5. Blue
blue
When I woke up, it was dark. Outside, the blizzard howled like a wild thing, scraping against the windowpanes. The living room was warm, the fire low, gray and orange-pink coals.
Next to the fireplace, in the big leather chair, was Wolfe. I could see him in the firelight, his neck bent to one side on the headrest as he slept, a red wool blanket pulled over his lap.
I opened my mouth to ask where my bracelets were, my sneakers with the paint stains.
But I couldn’t wake him. Instead of sleeping comfortably in his own bed, he’d chosen a chair in the living room.
To make sure I didn’t steal or break anything?
Or to keep watch over me like some dark-haired guardian?
Most probably it was the latter. He was there if I needed the bathroom. Or something to eat. Or anything. Which was kindness. Pure kindness.
At least I remembered I had bracelets and a pair of sneakers. That I’d been rescued and fed, given shelter. Beyond that slender collection of facts was a blank wall of sheer gray, cold to the touch.
A sense of aloneness swirled around me. The weight of that made me shift beneath the blanket and sheet. I wasn’t used to being alone. Not recently, anyway.
I remembered there’d been three of us, huddled together in a corner, like puppies in a pile.
The room we were in moved back and forth, back and forth, swaying to each side, catching itself and then shifting the other way.
It felt like being rocked to sleep. It had been nighttime. Dark. Everything smelled of coal.
One of us was talking. Another responded. I said something and felt a sense of agreement among us. About what I had no idea, but at least it was a memory, one I could keep.
Now wide awake, I sat up. I looked over at Wolfe, asleep in his leather chair, and saw that just beside the raised footrest was a shadow, a space big enough for a person to slide into.
Grabbing the top blanket, I slithered to the floor and banged my ankle.
Swallowed a hiss. And crawled across the living room to make myself a nest there.
The floor was harder than the couch, but it was warmer being closer to the low fire. Better near him. I dipped my head to rest it on my bent knees. I could sleep sitting up. I’d done it before.
I hadn’t meant to wake him, but I must have. A hand touched the top of my head. Warm and still.
“Blue?” he asked, his voice thick with sleep. “What are you doing off the couch?”
Opening my mouth to speak, I hesitated. Unable to articulate what I needed. To not be alone in the dark. To not be alone while I slept. To be near someone.
Which was wrong. He wasn’t just anyone. He was Wolfe. He’d rescued me and taken me in and hadn’t, as yet, asked questions I would be unable to answer. It would be wrong to ask for more than he’d already given me.
Above me, in the dark, he drew a deep breath, and I realized he’d fallen back asleep.
Which meant that I could stay where I was, at least until morning.
I wrapped the quilt tightly around my shoulders, gazed at the orange and blue and gray coals, and soaked in the warmth, the consistency of Wolfe’s breaths.
In and out. Listened to the wind howl outside the windows.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so safe inside of a moment like this one. I thought about the contents of the duffel that Wolfe had shown me, the odd assortment of things that didn’t seem to go together but had been hastily thrown together or haphazardly assembled.
The collection reeked of a kind of person who took things as they came. Lived moment to moment. Whose face showed an easy happiness. The face and name were just beyond my vision, even if I closed my eyes. The harder I thought, the more wobbly the memory became.
There was someone else, too, in those memories that skittered across my brain. Younger than the first. Seemingly quiet and sweet, but with an inner core of literal steel. A little black notebook. An obsession with maps. A wary watchfulness. Who was he?
Sadness rippled beneath my skin. I knew them both. But I could not name either. My head ached, and the screams of the wind and the pellet shots of icy snow against the windows only made it worse.
“Blue?”
Holding my breath, I realized that I’d made a sound. Cried out loud. Woken Wolfe up. Disturbed the deserved rest of the one man who stood between me and a black abyss into which I would surely fall if I took even a single move in one direction or another.
“Blue?” Wolfe asked again.
Down came the footrest, and I felt warm hands on my shoulders, stiffening beneath his touch for no reason I understood.
The pounding in my head increased, as though I’d been smacked, hard, and I was hot all over as though with a fever.
I brought my hand to my face to check if my nose was bleeding, because it felt like it was.
Wolfe knelt in front of me, blocking the low light from the fire. He smelled warm from sleep, his closeness like a blanket.
“It’s no good on the floor,” he said, the words nighttime low as though there was someone in the other room we might disturb. “Can I help you back onto the couch? Can I get you anything?”
Part of me remembered, somehow, being sick, home from school, calling on the house phone to someone named Bettina. She was the housekeeper. She was from France, and her accent had faded, except when she was cross with me, which wasn’t very often.
If I couldn’t find Bettina, I’d find Rosalinda, who was the cook.
Her background included Michelin-star kitchens, and she made the most amazing food.
Cuban. German. Simple Irish beef pies. Anything you could want.
Either one of these ladies might bring me a hot drink and an aspirin.
A cool cloth for my head. All I had to do was ask.
I stared hard at this mental image and watched it fade from view. Tried to hold on to it so I could unravel it.
“You’re hot,” Wolfe said, his broad palm on my forehead. “C’mon.”
He lifted me to my feet and guided me to the couch. There, he pulled back the blanket and sheet, and helped me lie down. I felt utterly helpless, like a child who’d gone too far and done too much that day. But so grateful to Wolfe.
Moving into the kitchen, Wolfe flipped on the light over the stove and brought back a glass and a small bottle of Tylenol. After he helped me take it, he went back to the kitchen and brought back a small towel filled with ice.
“I’d go outside and get some snow, since there’s plenty,” he joked, then said, “but the blizzard makes that more trouble than it’s worth.
Here.” He tipped my head forward and placed the makeshift ice bag on the back of my neck.
His other hand was cold as he placed his palm on my forehead.
“There. That should feel better. Can you hold it in place? I’m going to get something for your feet. ”
It was the oddest thing, but within a minute of holding that ice bag to the back of my neck, I started to feel better.
The Tylenol began to kick in. Wolfe came back, peeled the covers from my feet, and wiped each one with a cold, damp cloth.
All of me relaxed. I was no longer boiling. The headache subsided by degrees.
“Can you rest?” he asked. “It’s only two in the morning.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just wanted to be near you.”
This seemed to take him aback. His eyes tracked me up and down, his expression cautious in the light from the stove.
“I’ll be right here,” he said, as though answering a question I hadn’t asked rather than addressing the statement I’d just made.
Maybe it was easier for him to be evasive, though I could hardly blame him.
He didn’t know me. I didn’t know him. Yet in those eyes, I saw kindness.
I wanted to reach for him and grab hold and never let go.
Just so I didn’t have to walk into the darkness of my own mind, completely lost forever.
And also, because I liked his smile. The fine lines next to his eyes.
The hardness of his muscles beneath the gentlest touch.
“Wolfe?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Wolfe?”
“Yeah?”
“Will I ever get my memory back?” I asked. “I keep seeing images of these two guys and there’s these two women—but focusing on any of it gives me a headache.”
“That’ll happen in cases like yours.” He took away the cold cloth from my feet, the ice bag from the back of my neck.
My head sank into the borrowed pillow, and even though the pillowcase was slightly damp, it was like a blessing.
“I read up on amnesia. Your memory can come back sudden like. It probably will. If it weren’t for this damn storm, I’d take you to the urgent care in Billings. ”
“No.” The word shot out of me, a slice in the air in the semi-darkness of the living room. “I mean, please don’t. I don’t know why, but—”
“I won’t,” he said, utterly calm, which was soothing in the face of my sudden panic. “Unless you take a turn for the worse. Then I will. Understand?”
“Yes,” I said, settling beneath the blanket. I closed my eyes and listened to him walking around, emptying the glass in the sink, turning off the light over the stove. Poking the fire before settling back in the easy chair, the footrest in place.
I wouldn’t get worse. I’d get better so I wouldn’t be a burden. But I’d have amnesia forever so I could stay like this forever, sharing fireplace warmth and nighttime depths with this man who’d been so good to me.
I feel asleep. Woke up. Fell asleep again. The next two days were a blur. I sensed a lighter sky outside the windows of the cabin, then a darker sky beyond the wall of moving snow.
Once, Wolfe opened the front door and showed me how high the snow was stacked.
It went all the way to his waist, pressed in the same shape as the door, as though a giant hand had come by, leaving the imprint of the door in the white wall.
He fed me and helped me to the bathroom. Made me take another bath.
“Why can’t I take a shower?” I asked, sitting there, shivering a little as the tub filled up, looking at the shower head.
“You want to try taking a shower while standing on one foot?” he asked, arching a dark brow at me.
“No,” I said. He had a point.
I slept and ate. Slept some more. My headache came and went, but with less ferocity each time. The nighttime brought a cozy stillness to the cabin.
Wolfe went back to sleeping in his own bed, but I was glad that the cabin was small because that meant he wasn’t too far away. I needed him near, though I could not explain why.
One morning, I woke up. Sat up and pushed the covers back, and knew that there was something I needed to do. Standing up in the low light of morning coming through the windows from beyond the driven snow, I wobbled my way to where the green duffel was, tucked on the far side of the easy chair.
My brain was ringing with a high-pitched howl. The duffel needed to get back to its owner. I grabbed it, went to the front door, opened it wide.
The drift by the front door was up to my chest. It swooped down on the far side to join a second drift. And then a third. And then others after that as far as I could see. Which, because of the sideways, snow-flocked wind, was not very far.
The snow sifting down to the wooden floor felt good to my feet.
The duffel was important. My friend—the unnamed one, the one full of joy—needed it back.
He had green eyes. He wanted me to like him.
I did, but never felt safe enough to let my guard down, which hurt him.
It hurt him even more when I couldn’t give him his duffle, and he’d been left behind to fend on his own, for himself.
Where was he in this swirl of white? Where was the other one? Everything in front of me reflected the void in my head. Questions I couldn’t answer. Directions I couldn’t find.
Where was the sky? Beyond the white was a soft shimmer of light, fighting its way through the sideways wind, the ever-present swirl of cold and energy.
Barefoot, I stepped into the snow, breaking through the white barrier that had piled up to the doorway.
And floundered, falling into a drift, snow melting on my skin like cold fire.
Snow went down my neck and into my mouth.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swim my way through, didn’t want to let go of the duffle, and found myself sinking beneath the white.
I was going to drown in the freezing, frozen water.
Behind me, I heard a shout, a low roar beneath the loud roar of the storm.
A grip yanked me out of the drifts, the push of the wind, the sideways snow.
Out of the drifts and into Wolf’s arms, banged against his strength as he pulled me from the doorway.
He was warm all over, warm from sleep, barefoot, dressed only in briefs, his plaid robe swirling around him.
He pulled me inside. Kicked with his feet at the snow that clumped in small piles, quickly melting in the warmth of the cabin.
“What are you doing?” He was focused on me, circles under his eyes, face flushed as though I’d woken him from sleep. “Why were you out there in this? In your bare feet?”
“I needed to get this back to Nimble.” I lifted the duffel to show him what was so obvious to me. My teeth chattered. The high-pitched whine in my head rang on and on. “He needs his things. Especially in weather like this.”
“To who?” His expression was tight, confusion in his eyes.
Fearing he wouldn’t understand, I tried again.
Rattled on about how the duffel was paramount to Nimble’s survival, even though I didn’t know who that was.
The words came out in a rush, my teeth chattering; the contrast between warmth and snow and Wolfe, his arm around my waist, was too much and made me dizzy.
“Look, I don’t know who that is,” he said, stern. “Don’t go out into the storm like that, especially in bare feet.”
Was he mad about the fact that I’d woken him up yet again? Or about the fact that the snow was melting into his wooden floors?
He shut the door and kicked more snow aside. Seemed ready to let me go. I couldn’t bear that. Flung my arms around his neck and held on tight, certain that the tide of snow could reach through the door and pull me under.
With a tug, he attempted to push me away, looking at me, brows wrinkled in confusion. I clung on all the tighter to my lifeboat in the nothingness.