Page 21 of This Love
Chapter 8
Ava
I took my time leaving the car and walking up the sidewalk to the blue house.
Pink flowers lined the path, just like Tucker had said.
Tucker ran ahead to unlock the yellow door. My father waited behind me, holding the itchy dress and painful shoes.
I didn’t like being between them, and something urged me to escape, but I had nowhere to go. I was at their mercy.
The flowers were tall bursts of green topped with tiny blooms. I ran my hand along their petals, which tickled my palms. The sidewalk was warm beneath my feet. I inhaled slowly and carefully, then let the air go. It helped. I wondered how my body knew to do that.
Up ahead, Tucker opened the door and waited.
I wasn’t ready to be trapped again, like I had been on the bed in the curtained room. I paused to look at a rock that was different from the other gray ones. It was bright blue. Then another, yellow.
The colored ones had numbers on top. 2018. 2019. 2021. The last one was white and black. 2025. Something about this one drew me to it. I picked it up.
Now that I was looking more closely, I could see the white part had a pattern like my dress, and the black had a V of white in the middle like Tucker’s suit.
“Each rock has a date for a significant part of our lives together,” Tucker called out from his position near the door. “That one we put out yesterday for our wedding day.” His mouth was grim, the corners turned down.
I glanced over the other rocks again. I wondered what was significant about the other dates. Maybe the book would tell me.
I couldn’t see my tattoo because of the long sleeve of my sweatshirt. It was hot out, though, and the longer I stood in one place, the warmer I got.
I moved to the shade of the front door, although I stepped aside to avoid being too close to Tucker.
My father followed. “Are we ready to go in?”
Tucker looked at me.
“Okay,” I said.
Tucker led the way. I followed him into a narrow space lined with photos. To the left was a bright white room with a blue sofa and a television.
I turned to the images. I spotted myself, although my hair in these pictures was longer than it was in the video I’d made with Vinnie. Vinnie was not in any of these photos, but many of them had Tucker. I also saw my father and the woman who’d been with him. Plus, the two other girls from the limo.
There was one with the tiny gray-haired woman from the waiting room.
I stared at all of them, trying to find meaning in any of the faces or scenes. Looking at them made me feel better than I had since waking up in the limo, though, so I kept doing it.
“You’re a photographer,” Tucker said. “Oh, right. Vinnie said that in the video. But you’re really good. You took all of these, even the ones you’re in.”
I nodded. Maybe that was why they were so pleasing. They looked exactly the way I would have wanted them to.
Tucker took a step toward another room at the back, and the floor creaked. I startled at the sound and then laughed. “You should fix that!” I said in a voice I scarcely recognized, bright and happy.
I clapped my hand over my mouth. It had popped out without my thinking.
For a moment, Tucker smiled in a way that made his entire face beautiful. My stomach flipped. I smiled back, touching my cheeks. So many things were happening here that I didn’t quite control.
“You always say that,” he said. “I’ll get to it, I promise.”
“Is that typical?” my father asked. “For her to just say things she used to say?”
“Yeah,” Tucker said, then turned to me. “If you’re distracted or startled, there are things you do and say that are the same across all the memory losses.”
