Chapter Eight Mercy
Chapter Eight
Mercy
Me: Rae, am I a gold digger?
Rae: I’m missing some very important context here. Elaborate please.
Me: I came home from the hospital yesterday, and first, our house is fucking gorgeous. You didn’t tell me this when we spoke on the phone.
Rae: It didn’t seem like something that demanded a warning. That’s typically reserved for bad news.
Me: Yeah, well, it still might have been nice. Something along the lines of Oh by the way, you live in a Million Dollar Home.
Rae: Next time you crack your head open and forget everything, I’ll make a mental note to apprise you of real estate valuations.
Me: I’m glad you’re joking about this. I totally freaked yesterday.
Basically went catatonic after we got home.
I mean, first I was relieved, right? Married for money.
Thank God it’s such a simple explanation.
But then my brain just shut down. Again.
I stared at him for a solid minute, then told him I needed to sleep.
I passed out until the next morning, and now he’s at work (imagine my air quotes here because that man has never had to work a day in his life) and I keep thinking maybe I’ve developed an alternate personality with a taste for the finer things in life.
Rae: That’s the best explanation you have? Oh boy.
Me: Rae! Have you seen my house? My car? I swear, I had an orgasm from the interior alone. I have Louboutins in the closet. Multiple pairs. I saw the red soles and almost threw up.
Rae: Honey, Grant has always been wealthy. You know this. Did you think he gave it all up because of your sparkling personality?
Me: You’re so fucking supportive, honestly.
Rae: I’m relieved that your language choices haven’t diminished in the wake of your weeklong nap.
Me: Raaaaaae. Focus. I married Grant for money?
Since when am I that person? Never! I’m never that person.
This means I have to swallow down all that self-righteous anger I used to feel about him and his trust fund and how easy everything was for him.
I’m a hypocrite. A weak-ass hypocrite who can only have information parsed out one little bit at a time. I hate everything about this.
Rae: Listen, I’m about to head into a meeting, but do you want me to call you later?
Me: There is a stunning lack of ‘no, you’re not a gold digger, Mercy, don’t be ridiculous.’ Don’t think I don’t notice this omission.
Rae: Mercy. You’re not a gold digger. Don’t be ridiculous.
Rae: Just talk to him.
Me: I can’t. He’s not here. He’s probably at the bank counting his stacks of gold like Scrooge McDuck. Omg, did he buy me the shoes so that I’d leave him alone? He did, didn’t he? I’ve been bought off so he can have the safety net of a wife and still do whatever the hell he wants.
Rae: And on that note . . . I’m off. Please rest. Don’t stress yourself out. You’ll have your memories back in no time.
Me: Awesome. I can’t wait to have the vivid recollection of when I sold my soul to Prince Charming for access to his investment portfolio.
My phone went dark, and I slid it away from me so that I wasn’t tempted to keep nagging her.
I folded my arms on the counter and laid my forehead down.
I’d been awake for about ninety minutes, and it was truly amazing what fourteen hours of sleep could do.
Today was the first morning I’d woken up since the accident where ow wasn’t the first thought in my head.
My body didn’t hurt. No lingering aches and pains from the impact of the crash. No headache.
Maybe the mattress was magic.
Even though I didn’t remember the bed, my body sure did. Yet again, Grant had given me privacy, and I’d found another pair of those heavenly pajamas, washed my face with the gorgeously bottled serums and toners in the bathroom next to the closet, and crawled under the covers.
I didn’t sleep right away, but the way my entire frame sank into that perfectly soft yet supportive mattress, there was a soul-deep recognition that this was the place I’d slept before.
There was a television in that room, too, but when I tried to find something to watch, the flickering sounds and fast-moving pictures made me feel slightly nauseous, and the lingering headache at the base of my skull meant that reading was out.
So I lay there for hours, rotating between staring at the ceiling and staring out the slider door at the variegated shades of green in the trees behind our house as the sun sank in the sky.
I must have dozed for a while, the drain of my own thoughts pulling me into sleep, because when I woke, I found a bowl of soup and some sourdough bread on a scalloped plate on the nightstand, along with a bottle of water and some over-the-counter pain meds.
Guilt was a nasty son of a bitch, because as delicious as the food was, it was tinged with the bitter aftertaste of not just embarrassment, but shame.
When I woke the next morning, clearheaded and surprisingly refreshed, to a note on the counter that Grant would be gone for a few hours, I didn’t really know how to feel.
Distraction came easily, because wandering the house looking for clues and acquainting myself with the Kincaid-Hastings household was a full-time job.
There were hints of him everywhere—the British tea canisters in the cupboard and the decadent tea set on display atop a walnut hutch in the dining room.
A masculine watch on a bronze tray in the bathroom, brown leather with a black face.
A bottle of cologne that probably cost more than I made during a week teaching and smelled so fucking good that my nether regions tingled after one teensy sniff.
I set that down very fast, vowing never to revisit.
My primary doctor called to check in, and we scheduled an outpatient PT assessment, as well as a follow-up in her office now that I was home. No appointments for memory retrieval, unfortunately.
When texting Rae didn’t magically settle my unease, I changed out of my pajamas into some soft lounge pants and a matching long-sleeve shirt in a sky-blue color, washed my face, and while my coffee was brewing, I started searching the house in earnest. Maybe the key to picking out the pieces of our life was in discovering it myself, rather than hearing it like a story.
With a thoughtful purse of my lips, I started in the kitchen.
“If I were a junk drawer, where would I be?”
Every respectable house has a junk drawer in the kitchen. Whether there’s actual junk within its confines is a different matter, but it’s where you stash the extra shit you need from time to time, or don’t want to organize right away.
Things like ticket stubs or pictures or receipts.
There were lots of drawers, but taking the flow of cooking into consideration, there were really only a few options. As I pried open the top drawer of a trio at the end of the cabinet next to the dishwasher, I let out a triumphant sound.
The Kincaid-Hastings junk drawer was a veritable gold mine—a perfectly organized one full of clear little bins in various shapes and sizes.
But right on top of those bins was a small stack of things: a few framed pictures and some mail in my name.
They were too large to slot neatly into any of the bins, likely shoved inside as he’d prepared for my arrival.
The mail would have been an easy place to start, but when had I ever—literally ever—gone about things the easy way? I tossed the envelopes aside and turned the first frame over.
“Oh my,” I whispered.
There’d been a real wedding, then. Something important enough that I’d printed and framed this.
My dress was white and clung to my body.
Simple enough that I’d probably walked into the mall and found it quite easily.
No veil, no heavy makeup, no bouquet gripped in my hand.
As promised, no puffy sleeves anywhere to be found.
We stood in a courthouse, the State of Michigan seal behind us so very official looking.
And at my side, with his hand around my waist, Grant stared down the camera with an imperious gleam in his eye and only the slightest hint of a smile teasing the edge of his firm lips.
His jaw was sharp and freshly shaven, the cut of his charcoal suit immaculate over his frame.
What transfixed me most, though, was my own expression.
It wasn’t the big, toothy smile of a woman in love, giddy just to be standing next to her dream man. I’d never had dreams of Grant Hastings, dirty or otherwise.
Okay, one dirty dream after my twenty-first birthday, in which the skinny-dipping scene ended very differently, but I’d take that to my grave.
I ran my tongue along the bottom edge of my top teeth and conceded the second and third dreams, but nothing else.
No matter how my past self had felt about the man at my side, my eyes were clear. I was at peace. Like I knew exactly what I was doing. There was a slight quirk to my left eyebrow that felt like I was challenging whoever might look at this picture someday.
Go on, it said. I fucking dare you to tell me this was a bad idea.
Where had we kept this picture, that he’d tucked it away so hastily? How often had I looked at it during the day? How often had he?
I rubbed my temple and set the rest of the photos down, deciding that maybe the mail was the better option after all, no matter how hard the curiosity tugged at all the loose threads in my mind.
The first envelope had already been opened, as had the second, and I slid the papers out with a furrowed brow.
Monthly donation statements to organizations I didn’t recall being involved in. But seeing the amount I was able to give every month made me feel just a little bit better about everything else whirling through my head.
The first was to a community center down the road from my school. They offered after-school programs to a lot of our students and their parents, and Rae and I worked with them frequently. They always needed more than they had.