#threegulls

There's no reason why that's the one thing she remembers for absolute certain. Why all the rest of her memories are fragments of a jumbled mess like someone took an armful from an old video store clearance section and dumped it all into a blender before pouring it in her brain one tiny drip at a time.

She's got amnesia.

That's what Vince says. He conspicuously does not say what gave her the amnesia. In Classic Vince fashion, though she doesn't exactly remember why she knows that with such conviction.

Her father.

That's what she has gathered from what Vince isn't telling her. It's something to do with her father. She might not remember, but the welling up of horror, terror, despair and pain at the mere thought of her father is answer enough for her to forgive him.

So she doesn't press the subject. She doesn't push like she feels she normally would because if she's going to remember anything…well, maybe she'd like to start someplace safer than that bottomless chasam.

Besides she has already cried herself to sleep over James' tiny body more times than she's certain she could count. And it makes her feel horrible to be crying over an infant, who is healthy and whole and safe in her arms, as if she'd lost him.

No. Whatever is lurking in that void that took her memories, must be bad. Bad enough that she doesn't want to march in there all on her own. She wants backup. And sorry, Vince isn't her backup.

It's purely self preservation.

It's protectiveness for James.

It's the thing missing.

Because it's not just her memory that's missing.

She keeps finding herself putting her hand out. Out into empty air where she excepted to find…something solid… no, someone. There is someone solid and dependable missing that should be there, would be there if…

If she's being honest with herself, she doesn't press Vince to tell her because she's running scared, terrified to learn that the someone she's missing was lost to the void along with her memories of him.

…

Duke comes to visit.

Paige comes upon him standing at the crib, one long fingered hand curled around the head of her baby boy like he's touching a holy relique. She watches him trace the tiny shell of his ear with his thumb. She watches the pain and heart ache etched in the lines of his face. They are familiar in a strange way. Like they and the hints of silver in his hair and chin fuzz are a sight she's seen before, but shouldn't be there now. One more instance of her unreliable memory that galls her.

“Not planning on stealing my treasure are you?” she says trying to burn away her own irritation at herself with some old familiar banter. Lift the chain from around Duke's neck with some of their normal camaraderie. She doesn't remember why the words feel like an old joke, but they feel right.

Clearly she doesn't get the tone of their old dynamic right though, because Duke snatches his hand back like he's been stabbed in the chest. And she doesn't like the look that flashes over the face of her best friend. Friend doesn't begin to cover the half of what she feels for this boy she's known since he was eight, but his reaction makes her fear that the rest of it is something else the void has taken from her.

“No. I would never!” Duke says in a small painfully earnest voice that Paige hates the sound of, absolutely hates. “I was just…”

Her instinct is to go to him, to wrap her arms around him, a single mutually beneficial move to bask in his big warm bulk while comforting him in a way he has lacked all his life. But he has backed away from her son like he's certain Paige will hate him for being in the same room with her child. And that's just wrong. Why would she be the least bit upset with him for taking comfort for his own pain from the sight and touch of her infant when…when…when…

“I know. You were just thinking of her.” His baby girl.

She watches Duke shudder through a pained breath that's more sob than anything else.

“You remember.” It's not a question. The tension bleeds out of him like a tidal wave going out, dragging Paige across the room to him with it.

“Jean. You had to give her up.” And then Paige's mind comes up against a solid white wall of nothing.

“I just don't remember why.” And she shakes her head annoyed with herself because understanding is just beyond her reach. She can feel it but she can't put her hand through the veil before her to fist more than snippets, each overwhelming in their clarity and brevity.

“I got you a picture of her first day in the world” and she's in tears over the vivid memory of a baby girl bundled up in strong arms as she tilts her phone camera in for a shot. She buries her hands in the back of Duke's black coat.

She hates the color on him. Its wrong. Fundamentally wrong for his lively spirit, for his sea and sun warmed complexion, and not just because it makes her think he's in deep mourning. She has seen him in mourning.

Duke tightens his arms around her like he knows she has just unlocked the memory of a cold damp dock and people packing up his childhood friend in a body bag. Both their ragged breaths are loud in the quiet room for a long while.

Vince has made himself blessedly scarce and James sleeps trouble free.

….

“You should go on a trip. Get out of this house.” Duke tells her, a sudden, or maybe not so sudden, segway from one of his elaborately told world tour stories.

Paige catches Duke flash Vince a look that says ‘back me up on this old man’ followed by a Duke brand ‘I have so much dirt on you’ eyebrow twitch. Of course Vince’s face flashes with ‘don't tempt me my boy, so do I’ and it takes everything Paige has of her frayed nerves not to laugh and give them both away but Vince apparently agrees regardless.

“I've got a house in Haven, Maine you could have for the summer.”

“Yeah,” Duke says. “Got a few friends back home who'll take good care of you. Sasquatch at any rate owes me.” Paige only catches the slight hitch in his voice on the word home because she's been surreptitiously keeping an eye on him all afternoon. She doesn't remember why home is so fraught a subject but there's a feeling in her bones that his father is part of it. She thinks it's one of the reasons they understand eachother so well.

“Sasquatch, owes you?” Paige laughs incredulously.

“Yes actually, Sasquatch owes me big time. In fact when you see him, you get him to tell you that story for me.”

He's so smug about it, she can't help smile regardless of the fact she doesn't know what he's done so well to make him so pleased with himself.

“Ok.” Paige says teasingly like she doesn't believe him.

But she's happy to see the black clouds chased away from Duke's eyes.

They’ve been sitting around the coffee table piled with pastries and fresh coffee. Someone snuck a shot of Bailey's into hers even though she normally takes it with milk and one sugar. Bailey's is for very bad days, she appreciates it along with the nostalgic stories they've been telling. Stories that don't belong to her. She hadn't realised how much the amnesia has been weighing her down. She'll have to thank them both for noticing she was spiralling and making her take a break.

It makes Paige's conviction solidify.

“Ok.” She repeats and a weight she didn't even know she had been carrying seems to lift revealing an unexpected anticipation beneath.

“Yeah, a trip would be really nice.”

Duke is holding James and probably doesn't even realize he's been stroking those long agile fingers across the delicate features of her baby like he's trying to memorize the faintest details of the boy's face by touch alone.

“But only on one condition. You need to come with me.”

Duke opens his mouth to protest, she knows he's going to protest, but Paige doesn't want to hear it. She doesn't think she can do this, whatever this is, if she doesn't have him in her corner. She flings an arm out to make contact with his arm. And something of her sudden anxiety must show in her face, or maybe he just knows her that well, because he huffs a small laugh and drops his gaze for a moment. When he comes back up he's got one of his ‘how can I not do anything in the world for you’ smiles that feels like pure love poured into her veins.

That smile alone gives her hope in a way that nothing else ever could and she doesn't even care if she never comes to remember why.

“Tell you what, you pack yourself and James up and drive out to Haven. And I'll meet you up there.”

“Well alright. You've got yourself a deal, Duke Crocker but don't you dare flake out on me man.”

She surprises herself a little with the sass, not remembering where it comes from yet, but it is worth it, because the look on Duke's face is priceless.

…

The next thing she knows Paige is driving a rental car on route 1 headed north from Camden. James is buckled into the back seat along with one large duffle bag she has an unpleasantly nagging feeling contains all of her belongings.

The latest song set ends and the radio host’s voice returns.

This just in: according to Rosemary of Rosemary's bakery our home town ghost just came in to buy enough mini cupcakes with sprinkles to throw a party. This is Ryan Wisely at WDLH, The Voice of Haven.

Paige chuckles and then things suddenly go to hell with the car.

It's scary, what with her infant son in the back seat, and yet the lump in her throat feels more like anticipation.

There is a knock on her window that feels like deja vu.