Three days after the church incident, Grace Holloway lost nearly six hours. She remembered leaving work. Rain on the windshield. A voicemail from her mother. The smell of wet wool. Then - Music. Heavy bass, muffled through walls. Grace opened her eyes while lying on a velvet chaise lounge in a room lit red and gold. Her head throbbed. Bodies moved everywhere around her - half-dressed, masked, laughing too loudly, touching without tenderness. Champagne spilled. Someone cried and kept laughing. A man in a suit was on his knees praying or vomiting, or something else entirely. Grace could not tell which, until she noticed his head bobbing up and down. No one seemed surprised to see her awake. Someone passed and kissed her forehead. “Back from the dead,” he said. Grace sat upright too fast. She was clothed, mostly. Expensively, but incorrectly. One heel missing. Blouse buttoned wrong. Her hands trembled. There were dark stains on one cuff. Wine, she thought instantly. Blood, she the thought...
Thirty-one-year-old Grace Holloway was, by every public measure, a lovely woman. People used that word often. Lovely . Lovely smile. Lovely manners. Lovely home. Lovely to work with. Lovely to have at dinner. She remembered names, birthdays, dietary restrictions, anniversaries, children’s allergies, preferred wine, and exactly how long to hold eye contact before looking modestly away. She sent sympathy cards on thick cream stationery. She volunteered suggestions where photographs might be taken. She touched forearms when speaking, leaned in at the right moments, laughed without showing too much gum, and could make almost anyone leave a conversation feeling slightly improved. Grace had spent years becoming indispensable. No one noticed that no one really knew her. --- The headaches began in late October. A bright, needling pain behind the left eye. Brief at first. A pulse. A stitch. Then gone. She blamed backlit computer screens. Stress. Weather. Then came the lost minutes. Standing in ...