Layla
I’m watching Willow as she takes in what he’s saying. She looks just as confused and as skeptical as I feel.
“There’s a possibility that when she woke up from surgery, she might have felt displaced. Confused. Even looking in the mirror might be confusing for her, because maybe she doesn’t feel attached to the reflection looking back at her. All of this confusion, which was blamed on amnesia, is probably what’s been fueling her anxiety and panic attacks.” The man taps his fingers on the table in thought for a moment. I stare at his fingers, waiting for him to offer up more proof. He pauses his hand and locks eyes with Willow. “If you are Layla, you would have memories of the two of you that Sable wouldn’t be able to access right away.” He turns to me this time. “Are there other memories you’ve noticed Layla struggle with besides the name of this bed and breakfast?”
I think back on everything that could be a clue. Things that have been missing from Layla’s memory over the last six months that I blamed on her memory loss. I pull up recent things that are fresh in my mind.
I turn and look at Willow. “What’s the deadliest time of day?”
“Eleven in the morning,” Willow says instantly.
I stiffen at that answer.
Last week when I brought that up, Layla acted like she had no idea what I was talking about. But Willow also could have heard that conversation in the kitchen, so it doesn’t really help prove much.
“Fuck.” I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to think of something else that seemed to have escaped Layla’s memory recently. Something Willow wouldn’t have heard.
I think about a conversation that happened in the Grand Room last week. I mentioned a book I had been reading, but Layla had no idea what I was talking about. Then I changed the subject and never mentioned the title of the book, so Willow shouldn’t know it. “What . . . what book was I reading the night I was supposed to leave for—”
Willow cuts me off. “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. It was about a game show host who claimed he was an assassin.” Layla couldn’t remember either of those things last week. “You told me you read e-books because paperbacks take up too much space in your luggage.”
I immediately turn and look at Willow after she says that.
All the pieces of the puzzle feel like they’re beginning to lock into place, and I don’t know if I want to fall to the floor in agony or wrap my arms around her. But before I do either . . . I have one more question.
“If you’re Layla . . . you would know this.” My voice is fearful. Hopeful. “What was your first impression of me?”
She blows out a shaky breath. “You looked like you were dying inside.”
I can’t move. This is too much. “Holy shit.”
She leans forward and grips her forehead. “Leeds. All these memories of you and Layla meeting here. The kiss in the pool, the song you played for her . . . is that me? Are these my memories?”
I can’t say anything. I just watch her as she grapples with the same realization I’m grappling with.
I think back on the last several months of my life, and how I felt like so much changed in Layla. It’s like she became a different person after that surgery.
She did.
She was a completely different person. Her entire personality changed; the way I felt about her changed. And now that I’m looking back on it, there are even similarities between the Layla who woke up from the surgery and the Sable I dated. Sable had bulimia. Layla became obsessed with her weight after surgery. Sable was obsessed with social media, and . . . me. Layla became obsessed with building my platform. Sable suffered from a number of mental illnesses, and the more days that passed after Layla’s surgery, it seemed like Layla was starting to suffer from those same mental illnesses. And the day we arrived here, I knew it was Layla who punched that mirror. I didn’t understand why she’d do it, but I knew she did it.
When Layla woke up from that surgery, she was not the same girl I fell in love with.
But all the things I loved about Layla in those first couple of months of knowing her are the exact same ones I started to notice in Willow. Her personality, her mood, her playfulness, the familiarity in the way she kissed, her strange and random facts. I used to tell Layla she was like a morbid version of Wikipedia.
That’s also one of the things I recognized and liked about Willow.
That triggers another memory that should have been an obvious clue.
“On the bed, upstairs,” I say to Willow. “The night you were watching Ghost. I said, ‘You are so strange.’ But I also said that to you when I first met you. Because . . . I was fascinated by you and enamored with you, and then when I met Willow, she felt so familiar, and . . .”