Have You Seen Me?(29)
My brother’s reaction made me reluctant to update Hugh last night. I will tell him, but not immediately, not when he has so much on his mind.
Which means two sins of omission, of course. This and the coffee with Damien tomorrow. Thank god Gabby’s on her way over now—I need the comfort of her presence.
Wineglass in hand, I head back to the bedroom, kick off my shoes, and change into lounge-y pants and a sweater. Then, for a while, I wander aimlessly around the apartment, like someone who can’t recall where she left her keys or set down a glass. I realize that on some level, I am searching, looking for the missing days. I know Erling keeps urging me to relax, but if I knew where I’d been and what I’d been doing, maybe I could make better sense of everything else.
Her last comment from the session echoes in my head: that I might never remember. No, I can’t accept that yet.
Finally, Gabby texts me to say she’s five minutes away, and then only seconds later, it seems, the buzzer to the apartment door is sounding and she’s striding in, all five feet eleven inches of her. She’s swaddled in a beige, drape-y shawl-collared coat, and her long red hair is tied in a high ponytail.
“Wait,” I exclaim, spotting the aluminum roller bag she’s hauling behind her. “Did you come straight from the airport?”
“Yup,” she says, embracing me. “I couldn’t wait. Omigod, I’m so relieved to see you.”
“Same here.” The mere sight of her has already begun to soothe my ragged nerves.
Leaving her bag behind in the foyer, she trails me into the great room.
“Are you up for wine?” I ask. “I’ve got a bottle already open.”
“Just a splash. I don’t want to crash too early or I’ll wake up at two A.M. and never get back to sleep. Tell me what I’ve missed.”
I’ve been keeping Gabby up to date by email, though I haven’t told her yet about my recovered memory. I’m nearly certain she won’t judge me harshly when I do, but I feel like I need to share it with Hugh first.
“Not much. I managed to do a little work today. Saw my therapist. Baby steps, really.”
As Gabby settles onto the couch, I grab the wine bottle and an extra glass and plop down next to her. She shrugs off her coat and unwinds the scarf that’s been wrapped around her neck. She’s wearing jeans and a tight black jersey top, along with some of her jewelry—an amulet around her neck and eight or nine bangles and ribbon bracelets, each one unique but fabulous in combination. Gabby has an enviably stylish but nonchalant way of dressing that I’ve never been able to master. I’m useless at nonchalant.
“So just so I’m clear,” she says after I’ve filled her wineglass, “the strategy is, basically, take it easy, see the therapist a couple of times a week, and get a second opinion from a neurologist.”
“Yup, and suck away on Altoids to stay in the moment. I still can’t believe this has happened. I don’t do unraveling.”
Gabby smiles. “That’s for sure. Do you like this therapist? I mean, you went to her originally for a whole different reason.”
“I do like her, and this latest stuff is in her wheelhouse. She’s worked regularly with people who’ve experienced trauma.”
“And she’s been helpful?”
“It’s been good to vent, but the process is going to take time. And she told me today that my memories might actually be too ‘fractured’ to retrieve, which is driving me crazy.”
“I’ve already given you my opinion on that front. Hire a private detective. Once he’s figured out where you went, it might trigger you to remember what you were doing.”
“You probably think I’m going to hire someone superhot who calls himself a private dick, and that you could date him after he’s done with my case. But I haven’t spotted any Chris Hemsworth types in the mix.”
She raises a ginger eyebrow. “You’ve started looking?”
“Just a basic Google search, that’s all. It looks like there’s a wide range of options. At one end are the really big agen cies, which help companies deal with major risks and security issues. And then there are some small, local operations, often made up of ex-cops or ex-military guys.”
“Try one of them.”
I let out a long sigh. “Yeah, maybe I should. Plus, it’s not simply a matter of wanting to know where I was those days. I keep wondering if something happened to me last Tuesday, something bad.”
“While you were in this so-called fugue state?”
“Either in it or immediately beforehand, and that’s what made me disconnect. Not the argument with Hugh.”
Absentmindedly, Gabby uses her right foot to wiggle off the black suede ankle bootie on her left foot and then performs the same maneuver on the opposite side.
“Here’s a thought,” she says, once her legs are tucked beneath her on the couch. “What if you were freaked out by a bad thing that happened to someone else?”
“You mean like seeing a person being attacked?”
“Right. Or being hit by a car or, god—jumping from a building. Something. There was this woman I knew ages ago, a big-shot lawyer who dated my cousin Bradley. I bumped into her a couple of years ago and she told me she’d left her fancy law firm to get an MFA in poetry. And when I asked her why, she said that on one single day in Manhattan, she came across three different scenes with cops standing around a dead body under a white sheet. Three dead bodies all in one day! And it threw her so much she ended up changing her life entirely. That kind of stuff can fuck with your head.”