Chapter 85
85
Drew
Finally, she’s back. I can see every moment of our past reflecting across her face. She knows me. She remembers it all. This is Evie, with her full memory intact, reliving every moment that has brought us here.
“Drew!” She’s shaking violently. It’s like some sort of horrific, religious exorcism. But it’s not about shaking things out or off. It’s about things crowding in, swamping her.
“I remember it all,” she says, wailing. “I’m so sorry!” She grabs both of my arms and holds on to me as if I’m going to flee. I’m not leaving. Not this time. I stand in front of her on the sand and stay with her while our entire history lands. While everything that happened to her reforms in her brain, settling into familiar neural pathways, bringing it all up and back and taking her through a life her mind has protected her from for days.
“Please stay?” she whispers. “I can explain.”
Of course I’ll stay. I wrap my arms tightly around her in an attempt to convince her she’s not in this alone anymore.
“Oliver …”
Here it comes. The memories I’ve feared. The all-powerful sway. For thirteen years, no matter what he did, she always took him back. She was pulled toward him by some unseen magnetic force that forgave and forgave and forgave …
A sob rises from somewhere deep within her.
“He’s dead,” she cries. “Oliver is dead. The accident …” Visions of it seem to play across her face. It’s like watching torture cross her mind.
And then she falls into uncontrolled emotion that seems to erupt from some place deeper inside her than I’ve ever known.
She looks into my face, ashen and distraught, and says, “Drew, it was all my fault!”