The Stranger in the Mirror(13)

??11??

Addison




I tap lightly on the screen door and lean closer to look for Gigi in the kitchen. “Anybody home?” I call, and open the door. As I enter, Gigi rushes into the room.

“Hi. Come and sit. How’d it go yesterday? Did you pick a dress? I’m so sorry I had to work. I wish I could have gone with you.”

“Me too. We chose the dress. But I was careless.”

Gigi frowns. “Careless? What do you mean?”

“Blythe and Hailey saw the scar on my arm,” I tell her.

Gigi sits back in her chair and purses her lips. “What did Blythe say?”

“Nothing.” I bite my lip and look at the floor. “But I saw the expression on her face.” I look back up at Gigi. “I know she’s leery of me. I can’t really blame her. I’m leery of me too. I know eventually I’ll have to tell her about my scars—I can’t wear long sleeves forever. But I really wanted to wait until she knew me better and would be apt to give me the benefit of the doubt.”

“I don’t believe she would ever hold this against you, Addy,” Gigi says kindly. “She seems like a good person.”

“She is. And I give her a lot of credit that despite her inevitable reservations, she’s doing her best to make me feel welcome. The least I can do is try to show her that I appreciate all she wants to do for us. It’s the reason that I’m going along with this big wedding, even though all that attention is the last thing I want.”

Gigi cocks her head. “Try to think of it simply as a day when the people who love and care about you and Gabriel want to support you and share your happiness.”

I get up and pour myself a glass of water, then lean against the counter to face her. “Some days I don’t know why I even agreed to marry Gabriel. He’s a great guy. Good-looking, kind, funny. I love him, or at least I think I do. But do I even know what love really is?”

“There you go again. Overthinking. You don’t have to dissect love and put it under a microscope.”

“But why is that a bad thing to do? It’s all I have, really. I can’t look back over my life and judge what I’ve done right and what I’ve done wrong, what choices I’ve made.” What I don’t say is that I feel like an impostor who has taken up life in a body that used to belong to someone else. I can’t stop agonizing over what could have caused me to try and take my life. Or maybe it’s possible that someone else is responsible for the slashes. That question keeps me up nights, and the fact that it doesn’t keep Gabriel up keeps me up even longer.

I got so lucky when Ed picked me up. When I think about it, that situation could have ended in a very different way. A young woman with no identification and no memory, hitchhiking. And I think of how Gigi’s medical knowledge might have saved my life, too. When we arrived at the house, it felt like a hammer was pounding on my head, but I was more afraid of being taken to a psych ward somewhere than dying. Gigi put an arm around my waist, and as we walked to the car, she kept repeating that everything was going to be fine and that she wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me. I still remember how her voice sounded in my ear, so gentle and reassuring.

At the hospital they gave me every test imaginable: MRI, CT scan, blood tests to check for infection, an electroencephalogram for possible seizure activity, even a gynecological examination. A psychiatrist asked me lots of questions, some of which I could answer but most of which I couldn’t. I felt so afraid and lost as I was wheeled from one test room to another, put inside clanging machines in dark spaces. It was terrifying. And then the diagnosis, which I could have told them myself: retrograde amnesia, the inability to recall any events that occurred before the development of the amnesia. Memory wiped clean.

I went home with them as soon as I was released and stayed in the guest room the first few months. Gigi is so wise. I think she realized that I couldn’t be alone at the beginning, but as I gained confidence, it would be good to have autonomy and a little space.

“I was thinking that you might like to have a place of your own,” she said one morning at breakfast.

My body got cold suddenly, and it felt like my stomach was dropping through my feet. Were they kicking me out?

I suspect Gigi saw the look of panic on my face. “What I mean,” she hurried on, “is that we have a nice one-bedroom apartment above the garage. You could stay there if you like and have a little privacy and room to move around as you please. It even has a kitchen, if you want to cook.” She paused here and gave me a look. “I guess you might not remember if you like to cook or not. But anyway, you’re still welcome to have every single meal with us. What do you think? Would you like to take a look at it?”

“Sure,” I said a little tentatively. The thought of leaving the safe comfort of their house was a little daunting.

Together we walked up the stairs to the small apartment, which was sparsely furnished but adequate for my needs. There was a small galley kitchen and a wooden table with two straight-backed chairs that took up half of the living space. The other half had a two-seat sofa of dark green velour, next to a round end table with a mock kerosene lamp. There was one picture on the wall—a marshland scene, featuring a black-and-white-spotted dog with a bird in its mouth. I turned to Gigi. “It’s a really nice place.”