“Two years ago, Greg was mugged and pushed into the path of an oncoming car. He was in a coma at St. Michael’s until six months ago. When he woke up, he didn’t remember anything, not his name, where he was from, nothing.” I spoke slowly, but flat and unemotional. The drawn shades and darkened kitchen lent a surreal cast to the moment, a made-for-TV movie quality that I couldn’t shake.
“Is he okay?” she asked through a hand-covered mouth, her eyebrows knitted in worry.
“Yes, sort of. He will be. Right now, his memory is spotty. He remembered your name, though. And mine and our children.” I purposefully left out any mention of his trouble with recalling Leah; she had no business knowing that.
“Greg was married.” Her statement shocked me. She hadn’t known, then? “It makes sense. I could never call him; he was always travelling, he said.”
“How did you meet?”
“Where else? In a bar. He was here for work. It had to be… oh, three years ago now?” She looked up, as if the ceiling held the memory and gave a small secretive smile, which lit a quick fire in me. Does she have the right to a private memory?
“You didn’t know about his accident, then? The nurses said it was in the paper.” I stirred my coffee and fought the urge to throw my mug against the wall.
“The night he broke up with me was the last time I saw him.”
“What night was that?” My voice was sharper than I’d intended, but I knew the answer before she said it.
“I don’t know the date exactly. I guess it was September… late September.”
“September thirtieth?”
“Maybe. It was a Thursday night. I remember because I was leaving on Friday. I had a concert in New York. I cried the entire bus ride.” Her manner was cool as she appraised me over the rim of her coffee mug, her long thin fingers tapping on the ceramic.
My anger was creeping up, choking me, though it felt misplaced. “Tell me everything, please?” I didn’t look at her, instead choosing to stare into my mug, stirring it slowly.
“I loved him. I think he loved me. Or at least he said he did.”
“Then why did you break up? That night?” I sank to her level, willing to trade barbs. Settle down. She has information you need, Claire.
“His company was transferring him to China. Some executive position, a big promotion. He thought it was a great opportunity, and he wanted to go. It was a two-year assignment, but I’m a violinist in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. At the time, I was trying for assistant principal, the youngest in the history of the TSO. There was no way I could go. We agreed to… put our relationship on hold.”
I laughed in earnest. What relationship? I wanted to yell. You didn’t even know his name. Advent had no foothold in China, and if they had, certainly not for a corporate trainer. Greg’s girlfriend hadn’t known him any better than I had. Questions swirled in my mind, but half of them I would never give her the satisfaction of asking.
“Karen, there was no China.” I reached across the table and lightly tapped her hand. “Greg was a bored thirty-five-year-old man in a troubled marriage, with a couple of kids, in the suburbs of New Jersey.”
“He said he didn’t have kids, but that he’d always wanted them.”
I sucked in a harsh breath. The depths of her cruelty seemed boundless. What about Greg’s dishonesty? Did that know no limits? “Do you still love him?” My questions were primal and unplanned, and perhaps just as callous; I didn’t know. I’d lost perspective in the shrinking kitchen.
She shook her head, appearing rattled for the first time. She held up her left hand, displaying a simple solitaire diamond. “I called his cell over and over until one day, after a month or so, the recording said the phone had been disconnected. It took about a year for me to move on. I knew he was American; he said he was from Syracuse, but it hadn’t ever mattered because he was never home, he’d said. I stopped trying after that and met a very nice trombone player. The wedding’s in May.”
She pushed herself up, crossed the room, and rummaged through a drawer. When she returned, she was holding a long strip of paper. She looked at it a moment before handing it to me. Greg’s face stared back at me, pushed up against Karen’s, four squares, various expressions. A photo booth picture strip. I was taken aback. His face was relaxed, free of the worry lines on his forehead. Her mouth was open in a frozen laugh, wide lipsticked lips stretched across straight white teeth. In the bottom picture, they kissed through laughter, her left eye open, peeking at the camera.