Thought I Knew You (30 page)

The girls were fast asleep halfway through the movie, and Drew and I lay in bed, talking in whispers. I gave him an overview of the day, how the girls did, how Greg did. He pulled me to him, my head resting in the crook of his shoulder.

“How will this work?” he asked. “When Greg gets out of rehab, can he even live alone? Is he going to move back in?”

“No, he’s not living at our house. We’re divorced now, Drew.” But I’d had the same thoughts. Could Greg ever live alone? I had no idea. “It doesn’t matter right now. He has months of therapy ahead of him before he will be released anyway.” I sighed. “How can I tell him? He asked me tonight if we were happy, and I got so scared, I didn’t know what to say. I lied and said yes. I mean, it wasn’t a total lie. I
thought
we were happy.”

“Were you happy?” Drew asked.

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I would have been, if I had never known what it could be like. With you, I mean. Is that crazy?”

He shook his head. “This whole situation is crazy.”

He kissed my temple, then my mouth, sparking the same longing he always did. I wanted to drag him to the bathroom and make violent love to him. I wanted to erase Greg from my mind, from my heart. Instead, I lay in Drew’s arms until we both fell asleep.

Sunday, we spent the morning with Greg and left around noon for the eight-hour drive home. The first half of the ride, the girls chattered excitedly about their daddy being back. They fell asleep for the second half, exhausted from the weekend roller coaster. At eight o’clock, we pulled up to our house. Cameras, spotlights, news vans, reporters, and cameramen were all over the front lawn.

I clutched Drew’s arm. “Oh, my God! What the hell?”

Hannah woke up and looked out the window. “Mommy,” she cried, panic in her voice. “What’s going on?”

As we pulled into the driveway, reporters approached the car and knocked on Drew’s window. Questions were shouted out from all directions.

“Mrs. Barnes, how do you feel now that your husband is awake?”

“Who is in the car with you?”

“Are you in another relationship?”

“How are the children doing?”

I grabbed Leah, and Drew took Hannah. We ran inside and slammed the door. Both kids were crying, and I was shocked.

Drew slammed his fist against the door. “Shit!”

“Everyone calm down!” I shouted. “This is not a surprise. Our story is extraordinary, and I’m shocked it’s taken this long to spark interest.”

I rummaged in the cabinets until I found an empty coffee can. Before I could lose my nerve, I opened the front door and walked outside. Within seconds, flashes were going off, and people started shouting questions. I held up my hand.

When everyone quieted, I spoke loudly and clearly. “I realize my family’s story is exceptional. I will speak to one reporter, sometime later this week. I’ll call you. Please don’t call my house. You will win my favor by being respectful. My children are going through a lot right now, and this is scary to them. We’ve spent the weekend with their father, and we are exhausted. Please, go home. If you don’t go home and leave us alone, I will, without a doubt, not speak to any of you. Put your business cards in the can. This will be my last public comment. Thank you.”

I placed the empty coffee can on the top step, and I walked back inside to my family.

In some ways, the next few weeks were more strenuous than when Greg went missing. The dichotomy of my week against my weekend was exhausting. My weekdays were spent with Hannah, Leah, and Drew—school, homework, dance class or soccer, bath, and bed. On weekends, I made the eight-hour drive to Toronto to spend with Greg. Mostly I travelled alone. I took the girls once, but told them we would spend a lot more time with Daddy when he came back to New Jersey. I deliberately avoided the phrase “when he comes home.”

At the therapist’s suggestion, we were recounting our life, chronologically and in great detail. I would haul in pictures, mementos, and things I would find around the house. When I gave him his journal, he ran his hands over the soft leather, passing the book back and forth between them. When I asked if he remembered it, he nodded. He opened the journal and read each page. He paused at the poem,
I carry your heart with me. I carry it in my heart. C!
He ran a finger over the words.

“Was C me?” I asked tentatively, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

“I don’t know,” he said, honestly, regretfully. “I don’t remember writing it.”

That stung. I had hoped it would spark a memory. Our time together was filled with so much of me talking, recounting stories, filling in blanks in Greg’s memory that he might not remember minutes after I told him anyway.

That was the frustrating part. I thought that once he remembered something, it would be retained, but frequently, I found myself retelling stories over and over again.

Once, after three weeks, he forgot Leah again. I excused myself and walked into the hallway, making sure to shut the heavy latched door behind me, then kicked a chair and cursed.

“What did you expect?” a voice asked from behind me. I turned to see Dr. Goodman watching me.

“I don’t know. I thought… I thought it would be easier.”

“It will become easier,” she replied mildly, as if my frustration was just a small part of her day. She started writing on a clipboard, all but ignoring me. When she looked up again, she smiled kindly. “Memory works like a natural tributary.”

I shook my head, confused by the analogy.

Reaching into her portfolio, she pulled out a yellow legal pad and a pen. She drew two lines down the center of the page. “Memories form new memories, just like water will find water. That’s how it works. Draining water will form small streams, flowing together to a larger water source. A creek. A river. Eventually, the ocean.” She drew small offshoots into the larger original two-lined river. “After a heavy rainfall, smaller, temporary streams can be formed, but without a source, they’ll dry up. Same thing with memory. New offshoots can be formed, but only with sufficient replenishment. With enough water, those tributaries become a permanent part of the landscape, and the earth underneath carved to accommodate the new stream. Rocks will be moved; even trees and vegetation relocate to allow for it. It’s a natural, yet time consuming, effect.”

I understood the concept, but I was just tired of being patient. Of being understanding.

She nonchalantly stored her notepad and pen back inside her portfolio. “The analogy works on a few different levels.”

I studied her with a spark of interest. “What levels?”

“Without a sufficient source of memory, Greg will forget a lot of what he’s learned. That’s you. You have to feed these small creeks of knowledge, both the established ones and the new, baby ones; they’re the most fragile. Feed them by telling the same stories over and over again. The people in Greg’s life have to shift. New canals won’t be formed without this change. You must put aside yourself, your life, your kids, everything. The landscape of your life has to change. Without it, those new memories? The small ones that he keeps forgetting? They’ll be stamped out. Like a dry riverbed.”

“Will he ever just remember anything? I mean, right after I tell him a story, will it ever come back fully, where he retains it?”

“It’s a long process. It’s not the movies, Claire, where someone wakes up from a coma and
poof
! they remember everything. Remember, Greg is extraordinary. We have rarely seen someone come so far so fast after such a long period of unconsciousness.” For the first time, the cold, steely woman was helpful. I felt better.

When I told her so, she laughed. “Working with the family members has never been my strong point. I frequently find them to be a necessary evil. They are emotional and often negatively impact a patient’s progress with their own way of dealing with their situation. Your situation is unique, to say the least. I have to admit I’m intrigued.”

“You and everyone else it seems,” I said dryly, recalling the throng of reporters on my lawn.

I thanked her and returned to Greg’s room. He was sitting on the couch, staring intently at the journal.

He looked up when I came in. “Who’s Karen?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Fuck it
. “I think you had an affair, Greg. Before the accident. I think Karen was your mistress. I don’t have any proof other than that note.”

He was quiet for a long time, lost in thought, searching for the memory. We were supposed to talk chronologically, and we had gotten up to Hannah’s first year. I had gingerly avoided the subject of Drew. I was delaying the hard parts—the affair, the memorial service, the divorce, my new life. But we couldn’t avoid them forever.

“The year before you disappeared, you were very withdrawn. Very… almost angry with me. I never knew why.” I retold Rochester in detail: the empty hotel room, the Thai restaurant. I told him about San Diego, the Grand Del Mar, the golf tee, and the fake business trips. He stared at the note,
Call Karen at Omni S.D,
tracing the letters with his finger, over and over again.

“Karen Caughee,” he said finally. “That’s her name.” Then he whispered, “Pronounced like
coffee,
the drink.”

I hadn’t known I was holding my breath until I expelled it, bursting out of me, relief and regret at once.

When he met my eyes, his were dry, but I’d never seen him look so sad. “She was my lover.”

Chapter 37

W
hen I picked up the
Hunterdon County Times
on Monday, I wasn’t expecting to see my face on the front page. Then again, there was so little news in Clinton, that I supposed had I thought about it, of course, my story would be front page when it finally ran.

Weeks ago, I had pulled the business cards from the coffee can and spread them out on the dining room table. I focused on women only and, after doing some internet searching, chose the one who wrote the least scandalous and most boring stories. Rebecca Riley had reported on the inclusion of the rural outskirts of Clinton into the public sewage system and what that would mean for homeowners. I only hoped Rebecca would write my story with the same level of enthusiasm.

When Rebecca had shown up, I found her to be my age, slightly overweight, smart, and personable. I instantly felt comfortable and spoke honestly and candidly, which was my first mistake. When I got the paper after returning from my weekend with Greg, I gaped in shock. The front page displayed a close-up of my face on the night the media had been all over my lawn. My features were pinched, and my hand was up in the air. I looked
bitchy.
The use of that photo was surprising because Rebecca and I had taken a few pictures together in the house and out by the barn. I sat down to read.

Claire Barnes: Grieving Wife or Brilliant Opportunist?

By Rebecca Riley

To meet Claire, petite, mild-mannered, and cheerful, you would have no idea of the tragedy her family has undergone in the past two years. Her husband of eight years left for a business trip two years ago and never returned home. Claire and their two children, Hannah and Leah, have remained in the home they shared with her missing husband.

In the meantime, Claire has become involved with her childhood friend, Drew Elliot. Some might say, “Good for her. She’s moved on, made a life in the shadow of tragedy.” Unless you know who Drew Elliot is. Semi-famous in artistic circles, he shoots compelling photographs of poverty-stricken men and women in American cities and makes a nice living doing it. Prior to his photography venture, he was a self-made millionaire when he got lucky during the Silicon Valley years. Then, one begins to think, “Lucky for her. Her troubled marriage seems to end without consequence, she has the endless sympathy of the community, and she gets to shack up with a millionaire? Seems rather convenient.”

Claire is likeable. She’s expressive, cheerful, funny, warm, and kind. Her home is beautiful—an old farmhouse accessorized with appropriate antiques, yet stylishly updated for modern living. She comments that the kitchen was recently redone.

“Most of the rooms in this house have been redone, actually. Since Greg left. It was a way to cleanse, to start over and regroup. You need that when you believe your husband has died, to find your own voice. I needed to make my life mine, where it was once ‘ours.’”

But you can’t help but notice the fine craftsmanship of the redecoration: stainless steel appliances, marble countertops, handcrafted cabinetry custom built from refurbished barn boards. You notice and wonder.

The most jarring part of the whole scene is the knowledge that Claire’s husband did
not
leave her. Nor did he die. He was robbed at gunpoint and pushed in front of an oncoming car. He lay in a coma for a year and a half, and even after he awoke, had no idea who he was.

Detective Matt Reynolds gave a statement on Saturday. “Our investigation was sound. We never stopped searching for Greg Barnes, and we have the records to prove that.”

You still have to wonder why they couldn’t find him. Both Claire Barnes and Detective Reynolds claim they searched tirelessly for her husband. And then, they stopped searching. A mere three months ago, Claire Barnes filed for, and was granted, a divorce from her husband. A month ago, Greg Barnes regained his memory.