a passerby was nice enough to loan me theirs,” I say, winging it. “I wish I had the number so I could send a thank-you text.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t help you with that. It would be tough to go back through caller ID.”
Damn it, I think. “Understood.”
“Anything else I can be of assistance with?”
He sounds eager to be done, but I can’t let him go yet.
“Nothing specific, no. I . . . I just hope I wasn’t a bother. I didn’t go on and on about what was wrong, did I?”
“No, you were fine. And no worries, we’ve all been there. Did you figure out the deal with the doctor?”
My heart jerks.
“Doctor? I told you I needed one?”
“It sounded like you had an appointment with someone, but you weren’t sure of the exact time—I guess because you’d lost your phone. You were hoping Nicole would know, but she wasn’t here. I think you mentioned a Dr. Early or something.”
“Right, right,” I say.
Okay, I’ve got another piece of the puzzle. It seems as if I was especially eager, maybe even desperate, to meet with Erling, but due to whatever mental distress I was experiencing, I must have lost track of when my next appointment was, even though Dr. Erling said she talked to me at nine that day. As I’m processing this detail, Carson is interrupted by someone with a question, and I realize I need to let him go. I thank him for his help and sign off.
Just as I set the phone down, Hugh saunters back into the great room, dressed in jeans and his heather green V-neck sweater. After shoving up the sleeves, he pops the plastic lid off the rotisserie chicken, whose juicy, herby scent, usually so inviting, turns my stomach.
“Something up?” he asks, grabbing a pair of poultry scissors.
“Sort of. That was Carson, one of the managers at WorkSpace, and he’s just filled me in about one detail from Tuesday.”
“Really?”
“I apparently called the front desk that afternoon, sounding frazzled. I told him I’d lost my phone and had borrowed one from a stranger. I must have used it to look up the main number at WorkSpace before calling there.”
“Wow,” Hugh says, pausing. “What about your purse? Was that missing then, too?”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
“So you may have ended up separated from your purse and phone at two different times.”
“Right. And there’s something else.”
Hugh’s started to carve the chicken, but he pauses again, the scissors in midair. “Tell me.”
“According to Carson, I was trying to contact Nicole to see if I’d mentioned the time of my appointment with Erling.”
“So you were already having memory issues?”
“Or I was just really desperate to see her and didn’t have my phone to double-check my schedule.”
“Do you think you were anxious to meet with her because of our argument?”
“Possibly. But I’m starting to wonder if something really upsetting happened to me on Tuesday, midday, which would explain those bloody tissues I told you about. Maybe I lost my phone when this—this incident occurred, or right afterwards, possibly because I was rattled. And then I started to come unglued and was anxious to see Erling.”
Hugh nods his head lightly, pondering my words. He’s done cutting the chicken and pries off the lids from a couple of salads he’s bought.
“Okay, but if the dissociative state actually kicked in on Tuesday afternoon,” he says, “why don’t you recall anything from late Monday night or Tuesday morning?”
“From what I’ve learned, memory loss in this kind of situation can include a period of time before the traumatic event you experienced. I guess in the same way someone with a concussion might not remember events immediately leading up to the injury.”
“What do you think could have happened to you, Ally?”
“Maybe I was mugged?”
“But if you still had your purse later that day . . .”
“I could have struggled with the person but managed to save my purse. And gotten a nosebleed in the process.”
He smiles ruefully. “I don’t know whether your new theory makes me grateful or even more concerned.”
“What do you mean?”
“It scares me to think of you in a bad situation in the city somewhere, but I’m also relieved to know I might not have done anything to instigate this hell you’ve been going through.”
“You’ve been worried you caused this? Hugh, you can’t think like that. Even if the fight did make me unravel, I was part of it, too.”
“You’re giving me a pass on the famous ‘it-takes-two-to-tango’ grounds?”
I lean across the counter and lace my