“Wouldn’t be the first time.” He hauled her up beside him and held her to his side. His heart drummed too fast, their closeness making him forget everything except what used to be and what could be again.
She used her free hand to grab onto a branch and pull ahead of him. “Really?”
“Just once.” He grunted and followed. They reached a level spot and separated further. “I ended up sliding down and you swore you’d never let me do that again.” The memory came up in a dizzying rush that left his head spinning. “Take the left fork.”He pointed at the wooden sign sticking straight up at the fork in the path. “Almost there.”
She ran her hand over the sign, her profile full of expectation. The way she lingered held him captive.
“Anything?” He knew better than to ask but part of him refused to be silent.
She traced the lines with one finger, spelling out WELLSPRING in slow, controlled movements. “It’s there but not there.” Her eyes closed. “It’s like smelling something familiar but you can’t figure out. There are flavors to being here, emotions.” Her eyes scrunched together. “It’s like heartache and hope blooming together. Does that make sense?”
More than she knew. He joined her at the sign and considered his options. “You used to love hiking. Being out in nature.”
“If I loved it so much, if I was so at home here, why did I leave?” The frustrated growl came out with a deeper ferocity. Her eyes flew open. “I don’t want you to answer. I know you won’t, anyway. This is something I must work out for myself, but it makes no sense. Being here…” She stopped and rubbed a hand over her heart before turning and striding down the path. Her voice carried back to him, the words almost too soft to hear, “…it’s like coming home. It’s confusing and liberating. So many feelings I don’t understand.”
He could clear up a lot of those feelings. He could give words and stories to fit them together, so they made sense. If he thought it would help her, he’d sacrifice his own heart and give her all the information she wanted.
She’d said she didn’t want him to answer, so he pressed forward in silence.
The graffiti-covered bench stood in the same place. A few of the boards were rotted. Most of the paint had worn off, but a few new artists had taken up the hobby of adding to the artwork,making vibrant splashes of color across the old, defeated wood. The middle sagged too much to risk sitting.
Michelle treated the bench with the same reverence as the sign. Both palms ran back and forth over the back of the bench. Splinters had to be digging into her skin, but she stared out at the clearing with a look that said she didn’t see it as it was now but how she’d remembered it. “This is it.” She blinked, her vision clearing. “The colors are wrong. Summer colors instead of fall.”
“There’s new paint on the bench.” He pointed out the obvious because if he let himself say anything else, he’d end up saying too much.
She looked down. The slump of her shoulders almost reminded him of defeat, but it was deeper than that, more of a crushing of dreams. “This is the same.” She poked her finger in the center of an old drawing. The loops and whirls used to be a victory sign for the year their high school team won the state championship. Now it was so faded and warped that it looked like an egg. “I remember sitting here and laughing.”
“I highly recommend the laughter, but not the sitting.”
“No kidding. I’d rather not end up rolling down the trail going head over heels because I trusted this old thing.” She sighed. “Why does the past always end up like this?”
Confusion ran through him, swallowing up the other emotions he’d worked to control. “Like what?”
“Faded. Lost.” A line formed between her brows. “Here but not here. Like me. I know this. I remember how it made me feel.”
He remembered every moment about their last trip here. He’d offered her a ring on this spot. “How did you feel?”
They had many memories here. Her feelings would depend on which one she’d remembered.
“I felt happy, like nothing in the world could ever go wrong.” She held out her hands. “I wore a bracelet. It was silver and had alittle charm on it. The colors on the bench were brighter, almost new. And you were with me.”
“We were together a lot.” He allowed himself that one fragment.
Years of memories with her looped through his mind. He’d thought nothing would ever come between them, least of all that Michelle would be the one to tear them apart. A breeze stirred the tree limbs. Leaves rattled, and a squirrel ran across a branch high overhead. It leaped, legs splayed, trusting natural instincts to get him across the gap and to the next branch.
Chase followed the little creature’s progress with his eyes. It landed, grasping the thin branch even as it bowed under his weight, and almost flung the squirrel back into the sky when it whipped upward.
“I’m beginning to see that.” Michelle’s quietness continued to linger. She spoke in a hushed way, like she worried about breaking the moment. “I was happy to be here with you.”
His throat convulsed. A tangle of thorns wrapped around his heart and pricked it full of holes. There were no words necessary for a response. They’d been happy. But not happy enough for her to stay.
Every fiber of his being longed for an explanation she had no way to give.
Lord, if her memory comes back, I need to know why. If I’m never given anything else, let me have that. Please.The silent prayer did nothing to alleviate his growing concern. He threw it aside like he did everything else that inconvenienced him with unnecessary emotional weight.
She walked around the bench and took his hand. The pucker in her brow remained as she traced the veins and scars the same way she’d traced the sign and the bench. “I guess we carry our memories the same way that bench does. They change us, bit by bit.” Her head lifted, those amazing eyes holding his. “I’mstarting to remember you, Chase, and it feels like we were much more than friends.”
He nearly kissed her then. It welled up inside, almost overpowering him. She deserved better than a kiss from a man she still considered a stranger. Having one memory about him and how happy they used to be didn’t change a thing.
