Page 55 of Back to Square One

It wasn’t long before the stress of the day took its toll on her, body and mind, and she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When Rowan opened her eyes, she was still on the couch. The living room was dark, save for the blueish glow of the television. She had no idea what was on, as she’d missed the majority of the doc and the channel had simply started up another show. Kevin always seemed to gain about twenty pounds as he slept and now had her pinned between his furry body and the back of the couch. Her right arm was asleep, and when she moved it out from under her, she winced at the pins-and-needles feeling, flexing her fingers to get the blood flowing again.

Her phone told her it was 3:37a.m. She’d been asleep on the couch for more than six hours. With a groan, she sat up, careful not to roll Kevin off onto the floor. He gave her an annoyed growl, hopped down himself, and sauntered off toward the kitchen, clearly irritated to have had his sleep disturbed, but now probably thinking it was as good a time as any to have a snack. She toyed with the idea of heading to her bedroom and going back to sleep for a couple hours, but she suddenly felt wide awake as everything from the previous day came flooding back into her head on a wave of memories. Ironic, that.

Her phone also showed her another handful of missed texts, and she realized how hard she must’ve been sleeping not to have heard the device buzz against the wood of the coffee table.

“Yeah, emotional upheaval will do that to you,” she said to the empty room, then pushed to her feet and headed into the kitchen. Coffee. Needed. Now.

She popped a pod into the Keurig and thought for about the fortieth time that she didn’t like the taste as much as she did from an actual pot. Being at the lake house had solidified that for her. She made a mental note to hop on Amazon and order a good old-fashioned coffeepot later.

Evie hated coffee from the Keurig.

The memory came out of nowhere, and Rowan closed her eyes, did her best to grab on to it. Evie thought the pods were weak. She liked a strong cup of coffee, and she always said the Keurig pods tasted watered down, that the coffee was never robust enough, even if she hit the strong button on the machine. And that’s why Rowan had purchased herself a Keurig. To spite Evie. Or at least the memory of Evie.

Another new/old memory found its spot in her brain and took a seat.

Huh.

She watched her mug fill, a sad smile on her face. Another memory recaptured. Another memory that did nothing but make her sad. Sadder. Maybe it would be better if she didn’t recover her memories, at least not the ones of her split with Evie. They’d broken her once, who was to say they wouldn’t break her again—or worse—the second time around?

Coffee in hand, she went back into the living room and clicked on a lamp. Her laptop was somewhere…she stood and glanced around the room until she’d located it, then took it back to the couch, stretched her feet out on the coffee table, crossed at the ankle, muted the TV, and opened the laptop. She typed into the search bar symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

Holy shit, there were a lot.

She scanned the list. Numbness or tingling in the limbs. She thought about Evie opening and closing her hand, something she’d thought was just a weird habit she’d never noticed. Weakness or paralysis in the arms or legs. Coordination and balance difficulties. She’d noticed Evie stumble more than usual during their few days together. Vision problems. Pain. Rowan now wondered about all the orange pill bottles she’d glimpsed on the dresser in Evie and Claire’s room. Muscle spasms and tremors. Hadn’t Evie dropped a cup? Or a bottle of beer? Both? Fatigue. Her memory tossed her a vision of Evie falling asleep on her shoulder on the boat, just dropping off out of nowhere, and how embarrassed she was when she’d woken up.

The list was longer. There was more. Rowan kept reading; she couldn’t stop. She suddenly wanted to know everything. She read that MS is an autoimmune disorder, where your own body eats away at the myelin, which is the protective covering of the nerves. That alone sounded like something out of a horror movie. She pictured tiny alien-looking creatures with little mouths and sharp teeth munching away inside Evie’s body, consuming her protection, leaving her nerves exposed to the world. MS was more common in women and usually struck between the ages of twenty and forty. Evie was thirty-eight three years ago. There were different types of MS, and she wondered which one Evie had. There was no cure, but there were things that could help, and she went on to read a list of dozens of different medications for various things—pain, fatigue, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, muscle spasms—the list went on and on.

Rowan kept reading because she knew if she stopped, the emotion she was avoiding would clobber her.

Of course, she eventually did have to stop reading, and eventually, it did clobber her.

Slowly, she closed her laptop, her eyes burning, from both the hours of reading and the tears that had been pricking the backs of them for over an hour now. She sat there, dumbfounded at all she’d learned, at everything Evie had gone through.

Alone.

She’d dealt with all of this alone.

The wave came suddenly, even though she’d been expecting it, and Rowan took the full force of it. She sat on her couch and wept for Evie. The Evie she’d known then, before her accident and before their breakup, and the Evie of today. She cried for them both.

Not sure how long she’d been sitting there, she glanced at her phone to see that it was late morning, and it caused her to mutter a curse at how long she’d been on her couch. Since last night. Still feeling blindsided by the reveal of Evie’s disease and pummeled by all she’d learned, she also knew she couldn’t stay in this emotional place forever. She pushed to her feet, which seemed to take enormous effort on her part.

Hooking her bag over her shoulder, she headed to her bathroom and took a very long, very hot, much needed shower. Once she’d moisturized her body and put on some clean clothes, she felt a hundred times better. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she’d had nothing but coffee since the wee hours of the morning, so she went into the kitchen to see what she had—or more accurately, to see what her mother had left her, since Rowan had been gone for a week and needed to go grocery shopping.

There wasn’t much, and she was toying with the idea of eggs again when her doorbell rang, surprising her.

It was Stevie and Sara.

“Hey,” Stevie said when she opened the door.

Rowan frowned and pulled out her phone. “Did you text?”

Stevie shook her head. “I figured you’d tell me to grab my truck and go, but I wanted to make sure you’re okay. Can we come in?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just walked past Rowan, followed by Sara, who gave her a sad smile and rubbed a hand down her arm.

“Sure,” Rowan said, belatedly.

Stevie took in the rumpled blanket on the couch, the laptop, the TV that Rowan had muted hours ago that was playing some true crime series. She pointed at the computer. “Doing research?”