“Marshall.” I said it aloud. The name had bubbled up unbidden from the recesses of my mind, and I clapped my hands together.

“Oh, good job, brain,” I said, giving myself a congratulatory pat on the noggin.

It had been like this for weeks. Bits and bobbles. Flashes and flurries. All of them rising to the surface and then slowly coming into focus. I was nowhere near having a complete memory of my past, but I’d made definite progress. It was more like feeling my way through fog now, rather than pitch darkness.

Evan had just gotten home from a work site, and I ran downstairs to double check, even though I was sure I was right.

“Good evening to you, Evan Marshall Gaines.” I lifted a coy shoulder to him as he hung up his hard hat.

“Did you remember that on your own?” he asked.

“I did indeed.”

“Hey, now. That calls for a celebratory pizza.” He waved to the box that he’d already laid on the table. He opened it up and handed us each a slice, holding his up in a toast. “To my middle name.”

“I solemnly swear that I won’t use it for scolding.” I held mine up as well.

“Did you remember it from our wedding vows?”

I couldn’t help but note the tinge of hope in his voice. I was sorry to disappoint him.

“Nope. It was kind of boring really. I had a memory of filling out paperwork.”

“Wedding license?”

“No, it wasn’t that.” I wasn’t sure how I knew that fact, but I did. If there was anything I could say about the recovery process from amnesia, it had given me a newfound respect for the intricacies of the human brain. Plus, I’d learned to trust my gut.

Sometimes, details came back to me in rapid succession, like waves crashing one after another on the shore. Other times, it was like deep sea fishing with a flimsy pole.

“I don’t know what else I’d be filling out with your full name, though. Maybe insurance?”

“Yeah, maybe.” He bit off another mouthful, still smiling, but his enthusiasm had obviously waned.

I didn’t expect him to throw a ticker tape parade every time I recalled a fact, but I was flummoxed at his reaction or lack thereof. If anything, he seemed worried. True, my gains had been slow. But progress was progress.

“Aren’t you happy?” I asked.

“Of course. I . . . of course, sweetie.”

“I’ll remember our wedding at some point. I can feel it.”

“Oh, no. I didn’t mean that I was disappointed that you hadn’t. I just . . .” His voice trailed off. And there it was again. That glass wall.

* * *

The next morning, Evan got up early as usual. He was finishing up paperwork in his office and preparing to leave for a work site as I walked down the hall.

I was sore from the previous night’s festivities. The condom stock had been replenished more than once in the last month. Although I still found it strange that Evan preferred condoms to my diaphragm. I’d never heard of a guy who would willingly choose those of the two options. Of course, I’d also never heard of a guy who had the self-control to pull out. Every. Freaking. Time.

It seemed like overkill with the condom. I hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask him about it, though.

We crossed paths as he was exiting the office. He was tucking a rolled-up blueprint into a tube and stuck it in the corner on his way out.

His eyes were puffy and bloodshot, ringed with moisture.

“Oh, hey,” he said. He pointed to his face. “I should probably grab a Claritin on my way out.”

Allergies, my ass.

But I nodded in agreement and gave him a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the butt as he walked out to his truck.

Then I deadbolted the door and scrambled back into his office.

Yes, I was totally invading his privacy.

Yes, I made Nancy Drew look like the CIA’s finest.

But I was getting to the bottom of this once and for all. My husband was keeping something from me. I knew it.

I started with the tube he’d put down. There was only one blueprint in it, and I unfurled it on his drafting table. It was . . . a tree. No. Some kind of bunk bed or . . . a tree fort? It was intricate and I could tell it would be something interesting. Something . . something that meant absolutely nothing to me.

So maybe that wasn’t what had gotten him crying. Then what?

I looked over his shelves. Pictures from our wedding, photos of him growing up with his brother and sister, family vacations. One of us standing in front of the house, holding up a “Sold” sign. Books on woodworking. An old soccer trophy.

No. No, it wasn’t any of these. Again with learning to trust my gut, I just couldn’t see him breaking down over taking second place in his junior year state finals soccer tourney.

I was back to the question of, “Then what?”

I sat down at his desk and rifled through the drawers. Mostly client files and invoices. I felt around at the back to make sure there weren’t any false-bottomed drawers. Nada.

I pushed myself back from the desk.

Get a grip, woman.

There was no reason to believe that he was doing anything sinister or unethical. Certainly not cheating on me or something like that.

And then I noticed a slender top drawer, barely noticeable. It wouldn’t hold anything thicker than a pencil. But it had a keyhole.

I tugged on it.

Locked.

The key wasn’t anywhere in the desk. I’d already sifted through all of the other drawers. It wasn’t on his keychain. All he kept on that were our car keys and a house key. I looked over the shelves. Nothing there.

Okay, I was officially being paranoid. And an idiot.

I had an amazing husband. Attentive, kind, loving. One who I still occasionally had to pinch myself over, to make sure the life we’d built was real. I looked up at his shelves again.

One who surrounded himself with pictures of us. Of me. One who loved the same geeky movies that I did and tried really hard to stay awake during Jane Austen movies. One who kept second place soccer trophies from high school.

Wait.

Who the hell would display a second place soccer trophy from high school?

I picked it up and looked closely at the inscription. It didn’t list his home state of Tennessee. Or any state, for that matter. It didn’t have his name on it or the name of a school. The top was cheap plastic, but the bottom was oddly heavy. I shook it.

It rattled.

Then I carefully unscrewed the bottom, and objects clattered out. There was a key for a safety deposit box, a few rings that looked like they might be family heirlooms, and . . . a small key.

This was it. The moment of truth. Was I going to be that woman? The snooping, suspicious, meddling type?

Hell, yeah, I was.

I stuck the key in the lock.

“All right. Let’s see what we have.”

“What are you doing?”

I screamed and dropped the key, whirling around to face my best friend.

“What are you doing?” I said. “You almost gave me a heart attack, Jen.”

She handed me one of the two lattes she was holding.

“Amnesia and a heart attack? Sounds like you’re gunning for a full-blown Lifetime movie, Annie.”

“I repeat, what are you doing in my house?” Unannounced.

“Chill out. I’m bringing you coffee.” She handed one over, her eyebrow quirked up. “I rang the doorbell, but you didn’t answer, so I let myself in.”

“I didn’t hear a doorbell.”

“Maybe it’s broken. Too bad you don’t have a hot husband who’s good with his hands to fix it for you. Or maybe he’s figured out better things to do with those hands.”

“And why do you have a key to our house again?” I asked, pinching the crease of my eyebrows.

“Evan gave me a copy. He wanted to make sure someone else close by had one in case of an emergency.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for the coffee, not that I usually think of coffee as an emergency.”

“It is when you don’t answer the door. I was two seconds away from calling Evan to ask him where you were.”

My breath caught in my throat, imagining how awful it would have been if it had been him and not Jen who had walked in just now. How would I have explained this intrusion of his personal space?

“Now back to the original question,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m . . . invading my spouse’s privacy.”

“And does that strike you as a particularly healthy exercise?”

“No.”

“Why are you invading his privacy then?”

“Because” —I put my hands on my hips and stared up at the ceiling—“does it seem like maybe he’s hiding something from me?”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . honestly, I don’t know. Not anything terrible. But something hard or hurtful or . . . I don’t know.”

Jen just stood there, staring at me. She no longer looked put-out. More pitying.

“What?” I said. “Say something.”

“I think . . . I think that’s a question you need to ask Evan.”