It was the first Wednesday in September – the day after Gwen and Drew had sent their children off to school. That Tuesday had been a dream, and they had spent the day lazily lounging in their bed amidst their wedded bliss, wrapped up in each other in ways they had not been able to indulge in since the birth of their first child, making love without fear of their children entering their bedroom, without worrying for a second that they may be caught. It was a dream, and just like any other, it had to end and their real lives had to resume.

Despite Jeremy's age, he had always been a great help to Drew in their cornfields. His return to school had been a bigger hit to Drew's efficiency than Drew could have anticipated. The loss of his son's help, coupled with the fact that he had spent an entire day skiving off, meant that he was very far behind on that day's work. This was going to be a long, long day.

He plunged his shovel into the dry earth, sighing as he felt the sweat dripping steadily down the back of his neck. His shirt was drenched, and his arms were tired. His whole body was suffering from exhaustion. With a deep sigh, he looked on at the rows of corn that he still needed to tend to, wishing desperately that he could have some help. But of course that was entirely out of the question. Hiring help meant paying for someone else to help, and their family was too in need of money for that. Though Drew was not a particularly proud man – in fact he was all too willing to do whatever he could to take care of his family while putting forth the least amount of effort – he was not going to outsource his money just so that he could work less.

A sharp, searing pain shot through his left arm, and he dropped his shovel to the ground with a groan. It was happening again. He closed his eyes, and immediately he was swarmed with dark, vague images that he could not understand. That man was there again – the tall, cloaked figure who had no nose and whose eyes were a deep, demonic red. Drew could feel a tinge of familiarity whenever this man entered his mind, and that scared him even more than the fear instilled by the man himself.

His eyes closed as the sharp pain became burning. He felt as though his arm was on fire, but several year of experience told him that this pain was normal for this particular injury. He had no idea where the deep, scarred gash that traveled up the length of his forearm had come from, but he was certain that it was something that had been done to him by the man in his mind. Why else would Drew see the man whenever he felt pain generated from it?

And then – just as quickly as the pain had begun – the burning dissipated, and he was left looking down at his arm, tensed up and red from having squeezed his hand into a rock-hard fist to help alleviate the pain. But of course it hadn't helped much. Nothing ever did.

Drew attempted to put it out of his mind as he continued to work, realizing both consciously and subconsciously that he could not afford to take a break and ponder all of the mystery surrounding his life in Iowa if he ever wanted to get home to his wife and children. But try as he might, he couldn't help but let his thoughts wander every so often to what he had seen in his mind – on that day and on others.

Whenever he would remember his past life, it always made him feel uncomfortable. Gwen's visions were almost always supported by happy thoughts and family and growing up, and he always knew without her telling when one of her memories had been recovered. He could always tell exactly what she was thinking.

Drew was glad not to remember who he was because he was certain that whoever he had been was not someone that his family could love. He never had those warm thoughts of home, of a childhood he wished to remember. Everything he knew of his past had been dark and mysterious and frightening – just like the man with no nose, like the large manor that he occasionally saw that felt vaguely like a home despite the deep feeling of foreboding that he experienced each time that he saw it in his mind.

He couldn't tell Gwen, but this was why he didn't want to remember. Because his home – the one place that she had always associated with the pleasantries of her adolescence – were tainted by the knowledge that his home hadn't been happy.

Without realizing it, Drew had finished a good deal of his work, even with his thoughts running rampant. He tossed aside his shovel as he noted the position of the sun. He could afford to break for lunch, he decided.

As he began walking through the cornfields – his body and mind exhausted – he felt the pain returning to his arm. It began as a slow, intense heat, but turned quickly into a searing burn that more painful than anything he had ever experienced. He fell to his knees in agony, clutching onto the deep, scarred gash that was pulsating with crippling tremors. He cried out – thankful that his son was at school and not with him in the fields – and closed his eyes as he felt his whole body explode into a fit of cold sweats.

He saw Gwen in his mind. There was a man with her. His hair was black and his eyes were green and wide. It was inherently obvious that he was dead. His whole body was splayed unnaturally over the green patch of grass. There was no blood or wounds that Drew could see, but the dark-haired man's pallor was ghostly pale. Gwen was kneeling beside him, her red hair matted with dirt and grime, and her whole body was convulsing as she cried without restraint. She threw herself over him, holding onto the cold, dead body as she prayed that his death was a lie. Whoever this man was, Gwen had obviously loved him, and she had watched him die.

The vision faded as the pain in his arm began to subside, but the haunting image of his wife – the strong woman that she was – crumbling to ashes before his eyes remained ingrained. He couldn't forget it. He couldn't let go of it. Drew had never once seen her cry so openly, and it hurt his heart that he had not been there to protect her.

But she doesn't remember it.

Before that moment, Drew wasn't even entirely sure that he had known Gwen before they had met in Iowa. It had always seemed a terrible coincidence that neither of them could remember their pasts, but he had assumed that they had just missed each other – that they were from the same time and place, but that they had never physically crossed paths. But he had apparently been wrong. He had known her, and he had seen her broken down and cold and dying from remorse.

He knew then more than ever that he was doing the right thing by never wondering about his past, by never allowing her to attempt to recover her memories. There were obviously things that she was far better off not knowing, and he'd be damned if he let her get hurt by finding out.

She could never know about the man with the black hair and green eyes.

The nearest farm was almost thirty miles down a winding, narrow country road. Gwen hated driving it alone, but with the kids in school and her husband almost too busy to stop working for lunch, she knew that she didn't have much of a choice. By the time the kids finished school, most of the local farmers would have been done for the day, besides, and Gwen couldn't afford to wait until the weekend to go to the farm.

She drove their family Sedan, conscious of the fact that she was nearly in need of gas and that the breaks were squealing, and she was fairly certain that the car needed a tune-up. With a sigh, she thought of the look on that would be on Drew's face when she told him this. He already spent all day working his fingers to the bone just so they could break even, and now she was going to be adding more to the list of things they needed but couldn't afford to pay for.

She turned left at the farmer's market. She could smell the fresh, end of summer berries even before she parked the car, desperately wishing to herself that she could indulge and buy some as a treat for her children. But she knew she couldn't. Her budget only allotted for the necessities, and sometimes even those were pushing it. After this year, Gwen was fairly certain that she would need to begin growing her own produce in her herb garden to save even more money.

The woman selling radishes smiled at her, and Gwen had to look twice. The lady was blonde and pretty, her smile airy, like she didn't have a care in the world. Her earrings were also shaped like radishes. Gwen couldn't help but laugh. She didn't need radishes, but if she had, she was certain that she'd have purchased them from this woman.

And then as the wind blew and Gwen closed her eyes, something strange occurred to her.

The radish woman looked so familiar.

"Hello there," the blonde woman said as Gwen approached her stand. "Can I interest you in some of these today?"

Gwen shook her head briefly and the woman continued to smile. She wanted to ask the lady why she looked so familiar, but all that would accomplish is to make herself sound like a lunatic. Although she had the vague idea that this woman didn't seem terribly judgmental.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like to try some?" the blonde asked. "I assure you that these are rather fresh, and they would be lovely in a salad!"

Gwen shook her head again. "I feel like I know you," she said before she could stop herself.

She smiled again. "Perhaps we have crossed paths at some point, but I can't seem to remember much before the last few years. It's the strangest thing. I suppose we could have met before my memory disappeared."

"You - your memory disappeared?"

"Oh yes. My mind has gone terribly fuzzy. There was some sort of creature that I used to know that could cause such things, but I can't seem to remember that, either."

Gwen glanced out the corner of her eye to see if anyone was hovering nearby. "My memory is gone, too," she said, her voice low and even. "I can't remember anything before coming to America." Gwen bit her lip. "My husband is the same, too. I thought we had both gone mad."

The blonde smiled. "Oh, nonsense," the woman said, scolding playfully. "You're just as sane as I am."

And despite the radish woman selling radishes and talking about creatures that cause memories to disappear, Gwen felt someone assured by this. She bought a few radishes, despite her lack of need for them.

What a strange, strange day.

That evening, after the children had been put to bed and all of the dishes had been done, Drew and Gwen settled into bed.

"Turn off the light, would you?" Drew requested as he turned on his side. He was so exhausted that he could barely keep his eyes open.

"In a minute," she said. There was obviously something on her mind, and it didn't take a genius to know what.

With a heavy sigh, Drew used all of his strength to sit up, his back leaning against the headboard. "Gwen..." he began, already tired of the discussion before it even began.

"I know you hate when I talk about this, but..."

"Gwen," he interrupted gently. "We both know how this conversation is going to end, and I don't want to go to bed angry." He sighed. "Why do you feel like your past is so important? Why can't you just be happy to be here with your family?"

Her eyes went wide. "I'm not saying that I don't love my life, Drew," she said, her voice rising ever so slightly. "Our children – our family – is so important to me. I would never want to change where I have ended up. I just want to know how I got here. How can I not wonder?"

"Because there has to be a reason why we've forgotten."

"Maybe there is!" she exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. "Maybe something happened to us. Maybe we have amnesia from severe head injuries! We just don't know! But something did happen to us to make us this way, and we are not the only ones!"

Drew narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean, we aren't the only ones?"

Gwen opened her mouth to speak and then closed it, realizing immediately that she had said something she hadn't meant to. "At the market today," she said quietly. "There was a woman who seemed so familiar. So I spoke to her, and she told me that she doesn't remember anything from before. And she was English!"

"That doesn't mean that whatever happened to her also happened to us."

"But maybe it did," Gwen insisted. "Maybe it did, and maybe she can help us figure out what it was. She thinks that her brain was affected by some sort of creature that makes her brain go fuzzy..."

"That's brilliant. And maybe kisses from puppy dogs are the cure."

"I'm not saying she is right. I'm saying that maybe she can help us. We might even be able to undo it!"

"No," Drew said. "This discussion is over now."

"But..."

"I told you this would bloody well end with us in a row."

"Why does it have to?" Gwen pleaded. "Why do you hate the idea so much? Why can't I wonder who I was?"

"Because it's irrelevant. Who you were, who you could have been, what your life may have been like, whether or not you had a happy home with a mother and a father who loved you... none of it means anything if it didn't shape who you are now. And we got here just fine on our own. We don't need to learn about our pasts to have a happy future."

Gwen swallowed hard. "I love you, Drew," she said, her voice low and tentative, but by no means cowardly. "I love you and I respect you as a husband and as a father. But you're wrong about this, and you can't make me stop thinking about it and you can't force me to stop trying to understand what happened to me."

He didn't respond. With an angry glare, he reached across her and turned off the light. He turned on his side away from his wife and went to sleep without so much as another word.

So much for not going to be angry.