You Will Remember Me by Hannah McKinnon (best sales books of all time txt) 📕

noises as she beamed, saying she couldn’t believe it. She’d had terrible hay fever ever since she was a teen, and practically guzzled Benadryl by the gallon to get some relief. I didn’t want to let on I’d had no idea, or see her expression change to disappointment, and so I crushed the pharmacy receipt up into a ball, and a while later threw it in the trash.

Sweat pooled under my arms as we drove to Dr. Adler’s, my head twisting left and right as I tried to get a good look around. Maya pointed out Keenan’s house, which had a rusty swing-set in the front garden, the broken yellow plastic seats gently moving in the wind. After that we continued in silence for a while. I soon noticed our house was at the end of a long road flanked only by a few other dwellings, and all of them were spaced at least a quarter of a mile apart.

“Do you know why Dad chose the house?” I said. “It’s so remote.”

“It was your grandfather’s,” Maya said. “He left it to Brad when he died. Your pops was American, got your English grandmother pregnant when he was working over there, married her but couldn’t stick it, apparently. He came back here a year after Brad was born, basically abandoned his wife and your dad in the UK. They never had much of a relationship after that, and I think you only met your grandfather once, when you were small. Brad always said he got the house out of guilt.”

It was probably a story my father had shared with me, one we’d maybe talked about over a drink. The impact of another lost memory hit me squarely in the chest, and it renewed my determination to do whatever I could to unlock my mind, no matter the truth. I couldn’t pick and choose. I either wanted all of my past, or none of it.

“...and I never thought it was that remote,” Maya was saying. “Not with the path behind the house along the cliffs. If you turn left, it splits and there’s another one leading down to the beach. Turn right and walk for about two and a half miles and you get to the other side of town.”

“That’s where Kate fell, though? Along the path?”

Maya nodded, and I didn’t say anything else but stared out of the window as she brought us closer to Newdale. It seemed a handsome town, and the large wrought iron sign in the shape of a wave with the words Welcome to Newdale, as well as the immaculate multicolored flowerbeds on either side, all indicated a certain level of prosperity and charm. Main Street appeared to contain the heart of the place, both sides peppered with bijou clothes boutiques, a bookshop, antiques dealers, a jeweler, an arts and crafts store, as well as multiple cafés and restaurants.

As we waited at a red light, I knew Maya’s eyes were on me and I turned my head, caught her observing. “Nothing’s coming back,” I said. “I don’t remember any of this.”

She reached out and put a hand on my arm. “Don’t worry. We’re almost there.”

Sure enough, she turned left and took a few side streets with tall, leafy oak trees on either side. Dr. Adler’s office was in an annex next to his Victorian house similar in style to Maya’s, but twice the size, and it seemed freshly painted. After we parked the car, we headed to the right side of the building, the sun warming my skin, the scent of something flowery—sweet and heavy—in the air. Before I had a chance to knock, heavy footsteps approached from the other side of the door, and an older gentleman dressed in a tartan shirt and brown corduroy trousers opened up.

“Mr. Bennett?” He peered at me over the top of his round spectacles and, when he saw Maya behind me, smiled. “I’m delighted to see you found your stepbrother.”

“Not as much as me,” she replied happily as we walked inside.

Dr. Adler ushered us past a little reception area with half a dozen orange plastic chairs, and into the first consultation room on the left. Its walls were slate gray, and he’d adorned them with pictures and self-portraits of what I assumed were his younger patients. They had toothy grins, bandaged arms, stitches in their knees and speech bubbles with words of thanks written inside. He gestured for us to take a seat, before following suit, and placing his hands in his lap.

“You mentioned memory trouble on the phone,” he said. “Shall we start from the beginning, so to speak? Tell me what you remember.”

With Maya’s help, I explained most of what had happened, including the various flashbacks I’d experienced so far, but staying sufficiently vague about the location I’d woken up in, as Dr. Adler made notes.

“And the first time you realized you couldn’t remember anything about yourself was when you woke up somewhere on a beach yesterday morning?” he said.

“God, I can’t believe it was only yesterday, it feels like years,” I said. “And I can’t explain it. I know there’s stuff inside my head, but I can’t access it. It’s as if there’s a roadblock, or a big gaping hole. Does...does that make any sense?”

“Perfect sense,” Dr. Adler said.

“If it’s amnesia I’d say it’s retrograde, not anterograde—” Maya shrugged when I raised my eyebrows in surprise “—because he’s perfectly capable of forming new memories.”

“Somebody’s been doing research,” Dr. Adler said with a smile. “But it’s a little early to jump to conclusions. Your memory loss could be related to many things, Ash, such as an injury, or disease.”

“Disease?” I said. “You think I’m ill?”

“Not necessarily. You mentioned a head wound. May I?” When I nodded, he pulled on a pair of latex gloves and gently touched my scalp, tilting my head to one side. “This had to be quite the blow. You could’ve done with a few stitches.”

“To be honest, it didn’t feel like a priority.”

Dr.