Page 91 of Last Summer

She goes cold. He said the same thing to her in the hospital. Ella remembers that. She remembers his anger. He didn’t believe her then. He thought she was pretending.

“Last summer, you interviewed an actress named Amira Silvers. For whatever reason, the article didn’t go to print. But she wanted to forget something that happened when she was a kid and had found a doctor who was helping her suppress the memories. Dr. Irwin Whitely is a cognitive scientist doing cutting-edge research in the areas of memory control and motivated forgetting. You approached him to get his story. You wanted to write a feature on his groundbreaking research. You interviewed him last August in Reno.”

Reno. She ran into Nathan in Reno. But that was in October.

“Show me this doctor,” she demands.

Damien stands and retrieves his phone from his back pocket. He brings up the website to Dr. Whitely’s lab and gives Ella his phone.

Ella skims through the site’s pages, speed-reading sections of Dr. Whitely’s research. The lab is a neuroscience research center focused on studying the mechanisms that underlie memory control. Most people, especially as they age, want to improve their ability to retain and retrieve memories. But this facility, with the use of advanced techniques and a diagnostic approach, doesn’t just center on improving the ability to retrieve memories. It aims to control the retrieval process, training individuals to consciously and deliberately do the opposite of retrieving memories. It rewires the brain to block specific memories, on purpose, at the individual’s will. The lab claims that once the mind has been conditioned to intervene in the memory retrieval process, which takes multiple sessions, all an individual would need to do to consciously repress a person or event from memory is to apply a string of unique code, a formula of words, that has been programmed into the brain. The same process works to reverse the effects.

“Did this guy do something to me?” Ella asks, returning his phone.

“Dr. Whitely? You agreed to be one of his test subjects. I don’t think you intentionally set out to forget anything specific, it was just research on your part. You wanted a better understanding of his methods. Twice a week for two and a half months, you drove to Reno. He taught you how to suppress specific memories about someone you know or something that happened to you. The theory behind it is that by virtually wiping someone from your mind, you wipe out everything associated with that person. You told me he intends to use his research as therapy for people who were abused as kids. They could forget what happened to them. After we lost Simon, you told me in the hospital that Dr. Whitely had given you the tools to forget everything that happened, and you wanted to forget Nathan specifically. For the sake of us, I agreed to help you.”

She did forget Nathan and everything associated with him. Meeting him. Interviewing him. Sleeping with him. Her pregnancy.

Simon is mine.

Tears well in her eyes. She squeezes them shut. She forgot her pregnancy because she forgot everything associated with Nathan. Why hadn’t she thought that through? How stupid could she have been, and for Damien to go along with her?

Wiping her eyes, she clears her throat and turns around. “Nathan said some things to me. He claims Simon was his.”

Damien’s face falls.

“Damien?” Her voice comes out as a thin whisper. “Is it true?”

“I’m not Simon’s biological father.”

Ella has the sudden urge to run to the bathroom and vomit.

“Did I know?”

He slowly shakes his head, his eyes dropping to the floor. “I don’t think so. If you knew, you didn’t tell me.”

“You don’t think so? Then how did you know Simon wasn’t yours?”

Damien sighs. He stares at the floor.

“Damien?”

His gaze meets hers. “I’m sterile.”

Ella’s mouth falls open. She blinks. “You’re sterile?”

He nods. “I found out in my early twenties. Anna had trouble conceiving so we both got checked out. She was fine. I wasn’t.”

Ella’s heart goes out to Damien. Her big, strong, larger-than-life Damien. So ashamed and embarrassed that he’d kept the truth from her. He hadn’t been honest with her.

She guessed it was easier for him to say he doesn’t ever want kids than to admit he could never have them.

Which pisses her off even more. How dare he assume she would have walked away from him. Did he think so little of her? Unlike Anna, she never would have left him.

“Did I know that you were sterile?”

“Yes. I told you the day of the accident. Right before you got in the car.”

We need to talk.

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