Chapter 2
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— Lilac —
I’d managed to hold it together through the checkout line, smiling at the cashier and making small talk about the weather while my heart hammered against my ribs.
I’d loaded the groceries into the car with steady enough movements, buckled the boys into their booster seats, and driven the fifteen minutes home without running a single red light.
But now, standing in Betty’s kitchen with a bag of tomatoes I couldn’t remember buying, the trembling had taken over completely.
“Mama?” Knox’s voice drifted in from the living room. “Can we have a snack?”
“In a minute, baby.” I set the tomatoes down before I dropped them and gripped the edge of the counter, forcing myself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The way the therapist had taught me years ago, back when the panic attacks were constant instead of occasional.
Who was he?
The question circled through my mind. That man—that huge, terrifying man with the leather vest and the green eyes—had looked at me like I’d personally destroyed his life.
Had called me by name. Had accused me of walking out on him, of getting pregnant by someone else.
Like we shared some history I couldn’t remember.
But I would remember someone like him. Wouldn’t I?
“Lilac? Sweetheart?”
Betty appeared in the kitchen doorway, her reading glasses pushed up into her silver hair and worry carved into every line of her face. She’d been napping when we got home, but the boys must have woken her.
“The boys said something happened at the store.” She crossed to me immediately, her nurse’s instincts kicking in as she took my hands and felt my pulse. “Your heart is racing. What’s wrong?”
“There was a man.” The words came out thin, reedy. “He knew my name. He said—Betty, he said I was his wife. That I walked out on him seven years ago.”
Betty’s face went white.
Not confused. Not dismissive. White.
“What did he look like?” Her voice was careful now, controlled in a way that made my stomach clench. “This man who said he knew you?”
“Tall. Really tall, with broad shoulders. Dark hair, green eyes. He was wearing one of those motorcycle vests with patches all over it.” I searched her face, looking for reassurance, for the gentle dismissal I expected. “Betty, he was crazy, right? He had me confused with someone else, right?”
She didn’t answer. Just stood there with her hands still wrapped around mine.
My mind raced, grasping for explanations.
“Maybe—maybe I have a twin? A doppelganger?” The words tumbled out faster now.
“They say everyone has a twin out there, right? Someone who looks just like them? He must have confused me with her. With whoever this woman is who left him.” I could hear the desperation in my own voice, the need to make this make sense. “Betty?”
“Sit down, sweetheart.” She guided me to one of the kitchen chairs and sank into the one across from me. Her hands were trembling now too. “I need to tell you something.”
“You know him.” It wasn’t a question. I could see it in her face. “You know who he is.”
Betty nodded slowly, her eyes distant for a moment.
“I believe I do. Assuming it’s the same man.
” She seemed to be talking to herself now, her voice barely above a whisper.
“It sounds like him. The description matches.” Then she turned to face me fully, her grip tightening on my hands.
“His name is Cliff Spencer. Most people call him Colt.” She took a breath.
“And, yes, before you came to me… he was your husband.”
The words didn’t make sense. They were English, arranged in a grammatically correct sentence, but my brain refused to process them.
“That’s not possible. I’ve never been married. I would remember—”
“You don’t remember anything from before you woke up in my spare bedroom,” Betty reminded me gently. “The doctors called it retrograde amnesia. Trauma-induced memory loss. Everything before that night is gone.”
I knew that. Of course, I knew that. My pregnancy, my boys’ lives—all of it lived in the shadow of the gap where my memories should have been. The careful explanations, the therapy sessions, the gradual acceptance that my past was a locked door I might never open.
But I’d always assumed there was nothing dramatic behind that door. A normal life, maybe. An unknown, forgotten accident had stolen my memories along with whatever ordinary existence I’d been living.
Not a husband. Not a marriage. Not a man with grief and hatred burning in his eyes.
“You knew,” I whispered. “All this time, you knew I had a husband, and you never told me?”
Betty’s eyes filled with tears. “At the time, the doctors said it was better to let your memories return naturally. Forcing information on you could cause more psychological damage, make it harder for you to heal. And then…” She took a shaky breath.
“You asked me not to tell you anything. Do you remember that?”
I did. Vaguely. Those early months were hazy, a blur of pain and confusion and the fast growing baby bump.
I’d been so lost, so overwhelmed by waking up in a stranger’s house with no memory of who I was or how I’d gotten there.
The therapist had helped me work through the panic, the grief of losing an entire identity. And at some point, I’d made a decision.
“I said if no one was looking for me, maybe I didn’t want to be found. I also told you I’d rather build a new life than chase a past that might be worse than not knowing.”
“You were pregnant and alone,” Betty said softly. “No one came looking for you. No one filed a missing persons report. You decided that whoever you’d been before, that person was gone. You wanted to focus on your babies, on surviving, on getting better.”
I pressed my hands against my temples, trying to make sense of it all. “But you knew. You knew I had a husband. Why didn’t he come looking for me?”
Betty’s expression darkened. “I don’t know the whole story, sweetheart. I only know what Graham told me when he brought you to my door that night.”
“Graham.” My voice went hollow. “Graham brought me to you?” The man who’d been a fixture in our lives for years, who’d taught the boys to ride bikes, who showed up every few months with groceries and toys. “He—he knew me before?”
“He saved your life.” Betty glanced toward the window, then back at me.
“He was young—just a prospect, barely eighteen years old. He showed up at my door in the middle of the night with you unconscious in his arms, covered in blood, barely breathing. Said you’d been hurt and he couldn’t take you to a hospital because… because of who had hurt you.”
My skin prickled. “Who hurt me?”
“I don’t know all the details. Graham wouldn’t tell me everything.
It was safer if I didn’t know. But he stayed for a few weeks, helping me care for you while you were in the coma.
And when you finally woke up with no memory of who you were…
” She shook her head. “He said it might be a blessing. That maybe it was better if you didn’t remember. ”
The kitchen felt too small suddenly, the walls pressing in. I stood up abruptly, needing to move, needing air.
“So my husband—this Colt—he didn’t come looking for me because… what? He didn’t know I was hurt? He didn’t care?”
“I don’t know, Lilac. I truly don’t.” Betty rose and followed me to the window, where I stood staring out at the backyard.
The boys were playing on the swing set, their laughter drifting through the glass.
“All I know is that Graham checked in on us for years, making sure we were safe. And when I told him I was thinking of moving to Oregon to be closer to my sister, and that you were coming with me, he said it should be fine. That it was far enough away from the MC in Texas for us to be safe.”
Texas.
The word triggered something—a flash of heat, the smell of dust and motor oil, the rumble of a motorcycle engine. For a split second, I saw a road stretching out under a blazing sun, felt arms wrapped around my waist, heard a man’s laugh carried away by the wind.
I gasped, gripping the windowsill as the vision faded.
“Lilac?” Betty’s hand was on my shoulder. “What is it?”
“I saw something. Felt something.” My voice came out strangled. “Texas? A motorcycle. Someone laughing.”
Betty’s face was pale. “A memory?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I pressed my palm against my chest, where my heart was racing. “It was just a flash. But it felt… real. Like I was watching a memory.”
We stood in silence for a long moment, both of us processing what this meant. In seven years, I’d never had a single memory break through. I’d accepted that my past was gone forever, that the woman I’d been before was someone I’d never know.
But now a man from that past had found me. And suddenly, the locked door in my mind didn’t feel quite so solid anymore.
“The boys,” I said suddenly. “Are they—is he—”
“Their father?” Betty nodded slowly. “Yes. That’s what Graham told me.”
I turned back to the window, watching Luca push Knox on the swing. My fierce protector and my quiet observer. My whole world since I woke up seven years ago.
Their father had looked at me with hatred today. Had accused me of cheating, of abandoning him. Had scared them with his anger.
“He thinks I left him,” I said. “He thinks I cheated and ran away.”
“It seems that way.”
“But I didn’t. I was hurt. I was in a coma. I didn’t choose to leave.”
“No, sweetheart. You didn’t.”
I watched Knox throw his head back laughing at something Luca said, and something hardened inside me.
Whatever had happened seven years ago, whatever the truth was, those boys were mine.
I’d raised them alone. I’d built a life from nothing, with no memories and no help from the man who’d apparently been my husband.
He didn’t get to show up now and terrify my boys. He didn’t get to look at me like I was a monster when I didn’t even know who he was.
“What do we do?” I asked Betty. “If he’s here, if he’s found us…”
“I need to call Graham.” Betty’s voice was firm now, the nurse taking charge. “He’ll know what to do. He knows the truth about what happened that night.”
“And if this Colt comes back? If he comes here looking for me?”
Betty moved to stand beside me, her hand finding mine. “We tell him the truth. That you don’t remember him. That you don’t remember anything. If he wants answers about what happened seven years ago, he’ll have to look somewhere other than at you—because you don’t have them to give.”
I nodded, but my stomach was churning. Somewhere out there was a man who had once been my husband. A man who was the biological father of my children. A man who looked at me with hatred because he believed I’d betrayed him.
Apparently, I’d once loved him enough to marry him.
But all I could remember was a flash of Texas heat and the sound of a laugh I couldn’t place.
It wasn’t enough.