Filed To Story: The Lingering Kiss of Farewell Novel
she nodded.
Though she heard another murmur,
“She looks just like Marrin Reeves, don’t you think?”
And turned to frown at them, and had to shake it off. She focused back on the lady serving her.
“There will be two rooms. My agent is with me. She’s just ducked off to the bathroom.”
The reservation was checked, and she signed and filled in her details. The lady took her credit card and read it, saw it had her name Marilyn Riddley on it and swiped it and handed it back,
“For room service charges.”
“I’m aware.”
She nodded and collected the keycards for the room she and the boys would have, as well as the one for Lisa, her agent was booked into the room next to hers. As she walked away she heard another comment from those at the reception desk,
“It said Marilyn Riddley on the credit card!”
She turned and looked at them with a slight frown, and they were all looking at her, well, staring at her to be. exact. She headed for the elevator and saw Lisa and the boys coming back this way. She raised a hand, and they made their way to her.
The elevator opened, and the couple in there stopped and stared at her and the woman hissed
“Isn’t that Marrin Reeves?”
to her husband.
“Looks like her,”
he stated, and she frowned at the two of them as he escorted his wife from the elevator, and Lisa looked at her questioningly.
“I don’t know.”
She shrugged, but as they all stepped in and turned around, there were many out there staring at her.
“Now that is weird,”
Callum stated when the doors closed.
“People don’t normally stare at you like that mum.”
“Agreed.”
Lisa murmured.
“I wonder who Marrin Reeves is?”
she murmured to herself.
“Likely some famous woman from here in Houston. Clearly well known. I’ll look her up when we’re all settled in. See what all the fuss is about.”
Lisa stated
“We certainly don’t want to bring unwanted attention if she’s in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.”
“Mm,”
she nodded, but a part of her was now more than curious, the car accident she’d been in. The hire car had Texas number plates on it… Maybe she had family here and didn’t know it. She recalled nothing at all. So she wouldn’t know, though she could well have a sister she supposed and one that she didn’t get along with. She shook it off, and they headed to their rooms. That picture of her wouldn’t go up at the bookstore until the morning of the signing. So no one here should recognise her at all. It was one of the things she had insisted on. They could advertise her signing at the store all they liked but couldn’t put up her picture until the morning of the book signing, because she didn’t want her face all over the place.
Didn’t want people to recognise her and come at her while she was with her children, out looking around or having dinner in a restaurant or lunch in a caf?. Swimming in the hotel pool even. She had so far managed to keep the boys out of everything, and was hoping to be able to do so here as well.
This hotel also had a babysitting service that she’d booked for the time of her signing. The twins had actually liked being on the road and going to all the different cities. They had told her it was just like one big driving holiday.
They didn’t ask about their father anymore, they had done so when they were first at school, and it was a day for the dads to come and tell their class about their job. She’d had to tell them she didn’t know who he was.
She had sat them down and told them about her car accident, something they already knew from her myriad of scars on her legs and down the left side of her body and told them that, that accident had caused her to lose her memory and she recalled nothing before waking up in the hospital.
They’d been stunned into silence, but gotten used to the fact that it was just her and them because she couldn’t recall anything else. They thought it was very funny now, when she couldn’t find something she was looking for, and they hollered out
“Oh my God mum, your amnesia’s back. Don’t you forget us.”
They often teased her.
Sometimes they ran over and stared up at her.
“Do you know who I am?”
Then they would bolt away laughing when she tried to swat them. Though it was even funnier when she stared down at them and frowned deeply.
“Who are you?”
she’d ask in her most serious tone and seen their eyes widen just a little as they actually wondered for that split second if she’d forgotten who they were. Then she would laugh
“Gotcha.”
And they would slap at her for scaring them. It was a two??ay street that one. A fun game to play at times, frustratingly annoying at others. They found it more amusing than she did most of the time.
She’d played the ‘sorry I couldn’t remember where the school was’ when she sometimes. And they muttered ‘ha ha’ as they got in the car. late to pick them up
She was sitting with the boys. They were playing on their tablets. When there was a knock on the door, she got up. It was Lisa.
“Oh you’re all going to love this, I checked out that Marrin Reeves person. You got a doppelg?nger and a half. I nearly believed it was you.”
She stated, coming into the room.