The Night Mark(75)

And now she’d lost him, too.

Faye rolled out of bed and took another shower to wake herself up and clear the cobwebs from her head. Also, she needed a reminder of the many benefits of living in modern times as opposed to say...1921.

Shower over, Faye dressed in a white sleeveless blouse and miniskirt, and she felt naked in them. In just a few days she’d grown so accustomed to ankle-length skirts and long-sleeved shirts that to show the world her bare arms and bare legs seemed positively wicked. Of course, in 1921 long sleeves and long skirts also kept her from severe sunburn. In a time before sunblock, modesty prevented skin cancer.

In the kitchen, Faye went about brewing her usual cup of black tea for breakfast. She boiled water in a saucepan and found her tea bags. Ty came in and peeked in the pan.

“You cooking spaghetti for breakfast?”

“Just tea,” she said.

“On the stove? Why not use the microwave?”

Faye looked up sharply.

“Right,” she said. “Microwave. I forgot about microwaves.”

“What do you mean you forgot about microwaves?” Ty stared intently at her.

“I mean... I forgot they existed.”

“Are you still hungover?” he asked.

“Kind of feels like it.”

“Did you drop acid?”

“No, Ty, I did not drop acid.”

“You forgot microwaves exist. It was a fair question.”

“I...” Faye sat down and rubbed her temples. “I sort of can’t quite remember the past few days. Here. I remember things, but I don’t know if they actually happened. But they had to have happened if I remember them, right?”

“Do you remember us having sex?” he asked.

Faye rolled her eyes. “Yes, of course.”

“When was that? How many days ago?” Ty asked.

“A week ago, right?”

Ty nodded. “Okay. Come on. I’m driving you to the hospital. Where’s your keys?”

“What? The hospital? Why?”

“Because yesterday you said you were so hungover you weren’t sure what year it is. And this morning you forgot microwaves exist and now you think something that happened three nights ago happened a week ago.”

“Three nights ago? No...that was...” Three nights ago she’d been in the lighthouse with Carrick. He’d taught her how to use the logbook to record weather conditions.

“We went out on the boat,” Ty said. “We went to dinner. We came back here to your room.”

“Three nights ago.” She knew the date and yet it seemed impossible that was only three nights ago. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure I’m driving you to the hospital, and real damn quick.”

“I can drive myself.”

“You said you forgot microwaves exist.”

“Right,” Faye said, nodding. “Okay, yeah. You should probably drive.”

It was a slow day in the ER, and an hour later Faye sat on the end of an examining table behind a white curtain as a doctor who looked five years her junior shone a light in her eyes and asked a series of increasingly personal questions. Finally, he lowered his light and put it in his white coat pocket.

“Let’s talk,” he said. He pulled up a wheeled tripod stool and sat down at the end of the table.

“Talk about what?”

“An MRI. You need one. Today.”

“An MRI? Are you serious?”

“You said you weren’t entirely sure what happened in the last three days, although your friend in the waiting room can apparently account for your whereabouts. If he knows what you were doing and you don’t, something’s wrong.”

“I feel okay. I’m just...confused.”

“Confusion and disorientation are both signs of a head injury,” he said. “But there’s being confused, and then there’s amnesia.”

She flinched at the A-word.

“I remember everything, just not...”

“The MRI is just to rule out traumatic brain injury related to your near-drowning experience,” he said. “I don’t expect it to find anything.”

“You don’t.”

He shook his head.

“Ms. Barlow.” He smiled, and she didn’t trust that smile. Whatever he said next she wasn’t going to like. “Your first husband died four years ago and you recently divorced your second husband. Your father died last year and your mother has dementia, and you’ve suffered two miscarriages and several years of infertility treatments. Any one of these events could cause you to experience a temporary break with reality—a nervous breakdown, a fugue state, a major depressive episode... When you tell me you’ve been hallucinating another life, that tells me you either need a neurologist or a psychologist. I’m neither of those things, but I want to get you to the right person who can help you.”

Faye swallowed a hard lump in her throat, and that lump was a pearl. The first grain of sand in the oyster had been Will’s death, and after that every loss had added a layer to it.

The doctor glanced down at his notes again. “Your chart says you’re on Ambien?”

“I took one Ambien my first night in Beaufort because I have trouble sleeping in new places. One. One Ambien is not going to trigger a six-day hallucination. I didn’t even take it the day I disappeared.”