Memory's Edge: Part One (25 page)

Chapter Forty-Eight

The Right Choice

Searching
the table for the keys, John spotted them next to his cell phone as it began to
ring. He picked up the keys and moved to answer it.

“Just let
it go to voicemail,” Gretchen said as she rushed past him to the door.

They had
dinner reservations in half an hour.

“Give me a
minute, Gretchen. It might be the Fields. They were supposed to call as soon as
they got the final count for their company dinner.”

Gretchen
put on her best pout, but stood still to wait for him. John threw her a
thankful look and answered the call. “This is John,” he said.

“John,” a
woman’s voice replied, “this is Melinda Velasquez, from Channel Four News. I
interviewed you last year after your accident.”

“Melinda,
of course. How are you doing?” he asked, wondering how she had gotten his
number. Gretchen gave him a questioning look. John shrugged. “What can I do for
you?”

“Well, I
was looking through some of the pieces I did last year and realized it’s almost
been a year since your accident and I was wondering if I could come back down
and do a follow up,” she said. “Some of our viewers have written us emails asking
about what happened to you.”

“We’re
doing really well, Melinda. Gretchen and I are actually getting married next
month,” he said.

Melinda
laughed. “You’re kidding! I told Hal you two were going to hook up. He owes me
twenty bucks,” she said. Apparently Hal was in the same room because she yelled
the news to him. “So, John, how about another interview? The viewers will love
this.”

“Just a
minute, Melinda, let me talk to Gretchen,” he said. She told him to go ahead
and John muted the phone.

“It’s Melinda
Velasquez, that reporter who interviewed us after the accident,” he said.
Gretchen nodded in understanding. “She wants to come back for another
interview, tell the viewers what’s happened to me since the last time they saw
me. What do you think?”

Smiling,
Gretchen said, “Sure. That would be fun, as long as we do it before the
wedding. It will be too crazy afterward.”

“Melinda?”
John asked. She said she was still there and he continued. “We’d love to do the
interview as long as we can do it before the wedding. We’re leaving on our
honeymoon right after and then we both have to get back to work as soon as we
return.”

“When’s the
wedding?” Melinda asked.

“April
third.”

John could
hear some indistinct mumbling as Melinda tapped away on her keyboard. “Okay,
I’m in Las Cruses next weekend, Santa Fe two weekends from now, and I’m working
a big political event here in Albuquerque on the twentieth, but I could do the
Friday before that. That would be March nineteenth.”

“March
nineteenth?” John asked Gretchen.

She
mentally checked her calendar then nodded. “I can get a sub for that day,” she
said.

“That
sounds great, Melinda.”

“Wonderful.
I’ll call you next week with the details, okay?” she asked.

“We look
forward to hearing from you,” John said before ending the call.

Gretchen
grabbed John’s hand and started pulling him toward the door.

“That was
unexpected,” he said.

Gretchen
nodded as they walked to the car. “I’m surprised she even remembered us.”

“Yeah, me
too. Even during the interview last year she didn’t seem all that interested in
our story,” John said.

“I had such
high hopes after the interview that we’d find someone who knew who you were,”
Gretchen said.

John opened
her car door for her and closed it once she was in. As he walked over to the
driver’s side he remembered how angry he’d felt when the interview hadn’t
worked. Now he had a completely different emotion. Fear. It lasted only a
moment. If no one in New Mexico knew who he was the previous year, why would
they know who he was now? John was still struggling with the returning memories
on a daily basis, but he passed off the idea that the interview would
complicate things for him. At least they only covered New Mexico. Any more area
and he might be in trouble.

***

With the
wedding only two and a half weeks away it was getting close to crunch time for
John. He had just finished his last catering job before the wedding over the
weekend and was putting all his effort into finalizing the menu for his own
reception and planning some practice sessions for Ethan and Melissa just to
make sure they could make all the dishes themselves. John had hired another
server to help them and Jeremy was coming home during his spring break to head
up the crew. The interview coming up in two days only added to his stress.

Gretchen
was just as busy. It seemed she spent more time at the seamstress getting
fitted for her wedding dress than she did with John. He wasn't sure why she
needed to be measured and pinned so many times, but he knew better than to
complain. When Gretchen wasn't running back and forth between appointments, she
was on the phone with Desi coordinating people and deliveries. When they had
the chance to breathe, they usually ended up collapsing on the couch to do it.

Which was
what they were doing at the moment.

Something
was playing on TV, but John wasn't paying attention. Gretchen dozed on his
shoulder as he flipped through a book she’d left on the coffee table. The novel
turned out to be too much of a romance for his taste, so he set it back on the
coffee table without disturbing Gretchen.

Turning his
attention to his favorite subject instead, John shifted so Gretchen was lying
on his lap, and brushed her hair away from her face. Her lips curled into a
brief smile as his fingers trailed across her skin. He watched the slight
expressions that flitted across her face as she slept and wondered what she was
dreaming about. He hoped it wasn't Carl.

His parting
comment the day John had talked to him about the memories irked him every time
he thought about it. It had been almost painful not to demand Gretchen explain
why she hadn’t told him about Carl kissing her the moment it happened, but he
knew without a doubt that Carl had been the one to initiate it. Gretchen was
likely embarrassed and didn’t want to make John dislike him more than he
already did. Besides, he was hardly the one to judge her for keeping something
from him. John had been lying to her about the memories almost from the
beginning of their relationship.

Harsh ringing
from one of their phones left in the kitchen ended the moment of watching
Gretchen sleep. It was probably another reminder about something for the
wedding. John wanted to let it go to voicemail, but Gretchen was startled by
the noise and pulled herself up off his lap. She blinked the sleep out of her
eyes and looked toward the kitchen.

“Lay back
down,” John said. “I’ll get it.”

Gretchen
smiled and trailed her fingers along his leg as he stood. John walked to the
kitchen, annoyed at the interruption, and picked up the phone. “This is John.”

“John, this
is Melinda,” she said. “There’s been a change of plans with the interview on
Friday.”

Great.
Changes in their carefully laid plans were the last thing they needed. “What
kind of changes?” he asked.

“Time,
location, and the person doing the interview,” she said.

Wasn't that
everything? “You’re not doing the interview anymore?” he asked her.

“No. It
kind of got away from me,” she said. “I told my boss about the interview after
I talked to you and apparently he mentioned it to the station manager, who got
really excited about it, and somehow your story kept getting passed up the
ladder until it reached the top.”

“The top?”
he asked. “What does that mean?”

“It means the
Today show, John.” Melinda laughed into the phone. “You and Gretchen are going
to be on the Today show Friday morning. One of the hosts heard your story and
just had to have you. They’re going to call you any second to set up your
travel itinerary so I should let you go. I just wanted to give you a heads up.”

“Uh,
thanks, Melinda,” John said. She must have ended the call, because it rang
again a few seconds later. He was too shocked to answer it. The phone rang
again, bringing Gretchen into the room with a puzzled expression.

“What’s
going on?” she asked.

“The Today
show wants us to come on their show,” he said.

Gretchen
looked at the ringing phone in his hand and grabbed it. The ringing stopped and
Gretchen started talking. Watching her grow excited as whoever she was talking
to
laid out their plans was a surreal experience. John read
the notes Gretchen wrote down about the flight on Thursday, the next day, and
what hotel they would put them in, but all he could think about was how many
people would be watching the Today show on Friday morning.

Doing the
interview with the Albuquerque news channel, which reached less than a million
people and had already failed once to produce anyone who knew John, was all
fine and good. It was safe enough. The Today show reached the entire county,
hundreds of millions of people. If the dark haired woman from his memories had
any interest in finding him still, it would give her the perfect opportunity.

Setting the
phone down on the table, Gretchen bounced up and down with excitement. “The
Today show, John! Can you believe it?” she said.

“No, I
can’t,” he said slowly.

It was
usually pretty hard to dampen Gretchen’s excitement, but John’s complete lack
of enthusiasm caught her attention.

“John,
what’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t
think we should do the interview.”

Gretchen
frowned and glanced at her scribbled notes. “Why not?”

“I just
don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said. “We still have so much to do before the
wedding. Having Melinda come here wasn't too big of a deal, but going to New
York? I don’t know, Gretchen.”

“But, John,
this is probably the only chance like this we’ll ever have. Millions of people
will hear your story,” she said.

“Yeah, I
know, Gretchen. That’s exactly the reason I don’t think we should do it. What
if someone does recognize me?” he asked.

Gretchen
shook her head at him. Hands on her hips, she stared John down. “That would be
wonderful, John. You would finally know who you are.”

“I already
know who I am, Gretchen,” he said.

“But what
if you could find your family, your parents, maybe, or your siblings? Wouldn’t
it be wonderful to have some of your family at the wedding?” She was still
determined to reconnect him with his past. She did it because she loved him,
but it was a misguided desire.

“Okay, yes,
finding my parents would be great, but what if someone else found me?” he
asked. He didn’t want to say it. He wanted her to figure it out without him
having to bring up the memories.

Thankfully,
realization dawned on her. “You mean a woman?”

John
nodded.

“But, John,
it’s been a year.”

Walking
over to him, she put her arms around his waist and hugged him. “John, I want to
believe there were people in your life before I found you who are looking for
you. But it
has
been a year. Wouldn’t someone have found you by now if
they were going to? We tried the interview last year and the website and the
newspapers, and we got nothing.

“As much as
I hate to admit it, maybe you didn’t have any family still living. Maybe your
friends tried to find you but couldn’t. And if there was a woman in your life
and she didn’t find you, she probably either moved on or isn’t worth finding
anyway,” Gretchen said. “And besides, even if some woman from your past showed
up, I know you wouldn’t leave me for someone you don’t even know anymore. I
trust you, John.”

But what if
it wasn't just
some woman
? John had seen the reception hall, the bouquet
in her hands. If he was married to another woman, how could he not try to find
out what they once had together? Why would his wife not have found him, though?
As John poured over the memories he had recovered, he recognized that he was
quite a bit younger in them. Maybe the woman was already gone. The possibility
remained, but making Gretchen understand his reasoning would require him
telling her about the memories. The risk of losing Gretchen seemed so much
bigger than the risk of the memory woman finding him.

“I trust
you, John,” Gretchen repeated as she laid her head on his chest.

She wasn't
going to give in. If John went missing tomorrow, he knew Gretchen would never
give up looking for him. He could see why she would say that John not being
found meant there was no one looking, because he could picture her scouring the
country to find him. John could also understand, however, that he was one
person in hundreds of millions in the country. What if you
could
look
for a year and never find anything?

Locked in
indecision, John held onto Gretchen. The problem with that theory was the same one
John had been stumped by from the very beginning. He couldn’t imagine going
somewhere so out of the way that news coverage wouldn’t reach Gretchen to tell
her where he was without first telling her where he was going. Every memory
John recovered of the woman told him they loved each other deeply, but that
must have been past because he couldn’t come up with a scenario where he would
end up so far away from her that Gretchen’s efforts to find his family wouldn’t
have reached her without her already knowing where he was planning to be.

She would
have found John if the memory woman still loved him. It always came back to
that.

“Okay, I’ll
do the interview,” he said.