Pictures of You

Chapter 84

the PRESENT

84

Evie

It’s four o’clock in the morning when Drew wakes me in my parents’ spare room. I’ve had the most unsettling, horrible nightmare, but I can’t hold on to it in my mind.

“Evie,” he’s saying, shaking my shoulder. “Wake up.”

I open my eyes, and he’s perched beside me on the bed, fully dressed, in jeans and a T-shirt.

“Get up, Hudson. Get dressed. Meet me in the car.”

“Are we running away? What is it?”

“Just trust me.”

He leaves the room and, a minute later, I hear him leave the house and close the door quietly, while I dash to the bathroom and pull on a dress I grabbed from Mum’s wardrobe yesterday. Some white, shapeless thing that she’s probably never worn, and no wonder. Not exactly the Bonnie and Clyde outfit Drew might be going for if we are, in fact, running away, but it’s all I’ve got.

I slip outside and into the passenger seat and he wastes no time starting up the engine.

“So we’re stealing my parents’ car now?”

He smiles. “I promise we’ll have it back by breakfast.”

It’s about forty-five minutes to Brighton Beach—less at this time of morning, particularly at the speed Drew is driving. We arrive and park, and if we’re here for a beach sunrise, I wonder why he didn’t pick a closer one.

He takes my hand once I’m out of the car and drags me down the sandy path toward the ocean. I’m not even remotely near the shoreline when I see why he’s brought me here. With every crashing wave, the ocean is lit up in blue, sparkling phosphorescence. I stop on the sand and just watch.

“Every time I see it it’s like the first time all over again,” he says. I know this is for my benefit, because I was so broken-hearted to know I’d forgotten.

“How did you know?”

“Location-centric alert on a photography app on my phone.”

I pull the slides off my feet and tear toward the water, running straight into the waves, stepping over them, falling into them full-tilt, splashing everywhere.

He’s on the shore, watching, kicking his shoes off and carefully rolling up the cuffs of his jeans like he might step tentatively into the shallows. I’ll have none of that. I wade out of the water and pull him out into the depths with me, waves crashing over our calves, and then our thighs, the hem of my white dress floating up in the water around me.

“Don’t get it in your mouth,” he warns, and I ensure that won’t happen by dragging him close, throwing my arms around his neck, wrapping my legs around his hips, and planting my lips on his.

I feel like I’m floating as the ocean builds around us, waves rising as Drew stands firm on the sandy floor, hands at my waist. I shut my eyes, the shock of cold water swirling at my hips as white-hot flames catch alight between us.

“Did we do this the first time around?” I ask, between breaths.

He pulls me closer, one hand trailing up my back and through my hair. “No,” he replies.

His mouth meets mine again. Not even the phosphorescence is enough to distract me from a kiss that seems to encompass every second of remembered and forgotten time. My hands cradle his face as he carries me deeper into the water, my mouth trailing along his cheekbones—strong contours, familiar even to the part of me that can’t remember him. His lips explore my neck and my back arches, my legs falling from his hips and my feet finding the sand beneath the water. I burrow my face into his chest, holding him in a hug so all-encompassing it transcends the need I’ve had, all this time, to “know.”

And then … from another place and time, stark, bright flashes of light and knowledge.

Not now.

My lips find his again, but the pictures won’t stop. I try to push them away and focus on this profoundly beautiful moment in time, but my mind glitches and a barrage of glittering stills and moving scenes flood my consciousness.

“ Stop it. ”

He pulls back instantly.

“Not this!” I launch us back into the kiss. But there they are again, thousands of images crowding at once, in an overwhelming rush of remembering.

And now the pain.

Suddenly, my head is exploding with pressure. I stop kissing him and moan, my hand shooting to my temple.

“Evie, what is it?” He takes my face in both of his hands. And, as he looks at me, water churning around us, first light creeping above the horizon, I know it’s finally safe to pull toward me all the knowledge I’ve been resisting.

“Why did I quit my doctorate?” I ask him.

“You want to discuss your doctorate? Now?”

He doesn’t know I’m on the verge of some massive breakthrough. The neurologist I saw at the hospital said this is how it can happen. All these random flashes of memory can give way to it flooding back suddenly, and I’m sure I’m right on the brink.

“What was my thesis topic?” I ask.

He seems confused. “We didn’t really know each other then. You weren’t talking to me, remember? Sorry. I know you can’t remember. I can barely think after that kiss.”

“Drew, please! This is important.”

He struggles to recall the information. “Something about linguistic fingerprinting? Idio-something? I’m not the linguist, Evie.”

“Idiolect?” I say. “Someone’s patterns of language use.”

He leads me out of the water again and onto dryer sand, so we can have this conversation without being pounded by waves.

“Your father always got the order of adjectives wrong,” I tell him.

“Yes, we’ve been over this. We have this wild suspicion he murdered my mother, but all we’ve got to go on is a wedding speech.”

“Yeah, but in my nightmare last night, I received an anonymous letter someone sent to my office at the university.”

The more I dwell on this, the clearer it’s coming into focus. My office. Piles of paper with my research. The envelope. No stamp. No return address. It wasn’t a nightmare. “‘You’re an interfering, young, conniving, dangerous woman …’” I say, all our previous suspicions refracting through this one crystal memory.

“Is that what it said?” Drew says, suddenly far more intrigued.

“The speech, the note, and now this letter. No wonder I’d written Adjective order in that notebook in my podcast studio.”

“What else did the letter say?”

“‘Pull your research. Pull your research, Evie, or …’”

My blood runs cold.

I look at Drew and know my face is an open book. Suddenly, everything crashes back in and I feel panicked and sick. “Oh my God,” I cry.

I remember every little thing . It’s just like that sense people talk about, before death, of seeing your life flash in front of your eyes.

But I’m not about to die. I’m waking up, and remembering every aspect of the arduous, horrendous story of the last thirteen years.