Chapter 4
She had expected to feel more when they pulled up outside, but there was only a mild ripple of anxiety coupled with appreciation of Byron’s work over the years. It looked almost identical to how she remembered it. A little more worn down, the paint was faded, and the garden had only been maintained, not kept up to date. Where plants had died, there were bare patches. She hadn’t wanted to spend the money replanting a garden she wasn’t going to be looking at.
He had given her a tour of the house, showed her where some of the major repairs had taken place over the years, and demonstrated that the water was, in fact, both connected and ran hot, and then asked if she needed anything with a weirdly concerned look on his face. Sending him away shouldn’t have been quite so hard as it had been. She was in a strange middle ground where she had technically known him for ten years and was in regular contact with him, and he had spent nearly as many years looking after the house as she had lived in it—but he was, despite all that, functionally a stranger. Since meeting him that horrible weekend when the girls were babies, they’d exchanged emails and texts a few times a month. Abigail used to joke with Liam that she spoke more to the contractor than she did some of her friends, but that was before things had started to fall apart.
She gave herself a shake. She didn’t need that train of thought right now. Abigail was faced with a choice—sleep in her old bedroom, or the guest room? She felt silly even thinking about it but there were so many memories in that room... good ones as well as bad. It was where she recovered after leaving the hospital—bad. It was where she had spent some of her favorite afternoons with her mom learning how to do her hair and make-up—good. It was where she and Jacob had secret conversations in the dead of night after he had sneaked in through her window—
A loud knock on the front door spared her the end of that thought train—but who the heck was knocking on her door? Had Byron forgotten something?
As she approached the front door, she heard a laugh that she recognized but couldn’t place.
She pressed her ear against the door, a woman’s voice.
“No way! Of course he did, what else would we expect? Anyway, I gotta run—I’m just saying hi to whoever moved into the old Clement place after all these years. Yeah—the abandoned place next to mine.”
The house wasn’t abandoned! Abigail flared defensively, except, well, she had kind of abandoned it... The woman finished up her phone call and Abigail stepped back to open it.
As the door swung open, Abigail rearranged her expression to something friendly and neutral, but the moment her eyes met those of the woman standing on her doorstep, she froze.
She knew this woman.
For the half-second before the other woman recognized her in return, she struggled to place this not-a-strangers’ face—a face that broke into the widest grin.
“Abby!?”
The tone, the inflection, the smile—everything.
“Cleo!” Abigail cried, “Oh my God, it’s you!”
The two women threw their arms around each other and squeezed tightly. Cleo let a stream of questions fly without pausing for answers. With all the breath gone from her, Abigail managed to squeak out a few words.
“I’m fine, suffocating a little.”
“Sorry!” Cleo said, stepping back and looking Abigail up and down, “When did you get here?”
“Uh, about an hour ago,” Abigail replied, “It’s great to see you! Come in, I don’t have anything in the fridge yet... so... uh, water? Sorry.”
Cleo laughed, “Don’t worry about it; I actually have some stuff I was bringing home from the store.”
She gestured to the car parked by the curb and covered the distance in a few easy steps, returning with several bags clutched tightly in her hands before Abigail could reply.
Still as graceful as ever,Abigail thought to herself as her old friend slipped through the door.
“So what’s brought you back after all these years?” Cleo asked, making her way to the kitchen as casually as if no time at all had passed between their eighteen-year-old selves and right now.
“Well, there’s a few versions of that story,” Abigail said, closing the door and laughing. “The short one is that I found myself with a summer free and thought it was time to come back up here and finally sort the house out once and for all.”
Joining Cleo in the kitchen where they had spent hundreds of hours sitting across from each other as teenagers doing homework or surreptitiously trying to watch TV instead of doing homework, Abigail was suddenly hit with the strangest sense of déjà vu. The loud crunch and crackle of off-brand tortilla chips being torn open completed the memory perfectly.
“That sounds either exciting or devastating—which is it?” Cleo asked with her broad smile and trademark bluntness, then noticing Abigail’s expression, quickly added, “Are you all right?”
“Sorry—yes,” Abigail stuttered, “just, you know, seeing you sitting in your spot with your hand in a party bag of chips—time machine worthy. Makes the error code in my brain go off.”
She smiled, but if she was being honest it was a little strange to be asked if she was all right. Years of ongoing medical issues and chronic conditions had left her resenting the question, which she found was asked multiple times a day. She recognized that it made her sound crazy but constantly finding the right kind of answer for each person who asked took its toll. In fact, she had sat Liam down on their one year dating anniversary and instructed him to only ask her if she was all right if she cried out or was crying. Which he managed to stick to for about half the time. Now, though, she felt out of practice—and Cleo was staring at her.
“Error code?”
Abigail shifted her weight from side to side, regretting her answer, “Yeah... you know, my memory stuff?”
Her old friend’s eyes went wide as she offered the chips to Abigail, “oh wow, yeah of course! Déjà vu must be wild...”
Nodding, Abigail took her seat across from Cleo and reached for the bag.
“Wild is one way of thinking about it,” she said, laughing, “still—it’s amazing to see you. You still live next door?”
“Sure do!” Cleo said excitedly, “Mom and Dad moved to Florida about fifteen years ago. Instead of selling it, they unofficially rented it to me. Then, about three years ago, they decided Florida wasn’t hot and beachy enough, so they emigrated to Spain. Apparently, they’d been putting the rent into a savings account in my name. When they sold it to me, I only needed a little mortgage. I’d never have been approved to buy a house around here without it.”
It was great to see her friend beaming and proud, but Abigail had to admit there was a prickle of envy in her chest. Cleo’s parents had always been... well, honestly, just as perfect as Cleo was.
“That’s great!” she said, “what do you do now? Did you end up studying architecture?”
Cleo grinned, “Well, after exactly one semester of architecture, I realized that my love of architecture was primarily aesthetic. I switched to nursing. I still read architecture books and magazines, and I even draw in my spare time—not that I have a ton of that!”
A nurse!? Wow...Abigail could not imagine Cleo dealing well with the messier side of that profession.
“Oh that’s so cool!” she said, “I would never have guessed that’s where you’d end up.”
“Me neither!” Cleo replied, laughing, “What about you?”
“Oh, me?” Abigail said, “Well, I got my degree in history and politics, ended up doing a post-grad thing in communications, and wound up managing business communications for international companies. You know, making sure the Americans don’t embarrass themselves at an important dinner in their host country, make jokes that have weird connotations, or ask awkward questions about why things are the way they are. Functionally, I was an adult babysitter but with multi-million dollar deals on the line rather than if the kid got their homework done.”
Cleo stared. “Holy moly, you really were! That’s so funny. Did you get to travel much?”
“Not at first, but eventually, when I made it obvious to one company in particular that it would be useful for them—considering some rather unfortunate comments made by the founder’s son on his last trip—they started sending me with them,” Abigail said, “It was a unique job, but it was fun. Then, when I had surprise twins, I stopped working.”
“Twins! That’s amazing. How old?”
“Eleven, they’re spending the summer in England with their Dad and his family, hence my freedom to come up here for three months,” Abigail said, “what about you—kids, husband, dog?”
“No, yes, then no, and no,” Cleo said, laughing, “Neither of us ever really wanted kids, and a dog was too much responsibility. However, my ex decided that he’d prefer to live his life with a perpetually twenty-five-year-old wife. Or maybe he’s just got a five-year relationship limit! He divorced me at twenty-six and married a twenty-two-year-old, divorced her five years later for a twenty-three-year-old which lasted two years, and he’s just finished divorcing wife number four after five years.”
Abigail blinked hard, “wait—is this Freddy!?”
The bark of laughter that escaped Cleo made Abigail jump: ”Yes, though at his twenty-first birthday dinner, he informed everyone he required them to call him Frederick from then on. I should have known from that moment he’d be a nightmare.”
“That must have been rough,” Abigail said.
“Only the first time, but by the time he got bored of me, I’d figured myself out and didn’t really care anymore. I’ve been single ever since—well, officially anyway. Two or three dates per guy doesn’t really count..”
“Same,” Abigail said, “Liam and I separated a couple of years ago—nothing quite so dramatic as yours. We just realized one day that we didn’t love each other anymore. We tried for a while, for the girls, but it was all work and no progress. We just kind of… slid into divorce out of a mutual disinterest in each other. It’s weird, but we actually still get on pretty well... Boring, I know.”
The tortilla chips she had been shoveling into her mouth throughout the conversation weighed heavy in her stomach now.
“Better weird than traumatic,” Cleo quipped, “at least boring lands the kids with two parents who love them and aren’t constantly fighting.”
“That’s true,” Abigail replied, feeling the conversation falling flat.
They sat for a moment in silence and Abigail could feel the awkwardness creeping in, but she didn’t know what to say.
“So, uh—”
“So why’d the house sit empty for so long?”
Trust Cleo to turn an awkward silence into a painful question, Abigail thought.
“Oh, well, after Jacob and the crash... My parents insisted we move. I figured they sold the house. I was a teenager recovering from some pretty major injuries so, honestly, I wouldn’t have cared if they’d thought to tell me one way or another. Then my mom died, and her will was very straightforward—everything to my dad. Then he died, and the will got complicated.”
She paused for the usual stream of consolation, which didn’t come, and she glanced over at Cleo, who was watching her intently. Abigail swallowed hard and pushed on.
“Basically, there were a bunch of weird business structures, and it took ages for them to figure everything out—but in the end, everything came to me. Unfortunately, it happened to be the worst possible timing. I had my maternity leave all planned and booked, but I was so busy and out of the country a lot, so I missed a bunch of scans, then way later than I should have found out—boom, twins. I had to take leave earlier than planned because pregnancy was messing with my body so much, and I couldn’t fly anymore anyway. Then actually giving birth was... Well, it was twins and my body was already kind of messed up. Then, after the girls were born, my dad died. Then it took six months, and I found out that they’d never sold this place, but it had been rented out as a holiday home.”
She had taken breaths as she spoke, but she felt like she was running out of air, so she paused.
“Wow... that’s a rough run of luck,” Cleo said, reaching across the table and resting her hand on Abigail’s.
“Yeah, so, when it finally came around, I had to come up and sign some stuff in person,” she said, “I was not... happy about it. I came up for two days, signed everything, cried at a local contractor who kept it maintained and up to code, and figured I’d deal with it in a few months when the girls were older. Or so I thought… years and years passed, then the idea of setting everything back up as a rental was way too daunting, and... Honestly—it was maintained and up to code, so I didn’t feel guilty about it.”
Cleo was nodding somberly, “Right... and now you’re here, to what? Sell?”
If it was meant to be accusatory, Cleo missed her mark. Abigail weighed her options—twenty years ago, she would have spilled everything to Cleo with no hesitation—but two decades takes its toll. She watched Cleo for a reaction as she spoke, “I don’t know. Maybe? I need to deal with it, figure out what I’m going to do...”
A warm smile spread over her old friend’s face, and she squeezed her hand reassuringly; that was what she needed.
“You remember Jacob, right?” she asked carefully.
Cleo raised one of her eyebrows, “My best friend’s long-time sweetheart and local mystery disappearance? Yeah... I remember, Abby.”
“Sorry, stupid question,” she said, “I just... well, my memory is kind of shot, and I figured while I’m up here, I may as well try and figure out what happened that summer.”
The second eyebrow rose to join the other on Cleo’s expression, “You’re going to swan into town and solve a twenty-year-old cold missing persons’ case?”
Her stomach twisted, “No, not that. Just, figure out what happened to me that summer. I... you know I had memory loss after the crash, right? Well... normally, amnesia like that mostly affects the incident and some surrounding hours—sometimes, the events after it don’t stick either. But I forgot most of the summer. Normally, memories come back slowly any time from a few hours to a few weeks later—but mine never came back.”
“You don’t remember any of that summer?”
Abigail shrugged, “Most of it is a blur. There are a few stand-out memories, but those are vulnerable to the normal degradation of twenty-year-old memories—plus, I’ve gone over them so much it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s wishful thinking.”
Cleo stood abruptly and started rummaging around in her groceries. Sitting there awkwardly, Abigail wasn’t sure what to do next. Was Cleo leaving? Did she really sound that nuts? The anxiety swirled around inside until she saw Cleo finally emerge with a large bag of individually wrapped candy bars.
“Right... so you’ve got the summer to try and remember a summer that happened twenty years ago? Can I help?”
Relief flooded her body and she actually let out a long sigh, making Cleo laugh.
“Sorry, I was just… you know the feeling when you tell an old friend something totally insane the first time you see them after twenty years?” Abigail said, hoping Cleo would get the gist.
“Of course, I get it all the time,” she said.
Reliable, that was Cleo.
“Thanks,” Abigail replied, smiling gingerly.
“There’s a farmers market this weekend… you should come,” Cleo said, “It’s great, so much to see and eat—plus it will be good for you to seek out some of the old haunts. Maybe for the Memory Quest, you know, for old times sake.”
“That sounds perfect, when?”
“Saturday. I’ll pick you up?”