Chapter 16
LIZ
For the next few days, Liz was getting irritably used to her zombie life. This couldn’t have been how they lived every day. Matt would spend a few minutes with her in the mornings before going to work. They’d have breakfast together on their balcony, and then he was off. He was always up before her and halfway through whipping something up for them by the time she’d get downstairs. She wondered if he would come wake her if she decided to sleep in one day. She hadn’t tried it in the past four days that she’d been home for fear of missing him entirely.
Liz was tired of waiting around to get her memories back, and sincerely hoped the life she had with Matt was better than this. She finally made her own plans.
There was a knock on the door. Liz pulled it open and beamed. “Hi.”
Marcus smiled shyly and stepped in tentatively. He looked around, almost as if he’d never been there. Liz frowned and then grinned at him.
“He’s not here. Don’t worry.” She closed the door behind him.
“Huh? Oh, Matt. Right, I was just wondering if he was home.”
Liz led him to the den.
She laughed. “Come on, Marc, it doesn’t take a genius to see you two don’t get along.” She glanced back at Marc to see him narrow his eyes and crick his neck. Whatever that meant, she didn’t have time to press now.
“Anyway, look at all this stuff I found so far.” She waited until Marc looked at the oversized coffee table in the den. “Maybe you can help me figure some of it out.”
He rubbed the back of his neck again. “Um…Matt didn’t want to help you with any of these?”
“I asked him, but he said I never really talked about much of this stuff with him.” she lied. Liz wanted to hear about her past from her brother, the one person she’d felt more connected to than anyone else.
He snorted. “Just because I’m not the one with the head injury, doesn’t mean I’ll remember all this stuff.”
She felt a pang of disappointment at his lack of interest in helping her. She picked up a small stack of photos and spread them out in her fingers like a deck of cards.
“Here are my graduation pictures. And there are so many of you and me,” she said proudly, pointing at images where she was practically suffocating her brother in a hug.
Marc grabbed them slowly, without looking up. “Oh. Wow, yeah.” He flipped through and then tossed them back on the table.
Liz held up a small metal frame. “These are our parents?” She knew they had to be. She was instantly drawn to the couple in the picture.
“Yes.” Marcus barely glanced at the photograph Liz held up.
“They look so happy,” Liz wondered, thoughtfully.
“They were,” her brother confirmed, looking anywhere in the room but at the photo.
She was upsetting him. She immediately regretted bringing this up. Maybe her selfish need to remember was only making him have to relive losing their parents.
“Marc, I’m sorry. This was a bad idea. I should have guessed this would be hard on you.”
“What? No. I’m fine. I just wish I could help.”
“Well, maybe you can tell me what this is?” Liz pointed to the figurine in the emerald green gown. That had come to mean a lot to her. And she didn’t know why.
“I think Matt gave you that.”
Liz frowned. She hoped this object would have been something that held more meaning. Like an heirloom that was passed on, but it didn’t look that old. “I wish I had more old stuff in the house but I couldn’t find anything other than these few things.” She pointed to the mess.
“Maybe there’s something at your place?” she asked, hopeful.
Marcus shifted and frowned. “Umm...you know, I live in such a small space, I couldn’t have kept it all…” he trailed off.
“Oh.” Liz frowned and focused on the tossed photo of her parents.
