"It's going to be ok," he told her gently, warmly. He had a nice voice; it was the kind of voice that made her want to believe every word he said. Made her want to believe that he was right, that it was ok, that she was ok, or at least that she was going to be.
It's going to be ok, she told herself, his simple reassurance a talisman she clung to in the depths of her own heart.
"And you're not alone," he reminded her.
You're not alone, she told herself.
That was something to be grateful for, wasn't it? At least she wasn't alone; she wasn't sure how she would have survived any of this on her own, and she was truly, deeply thankful that she wouldn't have to find out. The doctors and nurses had been with her these last few days in the hospital, and Malcolm was with her now, and she was not alone. And as long as she wasn't alone, she'd be safe.
"Thank you," she said, smiling.
Everything was going to be ok, and she was not alone, and it was a beautiful day. The sky was so blue, a deep rich color that made her heart sing to see it, and the trees that lined the road were bursting with color, red and gold and brown and green, vibrant against that blue. A bird wheeled overhead, some great massive thing; she didn't know what kind of bird it was. Or maybe she did; she just didn't remember.
She didn't remember anything.
They were in the car together, Olivia and Malcolm, and they were going home. She knew that her name was Olivia because the doctors had told her so, handed her a plastic card with a picture of her face on it - your license, they'd said, whatever that meant - and the words Olivia Margaret Benson were printed next to the photo. It was a nice name, she thought. A pretty name. She was glad to have a pretty name.
The car was Malcolm's; the doctors said Olivia's was totalled, and a kind nurse had explained to her afterward that totalled meant she wouldn't be able to drive it anymore, which was just as well, because she didn't remember how.
There were so many things she didn't remember; it would be easier to list the things she did remember. She could speak, could read but not write; different parts of the brain, the doctors told her. Language comprehension and memory weren't the same thing, and reading wasn't the same as writing. At least that's what they said, and she had no reason not to believe them, because the people at the hospital had been nothing but kind to her, had cared for her when she was scared and lost, and if there was a reason she ought to mistrust them she did not remember what it was.
She did not remember Malcolm, but he remembered her. On her first day in the hospital, still woozy from the blow to her head - sustained in the car accident she didn't remember - Malcolm and Rosie had come to her, held her hand and told her they were her friends and promised to be there for her. It was nice to have friends; she was so glad to have friends, because the doctors told her she didn't have family.
Or she did, she did have family. She had one singular piece of family, and Malcolm was taking her home, to the place where her family waited for her.
"I'm scared," she confessed quietly.
"I can't imagine," Malcolm murmured sympathetically. "Not remembering anything -"
"The doctors say it might come back," she said. "My memory. But until then…I think I'll be ok, but I don't…I don't know how to be a mom."
Malcolm was taking her home, and Rosie was waiting for them there. But Rosie was not alone; Rosie was looking after a little boy with a sweet round face and bright blue eyes, a little boy that everyone said was Olivia's son.
Her son, and she didn't remember him.
Didn't remember being pregnant, giving birth, didn't remember the early days of his infancy, his first steps, his first words. Every moment of her son's life until this day, she had forgotten all of it, and he was still so small; he didn't remember, either. How would he ever learn his own story, where he'd come from and how he'd grown, if his mother didn't remember? How would he ever remember his father, when Olivia couldn't? Or at least, she couldn't remember yet. Sometimes when she closed her eyes she could recall, just for an instant, the face of a man with bright blue eyes - eyes just like Noah's - and a warm smile. The vision always faded as quickly as it came on, the half-remembered fragment of some hazy dream dangling just out of reach, but it was there, just the same. A memory, almost, of a man with blue eyes. The only memory she had, really, and she was beginning to suspect that man was her husband. Who else would matter to her so much, who else's face would be so deeply imprinted on her heart that she could recall it when all other memories had fled? It must have been him, her husband. She must have loved him.
He died, Malcolm had told her. I'm so sorry, Olivia, but Ed died. About six months ago.
That was his name. Ed. Her husband, the father of her child, had been dead for six months, and Olivia could not even remember the sound of his voice, and now she was going home, to a little boy who had just lost his father, and had in every way that mattered just lost his mother, too. The responsibility that had just been placed on her shoulders terrified her.
"I'll tell you a secret," Malcolm said. "None of us knows how to be a parent, not really."
"Do you have kids?" she asked curiously. Malcolm was her friend - her good friend, a friend who had come to her every day while she was in the hospital, sat with her, comforted her, volunteered himself to care for her without a moment's hesitation - but she didn't know anything about him. Only the few things he'd told her, that he was retired, that he lived next door, that he used to golf with Ed and that he meant to look after his friend's widow and child.
"A daughter," he said, smiling. He had a very nice smile. "Her name is Emma, she's in college now. And I can tell you, I was scared every minute when she was little. We all just do the best we can, Olivia. We'll get you home, and you'll settle in, and Rosie and I will take turns staying with you so you're not alone. Nothing bad is going to happen, you'll see."
Maybe he was right. She couldn't mess anything up too badly if Rosie and Malcolm were there to help, could she? Her little boy - my son, she thought, her heart swelling in her chest at the very idea, my Noah - was walking and talking, old enough to communicate his needs to her, and he was really such a sweet little thing. Rosie had taken charge of him while Olivia was in the hospital, brought him to see her every day, and every day Olivia held him in her arms, snuggled him close and thought only how much she loved him. She might not have remembered how he came to be, but her heart knew her son, and she loved him. Maybe love was like language; stored in a different part of the brain, deeper, more primal than memory itself, written on her bones.
"Is there…is there anything I need to do?" she asked him then. "When we get home, I mean."
"Rosie cleaned the house," Malcolm said. "And the ladies from the club all brought food over, there's enough to keep you fed for a month."
The club was the country club where Ed and Malcolm used to golf. Apparently Olivia used to go there sometimes, too, though she couldn't recall what she did there.
"You're retired, so you don't have to worry about going to work."
The word retired struck a discordant note in her heart; she heard retired and thought old, but she wasn't so very old - not even sixty yet, according to the birthdate on her license - and Malcolm wasn't old, either, but they were both retired. What had she done, before she retired? She didn't know, and she didn't want to ask right now; right now she wanted Malcolm to keep talking about what she was supposed to do when she got home. She wondered, though. Wondered who she'd been, before. Before she lost her memory, before she and Ed moved to this little town, before Noah was born; who was Olivia Margaret Benson? What sort of life did she have, and what sort of life did she want?
"I'm going to stay with you tonight, and Rosie will come in the morning to help you take Noah to preschool. So today we'll go home, and you can have a shower and change your clothes. You can spend some time with Noah. We'll eat dinner, we'll go to sleep, and tomorrow we'll start again. There's nothing to be afraid of, Olivia."
He spoke with such authority, Malcolm. Such certainty. As if he saw everything crystal clear, as if he knew precisely what to do. That was a comfort to her; she felt so lost, just now. Lost inside her own mind, inside her own life. Having someone to follow, someone to help, gave her hope. They wouldn't let her stumble, Malcolm and Rosie. At least, not for now. Would they grow tired of it, she wondered, tired of her, tired of shepherding a grown woman through her life as if she were a child, when she ought to have been capable of taking care of herself? How long would it last, their devoted care, and when would they decide she needed to take on the world on her own?
Maybe her memory would come back, like the doctors said. Maybe she'd remember before it was too late.
She really, really wanted to remember.
"Here we are," Malcolm said, pulling the car into the driveway of a quaint little house. It was square, with a covered porch running along the front of it. The house boasted a green, well-tended lawn and a flowerbed that was likely vibrant in spring, but it was autumn now and the blooms had long since faded.
"Are you ready?" he asked, shooting her a worried glance.
Am I ready?
The hospital had terrified her, but there was structure there, routine. Other people tended to her needs, told her where to go, made all the choices for her so that she wouldn't have to do it herself. Home was different. Malcolm and Rosie would be there with her, but they weren't professionals, and they didn't know the answers to her questions. Where she'd come from, why her only family in the world was a dead man and a sad little boy, why Malcolm and Rosie were the only two people who'd come to support her, just those two friends who'd only known her for such a short time. Out here in the world she was untethered; she would have to make her own way.
I can do this, she told herself firmly. Really, she was lucky; a social worker at the hospital had explained to her about pensions and life insurance and everything, told her she didn't have to worry about making money to support herself and gave her the name of an accountant who could help her manage. Rosie and Malcolm would help her look after Noah until she got the hang of it herself, and even when they finally decided she was ready to be on her own they wouldn't be very far away; they both lived in the same neighborhood. The blow to her head had been tremendous and stripped away her very sense of self, but apart from the headaches and the misery of her ignorance she was in good health. All she really had to do was live.
Live, and learn. That little house was hers, and it would be full of her things. Photographs, letters maybe, mail and books, souvenirs and keepsakes. The house would be full of memories, and all she had to do was go inside, and find them. The answers to her questions would be there, she thought, waiting for her. At home.
"Let's go," she said.
And so they went, together. Malcolm took her bag from the backseat, a little black duffel that Rosie had brought to her, full of clothes and toiletries, all the things she'd needed while she was in the hospital, and they walked into the house side-by-side, shoulders brushing.
They no sooner stepped in the door than Olivia froze in her tracks; in the entryway to the house, directly opposite the door, was a small console table beneath a gold-framed mirror. There were shoes piled under the table, children's shoes and women's boots, a place where the family who lived here kicked off their shoes when they came home. On the tabletop there was a trinket dish, a place to set her keys perhaps, and three framed photos. The two photos on the sides were shots of Noah, professional looking portraits of the boy she'd held in her arms. It was the photo in the middle that drew her attention, though, that made her stop, and stare.
It must have been a picture from her wedding; she was wearing a beautiful white dress, with a bouquet of flowers in her hands. A man was standing beside her, his arm around her, wearing a smart black suit, a flower in his lapel the same color as the ones she held in her hands. The man was pressing his lips to her temple, kissing her gently while she smiled.
"Is that -" she started to ask Malcolm in an unsteady voice.
"You and Ed," he told her quietly, sadly. "On your wedding day."
She stepped forward, picked up the photo and held it in her hands, staring. That was him, then. Ed. Her husband. Tall and strong, his grey hair close-cropped. They were not young, in that photo; she hadn't thought to ask, before now, just how long she and Ed had been married, but evidently it hadn't been very long. They weren't in their twenties, fresh out of college and taking on the world together; there were wrinkles at the corners of both their eyes. But they seemed happy; looking at herself in that photo, Olivia saw a happy woman. A woman in love.
It brought her no joy to see it, though. Ed was dead, and she would not ever be able to hear his voice, would not ever be able to ask him to share their story with her. However they had come to know one another, to love one another, she would never really know because the one person who could tell her was gone already. That wasn't the part that hurt her most, though.
It hurt, looking at that photo, because his face was kind and handsome, but it was not the face of the man she recalled. For the last week the memory of a man's face had haunted her, and she had clung to it, thinking surely he must have been the man she loved. He wasn't, though. The man she remembered, the blue-eyed man with the warm smile, was not her husband. He was a stranger to her.
Who is he? She wondered. And then do I even want to know?
What secrets was she hiding? If she dug deeper into her own past, if she went through this house room by room, searching out the parts of her own history she'd lost, what would she find? And what if those secrets were…bad? Dangerous?
Who am I?
She desperately wanted to know; she was terrified of what she might find. But what choice did she have? The man she remembered, that face that swam in the darkness behind her closed eyelids, he meant something to her, and she needed to know why. She was determined to find the truth; whatever it took, whatever the cost.