I meant when he’d saved me from myself.
I never expected to fall in love with King. My captor, my tormentor, my lover, my friend, my world.
But I did.
The boy on my lap stirred, his little breaths warmed my skin through my shirt where his nose was pressed tightly against my stomach.
I had questions. So many questions that my head was ringing worse than when Nikki had shot me. I wanted to shout them out rapidly like rounds from a machine gun, but I didn’t want to scare the chubby cheeked boy whose eyelashes touched his cheeks while he slept. I ran my fingers through his soft curly hair and he sighed with sleepy contentment.
“I can’t believe it’s you, Ray. I thought I would never see you again and here you are sitting next to me. Do you remember me yet? Or him? Or anything?” Tanner asked tentatively. My eyes darted up to meet the only thing I remembered from my past life; the beautiful chestnut colored eyes from my dream.
I shook my head. “Just your eyes. I dreamt about them. Once,” I admitted.
“So you dreamt about me huh?” Tanner wagged his eyebrows suggestively. He nudged my shoulder with his elbow and I shifted away from the unfamiliar contact. “Sorry,” he said when he saw me stiffen. “Habit.”
“It’s okay,” I offered, although I wasn’t sure if it really was okay. “I need to ask you about him though.”
Tanner looked lovingly down at the boy. “Ask away.”
“I mean, how old is he? You said I’m eighteen. When did all this happen? How?”
“How?” Tanner laughed nervously. “Well, Ray, when a man and woman love each other…” He paused when he saw I wasn’t smiling. “Sorry. I’m so used to joking around with you. You’re kind of the only one who gets my jokes, or at least you used to.” Tanner ran his hand through his curls and sighed. He pulled at the stitching on the leather seat.
The car pulled to a stop in front large of a three-story house, with bright pink stucco. Tall twisting columns lined the front porch which was full of pink plastic flamingos and garden gnomes in various sizes. The long driveway was cut into lines that mimicked fans and was also painted the same garish shade of pink. The lawn was littered with more plastic flamingos. Concrete fountains, at least thirty, all in different styles were scattered around the yard.
“This is me,” Tanner said, opening the door. He picked the little boy off my lap and my heart constricted.
“Wait, where are you going?” I asked, suddenly feeling panicked.
“He’s had a long day. He used to spend most nights at your place but he’s been staying with me since you’ve been gone.” Tanner said. And although I didn’t’ remember the little boy I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that he wasn’t coming with me. Tanner must have sensed my disappointment, because he added, “But I promise, I will come by soon. Go and get settled in, then we’ll talk more.”
The senator emerged from the passenger seat.
“Wait!” I called out. Tanner turned back around. “What’s his name?” I pointed to the boy whose cheek was pressed up against Tanner’s shoulder, and although he had been jostled around quite a bit, he remained sound asleep.
Tanner smiled. “Samuel.”
My heart fell out of my chest.
Samuel.
Preppy’s name was Samuel.
“But we call him Sammy,” Tanner said.
“Tanner,” the senator said, dismissively. He took the seat next to me in the back. Instantly the contempt that had been temporarily put on the back burner for the sake of Sammy was back with a vengeance, and as we pulled back out onto the road, I launched my questions. “Why did you have King arrested?” I asked, unable to hide the bitterness in my voice. “He took me in. Gave me a place to stay. Before him, I was living on the streets, struggling to find protection, or food. My only friend was a homeless hooker who thought I was the pitiful one!”
The senator didn’t flinch hearing my tale of woe, nor did he seem affected in any way, for that matter. Instead, he adjusted a cufflink and clicked away on his phone. “Brantley King is a felon, a con man, and a murderer,” he stated, without looking up. “Whatever relationship you seem to think the two of you had was a farce. A barely legal one at that. I really was hoping that when he indicated that the two of you had been…intimate, that he was just baiting me, but I see now that he was indeed speaking the truth. That man came to me with the sole purpose of using you as a pawn to get what he wanted. Nothing more. He took advantage of you, a teenager, and tried to con me. Now he’s going where he belongs, and getting what he deserves, and that is the last I want to hear about that, young lady.”
“He just wanted his daughter back,” I argued, crossing my arms over my chest. He might’ve thought he effectively ended the conversation but tough shit.
“We don’t always get what we want,” the senator said flatly. His words echoed in my brain as if I’d heard him say them before. “Besides, I don’t know what kind of power he seemed to think a senator has. The most I could’ve done for him would’ve been to write him a letter of recommendation to the family court. Maybe make a call to Judge Fletcher if he’s still on the bench over there.”
“Then why did you make the deal!? Take me back,” I demanded. “I don’t even know you. Take me back!” I yelled reaching for the door, not caring that the car was back in motion and barreling down the road. I pushed on the handle and opened the door enough to see the blurring gravel road. The senator reached over and closed the door abruptly, clicking the lock shut.
“Ramie, don’t be ridiculous. There is nothing for you to go back to. And besides, do you really want to leave your son?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Fuck.
“Tanner said you told people I was in Paris so you wouldn’t be embarrassed by the fact that you had a runaway for a daughter. Don’t you think that instead of inventing lies, your time would have been better spent looking for me?” I asked with my hand still on the door. “If you were me, would you want to stay knowing that?”
The senator sighed. “We did look for you, Ramie. But we didn’t know about this memory business. We just thought when we hadn’t found you that you didn’t want to be found. And stop making this all about you. It isn’t just you who this debacle affected, so think about that before you go around hurling your accusations at people.”
“King didn’t abduct me. I want you to drop the charges. I don’t want him back in prison,” I stated, crossing my arms over my chest.
The senator narrowed his “I tell you what, visit with the specialist I’ve contacted. Make a real effort to assimilate back into your old life. Try to remember some things before you go and throw everything away to be the first lady of…Logan’s Beach.” He said Logan’s Beach like the entire place left a bad taste in his mouth. I opened my mouth to argue but he continued.
“Give it a month. A month of real effort toward your recovery. If after that time you still want to go back, I’ll drop the charges against him and have my driver drop you back off at his house with a letter of recommendation to the family court judge, which he can use for custody of his daughter. That’s the deal.” He straightened his tie. “And the only one I’m offering.”
“I don’t exactly trust your deals. Look what you did to King,” I spat.
“Ramie, he’s a felon! He’s got no voting rights for Christ’s sake. He’s a non-citizen as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t make deals with criminals. You’re my daughter.” He finally looked up from his phone. “I would never make you a promise I didn’t intend to keep.”
I didn’t trust him. Not one bit. He was a fucking politician after all. But what other choice did I have? He was right; there really was nothing to go back to. Then there was the nagging curiosity, which had never died down, reminding me that I really did want to find out who I really was. What my life was like before. “Okay,” I agreed. “But I have more questions. About me, about my—” The senator’s phone rang and once again he barked his greeting into the receiver, effectively putting an end to our conversation.
I’m not sure exactly what kind of relationship I’d had with my father, but I was beginning to feel that he wasn’t the cheering on the T-ball team, helping with my math homework type.
Within a few minutes after we’d dropped off Tanner and Sammy, the senator announced, “Here we are.” He placed his phone inside his jacket. Royal palm trees, which were at least twenty feet tall, lined both sides of the driveway. We came to a stop in the center of the U-shaped drive, right in front or a big southern style open porch with white railings.
I craned my neck up at the house. “You live here?”
“No, we live here,” the senator corrected. “You, your mother, myself, Sammy, and the housekeeper, Nadine. And when we I’m not here, I’m up in Tallahassee or D.C.”
The senator leaned over me and opened the door. He motioned for me to get out of the car. I had to shield my eyes from the rays of the sun burning through the separated palm fronds.