The Memory Painter

“You were my best man—I don’t expect to be yours. I won’t even be offended if I’m not invited to the wedding. Okay? So stop worrying. Please.”


Doc nodded and tried to hide it as he wiped the hint of a tear from his eye. Michael had read him right. “Come here, buddy. Congratulations.” Michael gave him a hug and joked, “Think you can talk her into naming a boy after me?”

“I suggest that and I’ll be living on your sofa forever.”

*

Bryan opened his eyes and a thousand thoughts flooded his head. Michael Backer had been his father’s best friend. Doc had even been in his wedding. Which meant …

Barbara. Holy Christ, Bryan had dated his mother—and dumped her. He felt ill.

He tried to sit up but his back protested. He had to quit passing out in his car. As he climbed into the driver’s seat, he looked back at Linz’s building and fought the urge to call her. He wanted to tell her everything, to have her remember it. For her not to possess these memories along with him felt close to physical pain.

With that thought a new fear engulfed him. What if she never remembers? No, he couldn’t think that way. The fact that her subconscious had reproduced a piece of Juliana’s life meant Diana must have taken Renovo too, and if she had, then it was possible she would remember more, like him.

Bryan was frustrated by his inability to recall Michael’s life in its entirety. And he was afraid that perhaps he never would. Only fragments were coming, and he knew he needed a tidal wave of memories to understand it all. Michael had only been forty in 1982. If these dreams were memories of a past life, then he had died young—along with Diana. What had happened to them? To their research? To Finn and Conrad?

The questions bombarded him. As he drove home, his mind sifted through what he had learned tonight, but he found no answers. He only knew Michael had remembered Origenes as well, and whatever drug Michael had taken had somehow formed a bridge between their lives.

Bryan glanced at the clock on the dash—two a.m., too late to go to his parents’ house. He would question his father about Michael tomorrow. The Internet would have to do for now.

When he arrived home, he fired up his laptop and made coffee, but instead of sitting at his computer, he found himself wandering over to his studio, drawn to a blank canvas. Without hesitation, he put fresh paint on his palette and picked up a brush, overcome by an urge to paint Diana.

He painted her on the beach at Nantucket, with the sun on the horizon. She and Michael had rented a little bungalow for the weekend, and Bryan captured her expression at the exact moment when Michael had asked her to marry him. She stood in the ocean, laughing, her arms opened wide as she embraced the wind.