“Wait...are you the woman who called the other day?” She looked at me, eyebrows raised.

“Maya,” Jack said, sounding uncertain. “What the hell is going on?”

“Listen, I don’t know what you think you saw,” Maya said to me. “I already told you—”

“I know what I saw. It was Jack—” I turned to him “—or whoever the hell you are.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But I don’t know you.”

His words stopped me dead, but then I let out a cold, sharp laugh, taking a step back. “Is that honestly the best you can do? I’m Lily Reid, in case you’ve forgotten. What is this? I caught you in a massive lie and now you think you can spin an even bigger one in front of your wife to get out of it?”

“Maya’s not my wife,” he said, shaking his head, and I laughed again, but it came out as a shrill, practically neurotic sound.

“He’s telling the truth,” Maya said. “My brother—”

“Your brother?” I stared at Jack. “You never told me you had a sister.”

“Stepsister, technically,” he said. “And I don’t know why you keep calling me Jack. My name’s Ash. Asher Bennett.”

Undeterred and unconvinced, yet confused and angry about what he was doing, and why, I pulled out my phone and swiped through the photos. “You told me your name was Jack Smith. See?” I pushed the screen into his face, flicking through photo after photo. “This is us. Here. In this one. And this one. And this one. You and me. Jack and Lily. We live in Brookmount, in Maryland.”

Jack looked at Maya. “I got into the trailer in Maryland.”

“Ash...”

He ignored her, touched the screen with a fingertip before whispering, “Lily. Lily.”

The renewed uncertainty in his voice glued my lips together and I looked at him, I mean properly looked at him for the first time since I’d started my rant. His furrowed brow, his lost expression—it was as if he’d never seen me before. This wasn’t right, this wasn’t an act. Something was terribly wrong. I wanted to reach for him again and pull him close, but an invisible wall had now gone up between us, keeping me at even more of a distance, making me feel as if we were strangers.

“What happened to you?” I whispered.

“I woke up on a beach in Maryland,” he said.

“Yes, you went swimming one night after work. You never came back.”

“I didn’t know where I was,” he continued. “Or who I was. Only that I had to get to Maine. They think I have retrograde amnesia—”

“What? Oh, my God.”

“—and ever since I arrived here, Maya has helped me.”

I glanced at her. “You remembered your stepsister?”

“No...” he said quietly. “Someone called her, and Maya brought me home.”

“But your home is in Brookmount. With me,” I said.