Five Minutes Alone Read Free Page A

that’s more than two hundred dollars, and figure that I can if I do what Kent suggested—take bribes in my dreams. I head to the kitchen and my heart breaks a little. Bridget is making breakfast. There are three bowls on the table. One for me, one for her, one for our daughter, Emily. Bridget has her hair tied back into a ponytail, where it touches just below her shoulders. It’s just as blond as it was whenwe first met, and just as wavy, but she keeps it mostly tied up these days. At thirty-seven, she’s two years younger than me, but has always seemed to age at a slightly slower rate than me, and even after all we’ve been through, all her body went through after the accident, she still only looks thirty. It’s genetics, because her mom looks twenty years younger than she really is. She turns towards me and smiles, that room-warming smile of hers that I’ve seen disarm others, the smile where I’ve seen men glance to her hand to see if she’s wearing a wedding ring. I imagine it’s every man’s dream to end up with a beautiful woman, and I’m living that dream.
    Toast pops up and Bridget turns towards it, then moves it onto a tray, dropping the pieces quickly because they’re hot. Then she starts buttering them, changing her grip every second. I walk over and put my arms around her from behind.
    “Morning,” I say, and I kiss her neck.
    “Morning,” she says, without turning around. “I’m guessing that was Schroder?” she asks.
    Schroder. The bowl for Emily. This happened for the first time two weeks ago. “No,” I tell her. “It was Detective Kent.”
    “Kent? I haven’t met him.”
    “Her.”
    “She’s new?”
    “She got transferred from Auckland this year.”
    She keeps buttering the toast. “Is it bad? The body that’s been found? That’s why she called, right?”
    I don’t answer. I let her go and move over to the fridge and grab orange juice, then pour us each a glass. Bridget puts the knife down and turns towards me. “What’s wrong? You look so sad all of a sudden.”
    “I don’t work with Schroder anymore.” I tell her the easy news, hoping she’ll remember the rest without me needing to spell it out, but knowing that it’s unlikely. When she came out of the vegetative state she spent four weeks not remembering a single thing, barely even knowing who she was. The day she came out was the same day I fell into a coma. We overlapped each other by only a fewminutes. We were like ships passing in the night. Before I slipped into my own coma, I remember the doctor telling me Bridget had woken up, that there was a problem, and I don’t remember anything else after that.
    “You don’t?” she asks.
    “He left the force.”
    She frowns a little. “When was that?”
    “Earlier this year.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me? Did Kent replace him? Is she your new partner?”
    “And you’re making breakfast for Emily,” I tell her, deciding not to update her on Schroder. He left the force because he was fired. He was fired because he had to make an impossible decision.
    She shakes her head a little and gives me a slight smile. “Of course I’m making breakfast for her. I’m taking her to the movies later this morning. It’s a shame you can’t come along. But you’re avoiding my question. Why didn’t you tell me about Kent? Is she attractive?”
    Four weeks after joining the land of the living, Bridget’s memory came back. All of it—minus the few hours before and during the accident. Then two weeks ago the problems started. Small problems. Painful problems. My wife wakes up into the morning of the accident. She thinks that everything is as it was three years ago. It’s the school holidays and she’s taking Emily to the movies and Schroder is my partner and the world, to her, hasn’t moved on.
    Today is the third time it has happened.
    I step forward and I grab hold of her hands. She tilts her head slightly and her forehead creases. “What is it you’re about to tell