Chapter 2 - The Heart Remembers
For several seconds, I thought I had misunderstood him.
Luca Moretti had just asked a waitress he had known for approximately four minutes to hold his son.
“You’re serious?”
His gaze remained on Leo.
“Yes.”
Something in his voice had changed.
It wasn't authority anymore.
It was fear.
I slowly held out my arms.
The instant Luca transferred Leo to me, the crying stopped.
Not gradually.
Completely.
Leo pressed himself against my chest, tucked his face beneath my chin, and released the smallest exhausted sigh.
The restaurant disappeared.
My arms tightened automatically around him.
And something happened inside me.
Pain.
Sharp enough to steal my breath.
Not physical exactly.
It felt like missing someone whose name I couldn't remember.
A flash struck me.
White ceiling.
Rain against glass.
A baby crying.
Blood on my hands.
Then nothing.
“Avery?”
Luca's voice pulled me back.
I blinked.
Leo had grabbed the silver necklace around my throat.
A tiny oval pendant.
The only possession I had when I'd awakened in a Pennsylvania hospital almost a year earlier with no memory of who I was.
The police had found no identification.
No purse.
No phone.
No useful fingerprints in their databases.
Doctors diagnosed trauma-related retrograde amnesia after a severe head injury.
“Avery” came from the name engraved on the pendant.
The surname Bennett had been given to me temporarily by a social worker.
Eventually, temporary became my life.
Luca was staring at my necklace.
His face had gone pale.
“Where did you get that?”
“I've always had it.”
“Always?”
“As far as I know.”
His eyes lifted sharply.
“What does that mean?”
I should have told him it was none of his business.
Instead, perhaps because his baby was sleeping against my heart as though he'd done it a thousand times, I said quietly, “I lost my memory eleven months ago.”
The older bodyguard pushed his chair backward.
Luca didn't move.
“Eleven months?”
“Almost.”
“What date?”
I frowned.
“November nineteenth.”
Luca stood.
Leo stirred.
I instinctively rocked him.
“Easy,” I whispered.
His little fingers curled into my blouse.
Luca stared.
Not at me.
At the movement.
“What did you just do?”
“Rocked him?”
“No.”
His breathing had changed.
“That song.”
I hadn't realized I was humming.
Three notes.
Soft.
Repetitive.
A melody with no words.
“I don't know.”
Luca's jaw tightened.
“My wife used to hum that.”
Wife.
My stomach dropped for a reason I couldn't explain.
“Used to?”
Luca looked at Leo.
“She died.”
The words should have meant nothing to me.
Instead, tears filled my eyes.
I turned away in embarrassment.
“I'm sorry.”
“Her name was Sofia.”
A glass shattered somewhere behind me.
The entire room seemed to tilt.
Sofia.
Suddenly I saw headlights.
Rain.
A man's bloody face.
My hands over a swollen belly.
Someone screaming.
Run.
I nearly dropped Leo.
Luca caught my elbow.
“Avery.”
“I need to sit.”
He pulled out a chair.
I sank into it, still holding Leo.
“What happened to your wife?”
Luca's expression hardened.
“She disappeared eleven months ago.”
I stared at him.
“You said she died.”
“I was told she died.”
“By whom?”
Before he answered, Leo woke.
His gray-blue eyes found mine.
He touched my mouth.
Then he made a sound.
“Mmm.”
Luca froze.
Leo tried again.
“Mama.”
Every nerve in my body stopped.
Nobody spoke.
“Mama,” Leo whispered.
I stared at him.
“No.”
Leo smiled.
“Mama.”
My eyes filled.
“He doesn't know what he's saying.”
Luca looked like a man watching the dead walk through a doorway.
“He has never said that word before.”
I stood too quickly.
“I have to go.”
Leo screamed.
I handed him toward Luca.
The baby clung to me with astonishing strength.
“Avery.”
“Please.”
“I need you to tell me where you've been.”
“I don't know!”
The room went silent.
I lowered my voice.
“I don't know where I was before November nineteenth. I don't know who my parents are. I don't know whether Avery is even my name.”
Luca's eyes moved again to my necklace.
Then he reached beneath his shirt.
A chain appeared.
Hanging from it was another oval silver pendant.
My pendant.
Its twin.
He opened his.
Inside was a photograph.
Luca and a brunette woman smiling beside the ocean.
The woman was me.
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
Luca opened my pendant with trembling fingers.
I had never known it opened.
Inside was another photograph.
Luca kissing the same woman beneath strings of lights.
On the opposite side were three engraved words.
L + S. Always.
The floor seemed to disappear beneath me.
Luca whispered the name again.
“Sofia.”
May you like
Leo reached for me.
And somewhere inside the ruins of my mind, a woman I could no longer remember began screaming to get home.
