The Night Mark(76)

“But you didn’t disappear, and you weren’t gone for six days.”

“I remember six days. I remember...” Faye paused and held out her hands palms open. “Everything. I can tell you where the pencils are in that cottage. And what brand they are. And I can tell you what we ate for breakfast. I can tell you the books I read. I can tell you Carrick likes milk in his coffee and Dolly likes sugar. I can tell you that sometimes Carrick says ‘aye’ instead of ‘yes’ and Dolly can sew a pair of drawstring pants in thirty minutes. And there was a cat named Ozzie, a gray tabby, and he’s got stripes on his head in the shape of an V. That’s his favorite place to get scratched—right on his V. Is that normal? Hallucinating a lighthouse keeper, a sarcastic teenage seamstress and a tabby cat?”

“The brain is a mysterious organ. It can play some pretty impressive tricks on us. Let me ask you this.” He pulled his stool a little closer. “What’s more likely—that you traveled to 1921 and spent a week living in a house with a man who looks just like your late husband but isn’t him and a teenage girl who reminds you of someone but you can’t remember who, living the life of a girl who died? Or maybe you had a reaction to a sleeping pill with known hallucinogenic side effects, or received a head injury, or you had a temporary break with reality brought upon by a series of severe emotional traumas? What sounds more likely to you?”

Faye didn’t answer. She didn’t want to answer. He was so calm and kind and rational and right. He was right. She had taken an Ambien. She had nearly drowned. She had lost so much in the past few years. Any or all those things could have brought on some sort of break with reality.

“Ms. Barlow?”

Faye blinked and wiped tears off her face.

“Okay,” she said. “Do the scan.”

“Good choice. We’re going to do blood work, just in case, as well. We can’t be too careful when there’s possible head trauma.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. She was glad he was taking this seriously, but she still felt like she’d betrayed Carrick and Dolly somehow, like she’d let someone convince her they weren’t real when they were.

Weren’t they?

They had to be. Why else would she miss them so much?

The MRI turned up nothing, which was both a relief and a concern. Faye certainly didn’t want to have a head injury, but she didn’t want some kind of psychosis, either. And she certainly didn’t want to think she had accidentally overdosed. The ER doctor referred Faye to a psychologist, and she dutifully promised to call her first thing in the morning.

“You’re lucky they didn’t send you off to the funny farm,” Ty said as he turned out of the hospital parking lot.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to call it ‘the funny farm’ anymore. It’s offensive.”

“You offended?”

“Only if they send me to the funny farm.”

Ty snorted a laugh. “Here’s my theory. I think you did exactly what I told you not to do. I think you went swimming off Bride Island, almost drowned like I said you would, washed up and got sunstroke out there. Fried your brain.”

“I don’t even have a sunburn, Ty. And I admit I went wading, but I don’t remember stripping naked and going skinny-dipping.”

“But you do remember spending six days on an island in 1921, so let’s just say for the time being your memory is suspect.”

“My memory is excellent. I remember everything that happened while I was gone. I don’t know if what I remember was real, but that doesn’t change the fact that I remember it.”

“That makes no sense,” Ty said. “We better go with my theory.”

“I’m not saying your theory doesn’t make sense. I even get why I’d dream of a man who looks, talks and kisses just like my dead husband did. You don’t need Freud to interpret that dream. But why would I dream about a deaf teenage girl who loved interior decorating and baking pie? I mean, that’s really specific. I don’t decorate. I’d never baked a peach pie in my life before I went there. Now I have. Now I can...” Faye glanced out the passenger-side window at a gas station in a strip mall. “Hey, can you take me to a grocery store?”

“Why? You hungry? We can go out to dinner if you want.”

“I’ll take you out to dinner as a thank-you for wasting your entire day with me at the hospital. Tomorrow. Now I need to cook something.”

“It wasn’t wasted. I met an insanely cute nurse. And I got her number.” He held up his left hand, where a phone number had been written on the inside of his wrist. “Don’t be jealous. I have a rule against dating crazy girls. A little loco is fun, but I draw the line if she’s hallucinating other guys.”

“I’m not jealous. I wouldn’t want to date me, either. Plus, I think I’m in a relationship with a man who’s been dead since the Johnson administration. Oh, and I’m married.”

“You said you were divorced.”

“I’m divorced in 2015. I’m married in 1921.”

“Nice guy?”

“A monster who beat and raped his wife when she refused to have sex with him.”

“And you want to go back?”

“Well, yeah. I’m cheating on him with a lighthouse keeper, or trying to. Is there a Facebook status for all that?”