My Ex-Fiancé's Memory Game novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Proof of Life

Sam lays out everything about the kidnapping that never fit, Hazel names the memory tests she taught Carter over dinner, and Carter, who can't remember her, texts her by her pet name.

He told me to meet him at a diner on Richmond Street, under the El.

I got there at nine.

He was already in the back booth, too big for it, with a cup of coffee he wasn't drinking.

He stood up when he saw me.

Nobody had stood up for me in six weeks. They'd tilted their heads.

"Miss Forbes."

"Hazel," I said. "You counted my father's money with him. You can call me Hazel."

"Sam, then."

The waitress came over with a pot in one hand and called him "hon."

"Decaf for her," Sam said.

I stared at him.

"You look like a woman who drove here with her hands at ten and two," he said. "You don't need more help shaking."

"I'll have regular."

Sam put a manila folder on the table and kept his hand flat on top of it.

"You first," he said. "What'd you hear?"

So I told him.

The grill room. The four men. Ten more women. One every three days.

I took out my phone and played him the recording.

He listened to the whole thing with his eyes on the sugar dispenser.

When Carter got to the part about going down, Sam's jaw moved once.

"That proves he lied to you," he said when it ended. "It doesn't prove he took your father's money."

"I know."

"He never says kidnapping. He never says ransom. A lawyer plays that and calls it a cold-footed groom with a mean mouth."

"I know, Sam."

He looked up at me then.

His eyes were very blue and very tired.

"Okay," he said. "Then here's mine."

He opened the folder.

"I've done this fifteen years," he said. "Cops, then private. Real kidnappers are scared of one thing. Getting paid for a dead man."

He tapped a yellow pad covered in small square handwriting.

"So they prove he's alive. A photo with a newspaper. His voice saying something only you'd know. Every time."

"They never asked for one."

"Your father asked. Twice. They hung up on him."

He moved his finger down the page.

"The drop. A trash can under the Strawberry Mansion Bridge, two in the morning. You know how many people from out of town know that bridge exists?"

"Carter proposed to me on it."

Sam was quiet for a second.

"What's the third thing?"

"They called the landline."

"My father's?"

"The house phone in Chestnut Hill. It's unlisted. Your father uses his cell for everything. Who calls the landline?"

I knew the answer before he said it.

"Me," I said. "My aunt in Harrisburg. And Carter, because his phone was always dead."

Sam closed the folder.

"I told your father on day three it smelled wrong. The cops told me to go sell insurance. Then Carter turned up in Fishtown with dirt on his knees and the case was closed by lunch."

"And you just let it go?"

"I wrote it all down," he said. "Then I waited for somebody to call me."

I wrapped both hands around the mug.

"My turn," I said.

He sat back.

"I test memory," I said. "There's a list of fifteen words. You read it five times and see how many come back. There's a story about a woman who gets robbed. There's a drawing you copy, and then twenty minutes later you draw it again from nothing."

"Okay."

"I talked about all of it at dinner. For two years. What real amnesia looks like. What faking looks like. The mistakes fakers make, so they get caught."

I heard my own voice go thin.

"He'd pour me more wine and say, 'Tell me about the tricky ones.'"

Sam didn't say anything.

"I looked at his scores in June," I said. "They were perfect. Not perfect high. Perfect damaged. Exactly the shape I described. I cried in a bathroom because I thought it meant he was really hurt."

"It meant he was really listening."

"Yes."

The waitress came back and asked if we wanted pie.

"Two," Sam said, before I could answer.

"I'm not hungry," I said.

"It's not for hunger. It's for the waitress. She's been watching you like you might fall off the bench."

I almost laughed. It came out as a breath.

Then I said the other thing.

"I'm pregnant."

He didn't look at my stomach. He looked at my face.

"Carter's?"

"Seven weeks. I found out this morning. I was going to tell him today."

"Does he know?"

"No."

"Keep it that way as long as you can."

"Why?"

"Because right now he thinks your family is a bank he already robbed," Sam said. "A baby is a bank he can keep."

The pie came. Cherry. Sam pushed one plate across to me.

"So what do you want?" he asked. "Say it plain. I work better with a job."

I thought about my father at the dining table with his reading glasses on, counting stacks of hundreds.

"I want to prove it," I said. "I want my father's money back. And I want this baby nowhere near the Appletons."

He nodded once.

"Then we do it quiet," he said. "No police yet. They closed it once. They'll be embarrassed. Embarrassed cops are slow."

I picked up my fork.

The pie was terrible. Canned filling. I ate the whole thing.

My phone buzzed on the table between us.

Sam glanced at it, then at me.

I turned it over.

A text, 10:41 p.m. From the man who didn't know my name.

"Hazy. Please. You misheard. Let me come over and explain."

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