They Never Loved Me. Now I Don't Remember Them. novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Signing
On her eighteenth birthday Lydia is told she will forget everyone, signs her grandmother's house and trust over to her sister in front of forty guests, and walks out into the rain. She cannot remember her aunt's street, and a car stops beside her.
At two o'clock on my eighteenth birthday, our family doctor told me I would forget everyone I knew.
He said it gently, with one hand on my shoulder.
The disease was called progressive amnesia.
First the names would go, then the faces, and in a few years my own.
My mother sat beside me with my purse on her knees.
"We'll get through this together, sweetheart," she said.
She had already picked up the medicine.
In the car she shook two white capsules from a plain brown bottle into my palm and watched me swallow them dry.
"Never skip one," she said. "Not once. Promise me."
I promised.
At six, forty guests filled our dining room in Bay Village, Ohio, for my birthday dinner.
There was a cake with my name on it in blue icing.
My sister Britta, who my parents adopted when she was six, hugged me at the door and cried into my hair.
"I'll remember everything for both of us, Lyd," she said.
I believed her.
Halfway through the roast, a man at the far end of the table asked me how school was going.
He had lived next door to us my whole life.
I opened my mouth and could not find his name.
Nobody laughed, but nobody looked at their plates either.
My father stood up and tapped his glass.
"Lydia has something she wants to do tonight," he said. "Something very grown up."
My mother slid a folder in front of me and set a pen on top of it.
The doctor was sitting two chairs down, with his napkin still in his lap.
"Your grandmother's trust became yours at midnight," my mother said, loud enough for the whole room. "So did the lake house."
"I know, Mom. I thought we'd talk about it tomorrow."
"In a year you won't know that house," she said. "You won't know the trust or what it's for."
"Britta will take care of both. It's one less thing for you to carry."
Britta wiped her eyes and looked down at the tablecloth.
Her friend by the window had her phone up and was filming.
I turned the first page.
It was a deed. The lake house went to Britta, and every dollar of the trust went with it.
"This is Grandma Ruth's house," I said.
"It's a house," my mother said, still smiling for the guests. "Everyone is watching, Lydia. Don't make this harder on all of us."
I looked at my father.
He was studying his wine glass.
My hand was shaking when I signed, and the guests clapped.
They kept clapping while Britta kissed my cheek.
"You're so brave," she whispered. "Thank you."
My mother squeezed my shoulder and picked up the folder.
"Good girl. Your next dose is at nine."
As she lifted it, I saw the lawyer's stamp on the last page.
It was dated last Friday.
The doctor had told me about my illness that afternoon.
"Mom," I said. "Why was this notarized before I was diagnosed?"
"The doctor warned us weeks ago, honey," she said. "We moved everything up to spare you this exact worry."
She said it so smoothly that three guests nodded.
I stood up.
The chair scraped, and the whole room turned.
"Sit down," my father said, without looking up.
I walked to the mantel and took down the photograph of my grandmother holding me on the dock.
I took my coat from the hall.
I took the brown bottle out of my mother's purse, because it was the only thing I had that could keep me well.
"Let her go," my mother said behind me, in her kind voice. "She won't remember why she left by morning."
Somebody laughed, softly.
So I left.
The rain had started, and it came down hard on Lake Road.
I walked past the end of our street with my coat over my head.
My aunt Pearl lived in Vermilion, twenty miles west. She was the only person in my family who still called me on my birthday.
She had called that morning.
I stopped under a streetlight and tried to picture her house.
I knew her street had a name.
I had written it on the back of my hand before dinner, in case, and the rain had washed it off.
I stood there and could not remember it.
Headlights swung across the wet road and stopped behind me.
A car door opened.
"Hey," a man called. "You can't walk out here. Are you okay?"
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