Chapter 29
The room loomed large and empty, as if Pamela had vanished without a trace.
Yet Scott refused to believe those absurd words.
His emotions gradually settled as he gazed at the wedding dress draped over the sofa.
Then Scott slowly lowered his eyes, his gaze dull and lifeless, his Adam’s apple bobbing faintly.
“We’re calling off the wedding today.”
Suppressing his anguish, he told Rachel and Nathan, who watched him with concern: “She’s just frightened by your both, too scared to show herself-”
Smack!
Rachel could no longer endure Scott’s self-deception. She strode forward and slapped him hard, desperate to shatter his delusion.
“Son. Pamela is dead!”
“How long will you keep lying to yourself?!”
Tears streamed down her face as she choked out: “Why do you think I went to Nathan the day after your dinner with
Peter?”
“Because Peter told me you’d lost your mind!”
“You took thin air to that dinner-claimed your imaginary girlfriend was real!”
Scott froze, then vehemently denied it: “Impossible! Why would he say that? Why would he lie to you?!”
He gripped Rachel’s shoulders, voice ragged with desperation:
“He’s lying! Mom, believe me!”
“Pamela is real!”
Grief-stricken and furious, Rachel snapped: “You insist she’s real?! Fine! I’ll show you the real her!”
Rachel and Nathan drove Scott to the familiar cemetery, stopping before a gravestone.
Dazed, he lifted his eyes to the photograph etched on the marker.
The person in that portrait-
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-was Pamela!
Scott’s pupils contracted violently. His legs gave way, knees hitting the earth.
Seventeen years he’d known that face-his childhood sweetheart, etched forever in his memory…
“How…” he whispered, voice breaking.
Every moment from their month together flashed through his mind like slides.
His initial disbelief and fear… then the dawning certainty he’d finally embraced…
Only to learn it was all fiction?
All imagined? Nonexistent?!
His breathing grew frantic, the light in his eyes seeming to shatter piece by piece…
Everything that had unsettled him this month suddenly made sense.
The store clerk’s confusion. His friend’s bewilderment. The airport staff ignoring his invisible companion. Even Kim’s cruel remarks…
All real yet he’d been utterly alone.
The truth hidden behind the fog now stood exposed.
But the cost was his most cherished light…
Tears streaming down his reddened eyes, Scott gently traced Pamela’s frozen smile on the cold stone.
“Pamela…”
No wonder he’d felt such agony at the cemetery before-he’d passed her grave!
As he whispered, Pamela’s face on the tombstone blurred in his vision…
Scott awoke to the sterile white walls of a hospital room.
Rachel saw him wake up and breathed a sigh of relief, bursting into tears: “You scared me to death, collapsing like that at the cemetery!”
“I’ve already lost your father… I can’t lose you too… How could I go on living…”
Scott gazed dazedly at Rachel, his eyes clouded with numb exhaustion.
“Mom, I need to go home.”
“Pamela and Ginger Tabby are waiting for me there…”
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“She gets scared when I’m not around…”
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