A History of Wild Places(99)

I smile at Theo, the familiar touch of his hand calming the roiling in my stomach.

But when I swing my gaze back to my parents, my mom’s expression has gone slack, the pink color washed from her cheeks. My dad’s posture has hardened in his chair.

I swallow again and this time find my voice. “This is my husband, Theo. You know him as Travis. We’ve been married for two years.” My voice catches, threatens to sink into my stomach, but then re-forms. “Although it feels like much longer—for both of us.”

The hiss of the TVs works its way into my ears. A phone rings from behind the lobby desk and a woman answers, speaking low enough that I can’t hear.

At last, my mother asks, “What happened to you out there?” Her bottom lip hangs open, hands clasped together so tightly that her knuckles turn as white as her slacks.

“I became someone else.”



* * *




My parents are staying in a room on the third floor of the hotel. An elevator ride above us. They ask us to join them for dinner at an Italian place up the road, Martoni’s Eatery, but I tell them we’d prefer to stay in, that the noise of a restaurant would be too much. But in truth, seeing them again, making conversation, pretending that we can resume life as it once was, is more than I can deal with right now.

My head hasn’t stopped swirling since we saw them in the lobby, my mother’s deft stare, concern and agitation puckering at the corners of her mouth. She was shaken by the sight of Theo’s hand in mine; the woman I’ve become, the secrets I carry. But she carries them too—I can feel the strain of them in her eyes.

Theo and I are back in our room, and I sit at the edge of the bed, my shirt drawn up, while Theo peels away the gauze and white cloth from my wound, revealing stitches and a surgically clean incision. It’s a small opening, the place where the bullet tore through the layer of flesh and wedged itself against my lower ribs. If Parker had been any closer to me, if his gun wasn’t so old, so rarely fired, perhaps the bullet might have traveled deeper into my torso. Hit organs that could have killed me. I got lucky, I guess.

Theo dabs the incision with peroxide then secures a clean bandage with tape.

“It’s healing good,” he says.

I touch his hand and he lifts his eyes. “I’m scared,” I tell him.

“I know. Me too.”

A knock thumps softly against the hotel room door. Theo stands and I lower my shirt, breathing deeply to test the restriction of the gauze. He opens the door and my mother is standing in the hall, shoulders rounded, hands clasped, looking out of place in this hotel. Looking like she’s a long way from home.

“Maggie,” she says, still standing in the hall. “Can I speak with you?”

She doesn’t know my new name, my Pastoral name, and hearing her say Maggie grates against my eardrums. A past creeping its way back in.

“I’ll leave you alone,” Theo says, and before I can object, he strides past my mother and down the hall. I imagine him sitting in the lobby alone, or maybe he’ll retreat to his truck, waiting until it’s safe to return to our little room. All we have left.

Mom steps through the doorway, letting the door close shut behind her. “It’s good to see you,” she says, and already I see the pain—some foreign regret—gathering in her eyes. “It’s been so long.”

“I know.”

She crosses the room but doesn’t try to draw me into another hug. Perhaps she senses that I don’t want to be touched right now, that I’m struggling to make sense of my surroundings, of her, of everything.

“I could use a cigarette,” she mutters, crossing her arms and smirking to herself. I’ve never known my mother to smoke, but maybe she started after I went missing. A nervous addiction. I wouldn’t blame her.

She lowers her arms again, fidgeting, before meeting my gaze. “I don’t know what happened between you and Travis out there. Or how it is that you’re married, but—” Her voice sputters away, maybe she’s decided not to say whatever she was thinking. She starts again. “The police told us that you’re having a hard time remembering things about your life before you left.”

I push myself up from the bed, a slow effort, and thankfully she doesn’t try to help me, just watches as I walk to the window overlooking the parking lot. A pool sits far below, glittering an unnatural shade of blue under the early evening sun. “The memories are coming back, slowly.”

“Do you remember the stories I used to tell you, about the place where I used to live?”

I swivel around to face her, leaning my hip against the window frame. Steadying myself.

“It was a place called Pastoral,” she says.

My throat dries up.

“I know that’s where you were,” she continues. “I know you went back to where you were born.”

I touch the edge of the window to keep my knees from buckling beneath me. “I was born in Pastoral?”

Her eyebrows crush together. “I never wanted to tell you the truth. But you were so mad at me that day; you needed to understand—”

“What day?” I press, cutting her off.

“At the ferry.” She frowns, as if just now realizing how little I remember. And maybe she’s trying to decide if she can backstep her way out of this, avoid telling me anything. But it’s too late now.