The Memory Keeper

Chapter 11

That night, Natalie tossed and turned, unable to sleep. At last, she remembered the capsules Piper had made for her, and stumbled to her bureau, where she took two of them, despite Piper's instructions to only take one.

The effect was almost instantaneous. She braced her hands on the edge of the bureau. Her compact, hair brush, and the black box from the palace quivered as though she looked at them from above a pool of water. All of her worries started to fade, like an ocean wave had taken them away. And clouds drifted across the sky in her mind, making her feel drowsy as though she had watched them for hours.

Just as she moved to her bed, the pillows beckoning to her like piles of rose petals, there was a loud knock from downstairs. She turned, her heart tying itself in a knot. The knock came again, louder. She looked at the clock on the wall. It was just past midnight. Ready to rush down the stairs, fling the door open, and slap whoever bothered her this late, she threw on her coat and made her way down to her office, peeking over the slab of wall to see if the noise had actually come from inside the building. But there was no shadow figure, no rat, and no chilly wind she could blame the noise on. The storm had ceased a little, but the train station remained closed, which meant Colette would be in town for a few more days, if not longer still.

The knock came a third time.

When she answered the door, the last person she had excepted to see stood there, and he was crying, hand braced to the wall, as though it had taken everything in him to keep from stumbling over. He looked at her, blue eyes almost black behind so many tears.

"Miss Gorman," he whimpered, and moved to take her hand. "I cannot remember the day we met. I cannot... remember." He fell to his knees, voice weak and broken, buried his face in his hands, and sobbed.

***

Steam rolled from the tea Natalie placed on the table beside Peter. She offered one of Piper's capsules, which he took without hesitation. And then the two sat in silence for some time before he asked, "Why did it just occur to me? That I cannot recall how I met her?"

Natalie had pulled her chair around the desk to sit next to him. Her own tea cup rattled on its saucer as she held it, unsure of what to say. "This is normal, and will be until I am finished." She thought about what Piper had said:

"If there is a memory found completely missing from a person's mind, all of a sudden, with or without their consent, just gone, simply gone, then they will start to go insane."

Peter shook his head, pushing hair from his eyes. "I can see her. Her face. And I know how I feel about her. I just don't know why. I can't... She is always there. I feel like I am chasing her, but when I finally get there, she disappears." He kept staring straight ahead, like he could see her standing there in front of him, like he could speak to her. "Why do I still love you?"

Her heart skipped a beat. Had she not chased a person she could never reach? A shadow, wrapped in a cloak? Piper's voice rang in Natalie's head a second time. "Those threads in your mind are always trying to weave a memory together, word from word, picture by picture. If it has one piece but not the rest, it will try to find it. You will be forced to chase after it, tormented, until nothing makes sense anymore." Her head started to pound.

Natalie did not know what to do. Her first instinct was to keep all of his memories, no matter what Piper or Colette had told her. They did not understand. She had already started, and there was no going back. If she waited any longer to finish with Peter, already in knee-deep, then she could be too late to stop the shadows he chased. It could be too late to untie those threads Piper had mentioned, always weaving. Always trying to put the pieces together.