I'm still thinking about that man. I wish I could figure out what it was about him that latched onto me so much. I can't think of his name. There are no flashes of thought that come with the look in his eyes.

  The snow on the windows is gone. It must have melted overnight. I step up close to the one in the living room. It's on the front wall of the house and looks out over the street. Of course, I can't see the street itself or anything else around the house. There's only a blur, colored like the bottom of a glass with a darker streak somewhere in the middle. Pressing my face close to the glass, I try to focus beyond the waves in the window to see more detail of the outside world. It doesn't do much good. Everything remains undefined and hazy, blended into one another like an impressionist painting.

  The longer I stand here, the more I'm aware of what I'm watching. Or, more accurately, what I'm not watching. There's no movement. No matter how long I stand staring through the thick, warped glass of the window, nothing changes. If a car drove down the street or a child skipped along the sidewalk, it would be a shift in the colors and shapes that could give me a loose impression of my home's place in the world. Everything remains absolutely still.

  Without giving myself a chance to think, I walk out of the living room and through the entryway of the house to the front door. My fingers easily turn the little gold lock in the knob. I've unlocked this door every day, so I could get the milk from where it was delivered right at my doorstep, or gather the mail when Charles wasn't there. But it feels different opening the door without the intention of just stepping right back inside. The farthest I can remember walking along the short hallway between the two doors is halfway. There a table perfectly aligned with the gold-colored design on the rich wine and navy Oriental rug on the floor that holds the mail when there is more than an envelope or two.

  I walk up to the table and run my fingers along the beaded edge of the wood. The mail hasn't come yet, so the table is empty. My eyes snap to the door at the end of the hallway. The door attached to the house is the original one. Charles had the hallway and another door added, using the privilege of inheriting his parents' millions, and the money he'd earned himself with his production company, to manipulate and adapt the house into a sanctuary for me. That door was meant to protect me, to keep me from the outside and the outside from me. The milkman stepped through it each week to leave milk, juice, and butter in its little metal crate by the second door. When he didn't use the slot to slip envelopes inside, the mailman came as far as the table in the middle to leave packages and stacks of correspondence.

  So why did Dr. Baker need a key?

  Each step toward the door feels like I'm walking through quicksand. The floor pulls at my feet, and everything Charles has told me since I woke up after the accident drags me back toward the house. What if he's right? The visions and dreams I've had don't make sense. If they are really memories, they should mean something to me. I should understand them or at least recognize what they could mean. But I don't. The intense image of the sun-dried sheet warming my skin as the man kissed me and the woman laughing at the table across from me seemed so real. It was like I could have touched them. Yet, I didn't know either of them.

  Maybe I wasn't really remembering anything. Maybe it was just as Charles said, nothing more than my memory loss and anxiety tangling up with what he's told me about his work. Rather than really remembering my life, I'm bringing up fragments and chips of what he's described to me through our years together. Soaked in depression and tinged with fear, they create the nightmares and confusing images that have been plaguing me.

  It's almost enough to let the feeling tug me back through the other door and into the living room. There are a few more presents to wrap, and I've been working on piecing a quilt I found in a basket in the bedroom closet a few months ago. That will keep me busy until it's time to make supper. Charles and I can sit on the couch together and watch I Love Lucy and go to bed. Maybe I'll know him this time.

  My foot moves back, but I stop myself. The fast, irregular beating of my heart feels like fear and anticipation, hope and desperation, all at once. I need to see what's beyond the door. If all those people at the party live scattered through the houses along the street, and there are children to have family picnics and play at a lake I've never seen, they are out there. I had them in my home, at least the adults. They stood close to me and talked like we'd had dozens of conversations before. They exist just beyond this door. Their lives carry on without ever wondering what catastrophe will befall them as soon as they are beyond the protective recesses of their houses. Or even if they merely look through the window.

  I want to know what they see.

  The doorknob turns, and I ease the door toward me. My position means the door will continue to conceal me, gradually pushing me backward until I'm standing with my back against the wall and the door over me. It gives me a few more seconds of being contained. But I don't want them. Now that the door is open and I can feel air that hasn't been recycled over and over come through, I know I need to walk through it.

  I do.

  My first step out onto the small covered porch is surreal. I don't know what I was expecting. Something dramatic. Something that made me know I’d done something significant. Instead, the change is barely noticeable. The temperature is cooler out here, but not as much as I’d expect. I already knew the snow had melted and was no longer clinging to the window, but there was no sign of it. No slush along the side of the road. No little crystals still forming piles at the base of the bushes along the side of the house. There is no sign that there had ever been snow.

  In fact, everything is pristine. It’s beautiful. Almost too much so. The little white house across the street is the same as the one to each side except for blue shutters in the place of red or black. Smooth lawns look like the blades of grass had been measured with a ruler before being snipped by hand to ensure total accuracy.

  But it’s not the loveliness of the neighborhood that catches my attention and holds it, sending a creeping shiver along my arms and down the back of my neck. Around me, everything is silent. There isn’t a whisper of wind or a single bird. Even in the middle of winter, there should be something. A cardinal or an owl, something alive in the same space as me. But I hear nothing. In the window of the house across from me, I see the outline of a Christmas tree. It’s not lit, but the tinsel glints through the clear glass. Something about it sends a chill along my spine.

  There has to be more than this. This is just a strange moment, an inconvenient lull. Looking out over the neighborhood from under the metal canopy of the porch is like looking into the snow globe. I’m only getting a tiny fraction, a sliver of the reality. Maybe I know more than I think I do, and that’s what’s bothering me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know it should look like something else, I just can’t quite place it.

  I wonder what will happen if I walk down the street. Maybe my feet will automatically take me to one of the neighbors’ homes. Or maybe someone is looking out their front window right now just like I was and when they see me, they’ll come out to talk to me. If it goes well, I’ll do more tomorrow. I’ve come this far. This could be the beginning of my new life.

  My hand wraps around the metal beam supporting the tiny roof over the porch. I realize I don’t know what it looks like. I can only assume it’s similar to the blue and white stripes of the one across the street. They make me think of blueberries with whipped cream. Or the red and white ones that look like a candy cane to the other side. The sweet-colored stripes match the shutters on each of the houses. I wonder what color my shutters are.

  I start to lower myself down the first step. The moment my foot touches the concrete below, a scream cuts through the air. It reverberates around me, shattering the stillness until I can almost feel it in piercing shards against my cheeks. My hand clutches the beam so hard I feel it pressing into my palm, and I stumble back. The scream continues behind me as my leg catches the rough, uneven edge of the concrete, and I land hard on the porch. It sounds unchained and terrified, wrenching from a deep, dark place as it swells and surrounds the house. It sounds like me.

  Pain moves up and down my leg like creatures with sharp claws running along my skin. I scramble for the door, pushing it open and shoving myself through a gap small enough to scrape my arm and bite into my hip. Slamming the door closed, I press my back against the wall, pressing my hands over my ears and clenching my teeth together to stop the chattering.

  The world falls silent around me. I lower my hands cautiously and wait for the scream to come back, but it doesn’t. Pulling myself up onto wobbling feet, I use the table to support myself for my first few steps back toward the main door to the house. It shuts with a click deep inside it. In the kitchen, the timer rings desperately, and the smell of sugar just on the edge of burning stings my nose.

  Dr. Baker is only seconds away from not having cookies during our session.

  Patient: Mary Whitman

  Date: Tuesday, December 20, 1955

  Notes:

  The patient is particularly fixated on the windows during this session. She constantly stares at them and seems distracted when asked questions. She admits to attempting to go outside as an experiment, hoping seeing the environment would bring back memories. It was not what she expected, and describes feeling disoriented, confused, and disconnected to the surroundings. Someone screaming frightened her enough to send her back inside. Though she openly says the scream was in her voice and happened when she was going beyond her comfort zone of being close to the house; she does not admit it was her screaming and exhibits interest in attempting to go outside again.

  When asked why she would do this alone, she says she knows her husband is expecting her recovery and wants her to be able to function normally. She wants to be able to manage this on her own and show him she can ‘come back’.

  She has started to ask questions during her sessions as she tries to determine the meaning behind what she is seeing and thinking. She wonders if these are real memories and impressions from some point in her life, or if the combined fragility of her mind has made it so she will never be able to really differentiate what is real from what she has seen or read.

  This may indicate some personal danger unless she overcomes this need.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Charles/Alex

  “Are you alright, Darling?” Charles asked, rushing into the kitchen.

  He gathered Mary into an embrace before she had the time to process his arrival. The spoon she held tumbled from her hand, the thick red sauce she’d been serving slashing across the white tile and splattering across the floor. The image made his brain burn, and her eyes locked on it brought a tingling sting along the insides of his arms and into the palms of his hands. He took her by her cheeks, tilting her face, so she looked at him.

  “What is it, Charles?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Then, you are alright? You’re not frightened?”

  The pink tinge that came to her cheeks told him his words were sinking in and creating a reaction. They tunneled through her and dissolved away the calm until it turned into anxiety and questions.

  “Why should I be frightened?”

  He pulled her against him again. One day, she wouldn’t tense like this when he held her. He’d be able to hold his wife and feel her relax into his arms. There had been moments of it already. Moments when she reached into her mind and brought up memories of love and devotion, let them color the way she touched him.

  “You haven’t watched the news then?”

  Mary shook her head, her green eyes widening, so the light from the fixture overhead sparkled in them and reflected the tile from the floor.

  “No,” she told him. “I’ve been too busy.”

  Charles took her hands and held them tightly in his.

  “There has been a string of robberies in the neighborhood. Three houses in the last week. Someone is coming in and stealing Christmas presents and other items. The first two times, there was no one home when they went in, but at the third house, the wife was home. She was doing laundry, and a man burst into through the back door. She had left it unlocked.”

  Mary gasped.

  “Is she alright?”

  Charles’s lips went into a thin line, and his eyes burned into hers. He chose his words carefully.

  “She survived.” Mary’s hand went up to cover her mouth, and he saw her shoulders trembling. “I don’t want you to worry, Darling. I’ve made sure you are secure here. I’ve added extra locks to the doors and changed the ones that were there. We’ll just have to settle for our mail and milk waiting for us on the porch if I’m not here to get it for you. I don’t want anyone even coming through the front door unless I’m here.”

  “Charles, why did you give Dr. Baker a key?”

  He looked at her through narrowed eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The mailman and milkman are able to come in and leave their deliveries right in the hallway. The first time Dr. Baker came over, I let him in, and he told me you had given him a key. Why would he need a key?”

  Charles shook his head, giving her a soft smile and rubbing her upper arms soothingly.

  “You must be mistaken. He doesn’t have a key. There wasn’t any need for him to.”

  She nodded, and he kissed her on the top of the head.

  “I’m so glad you didn’t see the news. I was so worried the whole way home that you would see the grisly story and be terrified without me here,” he said.

  Her eyes lifted away from the sauce spread across the counter and floor.

  “You never told me what you were doing today. Did it go well?”

  “It went very well. I finalized a deal I’ve been wanting for a long time.”

  “Another project?”

  “Not exactly. It’s a place where I spent a lot of time when I was young. The property has come under disrepair in the last few years, and the owner wanted it off his hands but was too nostalgic to make a good deal. Recent events have changed his mind, and he finally saw the benefit of selling it to me.”

  “Recent events?” she asked.

  Charles ran his thumb across her cheekbone and smiled.

  “Nothing for you to worry about. All that matters is it’s done, and I think that calls for a celebration.”

  Mary nodded.

  “Let me clean up this sauce, and supper will be almost ready.”

  “And I’m going to have a drink and relax. There should be a good special on tonight. Maybe something from Walt Disney. Can you believe it’s been five months since that amusement park of his opened up? It feels like everyone has been waiting for it for a lifetime.”

  Mary didn’t respond. He could hear the soft sound of her cleaning the floor and the faucet turning on to wash the spoon she’d dropped. He wondered what was going through her mind. She had seen the advertisements for the glorious achievement by the master of entertainment himself. He had created an entire world, a true fantasy, from nothing. Only his imagination and his dedication to what he knew the world should be. But she said nothing. Charles walked back into the kitchen and found her standing in front of the stove, staring into the bubbling sauce without moving.

  “Mary?”

  She turned to look at him.

  “Yes?”

  “Disneyland,” he said, drawing his lips up into a smile and hoping it rose up through his eyes like water. “Can you believe it’s been five months since it opened?”

  “Oh. No. It doesn’t seem like it.”

  “We’ll bring our children there one day,” he told her. He ran his hand along her back, feeling the buttons of her green gingham dress that so perfectly highlighted her eyes. “It will be wonderful.”

  “Do you really believe that?” she asked.

  He looked at her questioningly. The palms of his hands twitched.

  “Of course, Darling. You will get so much better. You’ll see. One day soon, you will be a mother, and all this will be behind you. It will seem like a different lifetime.”

  Nick

  “I know six months is a long time, but please. Can you just try to remember? It’s really important.”

  The woman’s face perfectly fit into the round opening in the bulletproof glass of the ticket counter. She sighed heavily. It was a burdened sigh that carried too many frustrated passengers, cold forgotten dinners, and a Christmas that would probably be spent trying to sleep off getting ready for it. Nick didn’t care. It didn’t matter to him who he was inconveniencing or how. All that mattered was Liza. He’d lost so much time already, and the police weren’t doing shit to help him. Every one of them looked down their noses and licked crumbs from their lips as they listened to him. They didn’t even have the decency to stop stuffing Christmas goodies from cheerful tin boxes and muffin baskets down their throats to hear what he had to say.

  This was a prime time of year for them. They got to march along parade routes scattered with crepe paper and tiny candy canes and puff out their chests while handing out presents to children. Every day bootlickers and single women, or sometimes not single women, whose panties got wet thinking about their handcuff fetishes and hero complexes swooped in with baked goods. It was just too much for them to think about to give an instant of thought to Liza.

  “She left a note?” they asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Saying she was leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she took her belongings?”

  “Yes.”

  “And money?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, what exactly is it that you want us to do?”

  “She didn’t leave on her own,” Nick insisted.

  Another nod and another bite of cinnamon roll. He went through the whole story three more times.

  “Poor sap’s wife left him, and he can’t deal with it,” one of them muttered to another as Nick walked out twenty minutes later.