“But Damon said Dad told the cops you’d been in contact with him shortly after you were taken,” Victoria said carefully. “Maybe that’s true and you still have gaps in your memory from the drugs?”
“I do have gaps in my memory. I know that.” Frustration simmered, but how could she expect other people to believe her version of past events when she had so many doubts of her own? “But I didn’t imagine that house in Mexico or the rotating staff of guards who stood watch every day for months.”
A shiver chilled her skin and she burrowed deeper in the covers, tugging the khaki-colored duvet up over the sheet. She reached a hand out of the blankets long enough to tap the remote for the gas fireplace. The flames leaped higher inside the pale-river-stone hearth. The house was quiet and she wondered if Damon was still awake. He’d kept things light between them after their kiss, his behavior toward her solicitous, polite…caring, even. But he’d seemed determined not to revisit conversation topics that could “agitate” her and he’d reminded her over dinner that she’d promised to see a doctor tomorrow.
For the amnesia she didn’t really have. The last holes in her memory now were drug-induced and, her doctor said, might never return.
“Okay.” Victoria turned down the television on her end of the call. “But what if the gaps in your memory are bigger than you realize? What if you were a captive for weeks and not months? Isn’t there a chance Dad could be telling the truth about having contact with you at first? Maybe you just don’t remember that you left Damon—like Dad said—because it was too upsetting.”
Her chest constricted. She wasn’t sure if she resisted the idea because she still cared about her husband, or because she wanted her son to have a relationship with his father. Or both.
“Why wouldn’t I have told you if I left my husband?” Caroline asked, tracing the buttons on the fireplace remote with her thumbnail.
Victoria was her closest confidante and had been since they lost their mother to an overdose of prescription opioids five years ago. Actually, she’d been closer to Victoria since well before that, as their mother had struggled with depression for years before her death. Caroline and Damon had that loss in common; his had died when he was young. At least she’d been close with her father. Damon’s dad had stopped visiting his illegitimate sons before Damon was a teen, choosing to be a father to his offspring by his legal wife rather than Damon and his brothers.
“Just guessing, but I was buried in coursework that semester, so maybe you held off because of that.” She seemed to hesitate and for a moment Caroline heard nothing but the soft hiss of the flames in the fireplace before Victoria continued. “Or maybe you were keeping me out of it since Dad asked you to keep your distance from me when you chose to marry his business enemy.”
It was all speculation of course, since Victoria couldn’t know Caroline’s reasons any better than Caroline did. A wave of fatigue hit her.
“But I remember someone entering the house. And it wasn’t Damon.” She had to have been kidnapped. She remembered being frightened that day.
“You were drugged,” Victoria said softly. “There’s a reason they give benzodiazepines to patients to forget about surgery. It makes things fuzzy and confusing. Time bends. That’s not your fault, Caroline.”
Right. Her physician had said the same thing. But that didn’t make it any less scary or infuriating.
Before she could say as much, however, she heard a baby’s cry on the other end of the call. She sat up straight in bed, poised to help before reminding herself that she wasn’t in the same house as Lucas.
“Guess it’s time for the midnight bottle.” The crying quieted for a moment; Victoria must have turned down the volume on the baby monitor. “I’d better go.”
“Okay. Wish I was there.” Caroline wanted her baby with her. Always.
She hated that she had to deceive people—her father and her husband, too—just to find out who was telling her the truth.
“Soon. Be safe, Caro. And good luck.” Victoria disconnected, leaving Caroline feeling more alone than ever.
Tomorrow, she’d have to find a way to divert Damon from her doctor’s appointment. She would go in person to the police station if she didn’t hear from the officers first thing in the morning. Her future was riding on what they had to say. Because once she found out if Damon had been telling her truth, she would confront him with her own: that although she couldn’t remember if she’d left him or not, she knew without a doubt she’d been held against her will for some of the time.