Stephanie Doyle - Remembering That Night

“I will not. I like you too much,” she teased.

“Listen, I have someone here. A woman. She’s in trouble and I’ve offered to help her out. But she obviously doesn’t know me or trust me. She would like to talk to someone I know.”

“Oh, this sounds promising. Put her on.”

Greg handed over his cell phone. “Her name is JoJo. She and her husband are people I’ve worked with.”

She took the phone and said hello. “Mostly I want to know if I can trust him and his friend Chuck.”

It sounded to him as if JoJo was doing a lot of explaining. He could hear her talking on the other end of the phone but couldn’t distinguish exactly what she was saying. Greg figured it would be a yes-or-no answer, but apparently JoJo felt she had to say more.

“And his friend Chuck?”

Greg watched her frown and could only imagine JoJo’s take on Chuck. They had a met a few times through different events at Ben’s house. No doubt Chuck would have introduced himself by hitting on JoJo before realizing she was married. Hopefully, JoJo would have seen through it and concluded that Chuck was all talk and a decent guy at heart.

Which was mostly true.

Finally, she said thank-you and handed the phone back to him.

“Did you tell her what a knight in shining armor I am?” Greg asked JoJo.

He was teasing but there was a pause for a second and then he heard a small hiccup. JoJo had turned into such a sap since she and Mark had married. “Yeah. I did. Because you are. You try not to be, I know. But I’ll never forget what you did for me. So yeah, I told her she could trust you.”

What he did for her? A few conversations. A few walks in the park. It wasn’t as if he’d given her therapy to help her overcome the tragic death of her sister and her subsequent split with her family. He didn’t do therapy anymore. All he’d really done was listen.

Not long after that though, she was ready to move on in her life with Mark. Who, beyond all reason, made her ridiculously happy. Go figure. Sometimes there was no accounting for taste.

“Thanks.”

“You’re going to call me or Mark tomorrow and tell us what’s going on, right?”

Mark and JoJo worked as private investigators. Mostly they specialized in criminal cold cases but he imagined they would be tempted to take on something a little more current if it meant giving him a hand.

First he had to know if a crime had occurred. Second, he needed to find out who she was.

“I’ll let you know when I know something. I promise.”

Greg shoved the phone in his pocket. “Satisfied?”

She nodded. “She said I could trust you.”

“And me, too,” Chuck chimed in, “right?”

The woman smiled shyly. “She said you were a bullshit artist and I shouldn’t believe half of what comes out of your mouth.”

Chuck’s jaw dropped. “I thought JoJo liked me.”

“She also said beyond the bullshit was a sweet guy.”

“Sweet?” Chuck groaned. “I hate being sweet!”

Greg laughed. “But you are sweet. Okay, let’s ditch the hospital. I’ll call the sheriff and let him know you’re staying with me.”

Greg started to turn but she reached out and grabbed his arm. “Why are you doing this? Really?”

“Really? I have no flipping idea. But it’s not like I had anything better to do on a Sunday.”

* * *

SHE LOOKED IN THE STEAMED-UP mirror. “Amanda. Amy. Alice. Alison.”

The names triggered nothing. She tried again. “Beth. Betty. Barbara. Bonnie.”

Maybe if she had one of those baby books. She could go through it alphabetically and wait until something jumped out at her. Then, once she remembered that one critical piece of information, everything else would fall into place.

She took a step back from the mirror and looked at her body. Despite her lack of memory it didn’t feel foreign to her. The three oddly placed moles on her chest actually looked familiar. She touched them and drew a line between the one in the center, the one that hovered over her right breast and the one that hovered over her left. As she made the triangle, it was something she felt she’d done before.

Her very own body art.

She’d already checked for any scrapes or wounds. There was nothing she could see. Twisting around in the mirror she didn’t detect any obvious marks on her back. That gave her relief. At least she wasn’t the product of some type of abuse. Not a victim.

Then why did whatever happen to you take your memory? Your life?

“Excellent question,” she muttered. But at least she was starting to understand the way she thought about things. She was cautious in nature. Which again felt right. Cautious women were smart women. They didn’t jump feetfirst into unknown territory. They were thoughtful and patient and wise.

Even standing naked in some strange man’s bathroom, she felt she’d handled the situation as best she could. She was at the mercy of human kindness with no memory, no identification and no money.

Greg Chalmers had offered to help her, but she hadn’t just accepted it. She’d questioned it. She’d gotten a reference from a woman.

This made her careful. She liked the idea of being a careful person. It soothed her and gave her back a little of her control.

Glancing at the toilet, she looked at the jeans and T-shirt she had placed on the lid. Greg’s clothes that he suspected would fit. The jeans had her a little worried. Yes, he was taller than she was, but he had no hips.

Staring back in the mirror, hers weren’t anything to write home about, but even a woman with no hips sometimes found herself stuck in boy jeans. However, the option of putting her own clothes back on wasn’t available. They were being washed, including her panties and bra. She’d never been so happy to strip out of clothes as she was when she arrived at Greg’s apartment.

A knock on the door startled her. She jumped then, checked to see that she’d locked it, which she knew she had because after she’d locked it, she’d tested it twice.

“How are you doing in there?”

Greg. He sounded worried. Maybe she had spent an overly long time in the shower, but the need to feel clean, really clean, had pushed her to stay under the hot stream of water until it had run lukewarm.

“Okay.”

“You must be hungry. I’m making spaghetti.”

At the mention of food her stomach rumbled. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Good.”

She scrambled into his jeans and gave a sigh of relief when they buttoned and zipped. Her butt was snug but that was to be expected when the owner of the jeans didn’t have one of those either. The T-shirt was a thick cotton and navy blue. She tucked it in and bloused it a little to create a loose effect. Satisfied she didn’t scream “here are my boobs, please look at them” she was ready to leave the safety of the bathroom. She’d already used a comb to untangle her hair and tie it up into a knot that would hold as long as it was still wet.

The two men were already in the kitchen. Greg was using prongs to dish out pasta and then handing Chuck a big bowl of what appeared to be sauce and meatballs. A green plastic container of cheese and a basket of white square bread she was pretty sure came out of a plastic bag sat on the table amongst the dishes.

This was wrong. Dinner was not being served properly. Instinctively, she knew that.

“You know if you pour the pasta back into the pot where the gravy is cooking, it will take on some of the flavor. Then you can serve it already mixed together.”

They looked at her for a moment as if she was an alien, but then Greg nodded. “That’s a good idea. We’ll try that next time.”

She approached the table and sat down. She wanted to be grateful. She was grateful. The shower, the clothes, the feeling that there was a place in the world for her to be. She owed these two men everything.