Tabula Rasa(28)

“Why didn’t anybody call about me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe someone did. But the authorities only wanted family—someone who could legally take responsibility for you. You know how the hospitals are. They weren’t going to just send you home with any random person who knew you for five minutes in some vague capacity.”

I looked back down at the papers. Shannon had discovered my mom was a single mother who had me young and had died from complications of the flu a few years ago.

“If I was raised by a single mother, how did I live without a job and have no student debt?”

“That’s where it gets interesting. You have or had a mysterious benefactor. I think it’s your father. I think he set you up for life to avoid a scandal. That makes him a powerful politician or someone famous whose brand would be damaged by an illegitimate child. Whoever it was is as much of a professional as me because the trail runs cold.”

“He didn’t call when my face was all over TV, though. Did he not recognize me?”

“Oh, I’m sure he recognized you, and equally sure he considered his problems over, with the woman he knocked up dead and the inconvenient child he didn’t want no longer a problem.”

I wondered if I’d known who my father was before the amnesia.

“Do you remember anything from your childhood at all?” Shannon asked.

“I... I’m not sure.” Honestly, at this point I wasn’t even sure what a memory felt like. At least not an old one. The whole concept seemed too wispy to nail down into anything solid. I did occasionally get a few images, bits of conversation and activity. It could be from my childhood. It definitely wasn’t anything recent.

“The farther back the memory loss goes, the more serious the case. Recent memories are lost first.”

So even if I remembered stuff from my childhood, it didn’t mean I’d remember everything or anything else.

“How much money do I have?”

“A lot,” Shannon said. “More than me. And I’m certainly not uncomfortable.”

I stared at him for a good long moment, wondering if he’d idly thought of killing me and draining my bank accounts. Surely, if he could find out this much about me, he could find out how to gain access to my money once I was out of the way. Why hadn’t Trevor done that?

But I think I knew. Those photos he kept in his wallet told me everything. I had to have dated him and then rejected him. And what he’d wanted more than my money was to force a relationship with me. When I woke without my memory, maybe he’d thought if he could just isolate me enough, make me depend on him enough... he might have a chance with me.

It sounded crazy-vain for me to think this way, but he’d obviously been obsessed. What else would explain the lies he’d concocted? In his fantasy, I was his wife and depended solely on him for everything. And he’d found a way to make it happen. I don’t think he cared even a little bit about my money, or maybe he’d been planning for us to live off it indefinitely. Maybe that was how he was getting by just fine and stocking the deep freezer without his job at the hospital.

“If you know how much money I have, does that mean you’ve been in my accounts somehow?” I didn’t even want to think about how he might have accomplished this, but I had every confidence Shannon was capable of figuring it out.

He gave me one of his patented calm, assessing looks. “I have.”

“Had there been recent withdrawals?”

His eyes widened as if surprised I wasn’t a complete idiot. “I’m impressed. Yes, Trevor gained access to your accounts. He had your cards and PIN numbers. I used them to get in. He’d been leeching off your money.”

“How much did he take?” I didn’t even know how much I had. More than Shannon. But what did that even mean? I had no idea how much Shannon had, but I was sure he had a lot more than it appeared to the casual passerby.

“Not as much as I would expect. I think he was just living off you since he fled his job.”

I wondered even more now about what Trevor’s end game had been. Surely he hadn’t thought we could live in an abandoned theme park forever. And even if we could temporarily, he’d been a fugitive, so it wasn’t as if he’d roamed freely without fear. Was there a second improbable location he’d planned for us? How would he have kept the ruse going? Or was he deluded enough to think he could win my love and then confess the truth to me, and we’d go off somewhere happily into the sunset? Was that why he’d tried to confirm that I loved him the night Shannon shot him? Had he thought he could move us to the confession and the next phase of his plan?

But... I had money. At least that was something.

“So I can pay you back now. For all the clothes and food and everything.”

“I don’t need your money,” Shannon said.

“I didn’t say you needed it. I just... you should be compensated for... for everything.”

“I don’t want your money.”

Shannon took his empty glass to the kitchen and went back upstairs. The cat followed him and then yowled when he shut her out of the bedroom.

However much he might be attached to the animal, it didn’t extend to bedroom privileges. She sulked back down the stairs, gave me a look of pure evil as if it were my fault he’d locked her out, then curled up on the chair she’d been in before.