The Secrets We Keep(12)

Alex didn’t say a word as I heaved. He rubbed my back and reminded me to breathe. Easier said than done.

Carefully, he settled the pillows around me. The pain was receding, slowly leaving me with each passing breath. I found the vases on the windowsill again, my eyes moving from one to the next, counting as I went.

“You can stop counting,” Alex said as he tossed the paper towel he was using to dry his hands into the trash and took a seat next to me on the bed. “There are thirty-seven of them here, more at home.”

I shook my head in confusion. How could I know thirty-seven people when I couldn’t remember who I was?

“They’re from our friends. Jenna, Keith, some of the guys on the soccer team. I think Coach Riley sent you some, too. Everyone’s here, been camped out in the hall for the past two days.”

I didn’t recognize any of those people, and had he said two days?

I turned my head toward the hall windows, but the curtains were drawn, the door closed. There was a whiteboard stuck to the wall there, a bunch of numbers scribbled next to what I thought were times. Above it was my name. I think.

Maddy Lawton.

“Do you know where you are, what happened?” Alex asked. He looked worried, his eyes darting between mine and the whiteboard I was studying.

I shook my head. I could guess from the bed, the white walls, and the wires hooked up to me that I was in the hospital. I remembered being in an accident, a bad one. But who I was, how long I’d been here, and who the girl in the car with me was … yeah, that I had no idea.

“Do you know who you are?” His voice was barely a whisper, shaky and uncertain.

I looked up at the whiteboard again, then down to my wrist. There was a plastic bracelet there with my name and a slew of numbers. “Maddy Lawton.”

He smiled at my words. It was weak and tentative, but a confirmation that I was correct nonetheless.

“I’m Maddy.” The whispered words felt foreign on my lips, but Alex nodded, the mere mention of my name lighting up his face. “Where is the other girl … the one that was in the car with me? Where is she? Is she okay?”

“Ella,” Alex said, concern replacing the relief I’d seen in his eyes a moment earlier. “Your sister’s name was Ella.”

It sounded so simple, so perfectly right. “Ella.”

“Maddy?” Alex was standing now, staring at me, waiting for me to do or say something. Problem was, I had no idea what that was. “Do you know who I am?”

I did, but not because I felt connected or drawn to him, rather because it was written on the card he’d shown me. Fear clawed its way through my system, the unnerving sensation that something was off … that I was off. It hit me, the realization that my entire knowledge base consisted of those two facts and nothing more. I knew who he was and who I was, but nothing more.

“You’re Alex,” I said as I stared down at his hand. It was locked in mine, his thumb gently tracing the lines of my veins. The touch was tender, soft, like the look in his eyes. Something you wouldn’t do to someone you didn’t know … really know. “And you’re my boyfriend, right?”

My expression must have shifted because his next words quickly tumbled out as if he was searching for the safe thing to say. “Everything’s going to be okay, Maddy. You’re gonna be fine. I’m gonna get your parents. They’re outside in the hall, talking to your doctor.”

“No, wait. Where’s the other girl? My sister…” I had to pause, swallow down my pain to get those simple words out. “Where’s Ella?”

I watched the lines of his face smooth out, his calm, soothing tone forced. “It’s gonna be okay, Maddy. None of this is your fault.”


My fault? “What? What do you mean my fault?”

He shook his head. The fact that he wouldn’t explain was answer enough.

The brief silence that followed was all-consuming, and I slowly started to piece things together. I didn’t hear the cry that escaped my throat, my mind too trapped in the shattering image of that girl … of Ella in the seat next to me, her blue eyes staring lifelessly at me as they pried her out of the car.

“Don’t cry. Please, Maddy, don’t cry. Nobody blames you. The roads were wet and the car slid. There was nothing you could do to stop it.”

He reached out to me, and I moved back. “No! Don’t touch me.” I didn’t want to be comforted or held. I wanted him to tell me what had happened, why I couldn’t remember anything, anything except that girl’s dead eyes.





7

Alex left me there sobbing, unable to form a coherent sentence. I saw the terror in his eyes when he finally got up and scrambled for the door. He had begged me to calm down, promised me everything would be fine. He was wrong, so wrong. Nothing would ever be fine again.

If what he was slowly trying to ease me into realizing was true, then the girl next to me in the car, the one I killed, was my own sister. Nothing … not the terrifying inability to remember who I was, not even the pain that was lancing through my head could compete with that dark truth.

“She’s awake,” I heard him say. The sound in the hall was deafening. Cheers mingled with cries. I saw a girl make for my door. I couldn’t pull her name from the tattered recesses of my mind. Didn’t need to because the swell of emotion that came from a glimpse of her face was more than enough. Hatred clawed at me, a complete and bone-deep hatred solely directed at her. Thankfully, Alex stopped her at the door and gently eased her aside to let someone in.