I flip to the first page, which shows a dreamy black-and-white photograph of me crouching in the sand, holding a perfect, closed clamshell in the palm of my hand, both halves of the shell intact. I’m grinning into the camera, my cheeks flushed. He took the photograph the day after we arrived, to reenact a moment from last summer. You loved to find undamaged seashells, without any missing pieces, he said. I remember one time when you found a perfect clamshell, but it was much bigger than this one. Still, this one will do.
The next pages show snapshots in time, recreations of shared moments. I’m spearing a square of ravioli with my fork; a selfie shot shows the two of us smiling on a forest trail beneath a cathedral of fir trees; I’m paddling a two-person kayak in the calm waters of Mystic Bay, close to the shore, laughing as Jacob makes faces at me. He printed thirteen photographs for our thirteen days here so far, each image representing something fun we did here before. In yesterday’s picture, the egg is sliced thinly. I’m grinning at Jacob across the table, the slanted morning sunlight in my hair.
“What should I do for the picture this time?” I say, putting the album on the table.
He stands back against the window. “Get naked?”
“Not a chance,” I say, blushing. “Try again.”
He grins. “All right. Before the accident, every morning, you got up and drank a cup of something. Usually it was orange spice tea.”
“Coffee now,” I say, holding up my mug.
“You were always reading a magazine.”
I pick up a copy of the New Yorker from the coffee table, the Style Issue from last autumn. I open the magazine in my lap.
“You liked to fold back the page,” he says. “Just like that. But you didn’t sit all stiff and upright.”
I look down at myself, then at him. “Am I stiff and upright?”
“Self-consciously so. You were carefree. You doubled up the cushions against the arm of the couch and lay down, sprawled out. That was more your style.”
Carefree. Is that even possible anymore? I’m trying so hard to file away every moment into memory. To remember where I set down my mug, what I last read in my book on the nightstand, what I had for breakfast. I turn and lie on the couch, setting the cushions under my head. “Like this?”
He looks exasperated. “Not so staged.”
“I can’t help staging—I don’t know who I was before.”
“Just relax,” he says, beginning to snap photographs. “Smile.”
I laugh. “I’m self-conscious, I can’t help it. You keep taking pictures of me.”
“You’re so beautiful,” he says, looking at me above the camera.
“If this is foreplay, it’s working,” I say, my cheeks heating even more.
“Are you relaxed now?”
“This is definitely comfy,” I say.
He comes over and squeezes onto the couch beside me, holding the camera above us and taking a selfie of the two of us lying side by side.
“You’re squishing me,” I say, giggling.
“That’s my MO.”
I shove him over and he falls onto the floor and snaps a picture of me at an angle, grinning down at him. Come down here with me, he says in my memory. He lay in just that spot, in the warmth of the fire. I tumbled onto the plush carpet and into his arms. We must have taken off our clothes . . . But I’m only guessing. Whatever actually happened next, and on all the days afterward, is lost to me.
“After I get some work done,” Jacob says, “I thought we could visit more of the places we used to go.”
“There are more?” I say, taking another sip of the coffee. We’ve driven the scenic routes, kayaked in protected bays, and hiked the bluff trails.
“The island is full of beautiful places.”
“What about Nancy and Van? Did we go places with them? Were we friends with them as couples?”
He looks thoughtful. “We hung out with them last summer.” He crumples paper and tucks it inside the pyramid of logs.
There’s a beat of silence. “You and Van? You’re friends?”
“He’s a decent guy. A good fix-it man. His forte, not mine.”
“But you’re good with computers. You did a great job of rigging up the Internet. Nobody else on the island even has a connection.”
“It’s our secret.”
“I won’t tell a soul. You’re an expert at making fires, too.”
He grins at me. “I like to look at you in the firelight. We used to . . .”
A blush spreads through my cheeks. I’m thinking what he doesn’t say. We used to make love by firelight. “You’re a romantic.”
“Speaking of which, we should go to the Whale Tale for dinner.”
“A date,” I say.
“No strings attached.”
“You’re my husband, we’re attached.”
“But I don’t want you to feel pressured.”
“You’re not pressuring me.” I run my finger around the rim of my mug. “I made a good decision, marrying a patient man.”
“I try. But I’ve snapped at you more than once since we got here.”
“It has to be difficult for you, living with Mrs. Rip Van Winkle.”
“At least you didn’t wake up speaking a foreign language, like that guy who lost his memory and wandered around speaking Swedish. The doctors couldn’t trip him up and get him to speak English. But he’d never learned Swedish. How could a guy who never knew a language start speaking in only that language?”
“That is weird,” I say. “Did they ever find out who he was?”
“Some American guy with major problems. His ex-wife had remarried. He’d lost his job. Everything was going wrong. One theory is his brain reset itself. Wanted to start over.”