Chapter 25

Winter Carnival, 2010

She standsin the ankle-deep snow and stares into the flickering flame of the firepit. A circle of giggling children grip long sticks with marshmallows stuck on their ends, turning them over the fire. Although she doesn’t know who she is or how she got here, she knows she’s at Winter Carnival on the Plains of Abraham. She lifts her Bonhomme’s Effigy, the all-access pass to the carnival, and studies the cheerful snowman mascot. She tries to remember purchasing it, but she can’t.

Suddenly she sways, lightheaded, almost dizzy, and wonders when she last ate. She wanders away from the crowd gathered around the fire and toward the food stalls of the German Christmas Market. As she joins the queue at a stall selling roasted chestnuts, she fishes some money from her pocket.

A man shouts urgently, causing several heads to turn. She notes the desperation in his voice but doesn’t look in his direction. She inches forward as the line moves.

“Chloe! Chloe!”

The voice is louder now, and she glances toward the yelling. To her surprise, the man is staring directly at her. She freezes.

“Chloe, are you okay?”

He runs toward her, and she notices the baby nestled in a carrier against his chest.

She looks behind her, but there’s no one there. He’s definitely talking to her. Is her name Chloe? She considers the question. No. That feels wrong.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

“Chloe,” he insists. “It’s me. It’s Bastian. We’ve been looking for you for days.”

She frowns at him. “I don’t know you.”

“I’m your husband.” He gapes at her.

“No, that’s not right.”

It can’t be. She studies his face. Surely she’d know her husband. Wouldn’t she?

The baby bouncing against his chest gurgles and reaches its arms out to her.

“Emilie wants you.” His voice cracks with emotion.

He lifts the child from the carrier and thrusts it toward her. She gives him a wide-eyed look and takes a step back, shaking her head no.

As the child’s blue eyes lock on her face and the gurgle turns into a coo of delight, she gasps, “Emilie?”

Chloe’s back.

She throws Bastian a bewildered, terrified look. “What happened?”

Later, after she’s checked over by a physician who finds no physical issues, Chloe is referred to a neuropsychiatrist specializing in amnesia. She sits picking at the fabric of her pants while she waits to hear what is wrong with her. Beside her, Bastian clenches her hand tightly. He’s been holding her hand in public ever since he found her at the Winter Carnival, as if he’s afraid she’ll vanish again if he lets go. Emilie is spending the weekend in the countryside with his family so that he and Chloe can focus on whatever news Dr. Marchand is about to give them.

The doctor walks into her office and smiles brightly. She has a warm, comforting appearance, soft and gentle. She wears her long silver hair in loose curls and favors flowing clothing in pastel colors. Her exterior belies the fact that she is one of the top experts in the field in all of Canada, if not North America. Bastian pulled a lot of strings, relying on the connections of long-time restaurant regulars, to get Chloe an appointment with her so quickly.

Dr. Marchand shakes both their hands and then pulls a chair around to sit beside them instead of positioning herself behind the desk like an authority. Chloe appreciates it instantly. No matter what news this woman is going to give her, she’ll deliver it with respect and grace.

“You experienced an episode of dissociative amnesia, formerly called psychogenic amnesia,” the doctor explains. “It’s a fairly rare condition. A person will sometimes travel long distances, engaging in tasks of daily living, such as taking public transportation, handling monetary transactions, or cooking meals. They can remember how to do these tasks, similar to how you purchased a pass to the winter festival and knew you loved roasted chestnuts, but they have no memory of their own identity.”

“What causes it?”

“It sometimes occurs in response to trauma or tremendous stress.”

“Like Emilie’s accident?” Bastian asks.

“Yes, absolutely. An event such as that could cause extreme stress in a new mother.”

Chloe doesn’t remember Emilie falling, but Bastian has told her and Dr. Marchand that Emilie tumbled from her seat and struck her head on the kitchen floor, and Chloe ran. Bastian didn’t realize at first that she’d taken off. He thought she’d gone to call a doctor or a neighbor for help. When she didn’t come back immediately, he tended first to their baby, as any parent would. Only after the doctors had assured him that Emilie was perfectly fine—she would have an egg on her forehead, and it wouldn’t be the last—did he focus on the fact that his wife was missing.

She didn’t return that evening. She didn’t answer her cell phone. Late that night, beside himself with worry, Bastian asked Madam Bouchard next door to stay with the baby while he combed the streets one by one, looking for Chloe. He imagined the worst: that she’d been hit by a car, mugged, raped, or murdered. When he didn’t find her, he called every friend he could think of, then the hospitals. Nobody had seen her.

He’d gone to the police, who advised him to give it a few days because she was an adult. He spent two days, distraught, pacing the floors of the house with Emilie. Then, desperate to do something, go somewhere, he remembered the winter festival. Craving fresh air, he bundled Emilie up in her warmest clothes and walked over to the market stalls. When the smoky, slightly sweet scent of roasted chestnuts filled his nose, he stopped to inhale the aroma of his wife’s favorite treat. That’s when he saw her queued up at the stall.

He’s told Dr. Marchand how Chloe reacted to him and says if the baby hadn’t reached for her, she might not have remembered her life with them. Privately, Chloe thinks he’s right, and it terrifies her.

“Will it happen again?” Chloe asks now.

“It could. It sometimes does,” Dr. Marchand replies. “There’s a woman in the United States, a famous case, who experienced at least two well-documented episodes.”

“At least two?” Bastian asks.

“She went missing a third time during a hurricane and hasn’t been found, so it’s unclear whether she’s out there somewhere unaware of who she is or if she was a victim of the storm.”

They process this information in silence for a moment, then Chloe asks a question that’s been haunting her since Bastian found her at the winter festival. “Could it have happened to me before?”

“You mean when you turned up in Montreal?” the doctor asks softly.

“Yes. I don’t remember anything before that.”

“It’s possible. I can’t say with any certainty because I didn’t examine you then. And the notes in your chart are, well, they’re a product of their time.”

Chloe shakes her head. “What does that mean?”

“The program’s priority was finding you a safe, caring home. Nobody was looking for a missing girl who matched your description. Reading between the lines, they seemed to think you were running from a bad family situation and chose to believe you didn’t know who you were. But, in truth, they thought you were afraid to disclose your identity, not that you’d genuinely lost it. So they didn’t do the testing I would have done. I’m sorry, I can’t be more definitive.”

Bastian seems impatient with this focus on the past. “But what can we do going forward? How can we prevent this from happening in the future? Emilie and I can’t lose Chloe.”

The break in his voice pulls Chloe away from her musings about the past, too. He’s right. What’s done is done. She has a life—a beautiful life—here and now with him and Emilie. She needs to protect it at all costs.

Dr. Marchand leans forward in her chair and extends both hands. Chloe and Bastian exchange a look before each taking one of the woman’s outstretched hands in theirs. Her skin is warm and soft.

“I can’t promise it won’t happen again,” she tells them, giving their hands a quick squeeze. “The most important thing you can do, Chloe, is to talk to your husband when you feel yourself becoming stressed—before it spirals out of control. Right now, during this postpartum period, you’re particularly vulnerable. Be mindful of that. And above all, you both must do whatever you can to ensure Chloe feels safe and secure.”