Low Pressure

“Did you run after Susan?”

“No.”

“You didn’t?”

“No!”

“Bellamy?”

“I don’t know!”

She gasped in stunned surprise at her own admission, and for several seconds they stayed frozen, their faces inches apart, staring into each other’s eyes. Then her head dropped forward and she repeated miserably, “I don’t know. And that’s the absolute truth.”

He’d pressured her for clarification, but hadn’t really expected it to be this consequential. If he had it to do over again, he might have relented sooner. As it was, he needed to get a grasp of the worrisome implications.

He pried his fingers from around the chain and, with that hand, tipped her head up. Tears were sliding over the freckles on her cheekbones. Her eyes were wet, deeply troubled, haunted.

“I can’t remember,” she said hoarsely. “I’ve tried, God knows. For eighteen years I’ve tried to bridge the gap. But that span of time is blocked out in my memory.”

“Specifically, what do you remember?”

“Specifically? I remember going down to the boathouse and seeing Susan drinking with her friends. Specifically, I remember her coming back, dancing with Allen Strickland, and making a spectacle of herself. I remember watching them leave the pavilion together.”

She looked at him and said helplessly, “But it’s like… like the broken center line on the highway. Sections of time are missing where I don’t remember what I did, or what I saw.”

She hiccuped a soft sob. “Yesterday I told you that I wrote the book so I’d be able to throw it away and forget it. But that was a lie. I wrote it in the hope of remembering.

“And what I think… what I’m afraid of… is that someone read the book, and knows what I left out. He knows whatever it is that I can’t remember. And he doesn’t want me to.”

Chapter 9

Dent wished he could dismiss her fear, but he’d come to the same unsettling conclusion. Someone was afraid that the constant retelling of the story would unlock a memory that had been sealed deep inside her subconscious for almost two decades.

Bellamy the child with a faulty memory hadn’t represented much of a threat to that individual. But Bellamy the woman with a best-selling book definitely did. You’ll be sorry now seemed less of a warning than a vow.

Also Dent feared that this elusive memory she so desperately wanted restored was one better left in the vault of her subconscious. Her psyche had blocked it for a reason. She might later regret learning why she’d been protected from it.

But

he had selfish reasons for wanting her to recapture it, primarily his own vindication. So for the time being, he would keep his concerns to himself and continue to help her.

With the pad of his thumb, he wiped the tears off her cheek, then, using his thigh to hold the swing steady, cupped his hands in her armpits, lifted her off the seat, and lowered her to the ground. Even then, he withdrew his hands with reluctance.

He took a cautious look around. It had been five minutes since the lovers had come up for air. Paw-Paw and his wife had given up on the ball toss and had packed their grandson into their van and left. A forty-something man in shirtsleeves and slacks had parked his dusty sedan, gotten out, and walked straight to a picnic table, where he sat down and immediately opened up both his collar and his cell phone. While talking into his phone, he ogled the cheerleaders, who were doing flips. Dent figured the guy had timed his visit to the park when he knew they’d be there.

No one was interested in him and Bellamy.

Coming back to her, he asked, “Who-all knows about your memory block?”

She looked at him with an expression that spoke volumes.

When he realized what she was telling him, his jaw dropped. “You’re shittin’ me.”

“No,” she said softly. “You’re it. I never told anyone. My parents were so upset over losing Susan, over everything, I didn’t want to add to their anxiety. When Moody talked to me, I told him the version that I ultimately wrote in the book, and for all I knew that was true.

“I tried to remember. I swear I did. But then Strickland was arrested. Moody and Rupe Collier were confident that they’d solved the mystery, so it seemed less important that I recall everything.

“During Strickland’s trial, all I was required to testify to was how suggestively he and Susan had been dancing, and I could truthfully answer those questions. I couldn’t point the finger at Strickland and positively identify him as Susan’s killer. Nor could I deny that he was. But neither could anyone else in that courtroom.”