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DELILAH

O ne week of being in the hospital and I’ve managed to convince everyone I believe them.

I don’t.

I never will.

But I wasn’t allowed any contact with the outside world the entire time I was there, and I refuse to be chained to a bed again. Not after the last time.

So, I let fake Asher think I believe him. I pretend the weight of the fake rings on my finger isn’t urging me to chop my damn hand off to get it away. He makes it worse as I sit beside him in the car and he twines his fingers through mine, drawing more attention to the rings.

I can almost believe it’s real if it wasn’t for my mind showing me years of memories that he wasn’t part of. There haven’t been any other knock, knock messages and part of me wants them back to give me the twisted comfort of knowing I’m right. Even if the reason for them is insidious, it will vindicate me.

The cool Montana summer air blows through the small gap in the window as we drive through a lane lined with trees to a sprawling estate. The house is nestled around the greenery, and the flat roof makes it blend into the ground from the current vantage point.

It’s not until we get closer that I see an elevated walkway connecting each part of the L-shaped building. One side is open with large windows looking out into the scenery, whereas the other is shrouded by trees and the dark privacy glass reflects the image of the branches back to me.

Slipping my hand free from Asher’s, I ask, “Where are we?”

We roll to a gentle stop, and he smiles as he runs his fingers through his hair. “Home. I had all of our things moved already. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

I follow him out of the car and stare at the house. It’s huge, and I haven’t been around anything other than the bare minimum since I was nineteen. The wealth I grew up around would see everything in front of me as normal. But my brain has been altered so that my new normal of my shitty job and yellow apartment is the opposite of everything my eyes can see. Not just the surroundings, the man too.

Asher doesn’t force me to move. He waits for me to go at my own pace and reminds me of the boy I used to love. Once I’m standing beside him, he places his palm on my back without any pressure and presses his lips to my temple. The comfort he provided me as a child is back and I lean into him. It’s involuntary and my mind tells me not to, but I can’t stop myself when he is the only familiarity I have.

The small amount of ease disappears as we enter the house. Each wall is lined with countless frames like a gallery. The open-plan space doesn’t allow any of them to be hidden and all of them contain a memory that does not belong to me.

Wedding photos. Me in a white dress and a veil blowing in the breeze. Asher standing in front of me. Both of us have matching smiles, unable to tear our eyes away from each other.

Graduation photos of Asher in a cap and gown with his arm around my shoulders.

Everything is there. In print. In front of me.

But it’s not a memory. I’m looking at someone else’s life that I’ve been dropped into. My parents are in them too. So are Asher’s.

He rubs my back and attempts to put me at ease. “It’s my first full day here too. We can get used to everything together.”

Slowly turning my head to face him, I keep my eyes on the images in front of me and give him a small smile. There’s no threat of being sedated anymore and I try to maintain the bullshit that I believe him.

“What about work?” I ask carefully.

I know I work. It’s a pain in the ass and my hair always smells of grease and smoke when I finish a shift at the diner.

There’s no answer as he guides me through the house, pointing out the different rooms. The kitchen is huge, a large island in the middle, and the corner of the room is constructed of floor-to-ceiling windows, providing an unobstructed view of the acreage with the mountains in the distance.

“You don’t have to worry about work. Or money,” he says as we take the stairs. “You never really wanted to work for someone else, and you have all the time you need to perfect your compositions or paintings. The creative therapy is good for you too. It helps ground you.”

The gallery of photos doesn’t stop. They follow us up and give me a migraine. Each image assaults my senses. It’s like being transported into a movie where all the characters are people I know but I haven’t read the script. The years are changing, and my parents are slowly distanced from my life. I nearly laugh out loud because I haven’t spoken to them since I was twenty-one, so at least them not being anywhere in my life makes sense.

I’m finally allowed a reprieve from the images as blank walls greet me on the way to the bedrooms. The hallway is filled with light from all the windows, and I pause, staring out at the tree line. The higher vantage makes it a blanket of green with the trees so close together.

I’m disturbed from staring at the calming view as fingers curl around my hip and warmth engulfs my back. Asher leaves an inch of space between us. But his hand is on me. His left hand, which has a wedding band on his finger.

Lifting my hand, I look at the two rings on my corresponding finger. The band is new, but I recognize the engagement ring without the photos of it being on another person’s hand.

His lips brush my cheek as he voices the memory. “It’s my mom’s. She always said it would be yours.”

I nod and audibly swallow. That memory is real. He knows it too. Dora always said that her engagement band would go to the eldest child. That pissed Kane off the most because it made him invisible. I miss him all over again, and it’s different knowing he’s dead.

My vision turns hazy as I watch the sun glittering off the diamonds. A hot, guilt-filled tear slips over my lashes and hits my knuckle. Asher wraps both arms around me and rests his chin on my crown as I continue crying. I can’t even stop the tears when I hate crying in front of Asher or allowing anyone to know just how broken I am. It doesn’t matter because there’s no tape that can repair the cracks and I can’t lie to myself with my own aging face staring back at me.

I don’t even know why I’m crying other than the overwhelming reality that I’ve made up a false world. My mourning is in part for a man I’ve lost for good and the years of my life I’ve made up. He lifts me off my feet and cradles me to his chest. The scent helps me as I wrap my limbs around him. He’s aged, but the smell is the same, and without looking at him I can pretend I’m seventeen again.

Stroking down my back, he kisses my jaw and speaks softly. “It’s okay, baby. Just take your time.”

His lips don’t move away from my skin as he walks us into a room and lowers to sit on the edge of a bed. My biceps tingle from how tightly I’m holding on to him. Not once does he complain. He just holds me. He’s the same person I fell in love with, my first love, and he’s grown up now. Without the arrogance of a teenager, he’s back to being perfect for me

I need to fill the gaps and rewrite over the false memories. There’s no easy way to ask him so I brace for an argument as I ask, “What’s our life like?”

There’s no outburst, when the old Asher would get pissed at me for forgetting things. I’d do the same to him. But now we’re older, we’ve matured, and we’re the same and different. It’s like we’ve kept the parts that worked well when we were teenagers and outgrew the immature habits. He gives me a small smile as I roll my head on his shoulder and look up. Tucking my hair behind my ear, he traces my jaw with the side of his finger.

“Our life is pretty perfect. Do you remember what you wanted when we were kids?” he asks, with hope brightening his eyes. “How you wanted to be able to travel and come home to a library filled with old books so you could feel like a philosopher when you’d really only read the?—”

“The sweet books because old people’s thoughts put me to sleep,” I finish for him.

His smile gets wider and he nods. “Yeah, that’s our life. We had chickens for a while, but they were a pain in the ass when they’d get their feathers everywhere.”

Comfort washes over me because those are things I do remember. I may not know if they happened, but I know that is the life we discussed. Every stupid thought and whim I had as a teenager is being narrated as an experience rather than a wish.

“We went to Paris after I graduated. We stayed for a few months.”

I nod and deflate. He notices the change and softens his voice to bring the topic to an end. “All the photos are in the case in the living room if you want to look through them. I’m going to shower. There’s food in the fridge, and there are no passwords on anything so you can use whatever you want.”

Sliding off his lap, I sit on the edge of the bed and look around the room. The walkway is in view through the windows and I crane my neck to peer around the edge to see what it leads to. The layout downstairs doesn’t match the outside of the building.

Asher moves around the room and I ask, “What’s in that building?”

He doesn’t pause as he removes his watch and ring. “The last owners had a studio they rented out. It’s separate from the main house.”

“Does anyone live there?”

Clothes rustle, pulling my attention back to the room in time to watch him remove his t-shirt. There’s a scar on his back. It stretches from the center of his shoulder blades down to his right hip. The jagged line is wide, and it must be old. There’s no information in my mind on how he could have got it and I lose all thoughts of it as he turns.

He’s always been muscular, but that’s nothing in comparison to what is standing in front of me. My cheeks heat the longer I look at him. Or specifically, his muscled chest. The arrogance is still there, and he smirks as he teases, “Happy about who you married now?”

I splutter over an excuse and look away to ignore the fact I’m blushing. He walks towards me with his t-shirt held loosely in his fist. The large windows show his reflected image getting closer until he reaches down and holds my wrist.

My gaze follows the movement as he brings my hand flat to his chest. The smirk is darker, as are his eyes. “You’re my wife, don’t shy away from me.” I just blink and he continues, “Does this help you know that this is real?”

I can feel his heart speeding up under my fingers, the warmth of his skin, and the hard muscle. Appreciation isn’t only physical because it soothes my mind. If I can feel him I know this can’t be fake.

“Yeah, it does,” I whisper as I move my fingertips across his body.

His muscles twitch as I trace each muscle group and I don’t allow my eyes to drop from his face. My husband is my first love. It’s everything anyone could want. In spite of the childhood memories, he’s still a stranger, so I pull my hand back to stop petting him.

He doesn’t linger and goes into the adjoining bathroom, leaving the door open a crack. I’m not going to creep on him showering, so I leave the room. Without Asher’s presence, I can’t stop the previous years of memories telling me that they’re the only thing that’s real. No one has visited me. Well, it would be more confusing if they did, since I left my parents with my middle fingers in the air and refused to look back. Their influence stretched further than my childhood home and the paranoia of everyone’s intentions has kept my life insular. But Asher is here and if the magnitude of loss made him into this caring person again, why couldn’t it do the same for the people who brought me into this world?

A parent’s love is supposed to be unconditional, yet all of their rules and requirements for me to be acknowledged as their daughter have only made me wish for them to change that much harder. The toxic, hurtful roots of hope sank deeper every time they’d give me the silent treatment or pull their care away as a punishment. It created channels in my brain that craved doing everything they wanted to get one little morsel of attention from them. Ruby and Scarlet are better than me. They left and they’ve never tried to contact anyone else. They cut me out too because they knew I was weak and broken.

This can’t be a long dream loop and I’m not going to become the teenage version of myself who spent more time thinking about my parents than they did about me, so I search for evidence to convince my mind that it’s wrong. There’s a laptop sitting on the coffee table as I come down the stairs. I pause and check behind me before going straight to it. It’s already on and there’s no password when I open it, exactly like Asher said. The diner’s name is the first search result, complete with a phone number. The images on the review site match my memory. Even down to the shitty peeling sign on the outside that should read “Carol’s Diner” but the A and last R are missing.

I keep swiping through them all and the faces of the staff members are even familiar. One woman stands outside smoking a cigarette and I whisper, “Eve?” as I zoom into her uniform to see the printed name. It’s blurry but I can clearly make it out. It says Eve. I’m not crazy and whoever that fucker upstairs showering is, isn’t Asher.

Picking the laptop up, I look for somewhere to hide and walk to the furthest point of the house. The stupid glass walls make it harder and I lock myself in the downstairs bathroom.

Once I’m locked away, I sit on the closed toilet lid and a tremor takes over my hand as I search for the most important question I have surrounding Kane’s death. I don’t breathe as the circle moves like a snake eating its own tail before bringing up the results. The name isn’t recognized, so I plug more words into the stupid search bar.

Search: death murder trial Hampshire twin

There are no details on his arrest, the trial, or anything to indicate he existed apart from an old article in a school paper from an award he won. Everything from that point on shows he doesn’t exist. I don’t know why I expected it to be different when his family stopped the news of Asher’s death being reported.

Kane’s death. Not Asher’s. Because I’m married to Asher.

I can’t stop the niggling doubts because I knew the woman’s name in the photo, so I search deeper. Maybe I just altered facts about who died. Either way this isn’t my life. As much as it screams that it is, and all the details match everything I wanted up until the fire, it is not my life.

Search: Asher Newman

The search results are plentiful. Pages and pages filled with Asher’s accomplishments. His business has won awards and all of the articles report on his success. Success that he’s found since stepping out from under his family’s shadow and built his own name without their help. I keep reading, expecting my father’s name to be somewhere. The plan when we were younger was that Asher would create his own property business with my father’s investment. It’s all they would ever talk about, but what he has now is a tech company. The bottom of the article states that he credits his accomplishments in honor of the brother that he lost. I fall into a rabbit hole as I read each article, and in each one he credits his success to Kane. Asher, who was ruled by his ego, has changed. He’s not lying and his grief made him more compassionate.

Losing Kane made Asher better.

But me losing Kane has left me fractured and lost.

Continuing my search, I enter the address for my apartment. An old listing comes up on the fourth page and I click into it. The walls are white, and it shows that it was sold three years ago. They’d always been nicotine-stained yellow in the years I lived there, and the dates don’t align with my memory. I was only in the hospital for two weeks. No one else could have lived in the place.

Unless I’m crazy and making shit up.

But I knew the woman’s name. I can’t falsify someone who exists. I go back to the search of the diner and the call button is right in front of me. I don’t have a phone to use and open a second tab to call using the laptop. The line trills straight away and the keys clack as I rapidly press the volume button to reduce any chance of being caught.

The voice echoes off the tile as they answer. “Thank you for calling Carol’s Diner. How can I help you?”

Bringing the entire device closer to my face, I whisper into it, “Hi, this is Delilah Leroux. Is Eve there?”

The voice comes back, slower this time. “She works the morning shift. Do you know her?”

Fuck. I don’t even know how to answer. I don’t recognize the voice and check the time. With the time difference it would be my shift now. I close my eyes as I beg, “My name is Delilah Leroux. I work this shift. Is anyone there who knows me?”

Their voice is muffled, asking anyone if they know my name. There’s something rustling and then another voice takes over. It’s rougher, like they’re a heavy smoker. “What did you say your name was again?”

Thank fuck! I’m not crazy. They know who I am.

“Delilah. Leroux. I’ve worked there for six years and tak?—”

“No, sweetie, we don’t know you.”

The familiarity makes me ask, “Carol?”

“My name is Sue-Ann. We don’t have anyone named Carol here.”

I sink and lower the laptop from in front of my face as I mumble, “Oh, sorry,” then close it.

“Lilo, baby, you okay?” A soft tap hits the door at the same time as Asher’s voice, causing me to jump and drop the laptop. It misses my feet by a fraction and the corner turns black as spiderweb cracks form on the glass.

The softness leaves and wood splinters as he pushes against the door. The lock pushes through the frame and his eyes are wild when he manages to open it. He slowly looks from the broken laptop to me. The worry leaves and he slowly steps forward in only a pair of shorts. His hair is still wet, water dripping from the strands to his forehead, and he lowers his voice.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

I nod. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to break it.”

The apology works for myself too. I didn’t mean to break my own mind, but I can’t just purchase a new one. There’s no glass or broken screen to show that it’s beyond repair, that I am beyond repair.

I thought my parents were the worst jailors after they locked me away. But this is worse and shows that they were right. Everything I knew, thought I knew, is wrong, and there is something wrong with me. It may not be the same diagnosis I got from their doctor, but there is something in my mind that’s fucked up and I need it out.