Nostalgic Trepidation

A wave of memory struck Jordan as she walked through the front door and onto a hardwood floor.

Immediately to her left was the living room, a well-worn leather couch nestled against a sill for a window that extended across the entire room. There was a coffee table resting between the couch and a television sitting in an entertainment center.

Past the entryway closet, a small bathroom, and a set of stairs was an intersection with each direction leading to a different room.

To the left, the kitchen was pristine save for a slow cooker ticking down as it cooked what must have been tonight’s dinner – chicken. It was barely wide enough for two people to pass each other through.

Straight ahead was the dining room. The oaken table took up the lion’s share of the floor space, a red tablerunner running its length and splitting it in half. Four chairs were pushed in with matching placemats set in front of each.

To the right, the office. Apart from a desk where a desktop computer rested, the room was mostly filled with what looked like election paraphernalia like the sign in the front yard.

Jordan turned around and went up the stairs. Her hand ran along the sanded rail. There were four doors on the upper level, as well as a door in the ceiling to what must be an attic.

She knew not to enter one of the doors. It wasn’t her room. Someone would get angry if she went in.

One of the doors was definitely a shared bathroom. Just enough space for a toilet, a standing shower, and a sink with a medicine cabinet.

But it was when she got to the third door that she froze. Jordan had a vague feeling she was looking at the door to the master bedroom. But hanging from the doorknob was a leather belt.

She couldn’t stop staring at the belt. Her heart raced as she slowly backed away from it. It was only a belt. Why was she panicking at the sight of it?

Jordan’s arms fumbled around and she stumbled into the fourth room. This room she knew. The twin bed whose head was tucked into one of the corners. The faded poster of a band whose base line she was tapping her finger to on her hip. A dresser that listed to one side because one of the legs broke years ago and no one ever bothered fixing it. And then there was the desk with… with…

The desk had been cleared. There should be something on the desk. She remembered staying up into the night sitting there.

It came back in a wave. A ham radio. There was supposed to be a ham radio. Where had it gone?

----

Jordan wandered outside in the hopes the neighborhood might jog her memory.

With every house seeming to look the same, she had to rely on their color and their lawn decorations to tell them apart. Her house was the only one on the street that was blue, the one on the corner had lawn gnomes.

Something in her told her to go down a street or two.

Nothing about the street screamed anything familiar to her. But she felt drawn to the brown house a few places down, where a young black man was frantically shoving boxes into a car and an older black man appeared to be arguing with him.

The two resembled each other enough that Jordan thought they must have been father and son.

The younger man with the sharp fade pulled on the orange jacket he was wearing and gestured into the air. “…w or never. You know they’re crawling all over the place.”

“Tonight should be the last one.” The older man’s facial hair had gone mostly white, and he may have hidden a receding hairline with a peaked cap. He shuffled towards the young man in a smoking jacket and slippers. “After that, I’ll go.”

“We can’t be sure we have that long,” urged the young man. “I, oh!” He noticed a new presence and his jaw dropped. “Jordan?!”

Jordan tilted her head. “Yes?”

The young man rushed up to her in a warm embrace. “Holy shit! I never thought I’d see you in town again! What are you doing here?”

Jordan’s eyes drifted towards the ground. “Have we met?”

Both men were stunned. They remained as such when she explained the doctor’s diagnosis of a fugue state.

The younger man sighed. “Reintroductions, then. I’m DeVon. And this is my old man.”

“Elijah Moore.” The old man took Jordan’s hand and shook it. “You always were one of the good ones. They think you’ll get your memory back soon?”

“I’m not sure,” Jordan admitted. “Could be hours. Could be days or weeks. But they wrote me a prescription that might help.”

Elijah shared a glance with his son. “…Lethenine, right?”

“Yeah. How’d you guess?”

A look of terror struck both men as a police siren blared just around the corner. Flashing red and blue lights drove down the way and stopped on the other side of the street.

The lights kept going as out from the driver’s side came a policeman with buzzed black hair. There was a slight resemblance Jordan struggled to place.

“Gentlemen.” The policeman smiled. “I see you found my sister.”

DeVon averted his eyes. “…Officer Riley.”

Elijah locked eyes with the officer’s and gave his own smile. “Derek. She found her way over, we wanted to make sure she didn’t get lost.”

Derek laughed a little too hard and planted his hand on Jordan’s shoulder. “Not filling her head with any bad memories, are you?”

“Of course not!” Elijah met the laugh with his own. “My son was just saying goodbye. Finally moving out of his old man’s place to strike out on his own.” He held up a hand to stop DeVon from saying anything else. “I’ll be staying here for a bit longer.”

It felt like bad theater to her. Bad theater in a language she didn’t understand.

“Alright.” His hand tightened on Jordan’s shoulder and gently pulled her away from the men. “Well, the rest of the family’s home now and we’ve got to make sure she stays on her medication. Don’t want there to be any complications.”

Jordan was led into the back of the police car, where handcuffed perps were normally kept. She looked out the window and saw the two men staring back at her with a look of worry.

From the driver’s seat, Derek looked back at her for a moment before slamming his foot on the gas.