“They say that the longer it takes the less likely it is it will.”

“That sucks.”

They finished about an hour later. When he asked her if he could take her out to dinner the next night, she fibbed and told him she already had plans, but they could talk after Saturday’s class. He wrote his private cell number on his business card and handed it to her.

“Needless to say, you’d probably never catch me at home. You can always call me on my cell.”

They settled the bill and he walked her to her car. “So, I guess I’ll see you at class?”

She nodded. “Yep.”

He extended his hand and she took it, briefly. His grip felt delicate, dry and soft, like shaking hands with a mannequin with balsa wood fingers. “Thanks for a wonderful lunch, Laura.”

He closed her door for her. She drove back to the shop feeling strange, like a play had occurred in front of her and she had a central role in it but didn’t know a single one of her lines.

And no one had cared.

She felt out of control. Nothing was going the way she thought it should, and why in heck was she even having lunch with this guy when she already told Rob she’d date him exclusively? Not to mention Kern was a total stranger to her.

It wasn’t a date though. Just lunch.

Yes, just lunch. So why had she hid it from Steve? Did she used to cheat on Rob?

That scared her. She pulled over before getting to the shop and sat tightly gripping the steering wheel. Maybe there was a good reason why her memory wouldn’t come back. Maybe there were parts of her life she didn’t want to recall. Stuff she never even told Shayla.

Maybe there were parts of her personality best left undisturbed in the dark abyss of her missing mind.

Something like that, she couldn’t imagine she’d even confide in Shayla about it had it happened.

What if her mind refused to release her past because it wasn’t a very good past? What if she’d led some sort of dark double life?

Do I even deserve Rob’s love?

If only she could find those journals.

Then again, maybe she was better off if she didn’t.

Laura continued on to the shop and managed to make it through the rest of the day despite her knotted stomach. Then she had a thought.

She’d forgotten about going to the warehouse. Forgot since Rob told her about it, that was.

She went to Steve. “Do you have a key or whatever to get into the warehouse?”

“No, but you have it on your key ring.” She brought it to him and he showed her which ones. “You feeling up to doing it?”

“Yeah. My ribs are fine. I need to find those journals.”

“You want me to take you over there?”

“Please.”

They left Sarah to close up the shop. Laura followed Steve in her truck. The warehouse complex was buried on a side street near Rotonda, a huge wagon wheel-shaped subdivision that looked deceptively easy to maneuver through on a map until you were actually inside it. He drove to the last building where the largest storage units were and took her key ring from her.

“Rob’s got a set, too, and there’s a spare set somewhere at your place. I don’t know where you keep them, though.”

He tried several padlock keys until he found the right ones. There were three units altogether, right next to each other, and she matched up her keys to the ones on his ring.

He opened all three doors for her. The units were jammed full with hundreds of boxes wedged in with walls of furniture. No wonder Rob hadn’t wanted her coming here before.

Laura’s breath left her. “Oh. My. Fucking. God. How am I supposed to sort through all of this?”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, you knew all this stuff when you put it in here. You numbered all the boxes and made a list with the contents so you could find stuff. If you’ll look, you’ll see they’re stacked in numerical order.”

They were. “I did?”

“Yep.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, good. Where’s the list?”

“I don’t know. Probably in your office at home.”

She felt her spirits sink again. There would be no quick search with a successful outcome. She wondered if she was impatient in her former life.

“No idea for sure, huh?”

“You were pretty methodical with things like this. You have a file somewhere with all your stuff in it like your will, business and insurance paperwork, things like that.”

As Laura thought about it, a light switched on in her brain. “You’re right, I do. I remember seeing it. It’s a red folder, the only red one. I didn’t go through it because it was in the front of the ‘morgue’ drawer. I guess I considered all my clippings important, too.”

“Every hurricane threat, that’s one of the first things you packed. It makes sense you’d put that folder in with them. To you, those clippings were important.”

Were. It almost sounded like she was dead and had just forgot to stop breathing. She’d even noticed more people taking about her in the past tense from before.

She mentally shook that thought off. “Okay, I’ll have to find it and come back and look later.”

“No problem.” He locked the doors and she followed him out to Placida Road before going their separate ways. Doogie had been very patient while they were at the warehouse, sitting quietly in the passenger seat.

She looked over at him. “Feel like coming back here tonight and helping me search?”

Just the tip of his tail wagged. Anything his mistress wanted, he wanted. Labs were willing to follow.

She dug her phone out, which was still on silent from lunch. She’d missed several calls from Rob throughout the day and he’d left her two voice mails.

In one way it comforted her. On the other hand it annoyed her for some reason. She wasn’t sure why.

Then she felt guilty. And that definitely annoyed her.

Was Rob controlling? Did he used to keep tabs on her every move?

Then again, he had good reason to be worried about her without Bill to keep an eye on her. Except she had the comforting weight of the 9mm in the holster against her back.

She couldn’t spend her life waiting for people to babysit her.

And if that’s what she needed to use to rebuild her life from the ground up, carrying a concealed weapon so she didn’t spend every spare moment focused on what might happen, she’d do it.

But first, she wanted to find that list before she did anything else. Back at the condo, she found it in the red folder in her desk. Also her will, business papers, insurance policies, and other important documents. She changed into jeans and an old T-shirt and called Rob.

“Hi. I was afraid you’d forgot me.”

She felt another twinge of guilt over lunch with Don Kern, and then anger and resentment for feeling guilty, and right on top of that guilt for feeling angry and resentful.

She suppressed a nervous laugh. “No, just had a busy day, that’s all.”

He sounded hesitant. “Did you want to have dinner or something tonight? Maybe go see a movie?”

“I’m sorry, but not tonight. I’ve got some boxes of stuff I want to sort through from the warehouse. I want to find the old journals.”

“Do you want any help?”

She gripped the phone tightly. He sounded hopeful, but she wanted to be alone. She didn’t know what she’d find in the journals, and if it wasn’t something good, she didn’t want Rob around.

“I’m not trying to blow you off, but I really want to do it by myself. I need to do it by myself.”

“Are you sure it’s okay to go over there alone?”

“I’m taking Doogie. And the gun. Steve already ran me over there earlier. It’s fine.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I understand.” He sounded like he didn’t understand, but was doing his best to give her the space she asked for.

She didn’t want to leave him sounding hurt. “Listen, tomorrow night, here, I cook dinner for you. It’s time to see if I can make something edible. Okay?”

His voice lightened. “That sounds good. What time?”

They agreed on a time and she hung up. Locating a flashlight, she leashed Doogie and grabbed her list.

The storage yard was open twenty-four hours and the manager lived in an apartment on the second floor of the office. Laura used another key to open the lock on the gate, and she locked it behind her, feeling a little more secure knowing a random stranger couldn’t get in.

Her ribs didn’t protest too much when she opened the door to the third storage unit, where her list indicated the boxes were located. She found a light switch and two sets of fluorescent four-bangers flickered to life. It wasn’t as bright as she would’ve liked, but it was light enough to see. The list indicated boxes seventy-six through seventy-eight were her journals.

She searched through the stacks and realized the boxes she needed were buried in a back corner. It took her nearly an hour to unbury them, and she ripped them open.

Even the journals were numbered. Starting in her junior high years and going all the way until the computer journals started. From the number and the short date range each one contained, she wondered where the newer ones were. Based on everything she’d seen, she journaled nearly every day, even if it was only a couple of sentences about the weather or what she ate. It had been an ingrained habit for years.

It didn’t make sense she would stop.

But where did I put the damn things? She didn’t have time to think about it. It was almost dark and she wanted to get home. The three large boxes fit in the backseat of the truck. She locked the unit and loaded Doogie. A quick shower to rinse off the sweat and grime, then she spread out on the living room floor in an oversized T-shirt with a cup of hot tea and Doogie by her side.