What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty Read Free Book Online Page B

memory.
    Did these belong to the Sultana? Her mind skittered away from the idea, like a frightened animal. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want a readygrown baby. She wanted her own little future baby back.
    This could not be happening to her. But it is, so get a grip, Alice. She began to open the bag and her fingernails caught her attention. She held up her hands in front of her. Her nails were beautifully shaped and long and painted a very pale, beige color. Normally they were ragged and broken and rimmed with dirt from gardening or painting or whatever other renovation job they were doing at the time. The only other time they’d looked like that was for her wedding when she’d got her manicure. She’d spent the whole honeymoon flapping her hands at Nick, saying, “Look, I’m a lady .”
    Apart from that, her hands still looked like her hands. Actually, they looked quite nice.
    They were bare, she noticed. No jewelry. It was a little unusual that she wasn’t at least wearing her wedding ring, but perhaps she’d been in a rush when she was getting ready for her “spin class.”
    She held up her left hand and saw that there was a thin white indentation from her wedding ring that hadn’t been there before. It gave her a disconnected feeling, like when she’d seen the feathery marks on her stomach. Her mind thought everything was still the same, but her body was telling her that time had marched on without her.
    Time. She put her hands to her face. If she was supposedly sending out “invitations to her fortieth-birthday party,” if she was . . . thirty-nine —she mentally choked and gasped for air at the thought—then her face must be different. Older. There was a mirror over a basin in the front corner of the room. She could see the reflection of her feet, in their short white socks; one of the flurry of nurses had taken off the strange sneakers (chunky, rubbery things) and put them on the floor next to the bed. Alice could just hop out of the bed and walk over and look at herself.
    Presumably it was against strict hospital regulations to get out of bed. She had a head injury. She might faint and hit her head again. Nobody had told her not to get out of bed, but they probably thought it was obvious.
    She should look in the mirror. But she didn’t want to see. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want this to be real. Besides, she was busy at the moment. She had to look through the bag. Quickly, she undid the buckles of the backpack and shoved her hand in. She pulled out . . . a towel.
    A plain, innocuous, clean blue bath towel. Alice looked at it and felt nothing but embarrassment. She was fossicking through somebody else’s private stuff. Jane Turner had obviously picked up someone else’s bag and insisted it was hers without really looking at it. It was just like Jane. So bossy and impatient.
    Well.
    Alice examined her beautifully manicured fingernails again. She put her hand in the bag again and pulled out a plastic bag, folded flat. She opened it and emptied it onto her lap.
    A woman’s clothes. Underwear. A red dress. A cream-colored cardigan with a single large wooden button. Knee-high beige boots. Small jewelry case.
    The underwear was creamy lace-edged satin. Alice’s underwear tended to be flippant and faded; jolly seahorses on her pants and purple cotton bras that clipped at the front.
    She held the dress up in front of her and saw that it was beautiful. A simple design of silky fabric with tiny cream flowers. The cream of the cardigan matched the cream of the flowers on the dress exactly.
    She checked the label on the dress. An S for small. It wouldn’t fit her. She was a medium at best. It couldn’t be hers. She folded the clothes back up and opened the jewelry case, lifting out a fine gold necklace with a big topaz stone. The stone was too big for her taste, but she dangled it over the dress and agreed