Page 90 of Last Summer

“I saw the photo.” The one on the internet.

Ella’s heart sinks, heavy with guilt.

“Do you have any idea how that made me feel? Seeing the two of you together like that? Why would you do that to us?”

“It’s not what you—”

“You’re looking at him the same way you look at me,” he interjects, voice raised. “What does he mean to you?”

Nothing!she wants to shout. But she doesn’t really know that.

She shakes her head.

“Do you love him?” he asks, his voice flat.

Her head snaps up. “No!”

“Did you sleep with him?”

Ella opens her mouth to object. But the denial falls flat on her tongue. She looks down at her lap. “I thought it would trigger my memories.” Half truth. The last thing she wants Damien to hear is how she couldn’t resist consoling Nathan. She couldn’t resist him.

Damien taps the chair with his index finger. Ella glances back up at him and he sighs heavily. “That’s on me. I should have told you about him. I shouldn’t have—” He plucks at a loose thread on the chair’s arm.

“You shouldn’t have what?”

He smooths the suede fabric where he plucked off the thread. “I shouldn’t have listened to you.”

“Me? About what?”

“At the hospital. I promised that no matter how often you asked or how difficult it would be not to say anything, that I wouldn’t tell you what happened. You made me promise to lie to you if I had to. Throw you off course when I needed to, because you knew you would ask questions. I agreed to do whatever it took so that you and I could start over. Pretend that the seven months before the accident never happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your memory loss. It’s intentional. You did it to yourself.”

Ella’s mouth falls open for a beat. She then laughs, tossing her head back. “You aren’t serious?” she says when she can get the words out.

“I’m dead serious.” He doesn’t smile.

Ella stops laughing. “Impossible.” She did her research on selective memory loss after Dr. Allington’s diagnosis. Motivated forgetting, the purposeful repression of memories on a conscious level, is highly questionable. It’s a theory. Unproven, from what Ella read. There is still much scientists and psychologists don’t understand when it comes to memories.

Ella slides off the bed and walks to their closet.

“What’re you doing?” Damien asks.

“Getting dressed.” She isn’t going to sit and listen to this nonsense. The nerve of him to blame her. He’s the one who’s avoided talking about the accident and Simon. If Damien can’t own the reasons for his silence, she doesn’t want any part of this conversation.

She yanks on panties and yoga pants, straps on a sports bra, and tugs on a tank top. Marlene should have an afternoon hot yoga class on today’s schedule at her studio. Ella needs to get out of the house and sweat out her angst.

After brushing her teeth and twisting her hair into a messy bun, she returns. Damien hasn’t moved.

“I’m going to make coffee. When I get back, I expect the truth from you, not this crap about intentional memory loss.”

His jaw ticks. “I am telling the truth.”

“Do you hear yourself? Do you seriously expect me to believe I chose to forget our baby?”

“You weren’t supposed to forget Simon.”

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