1514642093 (R) (23 page)

The image had the same pull over me as she herself did, and before I knew what I was doing, I was padding barefoot across the balcony, down the stairs and over the lawn towards her.

She looked like a vision, a classic painting by one of the masters. Hauntingly beautiful, a study in solitude. The moonlight cast an ethereal glow over her white t-shirt and bare legs, making her hair look silver. She sat near the end of the jetty, her knees pulled up, hugging them tight. I had begun to notice little things about her, like the fact that this was her favourite sitting position. It made me feel closer to her somehow. As if she had shared something with me, even if it was unintentionally. Hot on the heels of that realisation was the flip side – that I still knew precious little about her.

She looked up as I got closer, walking off the damp grass and onto the smooth wooden planks towards her. She didn’t look surprised to see me.

“Hi,” she said softly, as I sat down beside her with a sigh, dangling my legs over the edge.

The breeze was cool and minimal, but it was enough. I finally felt like I could breathe again. Maybe it had nothing to do with the fresh air and everything to do with the fact that I was beside her.

“Hi,” I said. “Couldn’t sleep huh?”

“Apparently I’m not the only one.”

We were close enough to touch, and it felt as if there was a current of electricity arcing between us.

She gave a small laugh, like a puff of air escaping. “What do you have against shoes?”

I looked down at my bare feet, suspended above the water, and wiggled my toes.

“The first time I met you, you were shoeless. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen you wear any kind of footwear since.”

She had a point. It gave me a little thrill that she’d noticed. “Hate them. They make me feel claustrophobic.”

She smiled at me, as though she wasn’t surprised. I was beginning to think nothing surprised her.

As worried as I was about her and the fact she wasn’t sleeping when she so desperately needed to, I also had to fight the urge to lean over and kiss her. This time of night was brutal on the impulse-control. It made everything seem unreal, irrational. It was as if anything could happen, as if the laws of the universe had been deferred. As if you’d found a loophole, and if you were brave enough, and the stars were shining brightly enough, you might just be able to slip under the radar and escape your reality, if only for a while.

I looked over at her, my attention immediately captured by her eyes. They glowed a kind of honey colour. I’d never seen them that colour before. It was the moon, I convinced myself.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said quietly. “I can’t shut my brain off.”

I didn’t tell her that she was the one mostly occupying my thoughts, robbing me of sleep.

She sighed, resting her head on top of her knees. “I know what you mean.”

I looked out over the harbour. The water was dead flat and almost black. I didn’t come down here often anymore, even in the daytime. This was our spot, mine and Em’s. In the dark, her with a glass of wine, me with a beer, sharing secrets and getting things off our chest. It wasn’t the same without her.

Yet here I was, with Maia, and there was nowhere else in the world I’d rather have been.

As if she could tell I was thinking about her, she scooted closer to me and reached for my hand. I took it, pleasantly surprised, and smiled at her. But she was deadly serious. The kind of deadly serious that made my pulse race.

“I need to tell you something,” she said.

Her hand was trembling in mine. I didn’t like the way she was looking at me, as if she was about to say goodbye.

“I want to be honest with you, because you’ve been honest with me,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Except, I don’t really know how to say this without you thinking I’m some kind of… “

“What?”

It seemed neither of us were capable of speaking above a whisper.

She took a shaky breath and squeezed my hand. “Promise me you’ll hold my hand until I’m finished? Because I don’t know if I can do this if you don’t.”

My heart began to pound so loudly in my ears, I could barely hear her. “I promise.”

I had spent the past few hours wondering what she had been through, who she had lost, how it had shaped her. And now she looked like she was about to tell me and I was scared to death. My mind spun through the possibilities while she searched for the right words. Above all, I wanted to make sure I smiled, squeezed her hand, offered her the kind of support she had offered me. She didn’t deserve anything less.

“From the first moment I saw you, I knew you were the one I’d been looking for,” she whispered. “I can’t explain it, but everything just seemed to fall into place. It felt like we were meant to be, and it made me feel so
complete
.”

Tears formed in her eyes and I think mine, too. I knew exactly how she felt. Yet, I couldn’t help but hold back the elation. She hadn’t finished.

“I know what we have isn’t normal,” she continued. “But maybe that’s the point – maybe the fact that we can’t explain it is what makes it magical. Maybe that’s what love is. Magic.”

I nodded. After all, I’d come to the same conclusion myself, not too long ago.

“I’ve been lying to you,” she whispered, tears finally escaping and sliding down her cheek. “And I’m so sorry. I don’t want to lie to you anymore – I wish I could tell you everything you want to know, but it’s not that easy.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. I opened my mouth to seek clarification, but she shook her head, silencing me.

“My name isn’t Maia – not my real name, anyway. I don’t know what my real name is. I don’t remember.”

I blinked, confusion whirling up inside of me.

“I woke up one day in a hospital and I don’t know how I got there. I was naked, I had no ID, I had a shaved head and a fresh scar on my scalp. No one knew where I came from. I don’t know my name, or where I was born, or what happened to me. I don’t remember any of it.”

She had tears crawling down both cheeks now, almost white in the moonlight, and she was staring at me with such a haunting intensity that I wondered if this was all just a dream. Was I really here? Maybe I’d fallen asleep already, and this was just some kind of twisted nightmare, brought on by stress. Maybe I was still inside, in bed.

“I don’t understand,” I managed, my voice hollow. “How can you not remember who you are? Are you talking about amnesia?”

She nodded, sniffing. God, the pain was just rolling off her. I was right. This was some kind of nightmare, and we were stuck in it together.

“So Maia isn’t your real name?”

“Do you know what Maia means?” she asked, flashing me a ghost of a smile that tore up my insides. “I looked it up. I chose it because it means the goddess of spring… and I was reborn.”

She was serious. She was deadly serious. This wasn’t a nightmare, this was real.

“Holy shit,” I murmured.

She leaned into me, burying herself in my arms, and despite the whirlwind in my head, I couldn’t help but think how right it felt, to be holding her like this. Even though she had a million secrets. Even though I hardly knew her. Even though I was ill-equipped to deal with any of this.

Amnesia.

It explained so much. Why she was so reluctant to talk about herself. Why she always steered the conversation back to me. Why she seemed to be holding back. She wasn’t deliberately trying to shut me out, she just didn’t know where the door was.

It made what was happening to us seem even more poignant. I was ready to believe in fate, destiny, serendipity – whatever name it went by. How else could anyone explain how our paths had crossed?

“I’m so sorry this is happening to you” I whispered into her hair.

I had a thousand questions for her, but one shone out above all the others.

LYING DOWN ON THE
wooden jetty, Maia curled into my side, we stared up at the night sky. I was reminded of the Counting Crows song, about lying beneath a bowl of stars. They were so close, yet just out of reach. I was familiar with that feeling, of reaching for answers that seemed just beyond my fingertips. Apparently, Maia was familiar with that feeling, too.

It was easier to talk out there, in the semi-darkness. It was almost as if a cloak had been thrown over us, hiding us from the world, from reality. There’s something about sharing secrets under the light of the moon that makes everything seem less daunting. It suspends reality for a while. It gives you hope, and hope was something that you could never have enough of.

“How does it feel?” I asked, running my fingertips gently up her arm.

Her body shuddered and I pulled her closer.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m not really here, like this is all just a dream,” she whispered, her words lingering in the warm, heavy air. “I feel like I’m constantly waiting for something that never comes.”

I couldn’t help but draw comparisons. I knew that feeling. Ever since Em disappeared, I’d been waiting. Waiting for news, waiting for answers, waiting to resume my life.

I’d been biting my tongue until now, but I had to ask.

“I know this is insane,” I said, squeezing her hand, resting on my bare chest. “But maybe you’re here for a reason? Maybe you being here, in Raglan, isn’t an accident.”

She moved her hand, entwining her fingers with mine. I could feel her heart pounding against my ribs.

“You think I might be her. Emily,” she said, as I struggled to breathe evenly. “I thought so, too. As soon as I saw the photos on your wall, I wondered.”

I needed to see her face. I sat up, pulling her with me, grabbing both her hands in mine and holding them tight.

“Don’t you think it’s possible?” I asked, my heart about to burst straight out of my chest. “It could be possible, right?”

She looked like she really wanted to believe me, but I could also tell that she didn’t. Not quite, anyway.

“Anything’s possible,” she murmured.

“You don’t believe it, though.”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore. I may look like her, but I don’t know if I
am
her.”

I tried to think about this with my head, not my heart, but it was like separating two halves of myself. The half that wanted Emily back, and the half that wanted Maia to stay. The thing was, I had come to the realisation just days ago that I was willing to let Em go if it meant letting Maia in. But now that the opposite seemed possible, I was torn.

She let go of my hand and picked up a lock of her long, brown hair. “My hair is different.”

She was right. Maybe I was grasping at straws, but either way, I had to know.

“You said when you woke up in hospital, your head was shaved,” I said. “Maybe it grew back a different colour? I mean, you’d been through major trauma. I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening.”

She didn’t look convinced, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. “Look, I know this is a long shot – all of this is. But you can’t deny the fact that you and I have a connection. And while you might not realise how unusual that is, I do. It’s never happened to me before. Maybe the reason we have this connection is because we already knew each other.”

She stared down at our hands, and I could tell she was trying.

“These hallucinations, or visions or whatever it is you’ve been having – maybe it’s not sleep deprivation? Maybe it’s something to do with your memory coming back? Maybe being here with me is helping you remember.”

I was floundering, but it seemed as if it could be possible. If she
was
Em, it made sense, in lots of ways. But I didn’t want her to think that was the only explanation. What if I was wrong? What if she wasn’t Em? What if she was just some girl who looked a lot like Em, but with a family of her own out there, looking for her, just like we were looking for Em?

“What if I’m not her?” she asked, reading my mind as she looked up at me through amber-coloured eyes. “What if I’m someone else?”

“You’re
you
,” I said firmly. “And whoever that is, it’s you I want – this version of you, the one that’s sitting here, with me, right now. I’m just trying to make some kind of sense of this, that’s all.”

“Don’t you think I’ve been trying to do that, all this time?” she pleaded. “I
want
to know who I am. I want to know where I was born, whether or not I have family out there. But if that means losing you, then –“

“Hey – you’re not losing me, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know how much you love her. If we somehow find out that I’m not her, where does that leave us?”

Oh God. My head felt like it was splitting open. I reached over to cup her cheek in my hand.

“It leaves us right here, right where we are now. Together. You and me. Nothing’s gonna change, I promise.” I smoothed away a stray tear from her cheek with my thumb. “I love you –
you,
whoever you are and wherever you’re from and whatever your name is.”

Those hauntingly beautiful eyes shone in the moonlight. “I love you, too.”

It was the first time we’d both said it. It should have been momentous, but it felt more like a check-box.