CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

While Tillie waited for Jon, she paced, wishing that she smoked so she'd have something to do. She'd smoked briefly in her early twenties to gain an aura of hipness she sorely lacked, but gave it up soon after. Instead, she rounded the studio: the living areas, the kitchen, one after the other, touching this canvas and that, stopping to look at the series to make sure she hadn't altered any of the others. Evidently, her alternate self only wanted to ruin her favorite. Whenever she passed it, she wanted to wail. It had been so perfect! A tribute to her mother!

She could paint it again, but it felt sullied now.

When Jon arrived, he was carrying Chinese takeout and bottles of good root beer. "I was fairly sure you hadn't eaten," he said.

"Wait." She realized the sky was full-on twilight. "What time is it?"

"Just after five. But I'm going to bet you haven't eaten since yesterday."

"True." She thought of Liam. Was he still coming over? She hadn't seen anything from him on her phone. A crest of disappointment rose, crashed into the confusion she felt over everything else, dissipated. Really, didn't she have enough going on without worrying about a guy?

Jon dropped the bag on her counter. "Show me the painting."

She gestured toward it. From this distance, she could see it wasn't objectively ruined. The dark bird was quite interesting, and details marked her as Tillie's creation—the jeweled tones in her eyes and rings, the sumptuous fabrics, the hint of elf in her ears.

"This is the painting of your mom?" He moved closer. "How did you do this in a day?"

"I don't know." Gooseflesh broke on her arms. "I don't remember it."

"It's really gorgeous work." He leaned in, looking at the brushstrokes, and then smiled. "Hey, I like the cat."

She hadn't even noticed it, but there it was, the white-and-tan-striped cat in the background. It hid beneath the leaves that had been transformed from roses to the enormous rhubarb leaves from the painting at the gallery.

Tears pricked her eyes, rising in response to an emotion she couldn't even identify.

Next to the cat was the child who had been tied up, too big for the land of the fey, now an ordinary-size girl, sitting cross-legged, hiding under the leaves.

She swallowed. "What is going on?"

Although he presented a frivolous front to the world, Jon was quite solid in practice. "Let's sit down. Tell me everything."

She grabbed the sheaf of papers she'd found that morning and shoved them toward him. "This is the other thing."

He sat on the couch, head bent over the death certificate. "I don't understand."

"Me, either." She sank down beside him. "I'm obviously not dead, though I did consider the Sixth Sense possibility for a minute."

He grinned. "You're definitely not dead."

"But what is this, then? I had a sister? Why did my mother give me the same name?"

He shook his head and looked at the certificate again. "It's really strange. Did you know she lived in LA?"

"No. I knew we'd lived in New Hampshire, because that's what my birth certificate said when I had to get a new passport." She frowned, recalling. "Remember, I applied so we could do our tour, and I had the expired passport but not the birth certificate. It took a couple of weeks to get it all straightened out."

"Yeah! We were freaking out because we were afraid it wouldn't get here in time."

Tillie nodded. "But nothing about LA."

He looked grave. "Maybe the episode was your brain trying to get you to remember something."

Something dark wiggled in her gut. "I'm scared."

"I get it." He straightened. "Did you look up the story online?"

"Yeah. It's all true. Nothing else to go on, though. The firestorm killed four people, one being Matilda. Who I think"—she stood, grabbed the photo of the child from the top of the box, and handed it to him—"is this little girl. Same picture."

"So sad," he said. "What a cutie."

Tillie folded her hands in her lap, as if she could make sense of things by creating order in her body.

"I'm not getting the timeline here," Jon said. "You saw the death certificate and the other articles, and looked them up, and then you started painting?"

"Yeah. I was trying to get out of my head."

"And then what? Blacked out?"

"Kind of? I don't know. It's not like passing out. I ..." She couldn't sit, and stood up to pace again. On the table were the original sketches of the cat. "It happened a couple of days ago, too. I drew this cat, over and over."

His face showed no expression as he leafed through the group of drawings, looked at the dark rendition of Tillie's mother. "Same cat."

"Yeah."

"But what happened, exactly?"

"I started painting, and then when I came back to myself, I had done all this work and had no memory of it."

His soft dark eyes were sober. "Do you think you might be having an emotional breakdown, maybe over your mom's death? You did take it pretty hard."

"I don't know!" she said with exasperation. "Not really. I took it hard because I loved her, and she was my mom, and I'm going to miss her terribly. That feels normal, and she died five months ago. This just started."

"What triggered it?"

She sank down beside him. "That weird painting at your show."

"Weird painting? One of mine?"

"No, no. It's in another part of the gallery, in the back. Did I not tell you about it?"

He frowned. "Not that I know of."

"Sorry." She told him the whole story, seeing the painting, feeling so weird, getting the aura, meeting Liam. "And then I got a migraine that night and just went to bed. I thought that all the weirdness was the headache."

He'd been around her long enough to understand how her migraines worked. She was luckily not a person who often suffered for days on end, but they could be intense while they lasted. "What did Liam do that night?"

"He got me into bed and slept on the couch."

"Seriously?" His eyebrows rose.

"Right?" She shook her head.

"So you haven't slept with him yet?"

"Oh, he came with me to my mom's farm yesterday and ... well." She shrugged. "He stayed last night."

He tilted his head ever so slightly, like a border collie trying to make sense of something. "He went with you to your mom's place?"

"Yeah. He had some free time, and I couldn't cancel the real estate person, so he offered to drive with me."

"Huh. That's different."

"I know. I really like him. It sucks that he lives so far away."

"Mm." He took her hand. "But maybe you've got enough going on without adding in a romance."

She looked down, taking strength from his grip. "You're right. Just a fling."

"Good girl." He slapped her thigh. "C'mon. Let's eat. Everything will be better after a meal. Then we can make a plan."

He'd brought her favorite black pepper tofu and white rice, which she gobbled in such a rush that she realized she'd barely eaten anything in twenty-four hours. "Maybe I'm hallucinating because I'm starving."

"You never eat right when you're painting hard." He slurped drunken noodles with chopsticks and eyed the work lined up around the studio. "I know you're worried about it, but the show is shaping up really well. And I know you had something else in mind with the fairy godmother hen or whatever that was, but this is better. Dark. More emotion."

Tillie saw what he meant—the other was more sentimental, her tribute to her earth-mother mom—but she was still sad.

And scared. "What do you think is happening?" she asked in a hushed voice.

"I don't know." He measured her for a long minute. "Maybe it's past-life memories."

She rolled her eyes.

"I mean, why not?"

She shook her head. "Or maybe I'm just—losing it."

"What if it's PTSD or something, from when you were little? You don't remember the head injury that gave you the scar, so maybe it's connected to that?"

She fingered the white streak. The idea had a ring of possibility. "Maybe."

The buzzer rang, and both of them startled a little.

"I forgot! It's Liam!" She realized she was still in her messy painting clothes, and her hair was tied in a knot at her nape. "Shit!" She touched her apron, then leaped up, heart suddenly buoyant, and pressed the speaker. "Hello?"

"It's Liam."

She glanced over her shoulder as she pressed the button to let him in. Jon set his meal down on the coffee table and delicately wiped his mouth, his fingers. "You look amazing, doll. Don't worry."

It was too late to make any changes, anyway. Tillie heard his footsteps ascending the stairs and opened the door with a swell of new-lover eagerness, her entire body springing forward the instant she saw him, his beautiful face, those long limbs. He caught her in a hug, a low sound in his throat. He smelled of aftershave and his skin, and as they crushed together, their arms looping hard around the other, she was wildly glad to kiss him.

"I missed you," he whispered.

"Me, too." She held on a moment longer, then released him. "Come in. My friend Jon is here. It's been ... a strange day." She realized, stricken, that she'd never made a reservation, and now here she was, eating. She turned toward him. "I didn't make a reservation. Jon brought takeout. Which we can share, or—"

Jon stood. "Or we can get some more." He held out his hand, which Liam accepted. "How you doing, man?"

"It's all good," Liam said, then looked between them. "Is everything all right?"

Tillie took a breath, then offered the truth. "Not really."

He paused. "Should I go?"

"No!" Tillie cried. She took his hand and brought him back to the couch. "Although you might be running away when you hear it all."

"No," he said. Rubbed her hand between his two. "Tell me."

So between them, Jon and Tillie recounted all of it—the death certificate, the weird painting.

He listened with care and quiet. Tillie found herself wanting to lean into him, let him put his arms around her. Cry, maybe. Saying it all aloud, she felt the weight of it.

"Are you willing to play with questions a bit?" he asked.

She looked at Jon. He shrugged.

"Sure," she said. "Why not?"

"Answer as fast as you can. Don't think."

She nodded.

"Who is the cat?"

"Sunny."

"Who is Sunny?"

"My imaginary friend from childhood."

"Was she a real person?"

"Maybe?"

"Why didn't your mother tell you about this history?"

"She has something to hide." A pinch twisted her heart. More quietly: "She has something to hide." She took a breath. "How am I going to find out what it is?"

"We'll figure it out," Liam said, and drew a line encompassing the three of them.

"We got you," Jon added. "Maybe you need to go back upstate and talk to some of her friends. See if anybody knows anything."

"That's a good idea."

"I'll go with. Tomorrow?" Jon said.

Tillie nodded.

"Tonight, you two do whatever. I've got plans."

"You didn't tell me that."

He kissed her cheek. "You didn't need to be alone. And now you aren't. I'll be by in the morning to pick you up. We can drive my car."

He drove a ridiculously beautiful old-school MG, on which he had done all the work.

"Yum. I'll love that."

After Jon left, Tillie realized that all she really wanted to do was take Liam directly to her bed. It might have been avoidance of the hard things she faced, but maybe it was just that he cast a spell over her whenever he arrived. "How hungry are you?"

His smile was slow. "Depends on the menu."

She wondered if she needed a shower after the long day at work, but he was already standing and taking her hand, and they stood by the bed in a bar of fading light and took off their clothes. She took her time, tracing the lines of poetry tattooed around his ribs, the tai chi symbol on his inner wrist. He kissed her throat and gently tugged her into the unmade tangle of the bed they'd only vacated this morning. They made love slowly and easily.

Lying together after, naked skin to naked skin, Liam rested a hand on her belly. "I have an idea if you want to try it, about your memory and all this."

"Ugh. I forgot about it."

He nodded. "You don't have to."

His eyes were as calm as a lake in midsummer. Tillie never trusted anybody, but she trusted him. "No, I have to keep working at this before I get an ulcer."

"Close your eyes," he said, and something shifted a little in his voice. It was softer, deeper, maybe. "Take a deep breath, and let yourself sink into the bed, heavy and comfortable."

She followed his instructions, taking pleasure in the weight of his hand on her body, his leg against her own. As she lay there, he pulled the comforter over them, and it gave her a sense of protection.

"Imagine the scene in the painting that started everything. Really see it, as many details as you can."

Easy enough, since she'd been obsessing.

"When you've got it clear, let it get as big as a room, and imagine that you can step into it."

Something quickened in her blood, but she did as she was told, feeling herself step into the world of the artist.

"Look around," he said quietly. "What do you see?"

A porch. A stone house, a step.

"No hurry. Take your time."

It allowed her a moment to breathe, and she felt a tension draining from her body, giving her space to look around. A road led to a deep forest of pines and mixed deciduous trees, as thick and mysterious as a fairy-tale wood. The word came to her clearly, a wood , not a forest .

A garden surrounded the stone cottage, a classic style, pinks and blues and fluttery leaves. Roses. She didn't know the names of the others spilling over a little stone fence, but the big plant along the porch came to her. Rhubarb. Cut it and eat it, sharp and piercing, or cook it in a pie pan with sugar. Crumble.

As she stood there, she saw that the weather was gray and misty, and she was wearing a thick sweater. She looked down at her body, touched the hand-knitted garment, the skirt beneath it. She saw rubber roots on her feet, muddy and battered, but she felt a swell of love for them. Puddles and mud.

A girl appeared. Her imaginary friend, Sunny, with dark hair and bright blue eyes and freckles on her nose. Where have you been? She asked. Let's play fairy tale.

Abruptly, Tillie fell from the vision into the bed, as sharply and abruptly as if she'd been torn out of that world. She fell hard, gasping, her eyes on the stained ceiling. She clutched Liam's hand fiercely, as if he alone would keep her from tumbling into a void.

"Easy," he said. "You're safe." He brushed hair from her brow. "You're safe."

She took in a breath, felt her body recognize where it was in time and space.

"Did that give you anything?"

"I think that the girl who died might be the imaginary friend I've had all my life. I call her Sunny. My mother used to tell me that I had talked about her from the time I could speak."

"Do you think she was imaginary?"

She fronted. "I don't know. She doesn't feel imaginary in that visualization." She called back the image. "I could see a lot of detail about her, about the house." She thought of the sweater she was wearing, the boots. "It doesn't seem like Southern California, either," she ventured. "Rainy. Colder."

"That's good."

Next to her thigh, his was bare and warm. His eyes were calm and beautiful. "Thank you," she said. "Bet you wished you'd found somebody easier to have a New York fling with."

He waited a beat, his thumb on her cheek. "Is this a fling?"

She looked at him, unsure of her answer.

"That's not what it feels like to me," he said.

A swoop of longing moved in her body, surging toward the places their bare skin touched. "No," she admitted, "but I know better."

"Do you? What do you know, Tillie?" He swung down to kiss her, looked at her mouth, kissed her again, lightly. She loved the feeling of his lips, as if it they were cut to fit hers. "That love is an illusion? That we're all jaded and no love is real?"

An unexpected sting of tears rose beneath her eyelids, and she looked away. "Maybe." But more than that, she thought, This just doesn't happen, not like this, some beautiful being dropping into your life, falling in love with you at first sight, and then it comes to something. It can't come to anything. "You live very far away."

"I do. They have invented this thing called planes."

She shook her head. "That sounds awful. Being with you like this and then—"

"What? Longing for each other?" He smiled, and she saw the slightly crooked canine tooth that made him seem so human. "Imagine what the reunions will be like."

Wishing she could believe, she turned into his chest, breathed in the smell of his skin, the crispness of hair against her forehead. "I just wish you didn't have to go so soon."

"Me, too."

"When is it?"

"My flight is Saturday morning, at seven a.m."

She wanted to ask him to stay a little longer, but that was a suggestion that should come from him. Instead, she curled closer. "Are you hungry?"

"I will be, but I'm not right now."

"Let's nap."

He gathered her close, and that was just what they did.