Chapter 2
In almost any other situation, it would have been a little unsettling for Abigail to go from alone and panicking to hosting and laughing in such a short sequence, but the flashback had really thrown her. She had gotten used to most of her long-term symptoms over the years, but whenever she had a full-blown flashback, she felt weird for at least a few days afterward. Following the flashback of her mom during the hospital stay, she had felt out of sync with the world for nearly a month afterward. So despite the slightly surreal feeling of now being in hostess mode, it was actually... Nice.
“So, tea?” Byron suggested as he finished unloading the boxes of supplies into the old study.
Abigail winced involuntarily, checking quickly to make sure he hadn’t seen, and sighed in quick relief.
“Sure,” she said, “just, maybe not the strawberry and vanilla one—it’s nice but a bit...”
Letting her sentence trail off, she hoped he’d fill in his own excuse and let her out off the hook.
He added solemnly, “Sure, fruit teas can be a hit, or miss.”
They made their way into the kitchen, and Abigail was struck by the bubbling panic she could feel building in her stomach—what if he wanted to leave soon? She’d be here on her own with the ghosts of that summer.
Not ghosts,she thought to herself sternly, never ghosts.
It wasn’t that she was superstitious, but she did know that if she started to give her memories and health problems too much weight, she would end up being dragged down by them.
Byron was already setting out the kettle and cups when she entered the kitchen, and when he caught her smiling at him, he looked embarrassed.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said, “It’s just funny—you seem more comfortable here than I am.”
He barked out a laugh and nodded, “Well, there’s a pretty good reason for that—I’ve been poking around this house for maintenance for a decade and don’t have any personal memories that culminate in a traumatic event associated with the place.”
Unable to help the snort of laughter, Abigail nodded and covered her face.
“That... That is frustratingly astute,” she said.
“Why is it frustrating?” he asked.
With a shrug, Abigail selected the blandest tea flavor she could see in the box—simple black loose-leaf tea; she didn’t need any more flavor-induced memories today.
“Maybe there’s something frustrating about a stranger, technically, seeing me so clearly.”
Byron stayed quiet and Abigail wondered if it was a tactic to keep her talking. Regardless, she had no desire to unveil more of herself than was necessary.
“So anyway,” Byron said, “do you feel settled in yet?”
It was a perfectly innocent question, but she kind of wished he’d asked anything else. Should she tell him she still hadn’t been able to venture upstairs since that first day when he gave her the tour? Or reveal to him that she was still sleeping on the couch in the sitting room at the back of the house because she didn’t want to see what the property manager, or whoever, had done to her childhood bedroom?
“Uh...”
“Sorry, dumb question,” he said, waving a hand, “let’s go with ‘have you seen Cleo recently?’ instead.”
She appreciated the save and nodded. “Sure have. She usually comes by on her way home. Even after her late shifts. She knows I don’t sleep much and usually finds me awake.”
“Still not improved?”
Abigail shook her head. “It’s fine. I go through patterns with insomnia, and it should settle soon. I think it’s mostly missing the girls and being somewhere new. I’ll probably check in with Doctor Lavender soon.”
“Doctor Lavender?” Byron asked, placing the teapot aside to brew.
“Yeah, he’s my ... Well, my specialist, I guess,” Abigail said, “he’s technically a... Oh, blast, what’s it called? He’s got it on his card. A neurologist with specialization in traumatic intracranial injury and associated long-term pathologized symptomatic amnesia.”
Byron blinked at her. “So he’s a head doctor?”
Laughing, Abigail nodded. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“I think you just did...”
That made them both smile, and Abigail rolled her eyes. ”Yeah, well, I don’t think it’s exactly a degree you go get, but that’s what he does, apparently. He’s been my specialist basically since it happened.”
“Oh wow,” Byron replied, “so you’ve known him, what, twenty years?”
She nodded. “My ex-husband joked that he felt I spent enough time with Doctor Lavender to invite him to the wedding.”
“Did you?”
“Not like that, but he did actually come to the wedding,” she said, laughing at Byron’s surprised expression, “I told him the joke Liam had made and he laughed, but then he mentioned off-hand that we’d known each other for over five years at that point and that it would actually be interesting to see how I did with a very stressful day.”
“Abby—are you seriously telling me your doctor invited himself to your wedding out of professional interest!?”
He was laughing, so she assumed he didn’t actually think it was weird...
“Well, when you put it like that!” she replied, “but actually it was kind of nice, and I did have a bit of a panic before walking out—you know, what if I forget what I’m supposed to say, or blank on Liam’s name? I’d be mortified.”
Byron shook his head as he checked the tea, “...and did you?”
“No,” she replied, “we’d already thought about all of that, and we had printed cards with our vows on them. Apparently, that’s quite fashionable now—you keep them as little keepsakes or something.”
There was a long pause in the conversation, and just as the thought formed in her mind, Abigail realized she was blurting it out.
“Why... Why do you call me Abby now?” she asked suddenly. It had been bothering her since she first noticed it.
Byron paused slightly as he poured the tea but caught himself and continued.
“Oh, sorry, I... Well. It’s honestly because of Cleo. She calls you Abby. So, I just assumed that it was... You know, your usual. Would you prefer I didn’t?”
Very conscious of his change in demeanor, she realized that he thought she was criticizing him or telling him off. Why couldn’t she just filter today!?
“No, no,” she said, “It’s just... No one but her calls me that. It was what we called each other as teenagers, you know? And everyone calls me Abigail now, and you were always pretty formal in your emails...”
As he pushed her tea towards her, he nodded, “Yeah, but that was when you were Mrs. Danbury. When you changed your email to Clement, I figured you’d gotten a divorce and didn’t want to... I didn’t want to accidentally call you the wrong name or anything.”
“Right, you were being considerate,” she said, “of course, that makes sense.”
“Did you want me to stop? I can call you Miss or Ms., whichever you prefer—or Abigail—”
He suddenly sounded so flustered Abigail rushed to reassure him despite not really having considered her answer.
“No! Please, Abby is fine,” she said, wishing she hadn’t brought it up. “It’s kind of fitting. I feel almost like a different version of myself here.
Silence fell between them again, and she stirred her tea. The aroma was pleasant but not as striking as the strawberry and vanilla.
“You, uh,” Byron said, making a face as he sipped, “might want to add sugar, maybe even milk. This is very strong.”
She sipped and winced; it really was.
“Uh, yeah, I’ll take the milk and sugar.”
Why did she always have to go and make it so awkward?She angrily thought as she stirred her tea. She had gotten so good at filtering, people reading, and figuring things out at work that off the clock, she sometimes felt like a loose cannon.
“So, the cleaning and DIY stuff?” Byron asked.
Abigail blinked, “Oh, yeah. Well, there are a couple of weird things I’d like to change, and the first step is usually cleaning, right?”
“What are you planning to change?”
“Well, the creepy split personality study for one,” she said, “whoever decided to cut it down the middle like that needs firing.”
She yawned as she pointed in the general direction of the study.
“Right,” Byron said, nodding, “I have to admit I thought it was a weird choice.”
He pushed off from the kitchen counter and she realized he was going to head towards the study.
“Weird is the right word for it,” she said, hating how weak her voice sounded. “There’s something about it that really just gives me the heebie jeebies. I don’t know why, but there’s something that just doesn’t sit right. Maybe everyone who goes back to their childhood home is weirded out by the changes that have been made, but...”
“You feel how you feel,” Byron said in a low voice that made her look up at him as she joined him at the door to the study, “the reason or the logic behind it doesn’t matter—you feel how you feel.”
“That’s what Doctor Lavender says,” Abigail replied, “but it still feels like I shouldn’t be freaking out over... Nothing.”
Byron shrugged, “Well, if my therapist says it and your therapist says it, maybe they’re on to something, right?”
It seemed to Abigail that he was deliberately looking into his teacup as he spoke. She considered how reluctant the men she’d known were to even consider going to therapy. She wasn’t about to correct him and say that Dr. Lavender wasn’t her therapist—technically speaking. It felt like Byron was trusting her with something. She didn’t know what she’d done to earn it, but regardless, she sensed that it was something he didn’t love talking about.
Her eyes narrowed on the bookshelf, scattered as it was with seemingly random classics and sagging textbooks; a deep green cloth-bound volume seemed out of place.
“What are you glaring at?” Byron asked.
As she crossed the room and put her tea down on the desk, Abigail pointed. “Just want to see what that book is.”
She saw that it was a surprisingly nice copy of Pride and Prejudice that had caught her eye on a shelf high above her head and she reached for it, but it slipped from her fingers. Glaring, she tried again—it wouldn’t budge.
Abigail pulled the chair away from the desk and climbed up onto it, hoping it was structurally sound and trying not to think about what might happen if it wasn’t. As she came eye-level with the book, she saw that there was a thick layer of silicone all along the bottom of the volume—it was glued in place on the shelf.
“What the hell!?” she exclaimed, equal parts annoyed at the discovery itself and angry that someone would glue a book to a shelf for aesthetics.
“What!?” Byron asked, sounding nervous.
“It’s... Stuck down?”
It wasn’t for aesthetics, she realized as she spoke. She noticed a drilled hole in the wood directly behind the volume. Was it to cover up an anchor point in the bookshelf? She shook her head in disappointment. No wonder this place hadn’t brought in much money—even she knew how to fill a drill hole and paint over it. She turned her head to look down at Byron and something about the scene in front of her felt familiar, but she was too shaken up from the flashback earlier to want to pursue the feeling.
With a sigh, she climbed back down from the chair and replaced it at the desk, flopping down to sit in it. Abigail intentionally turned her attention away from the memory that wasn’t quite there.
“I think it’s a poor job of covering up a drilled anchor point for the bookshelf, or maybe it’s another sensor for the lights like out in the hallway,” she said, “but either way, it’s a ruined copy of Pride and Prejudice.”
“Oh, right,” Byron said, “Yeah, that’s... I’m not a big reader, but it feels wrong to glue a book into a shelf just to hide a hole you should be able to fill and cover.”
“Exactly!” she exclaimed, shaking her head.
As the quiet crept back in, the thought of him leaving her alone with her thoughts—and that nagging feeling of familiarity—crossed her mind again, and before she could talk herself out of it, Abigail found herself speaking.
“Hey, please feel free to say no, but are you doing anything this afternoon? I’m honestly a little socially starved. Well, I’ll be honest: the lack of sleep is making me a bit cabin feverish. Did you want to stick around a bit? Keep me company?”
Her stomach flipped over as she watched his expression, looking out for the smallest indication that he was annoyed by her ridiculous request.
“Uh... Actually, I am free,” he said, “did you want help with the cleaning or getting a start on the DIY stuff?”
The tightness in her stomach eased. He’d said yes—she wouldn’t be left alone any time soon.
“Sure, if that’s what you’d prefer, but I’d also be down to just... Watch a movie?”
To her surprise, his eyes lit up and he nodded.
“Oh for sure! What movies do you like? You want to rewatch a favorite or find something new?”
Abigail did her best to hide that surprise as they filtered through the options in her streaming services and eventually settled on the Lord of The Rings trilogy which she hadn’t seen in a few years but knew was good enough to dive into without hesitation.
“I have to point out that all three films together are over nine hours long...”
A broad smile lit his face up, and he replied, “Twelve, if we’re doing the extended version, and that takes us to... What, one in the morning? Come on, I thought you were an insomniac!”
The excitement was coming off him in waves, and it was a little intoxicating. ”Fair enough. We’ll have to pause after the first one because I have a call with my kids.”
“Perfect,” Byron said, a wolfish grin followed by a wink. “I’ll order takeaway and see if Cleo wants to join for the second and third films.”
A flutter of excitement ran through Abigail, which was immediately followed by trepidation—what if he thought she was hitting on him!? She turned away and started to rummage through her cupboards for microwave popcorn. She decided that she wouldn’t say anything, but she would make sure to sit on the armchair and not on the couch where they’d be forced to sit next to each other.
Surely that would subtly give him the right idea... Right?