I Woke Up Married to My Worst Enemy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Doctor and the Casserole

A doctor says ten years are gone. Selena arrives with a casserole and a spare key and shows Hattie a text from her own phone: Done with him. After Founders' Day I'm filing.

The doctor at Marlow General held up three fingers and asked me what year it was.

I told her. She wrote something down.

I told her again, slower. She wrote more.

"It's ten years later than that," she said. "You have a gap in your memory that starts the spring you were eighteen."

"That's not a thing," I said. "That's a plot."

"It's called retrograde amnesia. Your scan is clean. It may come back in a week, or in a month, or in pieces. Or not."

"Which one is likely?"

"I'd say you should get comfortable."

Gus stood in the doorway with his hands in his apron pocket and said nothing.

I made him show me his driver's license. Then the date on the hospital's wall calendar. Then the date on three newspapers in the waiting room.

All three agreed with the doctor.

I wrote in my notebook: Doctor, 1 appointment (owe nothing, they billed Gus).

Then I crossed out the second part, because I didn't know who would pay the bill.

At home, a woman was sitting on the front porch swing with a casserole dish on her knees.

She stood up so quickly the swing hit the railing.

"Hattie," she said. "Oh, honey."

She had a glossy dark bob and a pearl bracelet, and I knew her immediately.

"Selena," I said, and relief nearly knocked me over.

"Tenth grade. Locker thirty-one. I gave you half my Pop-Tart on the first day." Her eyes filled. "Oh my God. You remember me."

"You're the only one in this whole town who looks the way she should."

Selena hugged me hard.

Behind her, Gus unlocked the front door and held it open.

"I made the potato kind," Selena said. "The one you like. It's got the crispy things on top."

"I like the crispy things?"

"You love the crispy things."

I wrote it down. Selena: 1 casserole.

"Hattie, you don't have to write that," Gus said.

"I'm not doing it for you."

Inside, I walked through the house once with my arms crossed.

Three locks hung on the front door. I checked all three.

I asked Gus for every key. He took them off his belt and put them in my hand.

"That's the whole ring," he said.

"There's a spare," I said. "There's always a spare."

"There's one in the garage."

"Where?"

"I'll show you."

"No. I'll find it."

I found the garage door and stood in front of a keypad on the wall.

I had no idea what the code was.

"It's your birthday," Selena said from the kitchen, and then added quickly, "I mean, Hattie, that's what most people use. I bet it's yours."

I punched in my birthday. The door lifted.

I walked in, found a coffee can on the shelf, and took out a key.

It was the spare. It had a little tag that said GARAGE, in my handwriting.

I put it in my back pocket and wrote it in the notebook. Spare key, 1, found by me.

When I came back, Gus was gone.

Selena was standing at the kitchen island alone, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

"He went to get Milo from his grandmother's," she said. "I told him I'd stay with you."

"Do you have a key to this house?"

"I'm your best friend," Selena said. "Of course I have a key."

"Give it to me."

She handed it over at once. She didn't even sigh.

"Good," I said, and put it with the others.

"I'd do the same," she said. "Honestly. I would."

She poured two glasses of water and sat down across from me.

Then she took my phone out of the pocket of my jacket and put it on the counter.

I hadn't known I had one.

It was thin and black and nothing like the flip phone I remembered.

"Put your thumb here," Selena said, and helped me.

It woke up. It had four hundred unread messages and a picture of Milo on the screen.

"You'll need this," she said. "Hattie, I have to tell you something, and I didn't want to, and I'm only telling you because you're my best friend."

"Go ahead."

"You didn't ask me to keep it a secret. But you were going to wait."

She opened a thread and slid the phone across to me.

The contact was named Selena. The messages were from me.

Two weeks old. One line.

Done with him. After Founders' Day I'm filing.

"Filing what?" I asked.

Selena put her hand on mine.

"Honey," she said, "I think you were going to leave him."

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