“But you’re not certain?”
“Of course not. It was dark and I was already freaked, thinking someone was behind me.” She then explained where she’d been, how the woman she’d thought was her sister had disappeared when the bus rolled up. “I didn’t know if ‘Allie’ got on, so I followed after the bus. I pulled up next to it at a traffic light and looked at the passengers inside, but I didn’t see her. There were only four passengers and none of them remotely resembled my sister.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”
“Because I was exhausted and upset and you were already freaked out and then . . . and then, we . . . well, you know . . .”
“And then you kissed me and we ended up in bed.” His unemotional voice worried her.
“Fast forward and I woke up, you were gone. So I didn’t have much of a chance to explain.” She couldn’t help the bit of irritation in her words. Did he really think she was somehow complicit?
“You followed the bus to the end of the line? You talked to the driver?”
Uh-oh. Here’s where it got murky. “I don’t know.”
His eyebrows slammed together. “You don’t know?”
She bristled a bit. How could she explain? “That’s right. It’s . . . it’s just that.” Rather than let her anger get ahold of her again, she expelled a long breath. “It’s just that I kind of blacked out, I guess.”
“What do you mean, ‘kind of blacked out’? Either you’re awake or you’re unconscious.”
“I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s happened before.” He was staring at her so hard she pushed her chair back and stalked to the sink, looking out the window once more. “It’s one of the reasons I checked into Mercy Hospital.” Her insides churned as she admitted things she hated to acknowledge, even to herself. “You remember,” she said, her voice softer with the memories, her fingers gripping the edge of the counter. “When we lived together, once in a while I was . . . a little fuzzy about things.”
He nodded slowly.
“You thought I was being . . . what did you call it? ‘Distant’? I think, or ‘moody’?”
A muscle worked in his jaw and for a second he looked away. “I accused you of being out of it and avoiding the issues when we fought.”
“Right.” Sometimes she hadn’t even really understood what they’d been arguing about. For years she’d hidden the secret that there were times when she couldn’t account for hours of her life. “Well, it appears I really was mentally checked out. I don’t know how else to explain it. I functioned, but I couldn’t recall how I did what I did, how I got where I ended up, who I’d seen. It seems to occur when I’m stressed and last night it happened again. I know I drove here, but for the life of me I don’t remember one thing about it. Not another car. Not merging onto the freeway. No town that I passed.”
He was staring at her hard and she could almost see his mental gears meshing as pieces of the puzzle fell into place. She felt foolish for never confiding in him before, but she’d been scared that he would find her too bizarre, that he would leave her, when all along it had been she who had one foot out the door. She wouldn’t allow herself to trust him, because she couldn’t trust herself. “The truth is, Trent, I don’t even remember leaving Portland, don’t know what bridge I took, what area of town I cruised through. I just know that somehow I drove back here.” She felt tears burn behind her eyes, but she refused to cry. As a distraction she found her cup of half-drunk coffee and topped it off from the glass carafe still warming in the Mr. Coffee. Her hands trembled.
“Does anyone else know about your blackouts?”
She shook her head. Took a sip. “Well, my doctor, of course.”
“Not your mom?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t have them as a child,” she explained, remembering. “They started after the kidnapping, when she and I were nearly killed by that psycho ten years ago. Jenna didn’t notice and I lied to cover up, and she was so upset herself, worried about me and Allie, trying to get her own head straight, deal with her own emotional damage. Carter was around, he helped, but I couldn’t tell them about the blackouts. And they only occurred once in a while. Jenna and Carter chalked up the missing hours to me being rebellious, a secretive teenager who didn’t want her privacy invaded, so I bluffed my way through.”