It rained the day I became Mrs. Lucy Sparks Newman.
I had hoped for sunshine, a positive sign of what lay ahead. But the rain was better, I realized as we huddled under the wide, clear umbrella Matt held while we exchanged vows as planned. The minister stood dry under her own umbrella, its see-through surface speckled with the fat raindrops, while our guests gathered in rows under the Old Mill’s awning to watch the ceremony from afar. The rain was better than sun because it meant Matt and I didn’t have to share the moment with anyone—even the minister couldn’t hear the words we uttered, for the deep dome of our umbrella created a bubble just for us.
Matt made me sweet promises as he slipped the plain gold ring onto my finger, where it nestled against the diamond engagement band I’d started wearing nearly a year earlier. Then it was my turn, and I cried when I slid the matching band over his knuckle—blubbered actually, though later Matt would say I’d shed only one gorgeous tear when I’d said my vows. I laughed at that, teasingly said, “I thought we were done with making stuff up?” and he smiled. Told me if I got to have false memories, then it was only fair for him to have a couple, as well.
I love you, Lucy Sparks Newman, he’d said, after we shared our first kiss as husband and wife.
I love you more, Matt Newman. And no one would convince me otherwise.
Soon after, Matt was twirling me around a packed dance floor, full of our family and friends. I’d never felt so completely alive, or happy or certain about anything. To think of how close I came to missing out on all of it...
I had tried to walk, or rather run, away from Matt that day in High Park. To give him a chance to start over and make new memories with someone else, rather than be forced to try to puzzle back together a relationship that died the moment I hit my head. But I only got as far as the zoo’s entrance before he caught up to me, his legs much longer and faster than mine. Told me he didn’t care about what I’d done with Daniel, or who that Lucy was. He knew me and loved me and believed in us more than he’d believed in anything else. I have enough faith for the both of us, Luce, he had said. Do you trust me? I did. So I decided to follow Dr. Kay’s advice about choosing the future I wanted, even if it didn’t seem to fit with what was happening in my present. And so, with that, I chose Matt.
I never got all my memories back. I still don’t remember what happened the day I slipped and fell, and the gaping holes in the years preceding it remain, though I have since memorized critical details of that time. Can talk about them as though they are memories versus facts I’ve learned and, well, committed to memory. The reminiscence therapy Matt started, and Dr. Kay and I continued, did help me recover somewhat. But even with therapy I realized I wasn’t remembering the original experience—I was recollecting a construct of it. And, in fact, a construct of someone else’s construct, because like Dr. Kay explained during our first visit, no one’s memory was one hundred percent accurate. We all confabulate to some degree. And so I’ve accepted that my memories—all our memories, actually—are little more than fiction. The present is far more reliable than the past.
After resigning from Jameson Porter, I started my own communications business—Sparks + Co—doing freelance public relations work for anyone who would hire me. So far I was founder, president and the only employee of my company, but I did have a virtual assistant for when projects started to stack up. And if things kept going as well as they were, I’d have the money to hire an associate in the next year. It was nice, starting over. None of my clients knew about the accident, or what I had lost because of it, and it was a relief not to worry about what I might have forgotten. I was all about the new memories now.
But while starting over was great, it hadn’t completely eliminated the anxiety about my memories. Especially the fragile ones I had only recently gotten back. I worried about going to bed one night and waking up with blank holes again. The pliancy of my memory only affording me so much stretch, like a vacuum cord that seemed to unwind longer than possible until the moment it snapped, ripping the plug out of the wall. The doctors assured me it was unlikely to happen now, losing more memories, unless I was to hit my head again. So I took precautions, just in case. I wore grippy-soled winter boots at the first sign of cold and kept a log of the best part of every day in a notebook in case anything were to happen my history would still exist in my own words.
Some days were harder than others, accepting what had transpired over the past year. But most days were better.
Interestingly enough I still had guilt when eating meat and had seriously flirted with vegetarianism a few times over the past couple of months. Jenny told me there’s an eighty-eight percent chance I’ll be vegan by Christmas, and she might be right even if I would desperately miss bacon. I still cannot recall my parents telling me the first time they’d split up, or that I had been ready to fire Brooke the week I had my accident, or how I cheated on Daniel with a random guy who ended having no place in my future but was quite important to ending ours. But none of it mattered anymore because of what I did remember.
I may not be able to recollect falling in love with Matt the first time, but I remember everything about the second time it happened. I can’t explain why the memory of Matt’s proposal sneaked back into what I’m calling my “lost years,” but I’m grateful it did. Because while little else of our relationship was retrievable, that became enough. It was the pivot point, and the foundation onto which we would build. It was the memory that single-handedly brought us to the moment under the rain-splattered umbrella on our wedding day, when a huge gust of wind nearly turned it inside out and Matt whooped as he grabbed for the umbrella, saying the weather was obviously sending us a sign.
This is our real Gone with the Wind moment, he added. To which I whispered back, because I didn’t want the minister to know we were talking when we were supposed to be listening, preparing for our vows, Like, the movie? He laughed then, kissed me even though the minister hadn’t yet told us we could, and a few guests clapped enthusiastically, thinking it was the kiss.
No, not the movie. The Halloween costume that started it all. Remember?
I didn’t remember. It was lost along with so much else. But I knew it had happened—could practically picture every detail because it was one of Matt’s favorite stories to tell—and that was enough.
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