CHAPTER FOUR
THE Malibu apartment was known for its natural spotlights. It had been built with ninety-two plate-glass windows, strategically located for eastern, western, and overhead exposure so that no matter where you were, the sun placed you center stage. Alex stood in front of a wall of glass, beautifully backlit, running his thumb over the edge of an oval inlaid maple box. “You got this in Lyons, I think,” he said to Cassie. She was sitting in a love seat the color of a blush, and when he sank to the floor in front of her, grasping her hand, she couldn’t help but gasp. It was like having the character spring off the movie screen, suddenly flesh and blood.
It was an odd feeling, seeing a stranger a few feet in front of you and knowing that you had shared his bowl of cereal, warmed your feet against his calves, traded him your whispers in a soft, mussed bed.
Cassie wished she could throw herself into the charade, but she could not. Alex was the actor, not her, and she was painfully aware of the shifting zone that moved with her, blue and magnetic, forcing a distance between them even when they touched. Alex sighed. “You’re not going to start acting like I’m larger than life, are you?” he said. “You never did before.”
Cassie gave him a half-smile. She had been quiet on purpose, figuring the less she said, the less of a fool she’d make of herself. “This takes a little getting used to,” she said. She glanced at the white alenc¸on curtains, the pickled-wood coffee table, the pink marble sink of the wet bar.
Alex leaned close to brush a kiss against her forehead, and she couldn’t help it, she stiffened. Since Alex had claimed her at the station, he hadn’t hesitated to touch her. It was ridiculous, really, to feel as skittish as she would on a blind date, since Alex had said they’d been married for three whole years. Still, she couldn’t seem to see herself in the day-to-day routine of a marriage. Instead her mind kept flashing through images she knew she’d been fed by the media: Alex Rivers at a black-tie benefit for AIDS research, Alex Rivers accepting a Golden Globe award, Alex Rivers juggling coconuts during a break on the set of Robinson Crusoe.
Suddenly he stood up, bathed in sunlight, and Cassie lost track of her thoughts. She did not remember Alex, she did not feel comfortable around him, but she was fascinated by him. The silver shine of his eyes, the proud line of his jaw, the muscles corded in his neck, all called to her. She studied him as she would Michelangelo’s David: fluid, beautiful, but far too steeped in his own perfection to be singled out for her.
“It’s a good thing we came here,” Alex said. “If you’re overwhelmed by the apartment, I can’t imagine what you’d think of the house.”
On the way to the Malibu Colony, Alex had tried to jar Cassie’s memory with descriptions of their three homes: the house in Bel-Air, the apartment in Malibu, and the ranch just outside of Aspen, Colorado.
He said that they spent most of their time at the house, but that Cassie had always preferred the apartment because when they were married she’d redecorated it.
“What’s it like?” she had pressed, eager for some detail that would shake free her past.
Alex had just shrugged. “It’s little,” he said.
But when the Range Rover pulled up to the towering whitewashed building, Cassie had stared at the rounded edges, the princess’s turrets, the tiers and tiers. The last thing it was was little. “It looks like a castle,”
she had breathed, and Alex had thrown his arms around her. “That’s what you said the first time you saw it,” he’d said.
“Cassie?” She jumped now at the sound of her name. She hadn’t even heard the telephone ring, but Alex was holding the receiver, mouthpiece covered. “Herb says he won’t sleep until he sees that you’re all right.”
He took a step closer to her and laid his palm against her cheek, his eyes darkening. “Well, I don’t give a damn,” he said. “You’ve got to rest.”
He lifted the telephone to his ear. “No, Herb,” he said. “Five minutes is too long. No—”
Cassie stood up and put her hand on his arm. It was the first time she had actually reached out to touch Alex, instead of him touching her. He turned to her, the telephone forgotten, his eyes locked onto her own. “It’s okay,” she said quietly. “Tell him to come over. I’ll be fine.
I don’t want to rest.”
He murmured something into the telephone and she watched the way his lips formed the words. She waited for him to hang up, but he didn’t. He cupped his hand over the receiver again and moved closer, until they were separated by the space of a breath.
Cassie did not close her eyes as Alex kissed her. Her hand fell away from his arm to hang at her side, and she tasted faint traces of coffee and vanilla. When he pulled away, she was still leaning toward him, her eyes wide and waiting for the flood of memories she was certain would come.
But before that could happen, Alex gestured helplessly at the phone.
“I have to talk to him. I left Macbeth mid-scene, you know, to get you.
Poor Herb has to clean up the mess I made.” He ran his hand over her hair. “Why don’t you poke around a little? I promise, no more than five minutes.”
As Alex turned away and started rattling questions into the telephone, Cassie moved downstairs to the middle level of the apartment. She wondered if she should change her clothes before Herb arrived. She wondered who Herb was.
She started toward the master bedroom, where Alex had showed her, earlier, a closet full of silks and rainbow cottons that belonged to her.
She reached the arched hallway Alex had pulled her through before.
This time, she stopped to look at the pictures that hung against the stark white walls. There was one of Alex on the beach outside the apartment, buried up to his chest in sand. Of Cassie herself, grinning, her arm thrown casually around the shoulders of a skeleton. There was a picture of a dog she did not recognize, and one of Alex on a rearing horse. Finally came a photo of Cassie in bed, white sheets pulled just up to her breasts, a lazy smile across her flushed face.
She thought of the pressure of Alex’s kiss. She tried to imagine his hands tracing their way down her spine.
She looked at the picture again, and she wondered if Alex had taken it.
HERB SILVER WAS FIVE FEET TALL, BALD, WITH A HANDLEBAR mustache and pointed ears that made Cassie think of a Munchkin. He met Alex at the door of the apartment and shoved a greasy brown paper bag into his arms. “So, I figure it’s lunch and what’s a goy like you going to have in his kitchen?” His eyes darted behind Alex’s substantial height, searching for Cassie, pushing Alex aside as he began to rummage in the bag. “There’s pastrami on rye with sauerkraut for you, and three knishes and for God’s sake, don’t eat all the forshpeis by yourself this time. Ah!” He held out his arms to Cassie. “You were trying to give me my third heart attack?”
Herb Silver was Alex’s agent at CAA. He had moved to L.A. over twenty years earlier, but he told everyone that even though you could take Herb Silver out of Brooklyn, you couldn’t take Brooklyn out of Herb Silver. Cassie reached out and hugged him, his head coming under her chin.
Herb kissed her on the mouth. He ran his hands lightly down her arms as if he were checking for broken bones. “So, you’re fine?”
Cassie nodded, and Alex stepped forward, offering her half of a paperwrapped knish. “She’s perfect,” he said with a full mouth. Herb raised an eyebrow. “Does the girl have a voice of her own?”
“I’m fine,” Cassie said. “Really.” She looked from Alex to Herb and then back at Alex again, silently thanking the little man for forcing his entry this afternoon. With Herb added to the mix of her mind, Alex couldn’t help but seem more familiar.
Alex clapped an arm around Herb’s shoulders and led him upstairs to the dining room. “Cassie—can you get the plates? All right, Herb, tell me what Joe’s doing in Scotland.”
Cassie wandered into the kitchen, grateful for something to do.
Somehow the ordinary things, like finding plates, or cooking, or watching the shower steam up the bathroom, made her feel at home. Alex had seemed so much less threatening that morning when they were doing things together—him pouring juice and her finding the ice, standing side by side and chopping peppers for an omelette, picking up a stack of papers the wind had scattered to the floor. There was an intimacy to simple tasks, things everyone knew and everyone did, that formed a floor of false comfort and security beneath even two strangers.
Herb and Alex were talking in the dining room, a running river of syllables she caught from time to time. Cassie looked from one cabinet door to the next, wondering where the dishes were. She opened the door closest to her. Tablecloths, and a breadbasket. The door beside it revealed wineglasses.
“Joe’s filmed the six lousy scenes that don’t revolve around you—
the witches, and something or other with Banquo. He says Melanie did a tour de force with the hand-washing bit.” Herb watched Cassie open a third and fourth cabinet, bite her lip, and then check beneath the sink. “What’s with her head?” he whispered to Alex. “She’s still a little meshugge?”
Alex shrugged. “The doctor told her it’s going to take some time for her to remember who she is, and what the hell knocked her out.” His eyes followed Cassie as she finally opened the cabinet that held the dishes. “In the meantime, I figure I’ll just keep her near me. Safe.” He grinned at his agent. “Shit. If I can’t bring back her memory, I don’t know what can.”
Cassie brought back three plates and a stack of paper napkins. She hovered at the edge of the table, the outsider. “I could only find wineglasses,” she said.
Herb waved toward her chair. “Just sit. We can drink out of the bottles.” He unwrapped a sandwich with a colossal amount of meat jammed between the slices of bread, and Cassie watched his mouth contort to seal around the bulk of it. “I hope you’ve thanked your lovely wife, Alex, for the free PR.” Herb pinched Cassie’s cheek. “Nationwide coverage of the heartbroken Alex Rivers shielding his wife is exactly the kind of pre-Oscar coverage we need.” He held his sandwich inches from his mouth. “It can’t hurt all your buddies at AMPAS to see you being a family man before they cast their Best Actor and Best Director votes.
You know, I’m going to call Michaela this afternoon and see if we can’t milk this on Oprah. You can plug Taboo, maybe we can get Cassie on for the last five minutes—”
“No.” At that last word, Cassie jumped. Alex hadn’t spoken particularly loudly, but he’d slammed his fist on the table so forcefully that he had cracked one of the hand-painted tiles that made up its surface.
Cassie watched a tiny line of blood trickle down Alex’s wrist, but he did not bother to wipe it away. His eyes narrowed, and he leaned across the table toward Herb, upsetting a bottle of soda. “You will not exploit my wife on television to stack my odds for the Oscars.”
Herb blotted his mouth with a napkin, as if he were used to this kind of outburst every day. “Okay, okay,” he said.
Stunned, Cassie sat motionless, watching the clear stream of Sprite puddle onto the carpet. She looked up at Alex. “I don’t mind,” she said.
“If you think it will help you—”
“I said no,” Alex bellowed. His fingers, clenched white around the edge of the table, suddenly relaxed. “Cassie,” he said more softly. “The soda.”
Cassie pushed back her chair and flew into the kitchen. A dishcloth.
She spun around, intuitively opening the cabinet that housed a stack of simple folded cloths. She efficiently mopped up the tiles on the table and then, kneeling between Herb and Alex, she pressed the cloth to the carpet. She scrubbed for a full minute. In fact, she was so intent on cleaning the mess, she didn’t notice the breaking weight of the silence that settled on her shoulders, forcing her to bow her head, preventing her from looking up at Alex.
“There,” Cassie said to herself, breathless. She rocked back to her heels.
Alex pulled her up to sit on his lap. “Sorry, Herb,” he said sheepishly.
“You know how I get about her.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Herb picked up the second half of his sandwich and began methodically sifting through the corned beef, eliminating every other slice. “Goddamn cholesterol.”
Cassie watched him pile the meat on the side of his plate. She shifted uncomfortably, feeling Alex’s thighs beneath hers. She realized she was shaking, and almost as quickly, Alex banded his arms around her.
“Cold?” he whispered against the curve of her ear, and before she could answer, he tightened his embrace.
“I’m going to fly back to Scotland on Friday,” he said. “I’m taking Cassie with me.”
“You are?” Cassie said, turning in his arms to stare at him.
Herb nodded. “UCLA’s giving her a sabbatical?”
UCLA? Cassie struggled off Alex’s lap. “What does UCLA have to do with it?”
Herb smiled indulgently. “Alex probably didn’t get around to telling you yet. You teach there.”
“I thought I was an anthropologist.”
“You are,” Alex said. “You teach anthropology there.” He grinned Picture Perfect
39 at her. “Let me see if I’ve got it right this semester—you’re teaching Archaeological Field Training, The Australopithecines, and you’re heading a tutorial for Golden’s course on biology, society, and culture.”
Cassie rounded on him, furious, her anger eating away at the distance between them and making her forget her quiet role as an observer. How could he have neglected to mention this? She’d told him about the hand she’d found in the library the day before, the first clue to her identity.
And at the police station, when he’d confirmed her profession, she’d practically crowed. For someone so concerned with his own career, Alex should have understood. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? I’ve got to call someone there. I might have missed a class. They might have seen the paper—”
“Cassie,” Alex said, “calm down. I had Jennifer call to let them know you’re all right and to tell them you’d be taking off sick for a couple of weeks.”
“And who the hell is Jennifer?” Cassie yelled.
“My assistant,” Alex said. His voice, low and soothing, ran over her shoulders and her back. He came to stand in front of her, grasping her upper arms and forcing her to look into his eyes. “Take it easy,” he said.
“I only want you to get better.”
“I’m fine,” Cassie exploded. “I’m perfectly fine. I may not be able to remember who I am, Alex, but that doesn’t make me an invalid. I’d probably remember a lot more if you weren’t so intent on making all my decisions for me and—” Suddenly, her words dropped off. Alex’s voice had been soft as rain, and his arms were offered for comfort, but his fingers bit into her skin. Cassie looked down to a spot where a small smear of blood from the side of his injured hand had marked her shirt.
He was staring at her so intently he didn’t even know he was hurting her. Cassie felt her cheeks burn. She was accusing him, although she only knew half the facts. She had yelled at him, when all he’d done was try to help. She turned away from Alex, mortified that she had screamed like a banshee in front of him, in front of his agent. What had she been thinking? Of course she’d go to Scotland. She had the rest of her life to teach at UCLA.
Alex brushed her hair back from her forehead. He seemed to be waiting for her to come to her senses. “I’m sorry,” Cassie murmured. “I just wish you’d said something.” She pulled away from him, letting that uneasy shadow fall back into place between them. She smiled through her embarrassment at Herb, then walked onto the patio that led to the beach.
“Whew,” Herb said, standing and stretching his arms overhead. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cassie act like that.”
Alex watched his wife walk over the bright sand, the wind covering her footsteps almost as quickly as she made them. He saw her pick up a stone and throw it as far as she could, aiming to shatter the sun. “No,” he said quietly. “Neither have I.”
IT WAS THE SUMMER OF 1975 AND SHE AND CONNOR LAY ON THEIR backs on the floating dock, rubbing their toes against the rough wood, challenging each other to see who could stare longest at the burning sun. “You’re cheating,” she said. “I can see you squinting when you think I’m not looking.”
“Am not,” Connor said indignantly. “You just can’t think of any other way to win.”
She was twelve and she was with her best friend, and it was one of those absolutely perfect days on Moosehead Lake, one that moved so slowly you were sure you were stuck in a photograph until, wham, just like that, it was over too soon. “God,” she said. “I’m totally blind.”
“Me too,” said Connor. “All I see is black.”
“Truce?”
“Truce.” Cassie sat up, groping along the dock past her fishing pole and Connor’s to find the skinny bones of his wrist. She pulled until she knew he was sitting up too.
She had known Connor for as long as she could remember. He lived next door and his father worked at the bait and tackle shop in town.
They had stolen still-hot elephant-ear cookies from her parents’ bakery;
they had been in the same class since second grade; they had learned to sail together on a battered old Sunfish bought with their pooled paper route money. They had both forsworn marriage, each thinking that with the exception of the other, the opposite sex was a miserable lot; they talked constantly of running away to the Canadian border, just to see if they could actually do it. Their parents said they were each other’s flip side, inseparable, two halves of a whole. Cassie liked that idea a lot.
It made her think of a picture in their biology textbook of a hermit crab that lived with a sea anemone on its back. The sea anemone, carried by the crab, had a better chance of finding food, and the crab was better Picture Perfect
41 protected by the sea anemone’s sting and camouflage. Separate, they had to take their chances. Together, they had a whole new chance at survival.
Connor jumped to his feet. “Want to fish?”
“Again?” said Cassie. “No.”
“Want to race back?” He gestured toward the sliver of shore.
“What about our poles?”
Connor dropped to a crouch. “I could teach you to do a backward dive.”
For a second Cassie’s eyes gleamed—Connor could do anything when it came to diving. He’d tried to show her once or twice, but she hadn’t been a very good student. Still, a back dive.
“Okay,” she said. “What do I do?”
Connor positioned her beside him on the floating dock so that they stood with their backs to the water, their toes balanced right on the edge. Then he bent at the knees and executed a perfect dive, slicing the water with his hands before his body followed like the silver slip of a knife. He surfaced beside the dock and wiped mucus from his nose.
“You do it.”
Cassie sucked in her breath. She bent a little, hopped, and slipped on the wet dock. The only thing she remembered for a long while after that was the horrible sound her skull made as it cracked against something hard and unforgiving.
Connor was already in the water when she blacked out, and he slung an arm across her chest and scissor-kicked his way back to the shore.
He dragged her across the sand, Cassie’s heels cutting dark wet furrows in their wake.
When her eyes blinked open, something was blocking her view of the sun, something black and looming. Cassie. She rubbed her hand against the back of her head.
Connor was staring at her as if she’d come back from the dead, instead of just passed out for a minute or two. “You okay?” he said. “You know who I am?”
Cassie snorted; she couldn’t help it. As if she could ever forget Connor. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re my other half.”
Connor stared down at her, his face so white she knew she had given him a good scare. For a moment neither of them said a word. Connor found his voice first. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get some ice for you.”
They swung open the screen door of Cassie’s house, leaving damp footprints and a shadow of sand on their way into the kitchen. “It would have been a perfect dive,” Cassie tossed over her shoulder. “Next time, I think—” She stopped at the doorway so abruptly Connor slammed against her back, and unconsciously, she leaned toward him. Her mother was slumped across the kitchen floor, soaked in a pile of her own vomit.
Setting her lips in a tight line, Cassie knelt beside her mother with a wet dishrag, wiping her cheek and her mouth and the collar of her shirt. From the corner of her eye, she saw Connor silently retrieve the bottle of gin that had rolled underneath the radiator. Her mother was supposed to be at the bakery, since it was only three o’clock. There must have been another fight. Which meant she didn’t know when, or whether, to expect her father home.
“Ma?” Cassie whispered. “Ma, come on. Get up.” She looped her mother’s arm around her neck and hefted the dead weight in a dragging fireman’s carry. With Connor watching from the doorway, she draped her mother across the living room couch and covered her with a light quilt.
“Cass?” Her mother’s voice was soft and breathy, a dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe’s. She reached blindly to find her daughter’s hand. “My good girl.”
Cassie tucked her mother’s hand under the quilt and wandered back into the kitchen, wondering what she could scrounge up for dinner. If she had a meal set when—if—her father got home, then he wouldn’t get angry, and if he didn’t get angry her mother would be less likely to drink herself out cold again. She could make everything okay.
Connor stood in the kitchen packing ice into a plastic baggie. “Get over here,” he said. “The last thing you need is for your head to swell some more.”
She sat down on a chair and let Connor hold the pack to the curve of her neck. It wasn’t like Connor hadn’t seen this before—he knew everything about her—but even the first time, he had just offered his help and kept quiet. He hadn’t looked at her with those moon eyes that she knew meant pity.
Ice water ran down the hollow between Cassie’s shoulder blades, and in spite of Connor’s first aid, a headache was beginning to kick through Picture Perfect 43 her. She stared out the window at the floating dock, which looked so far away she could hardly believe she had been there minutes before.
Cassie sighed. The problem with absolutely perfect summer days was that they were bright bull’s-eye targets for something to go outright wrong.
SHE WOKE UP TO THE COOL STING OF ALOE BEING RUBBED ALONG her calves. “You’re going to pay for this later,” Alex said. “You’re so red it hurts me to look at you.”
Cassie jerked her leg away and tried to roll over, feeling uncomfortable with the intimate slip of Alex’s palms over her own skin. She winced at the pain when she tried to bend her knee. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
Alex glanced at his watch. “I didn’t mean to let you sleep for six hours, either,” he said. “After Herb left, I sort of got tied up on the phone.”
Cassie sat up and shifted degrees away from Alex. She watched the sun cut a ribbon across the ocean. An older woman came strolling down the beach with two weimaraners. “Alex!” she called, waving. “Cassie!
Are you feeling all right?”
Alex smiled at her. “She’s fine,” he yelled. “Have a nice walk, Ella.”
“Ella?” Cassie murmured. “Ella Whittaker?” Her eyes widened, trying to catch a glimpse of the statuesque woman who, fifty years back, had been a pinup girl and a screen legend. “The Ella Whittaker who starred in—”
“The Ella Whittaker who lives two doors down,” Alex said, grinning.
“God, you’ve got to get your memory back soon, or you’re going to scour the Colony asking for autographs.”
For several minutes he did not speak, and Cassie could feel the quiet settle around them. She wanted to say something to Alex, anything, but she didn’t know what sorts of things they talked about.
As she turned toward the violet line of the horizon, Alex’s voice curled over her, light as silk. “I was going to tell you about UCLA.
God, I never would have met you if you weren’t working there, so I owe them a lot. I really didn’t do it deliberately. I just forgot.” He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. His eyes were the sloe-black of smoke. “Forgive me?”
He’s acting. The thought rushed through Cassie’s mind so violently she pulled her hand free and turned away, shaking. How do I know when he’s acting?
“Cassie?”
She blinked at him, held in his gaze, and by bits and degrees she softened. She couldn’t think about UCLA, about who was wrong and who was right, not just now. He was hypnotizing her; she knew this as well as she knew that she had been made for him, as well as she knew that any doubts she had about Alex would mirror her own faulty judgment.
Cassie began to hear and feel the unexpected: a tangle of sweet Mexican violins, a wet wind from an everglade, the song of one hundred hearts beating. She thought to run, some instinct telling her this was the beginning of the end, but she could no sooner move than turn back time. The world as she knew it was falling away, and the only place left for her to go was toward Alex.
“Forgive me?” he repeated.
Cassie heard the sound of her own voice, heard the words she couldn’t remember thinking. “Of course,” she said. “Don’t I always?”
A wave rolled over Cassie’s ankles, frigid and authentic. The magic broke, and then it was just the two of them, she and Alex, and that was starting to seem all right. “I came prepared with a bribe,” Alex said. “I made it myself.” He was smiling at her, and she smiled back hesitantly, thinking, He understands. He knows he has me in the palm of his hand. He pulled up the front of his shirt to reveal a neatly wrapped square package tucked into the waist of his jeans. “Here.”
Cassie reached for the tinfoil, trying not to look at the smooth, sculptured muscles of his chest. She unwrapped it. “You made me Rice Krispies Marshmallow Treats? Are they my favorite?”
“No,” Alex laughed. “In fact, you hate marshmallows, but it’s the only thing I know how to cook and I thought for sure you’d remember that and take pity on me.” He tugged it out of her hand and took a bite. “I grew up on these,” he said, his mouth full.
Cassie turned to him, her eyes gleaming. “Alex,” she said. “Where did I grow up?” Maine. She knew even before he spoke the word what the answer would be. “And who was Connor?”
Alex’s eyes widened, so she could see the ring of gold around the Picture Perfect
45 edge of his irises. “Your best friend. How do you—did you remember all this?”
She grinned, excited. “I was dreaming the whole time I was asleep,”
she said. “I remembered a lot of things. Moosehead Lake, and Connor, and . . . and my mother. Do we ever go there? Do I talk to my parents a lot?”
Alex swallowed. “Your mom’s dead, and, well, when I first met you, you told me the reason you went to college in California was to get as far away from Maine as you possibly could.”
Cassie nodded, as if she had expected this. She wondered how much Alex knew about her parents. She wondered if she’d ever been brave enough to tell him. “Where are your parents?”
Alex rolled away from her, turning to face the ocean. She watched his profile set, and she had a sudden memory—this was the way he looked minutes before he filmed a scene, when his own personality drained away and was replaced by the character he was playing. “They’re in New Orleans,” Alex said. “We don’t see much of them, either.” He rubbed his palm against the back of his neck and closed his eyes. Cassie wondered what he was seeing, what made him curl into himself. To her surprise, a sharp ache stung her chest, and she knew right away she had felt it so that he wouldn’t have to. When Alex looked up at her, old ghosts still shifted in his eyes. “You really don’t remember me, do you?” he said quietly.
He was inches away but she could feel the line of heat between them as if they were touching. Cassie put her arms around him, shivering as she took in more of his pain. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”
THEY MADE POPCORN IN THE MICROWAVE FOR DINNER AND watched a Monty Python rerun on TV. They played War with a deck of cards they found buried in the broom closet. With a pillowcase draped on his head for a wimple, Alex performed Lady Macbeth’s “Out, damned spot!” speech, curtsying low when Cassie laughed and clapped.
Her eyes were shining when he jumped down from the cleared coffee table he’d used as a stage. She did not know Alex, but she liked him.
Surely that was more than most marriages survived on.
Alex pulled her to her feet. “Tired?”
Cassie nodded, letting him slip his arm around her waist. As they walked down the stairs to the bedroom, she wondered what the sleeping arrangements would be. They were married, so he could sleep anywhere he pleased; but she’d really only had one day to get reacquainted with him, and she supposed he might chivalrously offer to stay in a guest bedroom for the night. She wondered if she wanted him to.
At the door to the master bedroom, Alex stopped walking. Cassie stepped away from him, her arms pressed to her sides. She could not bring herself to look at Alex, whose questions, even in the silence, seemed to fill the hallway.
He tipped her chin up and kissed her gently. “Good night,” he said, and then he turned toward a guest room a few doors down.
Cassie watched him for a moment, then walked into the bedroom and closed the door. She pulled her shirt over her head and stepped out of her shorts, tossing them on the four-poster bed en route to the bathroom. Stripping off her underwear, she stood in front of the mirrors that lined an entire wall beside the sink. She cupped her hands over her breasts and frowned at the small swell of her stomach. She couldn’t imagine what had attracted Alex Rivers.
She picked up the bottles and jars that dotted the countertop—facial creams and exfoliating scrubs and clear astringents that seemed to belong in equal proportion to Alex and herself. She had already brushed her hair and washed her face when she realized there was no toothpaste.
There were two toothbrushes—one green, one blue—and she didn’t know which one was hers, either.
She checked in the cabinets that were recessed into the walls, but all she could find were pale peach towels and two thick terry cloth bathrobes. She wrapped one around herself, rubbing her hands down the heavy brushed cotton. Maybe Alex had toothpaste in his bathroom, and surely he’d want his toothbrush.
She didn’t know which room he had gone into, and she was about to knock on random doors when she heard him speaking a little farther down the hall. “Life’s but a walking shadow.” The door was ajar, and in the reflection of the bathroom mirror she saw Alex standing over the sink, his eyes hollow. “A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,” he murmured, his voice no louder than a whisper. “And then is heard no more.”
Stunned, Cassie clutched the toothbrushes in her hand and leaned against the doorframe to see a little better. This was not Alex. He had Picture Perfect
47 transformed himself into a man beaten, a man who saw his life for what it would become—a flash in someone else’s memory, then something forgotten.
Cassie fought back the urge to push the door open and wrap her own hope tight around him. She did not know this new stranger, she knew him even less than she knew Alex, but she understood that she had come to help.
She thought about what Alex had said at the police station, the terror in his voice: You don’t know what it was like to lose you. And she began to see that the famous Alex Rivers came undone just as easily as the next person.
Cassie took one step forward and Alex opened his eyes, seeing her reflection. He was Alex again, and smiling, but in the darker gradients of his eyes she could see the terror and the numbness of Macbeth. She wondered if he had always been like that, if every character became a tiny part of him. She knew that actors, in some part, had to draw and embellish on their own experience, and the thought of so much despair buried somewhere in Alex wrenched her. “Where do you get it? All that pain?”
He stared at her, shaken by her second sight. “From myself.”
She moved first, or maybe he did, but then he was holding her and opening the tie of the robe, running his hands up and down her sides.
The toothbrushes fell to the floor and Cassie wound her fingers in his hair, burying her face in the hollow of his shoulder. She inched her hands down his back as if she were feeding a seam, bunching the fabric of his shirt until her hands burned the skin at his waist.
He kissed hungrily, bumping them against walls and doorframes as he pushed his way back toward the master bedroom. Cassie fell against the bed, and he pulled apart the sides of her heavy robe, pinning her arms while the moon danced over her skin. His tongue traced the bend of her jaw, the curves below her breasts, the white lines of her thighs.
Cassie opened her eyes, dazed by the image of his body over hers.
Alex pressed his lips to her stomach. “Beautiful,” he said.
He’s acting.
As it had earlier that day, the thought came out of nowhere, and when it took root in her mind she began to struggle. But Alex’s weight was on her, pressing. He cradled her face in his hands and kissed her so honestly she thought she would shatter. And then she remembered the spell he had woven between them that afternoon; the emptiness that had opened like a raw wound in her own stomach when she heard him speak as Macbeth.
The moment they came together, Cassie understood why they belonged to each other. He filled her, and she took away his scars. Cassie wrapped her arms around Alex’s neck, surprised by the tears that leaked from the edges of her eyes. She turned her face to the open window, breathing in the sweet mix of herself and Alex and endless ocean.
She was drifting off to sleep when Alex’s voice slipped over her. “You don’t have to get your memory back, Cass. I know who you are.”
“Oh?” she said, smiling. She drew Alex’s arm around her. “Who am I?”
She felt Alex’s peace curl against her like a benediction. He pulled her back against his front, into the place where she just fit. “You’re my other half,” he said.