Everything We Keep: A Novel (21 page)

CHAPTER 24

A short time later, I returned to the resort and ordered a mai tai and two shots of tequila at the beach bar. I downed all three and collapsed on a lounge chair near the water where I waited for the numbness to set in. I’d fucked up with Carlos and royally screwed Ian. Carlos didn’t want to see me again and there was no doubt in my mind Ian was crazy with worry, looking for me. Sleep sounded much better than dealing with the mess I’d created.

Rolling onto my stomach, I skimmed fingers along the sand, burrowing deeper to fist the coolness underneath. My knuckles kneaded the soft granules, the same rhythmic pattern I used when baking, and my alcohol-infused brain took me to Aimee’s kitchen. I stood alongside Mandy, laughing, planning the day’s menu as we pounded dough for the morning’s baked goods. The beach’s salt-infused air hinted of the sea salt we sprinkled on the pastries, the sand between my fingers as smooth as the silky texture of dough sliding underneath my palms. Like the dough Mom had first taught me to mix. And with the thought of Mom, my mind traveled back further. Back to Mom’s kitchen, where the scent of freshly baked apple pie permeated the air and I sat on a stool beside a boy I once knew. He sprinkled sugar crystals over my head. Magic Memory Dust. He’d told me I would never forget him.

If only it were the same for him.

I wept, squeezing my fists tight, sand oozing between my fingers like dough. Soon, my whimpers subsided and the numbness took over, my body succumbing to sleep.

When I woke, sluggish and disoriented, I trudged up the steps to the hotel with the intention of grabbing a few more hours’ sleep in my room. I couldn’t think straight, and at the moment, avoiding my problems seemed like the best plan.

I cut through the pool area toward the main lobby.

“Aimee!”

I jolted. Ian marched across the patio. I walked faster. He jogged ahead and blocked my way. “You left.”

I stared at his chest. “Last night never should have happened.”

“Bullshit!” He roughly ran both hands through his hair and lowered his voice. “Look at me. Please.”

I lifted my face. Rejection masked his, and I cried inside. I’d done that to him. I almost reached out, but stopped myself. “It was a mistake, Ian. I’m sorry. Forget it happened.”

“It was the best night . . .” He swallowed and looked over my shoulder. His nostrils flared before he returned my gaze. The lines on his face deepened. “I will never forget.”

Neither would I. But I had to finish what I started. I needed answers about James.

“Were you with him?”

“I can’t do this right now, Ian.” I motioned between us. “I’m here for James. It’s always been about James.”

“When will it be about Aimee?”

I ground my teeth. This
was
about me.

“Come over here. I have something to show you.” He clasped my hand and led me to a table shadowed under an umbrella. His laptop was open. He pulled out a chair for me and sat in the one beside mine. He pushed away his laptop and angled his chair to face me.

“I found James’s missing paintings,” I blurted.

He sucked in a harsh breath.

“They were upstairs in Carlos’s private studio.” I picked at the peeling paint on the chair arm with my fingernail. “He doesn’t remember me, and he acts like he’s had no memory loss. I offered to help and he told me to leave. He also said Imelda is his sister. I don’t understand what’s going on with him.”

Ian rubbed his palm back and forth across his chin. “What have I told you about my mother?”

I leaned away. “What does she have to do with James?” Ian gave me a fixed stare. I sagged deeper into my chair. “You haven’t told me much. Only that your mom had some mental health issues.”

“She had DID, dissociative identity disorder, what used to be known as multiple personalities. Mom had two. Sarah, her dominant identity, was my mother. Then there was Jackie.” Ian ran his hands over his shorts, shifting in his seat. “She scared the shit out of me. In a way, Mom was very much like Jekyll and Hyde. I never knew who I’d find at home after school.”

“Did Jackie hurt you?”

“Not physically, but she hated me, and she hated my father. Jackie didn’t consider herself married, so she often left, days at a time during some spells. I’d have to fend for myself if Dad was out of town on business.”

“Your mother must have felt terrible leaving you like that.”

“She did, after I told her what she’d done, or showed her pictures.”

I frowned. “She wouldn’t remember?”

“Sarah had no memories of her time when Jackie was the dominant personality, and Jackie couldn’t tell you a thing about Sarah. Total memory lapses, both ways. Simply put, Sarah and Jackie were two different people. They talked differently, too.”

I reached for Ian’s hand. “That must have been horrible for you.”

He gave me a bittersweet smile. “My mom’s the reason why I don’t do portraits. She’d ask me to take pictures of her whenever Jackie showed up. She wanted to know how Jackie looked, the way she dressed and did her hair. What she’d do.

“My pictures always caught Jackie at her worse. Mom hated those pictures, and I hated the person I saw in them. You see a lot more detail in a blown-up picture on the wall than you do in a thumbnail-size clip. Including the shit people try to hide. It’s in their eyes.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know.” He looked beyond my shoulder, his gaze internal. “The day Laney found me I’d been on my own for a week. Mom and I had been shopping. We were living in Idaho at the time. You can drive for miles and see nothing but fields. At a four-way stop in the middle of nowhere, Sarah left and there was Jackie. She looked at me in the rearview mirror and said two words: ‘Get out.’ She didn’t need to say anything else. I got out of that car so fast, not thinking I didn’t have a way home. All I cared about was getting away from her.

“Laney was at the diner where my dad and the police searching for me had met to study a map of the area. They were trying to figure out where they hadn’t yet looked. Laney was there with her own family and offered to help my dad. The police laughed when she claimed she was a psychic, but Dad was open to all the help he could get. She led him directly to me. I was filthy and starving and had been hiding in a drainage ditch. I didn’t want Jackie to find me. Mom came home two days after I did.

“Dad found a specialist, hoping to suppress Jackie. The doctor explained Mom had been severely abused as a child, which he believed was the cause of her DID. On an emotional level, she’d separated herself from the trauma. When I was born, Jackie arrived several months later. The shift between her identities became increasingly frequent over the years. The doctor told Dad raising a kid was too stressful. Mom needed to leave us if there was any hope for her. I haven’t seen her since.”

“That’s why you’re looking for Lacy . . . I mean, Laney,” I said. “You want her to help you find your mom.”

Ian nodded. “I miss her.”

I squeezed his fingers. “I hope you find her.”

“Someday.” He removed his hand and tapped his fingers on the table. “Anyway, I was thinking about what you’d said the other day, how Carlos seems unaware there’s a memory loss. It reminded me of my mother.” He pulled his laptop toward him. “I don’t think he has amnesia.”

“You think he has . . . what did you call it? Dissociative identity—?”

“No, I—”

“Then what the hell’s wrong with him?” I asked, growing impatient. “It has to be amnesia. He doesn’t remember me.”

“Or his real name, or anything about his former life. Friends, family, nothing. I bet Carlos knows absolutely nothing about James, right?”

“I don’t think so.”

Ian strummed his fingers. “I think he has dissociative fugue.”

“Dissociative what? I don’t—”

He raised a hand. “Hear me out. I can’t prove that’s what’s wrong; it’s only a guess. You’ll want to consult with a doctor, or maybe ask Carlos, but fugue makes sense to me. The dissociation results from severe emotional trauma. Something happened to James when he came to Mexico. Whatever it was, his mind shut down and erased everything.” Ian tapped his laptop. “It’s sort of like what happens when a computer crashes and the hard drive dumps all the info.”

“Then how am I supposed to help him?”

Ian’s eyes softened. “I don’t think you can.”

I thought about my request of Carlos. “Familiar surroundings should work, right?”

“Recovery from fugue isn’t guaranteed. Most of the time people regain their memories within hours of losing them. Sometimes days, and the memories return as suddenly as they disappeared.” Ian snapped his fingers.

“But he’s been this way for almost two years.”

“There are cases where the disassociation has lasted years. There are also extreme cases where the symptoms last . . . well, indefinitely. I’m sorry, Aimee.” He pushed the laptop toward me.

I watched the screen fade to black, hibernating. “He may never get his memories back?”

Ian pushed out a breath. “I think you should be prepared that James may be gone indefinitely.”

I frantically shook my head.

“With DID, two or more personalities exist, but they swap places,” he explained. “That’s not the case with fugue. The preexisting identity is lost and a new one created. Unless someone tells the person what’s wrong, the new identity has no idea it’s a replacement. That could explain why James—I mean, Carlos—hasn’t tried to recover his memories. He doesn’t know he’s James, and it’s a good guess no one told him.”

Ian gently rested his hand on my knee. “Aimee, it’s likely James no longer exists. In a way, he is dead.”

I pushed Ian’s hand off. He flared his fingers before resting his hand to the table. Emotions warred within him. I could tell by the way he fisted his hand and took several deep breaths. He wanted to touch me, but kept his distance. I needed that distance to think.

I rubbed my forehead. “How can James be gone if there are hints of him inside Carlos?” I explained the signature paint, and the visions Carlos had. He’d been trying to paint me for months.

“I’m not an expert. I don’t have those answers.”

Ian’s theory sounded too surreal and tragic. I wasn’t ready to give up hope. “What if he does get his memories back?”

“Here’s where things get tricky. If he does—and that’s a very big if since he’s been this way for so long—he’ll be extremely confused, especially with the time gap.”

“What time gap?”

“The one when James comes back. When he does, Carlos disappears, along with all of Carlos’s memories.”

I gasped. “He won’t have any memory of his life in Mexico?”

“To him it’ll be as though he left you yesterday. I don’t know what else to say, but this is something you should look into, read about. I’ve left some websites open.” He skimmed his fingers over the touch pad, waking the laptop. “And Aimee?”

I looked up from the monitor. Ian’s expression was guarded as he glanced toward the hotel lobby. “Tread carefully. Fugue is the mind’s way of protecting itself from something it can’t process, or doing so is too painful. There’s a reason James has been left here, away from family and friends. Someone doesn’t want him to remember, but I think he’s already asking questions.”

“What do you mean?”

“My meeting with Imelda was cut short. Carlos is in there now.”

Ian pushed from his chair and said good-bye.

I shot to my feet. “Where are you going?”

He thumbed over his shoulder. “The lobby. There might be a chance I can catch Imelda when Carlos is done.”

I grabbed my bag. “I’m coming with you.”

He stepped in front of me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

He grasped my arms. I felt as though he was waylaying me. “I’ve dumped a lot of info on you. Take a moment to process.”

“I want a moment with Imelda.”

“Don’t be rash. You’re too upset right now.”

“Bullshit! She violated him!”

His eyes widened, shocked by my outrage. I didn’t give a shit. She’d stolen almost two years of James’s life, our life together.

Ian tightened his grip. “You don’t know if that’s what she did.”

“Neither do you!” I cried, trying to shrug him off.

“You’re not being rational. Think, Aimee. I doubt Imelda’s the only person who’s screwed James over.”

My lips pressed flat. “Thomas.” He had to be involved, and I was willing to bet Aimee’s he’d known the whereabouts of James and his paintings all this time.

Ian gave me a straight look. His line of thinking was on the same track as mine.

Adrenaline powered through me. My entire body quaked. I needed answers. “I need to talk with Imelda. Now.”

“Don’t risk the chance of scaring her off. Talk to her when you’ve calmed down.” His fingers dug into my shoulders and a slew of emotions marred his face. I sensed his need to crush me against his chest and whisk me away. Far from the man who kept me from him.

He managed to keep his distance, elbows locked, but he felt miles from me. He was already letting go. “I know it’s hard, but give Carlos his time with her,” he said. “Until you showed up, he probably had no reason to suspect he’d been deceived. Use this time to understand what you’re dealing with. Read the articles. Make a list of questions to ask Imelda. Figure out what you’ll say to Thomas when you see him next.”