Kiss (45 page)

“Miguel.”

He closed his eyes as if he had a blockbuster headache, then opened them again. He took a deep breath.

“Are you hurting? Should I get the doctor?” Shauna gripped the bedrails near his head and pulled her rolling stool closer to him.

He lifted his hand off the bed. No.

She rested her chin on her hands. Oh, she wanted to touch his face, hold his hand, kiss him! She wanted tangible evidence that he was not severely harmed.

That he remembered her. She couldn’t bring herself to ask.

He turned his head toward her and took a long look at her hair, her face, her hands.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

Shauna straightened and touched her bruised face with her left hand. Tears sprang to her eyes, but not because her skin was tender.

He had forgotten.

She swallowed and forced a controlled voice. “I tripped in a stairwell.” That was all she could manage.

Miguel shifted onto his side and placed his hand over her grip on the railing. A small sideways grin poked his cheek.

“No, lovely. You moved the ring. I want to know what happened.”

Her relief came out in a laugh. She covered her mouth, and her tears spilled over.

“I remembered that I love you,” she said.

He lifted her hand off the rail and pulled it toward him, kissed her palm. She set up a guard over her heart and mind.

“Miguel, don’t risk—”

He kissed her palm harder, then placed it against his unshaven cheek and held it there.

“I don’t want to hurt—”

“Shauna, I’ve already said you can’t take anything from me that I wouldn’t freely give you.”

She shook her head. What she was capable of . . . even Miguel didn’t know.

“Don’t close yourself off to me,” he said. “Don’t.”

“But—”

“You have to trust me.”

“I trust you.” But she didn’t trust herself, the unknown factor in this equation.

“I’m pretty sure I got some of those drugs they gave to you.” Miguel winked at her. “I can’t remember my home address. Maybe we’ll cancel each other out.”

“I doubt—”

“I need you to shut up now.”

And I need you to save me again.

Miguel lifted his hand to pull her closer to him, and Shauna dropped her defenses, willing herself to believe that the love she had for him would be greater than her mutant mind. She decided to believe that his love for her would fill the empty places in her heart because he wanted to fill them, and not because she demanded it.

She let him kiss her.

Epilogue

The view from the dock on my father’s estate is beautiful today, November 13. Election Day. The sky is blue and the river is green and the air is unusually still. Lando—Dad—and I have decided to spend the day outdoors, as far from the video and radio streams as possible.

Rudy is on his chair at the end of the dock, eyes closed, face turned toward the sun. He is smiling. I can’t explain it and won’t ruin the moment by trying. Our father is smiling at him.

I hear Miguel’s footsteps approaching behind us and turn as he descends the short hill. Dr. Ayers walks beside him, tall and graceful and ramrod straight. I still have no memory of my sessions with him, though Miguel has told me what he knows of them and assures me that of all the doctors I could trust at this time in my life, Dr. Ayers is the one.

I extend my hand to him in a greeting, and he takes it in both of his, swallowing my fingers in his wide palms. He pats my knuckles. I think I’ll adopt this man to be my grandfather.

His eyes twinkle. “So tell me, Shauna, how it feels to have gotten your wish?”

“My wish?” I can’t imagine what he means, but I hope he’ll tell me.

“Well now. The last time we spoke, you wanted nothing more than to for-get all the pain of your life. We had ourselves a little argument over that one, we did.” He wags his finger to tease me, and I doubt we really argued at all. But then a flash of an image streaks across my eyes, startling me: a blazing hot parking lot, four stories beneath a high window.

A memory?

My memory has not returned, but Miguel’s memories have filled many of my gaps. In an act of trust I will never take for granted, Miguel has allowed me to learn how to access his mind without taking anything, how to look but not steal. Together we have been able to reconstruct our shared history—an effort that has led to some exceptionally beautiful kisses.

I show Dr. Ayers to a group of portable chairs we’ve set up near the dock.

“Who won that argument?” I ask, which sends Dr. Ayers into a fit of hooting laughter. Miguel and I exchange delighted grins and take seats beside him.

“Oh, I always win,” he says when he catches his breath. “We elders are always right.”

I don’t know about all elders, all the time, but it’s easy enough to imagine of Dr. Ayers. “Well, to answer your question,” I go on, “I’m not sure exactly what I was hoping for when I wanted to forget. But I think I have a different perspective on my past now. A different idea of its value, I mean. Hurts and all.”

Dr. Ayers rubs the corner of his laughing eyes, nodding. “Yes, yes. Pain or perspective,” he said. “That’s the choice.”

“Not a very easy choice, is it?”

“Oh now, that depends.”

“What do you mean?”

“You choose pain—you choose to fight it, deny it, bury it—then yes, the choice is always hard. But you choose perspective—embrace your history, give it credit for the better person it can make you, scars and all—the choice gets easier every time.”

“Seems backward.”

“Yes it does. But I tell you it’s true. I wrestled for years with that one like Jacob wrestled with God. How else could this head of black hair have turned so white?” He points to his curls.

I settle against the back of my chair and turn my face to the sun, like Rudy. I’m not sure I agree with Dr. Ayers, but the gaping black holes that still remain in my past suggest that he is right. Again. Whatever I learned or gathered or developed from those experiences is gone forever. I have lost a part of myself in them.

Besides, the man must have at least fifty years of life on me to prove me wrong.

“So what did God tell you when you wrestled with him?”

“‘Remember that you were a slave in Egypt.’”

I look up. “That’s cryptic.”

“Not really. It’s Scripture. His people were oppressed by their enemies.”

“And he wants you to keep that at the front of your mind? He wants you to stay focused on the darkest seasons in your life? How could that possibly do any good?”

Dr. Ayers folds his hands across his slim midsection and locks eyes with mine. Though the laugh lines deepen at the corners, his gaze tells me clearly that I must not miss what he is about to say.

“He wants you to remember who delivered you from that time, Shauna. That’s the point of holding on to memory: delivery, not darkness.”

“Perspective, not pain,” I murmur.

“Now, my dear, I think you’re getting it.”