan, the stairs below me start to give way, sliding down the cliff. I climb to the top and collapse onto flat ground. Someone’s calling my name. Kyra, where are you? Kyra?
Aiden and I ride the ferry into Friday Harbor. We’re huddled together in a booth by the window, watching the turquoise ocean race past the boat. He is holding my hand, his grip not yet as firm as I remember. He was in a coma for months, and his body is still recovering. But he’s the man I married, the man in the wool sweater with the scent of soap and pine.
My cheek is still sore where Jacob hit me, but the swelling is gone now, leaving only a faint yellow bruise after all these days. He cracked a rib when he kicked me, and I still can’t sneeze or laugh without a stab of pain, but otherwise, I’m remarkably well. Physically, at least. Mentally, that’s another story. A new nightmare plagues me now. Instead of a suffocating diver rising below me, I see Jacob coming for me, punching me, pulling my hair . . . I wake up gasping, and Aiden holds me close.
As soon as he woke from the coma, he asked for me, insisted on seeing me, but I had checked out of rehab. Jacob brought him the letter, which devastated him. It was easy for Jacob to check me out of the rehab center as my uncle. I was tabula rasa, unable to remember anything new for more than five minutes. Over and over again, he reminded me that he would take care of me. He whisked me away to the new life he had already created on the island, the life he planned to share with me after Aiden’s death at sea.
“He expected me to want to stay with him,” I say.
“I know,” Aiden says regretfully. He doesn’t ask, Would you have wanted to move to Mystic Island with him? For good? If you had remembered our fights, our separation?
“I would never have wanted to be with him,” I say. “The affair was long over.”
“You weren’t cheating on me,” Aiden says. “We were separated.”
“But it never felt right to me . . . being with him.”
“I drove you into his arms,” Aiden says, taking my hands in his. “I never should’ve introduced you to him.” The first time I met Jacob, I was visiting Aiden at his office. Jacob stared at me as if struck by lightning. You remind me of someone, he said.
“Nobody’s to blame,” I say, looking out the window again. The ghosts of our reflections stare back from the glass.
We’re quiet for a time.
“I hope you like the house,” Aiden says finally. He squeezes my hand.
“If I loved it when we bought it, I’ll love it now, too,” I say, smiling at him. Snippets of our marriage come back to me, but there are still gaps. I hope someday to fill them in, and until then, Aiden tells me what I need to know.
“You said you dreamed of the house,” he says.
“I was in a bright yellow Victorian.” I touch the stubble on his cheek. The wool of his sweater smells familiar, comforting. “It was a memory, but Jacob wanted me to believe it wasn’t.”
“The extent of his charade is what floors me,” Aiden says, wrapping my hand in both of his hands, bringing my hand to his chest. “Nobody could ever believe . . . It’s too bizarre. He created such a complete world.”
A little time has made me angrier, at Jacob, at myself. But I also learned enough about Jacob to know that he wasn’t a monster. “It wasn’t complete. He made mistakes. He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. He thought he could create this perfect life with everything I loved.”
“He held you hostage.”
“My lost memory kept me hostage.”
Aiden looks at me, and I see a range of colors in his dark eyes. “He fooled everyone, but most of all me. I put you in harm’s way. I was starting to suspect something was wrong. Something about the way you replied to me. The wording. Then after you agreed to meet me, you stood me up.”