Page 8 of A Future To Remember

“We did a rape kit when she first came in, but the state backlog for processing kits is so bad that Sheriff Penton probably won’t be able to get anything from it for a year. Maybe two. He’s hoping she’ll remember something before then, so it’s a waiting game.”

“How long are we keeping her?” the intern asked next.

“I’m ready to discharge her tomorrow, but Penton is asking us to hold off until he finds somewhere to put her while he investigates who did this to her. We’ve got the funds to cover her care for another day or two, and her head trauma justifies it, but as soon as she’s not showing a risk of syncope due to her malnourishment, anemia, and the TBI, the brass upstairs wants her discharged and off the books.”

“Poor woman. Maybe it’s not a bad thing she doesn’t remember that kind of a life.”

“Agreed.”

The pair of doctors moved on down the hall, and I felt hot tears slide down to the pillow.

I wasn’t fluent in a lot of the medical terminology, but I believed I knew enough to understand that I’d been caught up in a brutal, violent, sexual assault–filled world—for at least a decade.

What horrible things had I witnessed? What horrible things had been done to me?

As much as I wanted to remember my name, who I was related to, where I’d been born and raised, and if there was anybody out there looking for me, I didn’t want to remember how I’d lived—survived—under such conditions. I didn’t know how to divest myself from one while keeping hold of the other.

My choices were either to remember all of it or none of it, and I couldn’t decide which one I preferred.

“Maddy?” I heard Cash’s soft voice ask.

I didn’t turn toward him, I simply kept crying, covering my face with my hands. I felt shame and couldn’t understand why. All these emotions were overwhelming me. They felt so real, but I didn’t know why they felt real.

“Hey, hey,” Cash said, and I heard him come around the bed. Then I felt him lay a hand on my shoulder. “You in pain?”

I tried to hold back the tears, but they wouldn’t stop flowing. I continued to hide my face and curled myself into a ball. I wanted to shut out the world. I wanted to fall asleep and wake up in a different body with a clear head and a past that didn’t involve such violence and violation.

The bed dipped a little with Cash’s weight as he sat down. “Maddy,” he said again. “Did you remember something?”

A sob escaped me. I didn’t know if I could talk, but I wanted to. So, I reached out with my casted hand and laid my fingers on Cash’s arm. I just needed a moment to get some composure.

As I was sucking in some oxygen, however, the weirdest thing entered my mind. It wasn’t a memory; it was like watching a movie inside my head, the imagery as clear as day.

Immediately, my tears stopped and I turned to face Cash. He looked tired.

“Tell your deputy not to chase the white pickup.”

He blinked at me, then his mouth opened as if he were going to speak but closed it again. He didn’t know how to respond. But I had more to tell him.

“The kid in the white pickup with the red and blue stripes on the side. Tell your deputy not to chase him. Tell him to let him go.”

Cash studied me for a long moment, his expression sad. “Maddy, do you know where you are right now?”

It was my turn to blink. He didn’t believe me. He thought I was talking crazy.

He was right, of course, but it didn’t feel crazy. It felt urgent, and I needed him to believe me. “I’m in the hospital in Evansville, Idaho. Room three-ten. It’s Tuesday. I don’t remember my name or what happened to me, but I do know that if your deputy gives chase to the guy in the white pickup with painted stripes…he’ll die.”

CHAPTER 4

him

Oscar and I got to Seattle just after midnight. Eggy had slept the entire plane ride. I’d made sure to pack enough of his pain meds to last him through the next ten days, but day by day, I could feel him slowly slipping away. I held him all night once we got to the hotel for the overnight layover. Somehow, I resisted the urge to tell the little guy to hold on, but I wanted to. So selfish to ask a pup that’d been loyal and loving the entire fifteen years of his long life to endure the discomfort and fatigue, to hang in there because I needed him, but I’d come to believe he was my talisman. If Eggy was alive, there was still hope that Abby was too.

Unless, of course, the rented Tahoe they’d pulled out of the river held her remains. I’d already braced myself for that. Or I tried to.

I swore to myself that I was gonna hold it together long enough to identify her remains, get her and Eggy back home, then give him one final, best day before sending him off to be with her. Back in Austin, I had the vet on standby, and she was willing to come to the house. He’d be surrounded by everyone he loved—save the most important one. It was the best I could offer him.

Afterward, I’d bury them together, because both of them would want it that way. And in the place down deep in my heart, where my living grief sometimes found a foothold, I had plans to join them.