Pictures of You

Chapter 31

31

Drew

Oliver’s buying my photo was a power move I never forgave him for. He couldn’t stand to see me with something he wanted, even if it was my own intellectual property. I guess it was a mutual sentiment. It wasn’t just me who looked at Oliver Roche and saw a whole world to envy. Splashy house in Lane Cove. Luxury car at seventeen. Two parents invested in his life. And yet he managed to stay down-to-earth enough to be universally likeable. Or loveable, in Evie’s case.

I don’t know what he did with the portrait. It was never on display. The reason it won didn’t have anything to do with my photography skills; it was all her and the joie de vivre she had back then. She’d lit up the moment I pressed the shutter, but she would have done that with or without a camera stuck in her face.

“Maybe the portrait is at the house I shared with Oliver,” she suggests, walking backward away from me, as if she’s pulling me into a stroll.

I amble toward her, sand clinging to my feet, wet denim rubbing my ankles, every shred of common sense telling me to stop following this woman up the beach, into our past. I think she’ll be disappointed if she goes looking for that portrait, but it’s not my place to accuse Oliver now. Never speak ill of the dead, they say.

Dead. It’s weird to think Oliver is gone. Even weirder that I’m the one here with Evie. Life twists and turns and things you never imagined possible strike in an instant. Suddenly you’re on a totally different path. Not that this is still our path. It’s a diversion. Get her memory sorted, and that’s it. I can’t let her get any closer than she already has. No more brushing my face with her fingers.

She’s down the beach a little way now, inspecting rock pools. I resist the temptation to take more photos. She’s similar to the teenage girl I remember—always in a world of her own—but now with the body of a woman. Every move she makes puts thoughts in my head that don’t belong there, not in these twisted circumstances. She looks up just as I’m banishing yet another idea. My body has always been under her spell, but it’s my mind I worry about more.

I have to snap out of this. I pull out my phone and search for dissociative amnesia . The more I know about what she’s grappling with, the better, although what I find only plunges me into a world of concern.

Severe memory loss that can’t be explained by a medical condition.

The patient can’t recall events or people from their lives, especially from a time of distress or pain.

Can’t recall upsetting events or traumatic experiences.

Increased risk of self-harm …

“Did you keep anything from when we were at school?” she asks. “Concert tickets, programs from school plays, photos?”

Armed with new details of her condition, I’m wary about how to answer. “Why?”

“It’s just, I don’t have anything. I think it’s all been thrown out. Apparently I’m a minimalist now? Can you imagine?!”

“I remember your car. Books, journals, school assignment instructions … I can confirm that you loved stuff.”

“Maybe you really did know me,” she says, wonder lighting up her face. It’s better than fury. But now she’s looking at me expectantly, perhaps hoping she meant enough to me that I’ve stashed away evidence of our friendship for safekeeping.

“I kept a few things,” I assure her, though I’m not ready to tell her what. Not even sure I should, if this glitch in her mind is preventing her from accessing a whole period of her life for her own emotional safety. Why?

I wonder if she has any idea of all the ways she could break me. Has broken me. The fracture of our friendship was the catalyst for a decade of chasing the wrong relationships, gravitating toward situations I knew would fail before they even began. Always holding out some crazed hope that something massive would shift and a miracle would happen and we’d get our plan B start. An idea so far-fetched, given her marital status, that it always seemed impossible … and because it was impossible, safe .