Walking a little faster, I stumbled and tripped when the tip of my shoe caught on a root because I was too busy thinking about what would happen if Ash had one of the other types of amnesia, I got home and he no longer recognized me. Or if he’d had a stroke after all, a precursor to a bigger, more damaging and potentially fatal one. Getting outside was supposed to help my focus. Instead it was turning my brain to mush, making it a soupy mess of terrifying questions, with not nearly enough answers.

When the first raindrop smacked me on the forehead, I cursed myself for coming out in the first place. Ash had been sound asleep, but what if he woke up while I was gone, and ran off again? I was freaking out now, cutting through the forest before bursting out onto the main road, running full throttle, my lungs burning. It took me another few minutes to get back to the house, and well before I ran up the driveway, I saw Keenan’s bright red Subaru WRX parked askew.

“Oh, hell, no,” I wheezed, leaping up the porch steps, and as my fingers touched the door handle, I could already hear the shouting.

“...because you sure as shit should crawl back underneath it,” Keenan yelled. Ash must have said something in reply because Keenan raised his voice again. “Should I take that as a confession, you goddamn piece of—”

I rushed through the door and into the kitchen, where Ash was dressed in jeans and an old sweater, his hair sticking out at different angles. He stood behind the kitchen table as a red-faced Keenan, who held his car keys tightly in his fist, moved in on him.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I roared, and both of them spun around.

“I want answers,” Keenan said, turning back to Ash. “And you’re going to give—”

“I told you already, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ash reached for the back of a chair, looking like he might collapse, his eyes darting from Keenan to me and back again.

“Get out.” I walked over and grabbed Keenan’s arm, but he shook me off. “I said get out. Leave. Now. I mean it. You don’t get to come here and mess with my brother.”

“Stepbrother. And I’ll do whatever the hell I want, Maya.”

“Not in my house. Why can’t you understand he’s lost his memory? Besides, Ash is—”

“Innocent?” He led out a pseudo-laugh. “Yeah, yeah. He had nothing to do with Celine or Kate, blah, blah, blah. It’s a load of horseshit. You know it, I know it, and—” he pointed to Ash “—so does he.”

I narrowed my eyes, took a step closer. “For the last time, the police cleared him. They never found anything implicating him in any way. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Because he’s inno—”