She bit her lip and steadied her fingers to flip deeper into the stack. With every picture that passed, her heart pinged harder, louder.
Halfway through, she stopped and sucked air in ragged gasps.
“Who’s this?” She flipped the photo around, her hand trembling so hard the picture rattled.
Mrs. Nelson squinted, her lips forming into anO, and Michelle knew, even before the words formed, what she’d say. “That’s you, dear.”
Her. And Chase. Together.
She dropped the rest of the pictures onto the table and fell into the closest chair. Every ragged breath scored her throat, and she put a hand to her heart. Nothing could still the furious beat. “I knew him.” It wasn’t a question, but Mrs. Nelson nodded.
What looked like regret flittered over her face. “I’m so sorry. I forgot that was in there. I thought I’d put all of them away.”
“You have pictures of my life here, and you tried to hide them from me?” She focused so hard on the picture of her standing beside Chase, the two of them with their arms thrown around each other’s shoulders and their cheeks pressed together, that she worried she’d burn a hole through it. Two horses stoodbehind them. One, a golden palomino she recognized from one of her recent flashes of memory. So, ithadbeen a real memory. And the boy in the saddle, the one who had made her youthful heart beat with echoes of love that hit her today…was Chase.
“I never tried to hide them.” Mrs. Nelson broke into her reverie. “I put them aside a long time ago. If you’d asked, I would have happily turned them over.”
“How was I supposed to know to ask?” Pain tore the question from her. “I knew I’d grown up here, but I had no idea we were friends. I thought…” What had she thought? She’d believed she grew up in town with Sarah, and Chase lived in the country. Her mind hadn’t connected all the dots laid out for her. It was a serious oversight on her part. Of course they’d known each other. His mother and her aunt were best friends. “I was so busy trying to get my memory back that I overlooked the obvious.” Her head snapped up. “And none of you bothered to correct me.”
Mrs. Nelson winced, and she almost lowered the hardness in her gaze. Almost. “Were we wrong to hold that from you?”
“Yes.” It seemed obvious to her. If they’d told her everything they knew, maybe it would have triggered something in her memory and all this angst would be gone already. Chase’s words came back to her. He’d warned that their stories about her would be extensions of what they knew about her and would not be truly accurate representations of her as a person. “Maybe.” She leaned forward and cupped her head in her hands. “I don’t know.”
“Do you want to hear stories about yourself?”
It was the lilting way she asked the question that brought Michelle’s head up. She almost blurted ‘yes’ again but stopped to consider the possible repercussions. “I want my memory back, not some glossed over version that’s been handed to me by someone else. And I also want to hear about our friendship.”
Mrs. Nelson set the photos and album aside, turning her full concentration to Michelle. “You were a lovely child. You and Chase hit it off from the beginning. Two peas in a pod, that’s what Sarah and I called you. When you came to the ranch, you never left each other. If Chase had to ride out, you went along.”
It matched the snatches of memory she’d relived last week. And now she understood why sitting in that saddle in the tack room brought a rush of familiarity Why the boots she’d tugged on made her eyes tear up.
“The two of you used to try and sneak calves into the house.” Soft laughter eased the lines around Mrs. Nelson’s eyes. She pointed toward the stairs behind Michelle. “I once caught the two of you with a day-old calf between you. You’d wrapped it in blankets and tried to tell me it was an old trunk you wanted to look through. I might have believed you, but the calf bawled, and you both scrambled back outside like your britches were on fire.”
She couldn’t help the laugh that shook her entire body. “I can’t imagine doing that. I don’t have any pets.” Her apartment had been bare of any kind of hint that she even liked animals.
“You did. And you were the main instigator in Chase teaching his horses tricks. It always delighted you when his horses bowed or lifted a hoof on command.”
Nostalgia and a deep sense of loss invaded with such savageness that the hollowness reappeared and threatened to swallow her whole. So many memories, a lifetime of love and laughter, gone.
“It must have been hard for me to leave.” She choked out the words, not sure where they came from or why she forced them into existence. Maybe to try and understand her motivations.
Mrs. Nelson went quiet. She picked up the pictures and resumed adding them to the photo album. “You were both a little upset, but that was the life you wanted.”
“I did? Why?”
Mrs. Nelson shrugged. “I’m not sure, honey.”
“Did I tell Chase?” Surely, she’d talked to her best friend about why she’d chosen to leave Blue River.
That same puckered expression appeared on Mrs. Nelson’s face. “If you did, he never told me. And he wouldn’t. You two were thick as thieves. He’d never betray you by talking behind your back.”
That sounded like him. Honest to a fault and willing to suffer himself if it protected someone else.
What did that make her for putting him through this? They’d been friends, and he’d never indicated that in any of their conversations. It explained the familiarity and why she’d found the ability to laugh and joke with him. No one else brought that out in her.
Mrs. Nelson concentrated so hard on the photos that it became obvious she knew more but held it back. Her loyalty was to Chase. If Michelle wanted more information, she’d have to get it from him.
“I’m going to the barn. I need a break.” She stood and cleared her throat. “I’ll come back and finish this later.”
