What Ria Said

Lena’s POV

Ria arrived the next morning unannounced with pastries and the energy of someone who had already decided to be angry on my behalf.

She did that. Showed up physically when she felt the situation required more than a phone call. It was one of my favorite things about her and also occasionally exhausting.

She put the pastries on the table, sat down, looked at me and said “tell me everything.”

So I did.

She listened without interrupting which meant she was taking it seriously. Ria interrupted everything. Silence from her was not peace it was concentration.

When I finished she was quiet for a moment.

“He cried,” she said.

“On the street below.”

“After leaving your apartment.”

“Yes.”

She picked up a pastry, put it down, picked it up again. “Okay so either this man genuinely knew you and is carrying something enormous or he is the most elaborate and committed creep in this city’s history.”

“I know.”

“The two years of looking is the part that gets me,” she said. “That’s not casual. That’s not curiosity. People don’t spend two years and real money looking for someone like friends do.”

“I know Ria.”

“So what was he.”

“He said more than friends. More than he deserved. And then he stopped talking.”

She stared at me. “More than he deserved.” She repeated it slowly like she was tasting it. “That’s a guilt sentence Lena. That’s someone who knows they did something.”

My coffee had gone cold. I drank it anyway.

“My hands shake around him,” I said. “You know how they shake around loud noises or when someone moves too fast. It’s like that. Except he’s not loud and he doesn’t move fast. He’s actually very still and they shake anyway.”

Ria set her pastry down completely.

“Your body is recognizing him,” she said quietly.

“Don’t.”

“I’m serious. You said it yourself. The doctors always said some memories live in the body even when the brain wipes. Muscle memory. Physical responses. Your nervous system might know exactly who he is even if your brain doesn’t.”

I didn’t want to think about that. What it meant. What it said about the thing my body was recognizing and whether it was something warm or something it had learned to be afraid of.

“He’s coming back today,” I said.

Ria looked at me hard.

“I want to be here,” she said.

“No.”

“Lena.”

“I need to do this on my own terms. If you’re here I’ll spend the whole time managing both of you and I’ll miss things.”

She didn’t like it. I could see her cycling through arguments, discarding them, landing on the one she knew would stick.

“If you don’t text me every thirty minutes I’m calling the police,” she said. “I mean it. I will absolutely call the police on your mysterious crying stranger.”

“Every thirty minutes,” I agreed.

She left at nine. He knocked at ten.

Different knock this time. Two instead of three. Like he’d lost one somewhere overnight.

I opened the door.

He looked worse than yesterday. Like he hadn’t slept at all. His hair was slightly wrong like he’d pushed his hands through it too many times and given up. There were no coffees today. He was empty handed and he looked it in more ways than one.

“Can I come in,” he said.

I stepped back.

He walked past me and stopped in the middle of the living room and turned around and said “I need to tell you something and I need you to hear the whole thing before you react.”

My stomach pulled tight.

“Okay,” I said carefully.

He looked at me with those pale grey eyes and took one slow breath.

“Your name isn’t Lena Ashford.”

The room tilted slightly.

“What,” I said.

“That’s not your name. It’s the name on the ID the hospital gave you when you came in without one. Lena was the nurse who found you. Ashford was the street.” He kept his voice level with visible effort. “Your real name is Selene. Selene Voss.”

The world went very quiet.

Voss.

His name was Damien Voss.

My supposed name was Selene Voss.

I looked at him across my living room and felt something cold move through me from the chest outward. Slow and thorough. Like ice water finding every available space.

“Voss,” I said. My voice came out strange. Flat and faraway. “That’s your last name.”

“Yes.”

“Why do we have the same last name.”

His jaw tightened. His hands were at his sides and very still.

“Because you were my wife,” he said.