Persistence of Vision

  Chapter 2: Flash From the Past

  One Year Later

  Maggie awoke with a start. The sun was streaming through her bedroom window and onto her face. She told herself firmly that it was the sunlight that had awakened her and not unpleasant dreams. As she sat up, her dreams faded beyond memory.

  As long as she couldn’t remember, it couldn’t bother her. Swinging her feet over the side of the bed, she stretched. Glancing at her bedside clock, she found that it was nearly eight. A bit earlier than she had planned to rise on her day off, but as long as she was awake, she might as well get up.

  Pushing aside the voice that said the real reason she didn’t want to sleep more was because she was afraid of her dreams, Maggie stood, put on a robe, and went downstairs. She decided that she would make some hot chocolate and watch the sun rise.

  Just as the detective predicted, nothing turned up. A full investigation into the bar revealed that the owners were clean and the establishment honest. It could only be the individual worker, and he or she had covered their tracks.

  Of course, that was assuming it was the drinks that had put them out. Perhaps it wasn’t, though neither Maggie nor Jonah had been able to think of what else it could have been.

  Neither of them had suffered any perceivable ill effects—perceivable being the key word there—but Maggie couldn’t get over it. She ran everything she remembered over and over in her head, trying to come up with answers.

  Since leaving Vegas, the flashes had returned again and again.

  A flash of purple light. A rock formation. Brown boots walking across a room at eye level. A hand with an ugly back burn on the back. A woman standing in front of a broken lighthouse. Blood on her hands. A whisper of a voice. Gasping, clawing for air.

  For weeks she woke up sweating, her heart racing, fear ringing through her core. The flashes never faded, though. Each time she dreamed them was as vivid as the last.

  Each time she saw the images, the impression became stronger that she was trying to tell herself something. Something had happened to her and Jonah, and those flashes were connected to it in some way.

  Eventually she stopped being afraid of what she saw. The flashes became her companions. As long as she had them, she felt like she had some hope of one day figuring it all out, of finding out what had really happened to her.

  Five months after the incident, Maggie got up the courage to tell Jonah about the flashes. He had been angry with her.

  “But it’s not like it was evidence, Jonah! They were just flashes, completely incoherent hallucinations.”

  “How do you know that?” he’d challenged. “They might have been memories.”

  Maggie had frowned. She’d never considered the possibility that they’d been more than fever dreams. “Do you think I ought to call Detective Jones?” she asked.

  Jonah sighed and dropped his face into his hands. When he looked back up, his eyes were haggard. “Do what you want, Maggs, but do it now and move on. I don’t want to keep dredging this up.”

  He’d walked away, leaving Maggie feeling hurt. It was the only bitter conversation they’d ever had. She went home and cried herself to sleep.

  It was more than just the dreams, though. Maggie felt an overwhelming sense of loss. At first, she thought it was just the feeling of violation, of being victimized, but as time went on, she realized that it was something else. She could not shake the feeling that she had lost something, some major, vital part of who she was.

  And she didn’t even know what it was.

  That was the most frustrating part: to feel she’d lost something she yearned to have back so much that it hurt and not be able to define it. Whatever happened in Vegas, it was more than just passing out from some tourist trap. Much more.

  Still, Jonah had the right of it. Maggie had dreamed the flashes so many times; they were forever seared into her memory. Perhaps she’d never know what happened, but making herself ill over it was not doing any good. She needed to live her life.

  Since making that decision, things had been easier.

  It was twelve months to the day since the time loss had occurred, and today was Maggie’s day off. It was Friday, and her catering business would be slow. One of the great things about being the boss was that you could take time off whenever you wanted.

  After sipping her hot chocolate and watching the sunrise for half an hour, Maggie decided to do her errands first. She had a whole list of things, but if she did all of them this morning, she could have the afternoon to herself. Mentally, she ran through her list as she washed out her cup and placed it in the dishwasher: order some supplies for the business—see, she’d be working a little bit—pick up some things for the party tonight (Michaela had given her a list); go get her nails done; fill up the tank, as the price of gas had gone down several cents in the past few days, and they were predicting it would be back up by Sunday; groceries; dry cleaning…