Parallel Read online

  Parallel

  Elizabeth O'Roark

  Copyright © 2019 by Elizabeth O'Roark

  1st Edit: Jenn Wood, All About the Edits

  2nd Edit: Kathy Bosman

  Cover Design: Lori Jackson

  Photography: Wander Aguilar

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  To Patrick, Lily and Jack,

  who will always be the best thing I ever created.

  Oh, and stop reading here. No matter how old you are.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  I had a nightmare as a child. A nightmare that visited me again and again. I’ve never forgotten it, not a single detail, although if my parents hadn’t kept the psychologist’s report, I’d probably assume the years had added and detracted from it in various ways. But they didn’t. It’s all in writing, exactly as it rests in my head.

  Quinn, age four, was brought into our clinic due to recurrent nightmares. Parents report that patient wakes several times a week, crying for her “husband” (“Nick”), and claiming they’ve been separated by someone. Patient insists she “isn’t supposed to be here” for hours and sometimes days afterward. There are no further signs of psychosis.

  At first those nightmares—their weirdness, their specificity—made my mother scared for me. Over time though, she also became scared of me, and that taught me a lesson I’d continue to find true over the coming years: the things I knew, real things, were safest kept to myself.

  1

  QUINN

  2018

  Déjà vu.

  It translates to already seen, but really it sort of means the opposite: that you haven’t already seen the thing, but feel like you have. I once asked Jeff if he thought they actually call it déjà vu in France or perhaps keep a better, more accurate expression for themselves. He laughed and said, “you think about the weirdest shit sometimes.”

  Which is so much truer than he knows.

  “Everything okay?” he asks now, as we follow my mother and his into the inn where we will marry in seven short weeks. I’ve been off, somehow, since the moment we pulled into town, and I guess it shows.

  “Yeah. Sorry. I’ve got the start of a headache.” It’s not entirely true, but I don’t know how to explain this thing in my head, this irritating low hum. It makes me feel as if I’m only half here.

  We step into the lobby and my mother extends her arms like a game show hostess. “Isn’t it cute?” she asks without waiting for an answer. “I know it’s an hour from D.C., but at this late date it’s the best we’re going to do.” In truth, the lobby reminds me of an upscale retirement community—baby blue walls, baby blue carpet, Chippendale chairs—but the actual wedding and reception will take place on the lawn. And as my mother pointed out, we can no longer afford to be picky.

  Jeff’s mother, Abby, steps beside me, running a hand over my head, the way she might a prize stallion. “You’re being so calm about this. Any other bride would be in a panic.”

  It’s posed as a compliment, but I’m not sure it is. Losing our venue two months before the wedding should have made me panic, but I try not to get too attached to things. Caring too much about anything makes perfectly reasonable people go insane—just ask the girl who burned down the reception hall her ex was about to get married in…which happened to be the reception hall we were getting married in too.

  My mother claps her hands together. “Well, our appointment with the hotel’s events coordinator isn’t for another hour. Shall we get some lunch while we wait?”

  Jeff and I exchange a quick look. On this point we are both of one mind. “We really need to get back to D.C. before rush hour.” Are my words coming out as slowly as they feel? It’s as if I’m on delay somehow, two steps behind. “Maybe you could just show us around?”

  My mother’s smile fades to something far less genuine. She wants giddy participation from me and has been consistently disappointed with my inability to provide it.

  She and Abby lead the way, back to the porch where we entered. “We’ve already been discussing it a bit,” Abby says to me over her shoulder. “We were thinking you could walk down the stairs and out to the porch, where your fa— uncle, I mean, will wait.” She pauses for a moment, blushing at the error. It shouldn’t be a big deal at this point—my dad’s been gone almost eight years—but I feel that pinch deep in my chest anyway. That hint of sadness that never quite leaves. “And then we’ll do a red carpet out to the tent.”

  Together we step outside. It’s a gruelingly hot day, as are most summer days anywhere near D.C., and this thing in my head only gets worse. I vaguely notice my surroundings—blinding sun, a technicolor blue sky, the rose bushes my mother is commenting on, but all the while I feel displaced, like I’m following this from far away. What the hell is going on? I could call it déjà vu, but it’s not really that. The conversation occurring right now, with this group of people, is wholly new. It’s the place that feels familiar. More than familiar, actually. It feels important.

  They’re discussing the lake. I’m not sure what I’ve missed, but Abby is worried about its proximity. “It would just take one boatful of drunks to create chaos,” she says. “And we don’t want a bunch of looky-loos either.”

  “Most boats can’t reach this part of the lake,” I reply without thinking. “There’s too much brush under the water on the way here.”

  Abby’s brow raises. “I didn’t realize you’d been here before. And when did you ever sail?”

  My pulse begins to race, and I take a quick, panicked breath. They know I haven’t been here. They know I don’t sail.

  I don’t know why I let it slip out.

  “No,” I reply. “I read up a little before I came.” The words sound as false to me as they are, and I know they sound false to my mother too. If I were to glance at her right now, I’d see that troubled look on her face, the one I’ve seen a thousand times before. I learned early in life it bothered her, this strange ability of mine to sometimes know things I should not.

  Jeff’s phone rings and he turns the other way, while my mother walks ahead, frowning at the ground beneath her. “I hope they’re going to water soon,” she frets. “If it stays this dry, that carpet will be covered with dust by the time the ceremony starts.”

  She is right, unfortunately. I can see the soil shift loosely before me, the grass bu
rned and threadbare beneath an unrelenting sun, all the way to the pavilion. If there were even the slightest breeze, we’d be choking on it right now.

  We round the corner of the inn, and the lake comes into view, shimmering in the early July heat. It looks like any other lake, yet there’s something about it that speaks to me. I stare, trying to place it, and as I do, my gaze is compelled upward, beyond its sapphire depths, to a cottage in the distance.

  It’s a tap, at first. A small tap between my shoulder blades, like a parent warning a child to pay attention. But then something shifts inside me, invisible anchors sinking into the ground, holding me in place. My stomach seems to drop as they go.

  I know that house.

  I want to look away. My heart is beating harder, and the fact that people are going to notice makes it beat harder still, but already a picture is forming in my head—a wide deck, a long, grassy slope leading to the water’s edge.

  “How can the grass be so dry with all this water around?” Abby asks, but her voice is growing dim beneath this sudden ringing in my ears.

  And then, her words disappear entirely. There is no ground, no light, nothing to grab. I’m plummeting, and the fall is endless.

  * * *

  When my eyes open, I’m flat on my back. Soil clings to my skin and the sun is beating down so fiercely it drowns out all thought. I’m in some kind of field with a house in the distance, and a woman is leaning over me. Have I met her somewhere before? It feels like I have but I can’t place her at all.

  “Quinn!” she cries. “Oh, thank God. Are you okay?”

  The light is too much. That drumming in my head turns into a gong. I need it to stop, so I squeeze my eyes shut. The smell of parched grass assaults me.

  “Why am I here?” I whisper. The words are slurred, the voice barely my own. God, my head hurts.

  “You fell,” she says, “We’re at the inn. For your wedding, remember?”

  The woman is pleading with me as if I’m a child on the cusp of a tantrum, but nothing she says makes sense. I am already married. And since when did London get so hot? It’s never like this here.

  A man comes jogging toward us. His build is similar to Nick’s—tall, muscular—but even from a distance, I know he’s not Nick, not even close. My eyes flutter closed and for a moment, I feel like I’m with him again—watching the smile that starts slowly before it lifts high to one side, catching the faint scent of chlorine from his morning swim. Where is he? He was right next to me a second ago.

  The man drops to the ground beside me, and the women scurry out of his way. “She must have tripped,” one of them says, “and now she’s really out of it. I think she may need to go to the hospital.”

  I’m not going anywhere with these people, but I feel that first burst of fear in my chest. The throbbing in my head is growing. What if they try to force me to leave with them? I don’t even know that I’d be able to fight them off with my head like this.

  “Where’s Nick?” The words emerge wispy and insufficient, needy rather than commanding.

  “The hotel manager is Mark,” says another voice. “Maybe she means Mark?”

  “Can you sit up?” the guy asks. “Come on, Quinn.”

  I squint, trying to see him better in the bright sun. How does he know my name? There’s something familiar about him, but he also just has one of those faces. “Are you a doctor?”

  His jaw sags open. “Babe, it’s me. Jeff.”

  What the hell is happening here? Why is this guy acting like we’re old friends? I focus on him, trying to make sense of it.

  “Your fiancé,” he adds.

  For a moment I just stare at him in horror. And then I begin scrambling backward, a useless attempt at escape. “No,” I gasp, but even as I’m denying it, praying this is a nightmare, some part of my brain has begun to recognize him too, and remembers a different life, one in which Nick does not exist.

  Nick does not exist.

  I roll face down in the grass and begin to weep.

  2

  QUINN

  My memory has mostly returned by the time they’ve gotten me into the car. My mother and Jeff look at each other carefully, but say nothing about the fact that I, for a period of time, did not recognize either of them. I rest my aching head against the seat as they quietly argue outside. God only knows what my mother is making of this.

  “It will take you an hour to get back to D.C.,” she says. “There’s a state-of-the-art hospital in Annapolis.”

  “Even a state-of-the-art hospital is not going to be as good as Georgetown,” he replies. “Look, just finish up with the contract here. I swear I’ll take good care of her, and I’ll let you know what they say the second I hear anything.”

  I swallow hard, willing away this desperate thing in my chest, the one I woke with. They tell me I collapsed, but the things I saw seemed so real—Nick seemed so real—that it’s hard to believe I imagined them. A dream, a hallucination—it should be shadowy, vague. This is not. I remember our first date, our second date, the weeks that went by afterward. I don’t see Nick as some blurry figure I could only describe in generalities. I remember his eyes, his mouth, that dimple of his. I remember how familiar he seemed from the moment we met, that I knew before he’d even opened his mouth how he would laugh, how he would smile, how he would kiss. It was as if our relationship wasn’t new at all. It was a path so well-tread we could run rather than walk.

  My eyes open. Two feet away, Jeff and my mother continue to discuss me, and my chest pinches tight. Jeff’s the person I’ve loved for the past six years. The man I wake up next to each morning, the one who made crepes for my birthday and gave up a day of fishing to walk through the Hirshhorn with me last weekend. I hate that I’m sitting here right now wanting someone I’ve never met.

  Someone who doesn’t even exist.

  But on the way home, the motion of the car lulling me to sleep, it’s not Jeff who’s in my head. It’s Nick, just as I imagined him when I fell.

  * * *

  I wake in Nick’s flat just before he does. His hand is on my hip, possessive even in his sleep, and I’m smiling at that when his eyes flicker open. I’m also smiling at the view, given that a sheet is only covering his lower half, leaving the rest of him—bare, tan, flawless—on glorious display. Last night he said he’d stopped swimming competitively in college, but he’s obviously still doing a whole lot of something.

  “You stayed,” he says, his grin lifting high on one side. My heart flutters at the sight of it. I can’t believe I crossed an ocean only to fall for a guy who grew up a few hours from me.

  “I did. Although to be fair, I kind of had to since I have no idea how to get back to my apartment from here.” Given that I could easily have called Uber or pulled up a city map on my phone, this doesn’t make much sense, but he’s kind enough not to point it out.

  That dimple of his appears. I want to marry him based on that dimple alone. “All part of my evil plan to keep you here.”

  I glance around his flat, which I saw little of last night because it was late when we got in and the two of us were, um, a little occupied. It’s bachelorish—bare walls, windows in need of curtains, ash-gray hardwood. I decide I’m open to the possibility of being kept.

  “Evil plan?” I ask. “So this is something you’ve been working on for a while?”

  “Absolutely. Though ‘meet gorgeous female with no knowledge of London’ was a surprisingly difficult first step.”

  We are both smiling right now. How can it be so comfortable? How can I already feel so connected to him? From the moment we met yesterday, it was as if I was meant to know him, or perhaps, somehow, already did. “So far I sort of like your evil plan.”

  He raises himself up, leaning on his forearm. It brings him closer to my mouth. “And I was a perfect gentleman as promised, wasn’t I?”

  Our eyes lock. He kissed me for hours the night before, until I was on the cusp of begging him to undress me, but it went no further. His gaze
flickers to my mouth. He’s remembering it too.

  “You were a perfect gentleman.”

  He leans over me, broad, tan shoulders sculpted by God himself. “You can’t kiss me until I’ve brushed my teeth,” I warn.

  “Then I’ll focus on other parts.” His lips brush against my jawline and move to my neck. He pulls at the skin just hard enough to elicit a sharp inhale, my body arching against his without thought.

  “Jesus,” he groans. “I’m trying to behave here, but you’re not making it easy.”

  Since he’s only wearing boxers, that fact was already clear to me, but I don’t care. My hand skims down his broad back to his waistband. I want to slide my palm over his hard ass, and let my nails sink into his skin…

  “I want you to make that noise again,” he says, his voice husky and low. He pulls at my neck in the same place he just did.

  “Oh God, I like that way too much,” I murmur. “Just don’t give me a hickey.”

  He laughs apologetically. “I think it’s too late.”

  “Then,” I reply, pulling him back down, “you might as well do it again.”

  * * *

  “Hon,” says Jeff, shaking my shoulder. “Wake up.”

  I blink, trying to make sense of the fact that Nick is no longer with me. And then I look over at my fiancé, at his sweet face and his furrowed brow, and feel sick with guilt. It couldn’t have been real, with Nick, but I still have the sinking feeling that hits when you discover you’ve done something very, very wrong.