3: 3
3.
Maybe I was still holding on to some foolish hope.
Either way, I couldn't bring myself to tell Flora to get rid of the baby.
But back in the bedroom, I finally really looked at the place. The décor was overdone, gaudy in every direction, and nothing about it matched my taste.
I opened the closet. It was packed full, all of it loud, flashy clothes.
I'd lost my memory, but a person's preferences don't just change overnight, and I knew for a fact I would never buy clothes like these.
Then the toothbrushes, the towels, the slippers. Everything came in matched pairs.
But Flora had told me plainly that we'd been together a year, and that I'd always treated her with respect.
She said even the baby only happened by accident, that she'd gotten pregnant when she came to find me because she was worried after someone set me up.
There was no way anything of hers should be in my home.
Unless...
Unless she was never my girlfriend at all. She was Jude's.
Then I thought of all her fussing over me lately, the warm little questions, the sweet memories she claimed belonged only to the two of us, and it turned my stomach.
I understood then that I had to get my memory back, and fast.
I got in touch with a well-known brain specialist in America and booked a flight, planning to fly out that same night for tests.
While I was at it, I called the private investigator and told him to look into what Flora kept calling the plot against me.
And into the women I'd been close with before.
But I'd barely finished packing when Flora caught me.
She stared at the suitcase and passport in my hands.
"Honey, the wedding's only a week away. Where do you think you're going?"
"Traveling," I said.
"The wedding doesn't need me there anyway. I'm just going to get out for a while."
Only then did she let out a breath, her voice going soft again as she took the suitcase out of my hands.
"Honey, I already told you. It's not that I don't want you at the wedding. It's just that your health right now isn't up to it."
"Here's what we'll do. I'll take you to get checked out. If the doctor says you're well enough to attend, I'll have a suit made for you overnight, all right?"
Before all this, I'd have thought Flora was gentle and thoughtful, that marrying a wife like her was the luckiest thing that could happen to a man.
But now.
Now, thinking about that warning from my future daughter on the phone, all I felt was cold.
"And if I don't want to get checked out?" I asked.
Flora didn't answer. Instead Madison came in with Jude and a doctor, her face full of disgust as she spoke.
"What kind of nonsense is that? Weren't you the one making a fuss about how you absolutely had to be at the wedding?"
"Flora's willing to give you this chance. You should be glad."
"But I don't want a physical," I said.
Jude shot me down on the spot. "How could that be true?"
"Weren't you just now making an appointment with the top brain specialist in America, planning to get properly checked out and recover your memory?"
"No need to go to all that trouble. Getting the tests done here at home is just the same."
As Jude said it, he signaled the men on either side to move in.
I tried to shout, but they clamped a hand over my mouth.
They dragged me out of the room. The servants saw it and only lowered their heads.
In that instant, I knew for certain. That call from the future was real.
Flora wasn't my fiancée, and the baby she carried wasn't mine.
All of it, every last piece, was a setup to strip me of my fortune legally and by the book.
I dug my fingers into the door frame, still trying to get a call out for help, when a cold syringe of fluid went into my body.
The next second my eyelids grew unbearably heavy, and I blacked out completely.
