Chapter 2
The airport had always been a source of sheer joy for Abigail in the past; they had always meant that she was off somewhere amazing—this time, it was different. It wasn’t that she wasn’t pleased with how excited the girls seemed to be for their trip, or how genuinely excited she was for her daughters to be heading off to the summer of a lifetime. It was the pressing anxieties of being away from them combined with the way she had been staunchly ignoring the box filled with scraps of research for the last two weeks that had somewhat soured her mood.
Not that she let it show to the girls. They received the exact correct balance of Concerned Mom, Sentimental Mom, and Confident Mom.
“Of course you’ll be good enough,” Abigail said, tucking a strand of Hannah’s hair behind her ear, “You think Sarah Warg would let herself be embarrassed by letting someone into her summer school who wasn’t up to her standards?”
“But Granddad—!”
“Granddad showed her your last three recitals,” Abigail cut her off as Sid sat down hard on the bench next to them. “He’s the reason there’s a videographer there at all; he wants to see and hear you play.”
“Not enough to fly over...” Sid muttered.
“What was that?” Abigail asked quickly, raising her eyebrows in a ‘don’t you dare’ signal.
“Nothing,” Sid said, “I’m just... look, the flight isn’t exactly my idea of a party.”
She smiled at her daughter, “You’re worried about the flight? Because you’ll get bored?”
Sid let out a remarkably teenage groan for an eleven year old and Abigail had a premonition of exactly how many of these she would be on the receiving end of over the next decade.
“Mo-om,” Sid said, covering her face, “like, obviously. But... it’s just kind of long, and there’s a lot of ocean between here and there...”
As Abigail was about to respond, Liam arrived and tousled Sid’s hair.
“Come on kiddo, you’ll be fine,” he said. “Free reign to lounge about listening to music and reading books for half a day? Sounds like how you spend most of your weekends.”
Abigail shot her ex-husband a look. Sid didn’t need any more ammunition in her ‘they think I’m lazy compared to Hannah’ file.
“Really, Dad?” she said, rolling her eyes, “like you do anything more productive than that.”
Annoyance flared in Abigail’s stomach but she bit it down as Liam clutched at his chest like a camp theater actor.
“Oh, wounded! Again!”
The smile Sid was trying to hide flickered as he fell to his knees in front of where they’d sat down to wait for him.
“DAD!” she squealed as he feigned a collapse, “Stop! You’re so embarrassing!!”
Abigail found herself laughing along with her daughters and their father as they fooled around to pass the time. Her watch buzzed, letting her know she had only twenty minutes until she needed to be at her gate.
“Here, why don’t you girls go choose a book each at the kiosk,” Abigail said, wishing she could spend every last minute with them but needing to talk to Liam alone for a moment.
“What’s up?” Liam asked, concerned all of a sudden, “You’re not changing your mind, are you?”
“No—it’s nothing, it’s not—” Abigail stuttered, “I wouldn’t do that to the girls... It’s just... well, I feel really dumb doing this but I just want at least one person to know what I’m doing. I can’t pinpoint why... it’s just a feeling I have.”
“Uh—okay?” Liam said as he took a seat next to her, “You’re kind of freaking me out...”
“Sorry, that was not my intention,” Abigail said with a sigh. “Okay, so you know I told you about the car crash I was in at the end of senior year?”
Her ex-husband furrowed his brows together. “Yeah? To be honest, you never really told me much. I didn’t want to pry.”
Of course he didn’t,Abigail thought as she resisted rolling her eyes—it wasn’t anywhere near interesting enough for him to bother with.
“Right, sure,” she said instead, “well, there was a bit of fuss around it—the guy I was in the car with disappeared after. No one ever found out what happened to him. The issues I’ve always had with my memory—well, they started with the crash.”
She turned slightly and saw Liam quickly shift his expression from confusion to a mask of polite interest.
“Are you... are you sick, or something?”
“No,” she clarified, “but I’m going to take the opportunity when I’m in Rhode Island to try and maybe figure out what happened. It’s probably not going to work, but... I don’t know. It felt stupid to be looking into a missing persons case without telling anyone, but now that I’m saying it to someone, it feels equally stupid to be doing that so—”
Two bouncing figures in the distance caught her eye and made her stumble.
“No, not stupid,” Liam said, glancing in the same direction and seeing the girls, “I’m glad you told me—don’t get yourself into any trouble, okay? And let me know if you, I dunno, arrange a midnight meeting with some shadowy stranger from an internet forum.”
She laughed. He had always been good at making her laugh—even through the separation and divorce.
“Look what I found!” Sid said, producing a book on life drawing in charcoal, “she got a grown up fantasy book about elves and dragons and she won’t let me read it after her because she says she doesn’t want to read my drawing book!”
“Oh wow!” Abigail said, taking the book and admiring it before turning to Hannah, “Is that true?”
Hannah looked guilty as sin as she pushed the book she’d bought into her backpack. “It’s not... a lie. I just... my book’s really long! And I don’t want to give it to her before I’m done!”
Sid opened her mouth to reply, but Liam held up a hand and silenced them both.
“You won’t need to; you each have at least three hundred books on your phones, not including audiobooks,” he said, “plus there will be so many movies you won’t have a chance to feel bored. Sid—you won’t ask to borrow the book until your sister’s finished?”
“No, Dad, obviously,” she said grumpily.
“All right then,” he said, “now, I think your mom has to go...”
Abigail nodded as the twins looked towards her, eyes wide.
“Already!?” Hannah asked, worried.
Abigail’s throat caught as she held her arms out for her daughter.
“Yeah, but honey you’ll be absolutely fine—your dad has done this flight dozens of times,” she said, drawing Hannah in for a tight hug. “You will be so tired when you arrive but give me a call anyway, okay? Then you’ll get some really good sleep, get some practice in, then you just go and be yourself—you’ll blow them away.”
Hannah nodded into her hair as she squeezed back.
“Now, you,” Abigail said, “I’m going to use my once daily Sidney, all right?”
Sid nodded, hiding a smile, “okay, Mom.”
“Come give me a hug, Sidney,” she said, her eyes prickling. “You will be phenomenal. You’re going to make so much amazing art and see so many bands I’m nowhere near cool enough to name. Please promise me you’ll be safe and look out for your sister for me, all right?”
As she squeezed Sid tight, Abigail caught Hannah’s eye and winked. Hannah winked back, and Abigail knew her girls would be fine—but if she stayed one more second, she would burst into tears.
“All right, I can’t miss my plane; I love you girls so much… call me every day, text me every hour or every day… I don’t mind.”
One last round of hugs and a meaningful shoulder squeeze from Liam saw Abigail walking briskly through the airport towards her gate, tears falling silently down her cheeks.
***
Somehow, she had gotten lucky with the booking and had managed to score a business class seat for the same price as an economy ticket. It didn’t mean too much on a domestic like this, but she didn’t need anything fancy—just the tray table that was nearly twice the normal size.
On that tray sat the open documents box. Abigail leafed through the letters from her doctor justifying her need for extra time in exams and assistance with note-taking for her first year of college. These days, she would probably be able to get proper assistance—and not have been laughed at by half of her teachers over it. Back then, though, trying to get any assistance on campus was like pulling teeth, and her doctor had basically had to strong-arm the school into letting her have them.
To the Dean of Humanities Faculty, please be aware that the injury suffered by Miss Clement, and to which I refer, is not a trifling one. Her memory—both long and short term—has been severely affected by a recent vehicle accident. This does not in any way affect her intellectual abilities or capacity to undertake a degree; she is making a strong recovery and requires some support in order to achieve the results she is capable of while healing. In her case, extended examination times to compensate for her memory processing and the use of a laptop to take notes—this is not any different to the assistance your faculty provides to students with broken bones or learning challenges such as dyslexia. Your cooperation would be much appreciated as it would be a tragedy to allow a talented young person such as Miss Clement to miss out on her bright future for no justifiable reason.
Abigail smiled as she read it; her first year had been a nightmare, but thanks to Doctor Brant, it had been possible. The following years had been easier as she recovered and her teachers were already prepared for the fact that she needed support. Re-reading the letter, though, she paused on his claim that she had been making a strong recovery. She hadn’t, not really. Most people who suffered amnesia after a traumatic event regained their memories within hours or days—sometimes months. She never had, though, and during that first year of college, she had been constantly afraid that the reason was some undiagnosed clot or injury that would kill her if she sneezed too hard or bumped into someone.
Without meaning to, Abigail reached up to the back of her neck and ran her fingers along the thin scar that emerged from her hairline and down the back of her shirt. She had hit her head, hard. Luckily, she had not suffered severe brain injury due to the impact, and they had suggested that it may have been the water that caused the amnesia—they had also been very quick to remind her that it was only a guess. She didn’t remember the crash; she knew that, but as she thought about the suggestion, an image appeared in her mind, and her heart rate leaped. The screen of her smart watch lit up in response. The image of water rising around her ankles as she screamed from the back seat of a car that was slowly sinking in dark water. Reactively, she pressed her thumbnail into the soft bed of her forefinger, jolting her away from the imagined scene. That wasn’t what happened. It was something her brain had invented to fit the narrative she had been told—it wasn’t a memory. A deep breath in, she felt her heart slamming against her chest, but she had done this before. Deep breaths in, long breaths out. She was fine.
Abigail put the doctor’s letter back in the document box and picked up the small stack of faded photographs. They’d been taken over the course of the summer, but she couldn’t remember taking any of them. Not for the first time, she wished she had her diary from those three months, but somehow, in the process of moving away from Rhode Island so fast, it had gotten lost. She did have her diary from the first few months of living in Sacramento. Back then, she had been furious with her parents for moving her away—what if Jacob came back?
She flagged down a flight attendant, “Is the Wi-Fi working?”
“Sure is,” the Texan brunette said with a smile, “I’ll grab the details for you. Can I offer you a snack or a drink? We have wine, whiskey—”
“Oh, no alcohol, thanks,” she said quickly, “but some chocolate would be amazing if it’s not too much trouble.”
The attendant smiled at her knowingly; it wasn’t the first time her blanket ban on alcohol had been interpreted as her being in recovery, and it had been a long time since Abigail had bothered to correct anyone. After all, what was it to her if a stranger thought she was in the program? Maybe her being visibly sober could provide silent support for someone around her, or at least it would help normalize not drinking.
As the attendant spoke with the other passengers on her way to the galley, Abigail leafed through and found the only photograph she had of Jacob. They were standing together outside an ice cream shop; he stood behind her with his arms wrapped around her, holding an ice cream in each hand as she raised both of hers in peace signs. There was no way he had driven them off the road; he was always so careful, and he didn’t have a malicious bone in his body. She had always felt somehow betrayed that he was gone by the time she was released from the hospital. The town gossips wasted no time concocting wild theories—a murder-suicide gone wrong, teen drug use that led to a near-fatal crash, or he’d been so distracted by the girl in his passenger seat he’d nearly killed them both. Everyone had a theory about his disappearance—maybe he’d run off out of guilt or took his own life.
A full-sized chocolate bar and a laminated card bearing Wi-Fi connection instructions appeared on her tray table. Looking up at the attendant in confusion, she wondered if full-size candy bars were normal in business class or if she was going to be out a stupid amount of money for this.
“Long flights are hard. I was given this by the parents of a newborn,” she said with a wink. “I can’t have dairy so I thought I’d donate it.”
“Thank you—that’s so lovely,” Abigail said, “only if you’re sure!”
“Sure I am!” the attendant replied as she jostled off down the aisle.
The Wi-Fi process took a while to load, but just as Abigail snapped a line of chocolate off and bit down on a piece, it connected, and her notifications leaped to life. A dozen selfies from the girls as they boarded their flight, a serious email from Shelley warning her not to do anything silly in Rhode Island, and a text from the contractor she had hired all those years ago to do basic maintenance and keep the place acceptable after she’d inherited it.
From Byron: Hi, your flight lands at one, right? I’ll be at the exit. If you could let me know when you land, that would be great, thanks.
She shook her head as she replied, confirming her arrival time. He had always been so awkward on the phone. Then again, she reasoned, his only real experience with her was ten years ago, when she sobbed her way through the legal papers as she inherited a house she thought her parents had sold long before and begged him to help her out so she could just go home to her babies.
Probably not the best first impression she could have made, though he had offered to pick her up from the airport so she couldn’t have been that bad... right?