With a smile, Dr. Moore said, “Amy and Steve were in last week—we figured you wouldn’t be far behind.”
“Has Linnzi called you?” I asked Dr. Brooks.
She shook her head. “No. She has not.”
Drawing in a deep breath, I slowly exhaled. “She remembers bits and pieces of me. Me asking her to marry her. She seems to remember her love for me. It’s the strangest thing. She told me she couldn’t remember meeting me, but she knew deep down that she loved me.”
Both of them smiled.
Dr. Brooks said, “Love is a very powerful emotion, Nolan. Amy said that the entire time Linnzi was in France, she never dated.”
I nodded. “Linnzi did tell me she saw a counselor there. She said that they told her she was blocking a memory. Most likely a bad memory.”
Neither said a word.
Clearing my throat, I went on. “She told me she had been having dreams about me, and one time she saw me in France, sitting down at a coffee shop outside her work. Every time I went to Paris to check on her, I sat at the same coffee shop. It gave me a view of where she worked. I could see her come and go. When she saw me there, she said she felt like she knew who I was. I got up to leave, and she followed me until she lost me in the crowd. It was four or five years ago.”
“Really?” Dr. Moore said, his brows lifting in surprise. “Interesting. So she knew from simply seeing you at a distance that you had a connection?”
“Yes. Then I saw her at Truitt and Saryn’s party, since Saryn and Linnzi knew each other in high school. Um, anyway, she saw me and she reacted, though not with a rush of memories. Although, I do believe more and more are coming to her. She mentioned remembering me climbing into her bedroom at night. She remembers the day I asked her to marry me. She remembered us racing to a certain tree on my ranch. She remembers a vacation we took to London once.”
“Do you see the pattern? All happy memories,” Dr. Moore stated.
Dr. Brooks moved around in his seat and asked, “Nothing about the baby?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“When she asked you what happened, what did you tell her?” Dr. Moore asked.
“The truth. I was flying the plane, we were coming back from Colorado, and the landing gear failed. I was about to tell her about Amanda when she told me to stop. She didn’t want to know anything else.”
Dr. Moore nodded. “She knows there’s more.”
“Yes, she does,” I said. “She has even outright said she knows there’s more.”
Both doctors looked at one another.
“But do you think she remembers what the more is?” I asked.
They both shook their head. “No,” said Dr. Brooks. “But she certainly knows there’s something she is missing. I’m going to guess that she can pick up on your sadness as well, but she won’t call you out on it because if she does then she’ll be forced to face her own.”
“She told me she doesn’t care about the past, that she only wants to focus on our future because she feels like we’ve wasted eight years. And now I keep going over and over that decision in my head. If I should have walked away. Should I have just told her we were engaged? Maybe we just didn’t mention Amanda, but did I make the right call by leaving her? I don’t think I did, and now I…now I…”
I pressed my fists to my forehead. “Fuck! I feel like we made the wrong call. We could have been happy. All this time. And now I can’t move on because I can’t keep this secret about Amanda anymore. I’m tired of not talking about my own daughter. I want to remember her. I want to…I want—”
I looked away when my voice cracked and I couldn’t speak anymore.
“Nolan,” Dr. Brooks gently said as she reached for my hand. “I think you already know what you need to do. You haven’t grieved the loss of your daughter because you’ve been too busy grieving the loss of Linnzi. Amy and Steve haven’t grieved, and we all know Linnzi hasn’t. It’s time for you to tell her.”
I could feel the tears wet my cheeks. “She’s going to hate me. I’ve played this scene out in my head over and over again, and that’s the only possible outcome.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think she will. This is a woman who has been putting her love life on hold for eight years because she still felt the love she has for you. Eight years. She’ll be more upset if she stumbles onto the news than she would be if you just told her. She has the right to grieve and let the past go. Just because she can’t remember it doesn’t mean she’s not holding on to it just as tightly.”