All Chapters of Where the Pear Blossoms Fell: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

After being diagnosed with a progressive autobiographical memory disorder, I learned to keep a journal every day.While I still remembered, I wrote down what I needed to do the next morning.I opened the notebook with practiced hands and checked yesterday's entries.[Day Seven of Memory Loss. I'm forgetting more things.][One: I have to stop loving Graham Ellsworth.][Two: Mom and Dad won't fund my wedding. Report to Orchard Spoon Dessert House at ten and earn my own savings. Address: Juniper Lane, Old Market District.]Several more lines were faintly visible below, but water had blurred the ink past reading.They might have been my tears.I didn't remember why I'd cried the day before.I didn't dwell on it.No one but me would have cared.I didn't dare tell anyone about the diagnosis either.I was the Winslows' biological daughter, but I wasn't wanted in their house. If I said anything, my parents would only complain that they'd recovered a defective child who embarrassed

My mother stood over me with one hand still raised, fury in her voice."Are you trying to destroy us? Marissa told me you're working at some cheap dessert shop under the Winslow name. What happens when people in Stonewick society see you?"Whose reputation do you think you're wrecking? You did it on purpose, to humiliate your father and me."I held my cheek and tasted blood."Mom, isn't this what you wanted? You wouldn't give me anything for my wedding, so I have to earn it myself."My father came up behind me and kicked me hard in the shoulder."Don't you talk back to your mother."You think I can't see what you're doing? You want strangers to pity you so you can pressure us into signing businesses over to you. It's never going to happen."Get out of my sight. Go back to your room. I can't stand looking at you."The kick curled me onto the floor, and I stopped wanting to explain.I got up, caught the banister for support, and headed for the rear wing.Then I looked up.Mar

Rain fell in solid sheets.My parents were so worried about Marissa's injury that they checked her into a private clinic.My mother sat beside the bed slicing a pear while my father adjusted every pillow so she wouldn't feel the slightest discomfort.Graham stood at the east window.He watched the storm and said nothing.Marissa bit into the pear and looked at his back."Graham, you left her on that abandoned road outside Stonewick, didn't you?"There's nothing around it for miles. She'll be out in that storm two hours before she finds her way back."She laughed, pleased with herself."That should teach her. Maybe now she'll stop bullying me."Something started bothering Graham.He turned and studied her."You said you went into her room looking for something."So why was everything destroyed? Why did you break the savings jar?"Marissa's smile stiffened. She hadn't expected the question.Her eyes shifted, and then she turned to my parents, wounded."I... I was just cur

Cold rain ran down Graham's neck and under his collar.Every time his thoughts came apart, the same question came back.Was I cold, after standing in the rain this long?Would a woman who could barely remember her own name be terrified, left out here?The more he pictured it, the less control he had. He moved faster until he was half falling through the brush."Elise, where are you?"He needed to find me.He needed to say he was sorry, in his own voice.The storm ended almost as fast as it had come.An hour later the clouds opened, and all that was left was water dripping off the branches.They still hadn't found a trace of me.My parents reported me missing, and the Stonewick Police Department started pulling traffic camera footage, road records, and county search maps.Graham sent out every Ellsworth employee and contractor he could reach.Search teams went through fields, ravines, streams, and every stretch of ground around Flintwater Junction.They found nothing.The

Over those five years my father grew frail, and my mother developed an illness nothing seemed to touch.Graham's hair went white the year I disappeared.In a back booth at a cafe, a local news segment was going over the old story."A possible sighting of missing Winslow heir Elise Winslow was reported in west Stonewick this week. Her parents and her former fiance, Graham Ellsworth, traveled there to verify it."At the police station, they found a woman none of them had ever seen.The anchor went on, regretful."Unfortunately, it wasn't her."I turned toward Owen Sinclair, who was refilling my coffee."Owen, I'm the missing Winslow daughter they're talking about, aren't I?"His hand stopped on the carafe.Owen smiled and slid the cup back toward me."Yes. Dr. Quade's rehabilitation program is working. You're getting almost all of it back."I took it and nodded."Last night a lot of old things came back in a dream."The smashed savings jar, the crooked writing in my noteboo