Chapter 2 - There Was A Photograph Of Me On The Café Wall
I should have left.
Instead I stood in the middle of the café while three men behaved like I had entered a conversation that started years before I arrived.
“Unlock that door,” I told the manager.
He did.
Immediately.
Good choice.
The stranger remained near the back hallway.
“Sergeant Carter.”
“You've used my name twice. I'm running out of patience.”
He stepped farther into the café.
Late forties.
Army uniform.
Lieutenant colonel.
I recognized the rank before I recognized the man.
The face gave me nothing.
He gave me his name.
“Marcus Vale.”
Still nothing.
Walter laughed quietly from the table.
Not because anything was funny.
“She really doesn't.”
Vale looked at him.
“Walter.”
“You said if she ever came back—”
“I said we would not force anything.”
“We?”
I looked at Vale.
“What exactly did ‘we’ decide about my memory?”
His jaw tightened.
“Not here.”
“Everybody keeps saying that.”
The manager moved behind the counter again.
His hands were shaking.
I pointed at him.
“You too. Name.”
“Calvin Reese.”
“You know me?”
He hesitated.
“Yes.”
That made four people in the room if I counted myself.
Three knew a version of me.
I knew none of them.
“From when?”
Calvin looked at Vale before answering.
I caught it.
“Don't.”
He looked back at me.
“Six years ago.”
My pulse changed.
Six years ago I had been twenty-four.
There was a six-month section of that year I could account for on paper far better than I could account for in my own head.
Fort Danner.
Temporary assignment.
Then a vehicle accident.
Then rehabilitation.
The doctors called my memory loss retrograde and patchy.
I remembered the week before Fort Danner.
I remembered waking in a hospital afterward.
The middle was mostly absence.
That had stopped feeling mysterious years ago.
Humans get used to holes if life grows around them.
I looked at Vale.
“You were at Danner.”
“Yes.”
“And this is Fort Danner.”
“Still is.”
I almost laughed.
I had seen the name on my temporary orders for this week.
I just hadn't connected a base name to a place I had never remembered seeing.
“You knew I was coming.”
Vale hesitated.
“I saw the roster yesterday.”
“You didn't call.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn't know what you remembered.”
Walter said:
“She remembers none of it.”
I turned on him.
“You don't know what I remember.”
His face tightened.
“No.”
He knew he had overstepped.
Vale said:
“Rachel, you have an afternoon briefing.”
I stared.
“Are you trying to send me back to work?”
“I'm giving you an exit.”
“I didn't ask for one.”
That silenced him.
I pulled out a chair.
Sat.
“Start with Maya.”
Walter looked down.
Vale said:
“Not from him.”
Walter’s head snapped up.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re not doing this again.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Six years ago you did plenty.”
I looked between them.
“What happened six years ago?”
Nobody answered.
Then I noticed a framed photograph on the wall behind Walter.
Staff photo.
Maybe twenty people.
A café anniversary.
Calvin saw where I was looking.
His face changed.
I stood.
Walked over.
The picture was dated six years earlier.
Walter stood behind the counter, younger but unmistakable.
Calvin beside him.
And at a table near the front window sat two women in Army uniforms.
One was smiling at the camera.
The other had her head turned away, laughing at something outside the frame.
I knew the scar above her eyebrow.
My scar.
I touched the glass.
“That’s me.”
No one spoke.
Beside me sat a woman with dark curly hair, her shoulder pressed against mine.
She had drawn two tiny horns over Walter’s head with marker directly on the photo.
Underneath, someone had written:
MAYA + RACHEL — TABLE 7, EVERY MORNING.
I stared at the woman.
Nothing came.
Not a name.
Not a voice.
Not even the feeling of familiarity.
Then I noticed my hand in the photograph.
It was holding hers under the edge of the table.
Not romantically.
Tightly.
Like one of us was afraid.
I looked at Walter.
“Who was she?”
May you like
His answer took too long.
“My daughter.”
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