Chapter 38
Tucker
When a door slammed, I didn’t know what it meant at first. The walls of Ava’s apartment were paper thin, and it could have been a neighbor.
I left the kitchen where I was planning to make popcorn, a happy smell with good associations that might calm her.
It was something Ava and I had brainstormed as we prepared for this day.
She’d figured out memories weren’t just stored in her head, but in her senses and her muscles, and the ways things made her feel.
The bedroom door was open. I peeked in and saw the box on the bed.
No no no no. We’d purposefully hidden it away. We didn’t want Ava starting her journey with fear. That entire scrapbook was full of warnings.
She might run from them.
A quick search of the apartment proved fruitless. I raced for the door, angry I’d waited so long to look. I ran out into the parking lot and called her name.
Nothing.
I raced from one end of the building to the other. She was nowhere.
Where would she go? She didn’t know anything yet.
I returned to the apartment and snatched up my phone. I dialed her number.
A buzz sounded in the kitchen.
Her phone was where she’d left it before the seizure, sitting amongst the portraits.
I returned to the notebook for clues. It lay on its front cover, like she’d flipped through the whole thing before closing it.
There was no telling what parts she might have read.
It ended too soon, before we were a couple again.
We’d planned to rely on the videos we recorded and the story we’d written to establish our relationship.
But she hadn’t seen any of those yet.
The middle drawer of her dresser was open, so something had made her want to look there. If she found something, I had no idea what it might have been.
I dialed her father, panic making my heart thunder so hard I could barely breathe. It was very late. He’d be asleep.
I got Marcus’s voice mail and left a quick message saying Ava had lost her memory from a seizure and had taken off on foot. When I hung up, I wondered, what should I do?
I could drive around. She had to be walking. Most everything was closed this late. I’d take it slow, covering all the terrain.
I’d bring the book. Explain what it all meant. I snatched up the notebook and my keys and raced to my car.
I had to find her.