Everything We Keep

The first installment of Kerry Lonsdale's Everything trilogy opens in Los Gatos, California, where 26-year-old sous chef Aimee Tierney attends the funeral of her fiancé, James Donato, held on what was to be their wedding day in July. James, who had just turned 29, went missing two months earlier after reportedly falling overboard during a fishing trip off Mexico. His remains were said to be too decomposed for an open casket. James's older brother, Thomas Donato, gives Aimee a personal check for $227,000, the amount she would have inherited had they married, and encourages her to open a restaurant. In the parking lot, an older blonde woman named Lacy Saunders approaches Aimee and declares that James is alive. She hands Aimee a business card identifying herself as a psychic counselor specializing in missing persons. Aimee's friends Nadia and Kristen dismiss Lacy as a con artist.

Two days later, Aimee's parents reveal they have sold The Old Irish Goat, the upscale pub where Aimee works as sous chef, because the business is near bankruptcy. With both James and her career gone, Aimee spirals. Months blur together in sleepless nights, compulsive baking, and a neglected house.

In October, Aimee discovers Lacy's business card on the floor and drives to her house but panics before going inside. Lacy later appears on Aimee's porch, telling Aimee she still has doubts about James's death. Around the same time, Aimee discovers that seven of eight boxes of James's paintings have vanished from her garage. On a walk downtown, she finds that Joe's Coffee House, the café she and James frequented, has closed and is available for lease. She resolves to open her own café in the space. At the nearby Wendy V. Yee Gallery, she meets photographer Ian Collins and feels an immediate attraction. Over lunch, she finds a business card for Casa del sol, a resort in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico, tucked inside her wallet. She believes Lacy planted it. The resort is nearly a thousand miles from where James was supposedly fishing.

Aimee endorses Thomas's check and applies for the lease, but her application is rejected due to poor credit. Joe Russo, the building's owner, later visits Aimee and, impressed by her abilities, offers her generous terms, hinting that someone is looking out for her. Nadia designs the space pro bono, and an eight-month renovation begins. Ian returns from a photography trip and becomes a steady presence in Aimee's life. She tells him she is not ready for a relationship, and he proposes a deal: He will accept friendship if she promises to tell him when she wants something more.

On her birthday at a nightclub, Aimee spots Lacy and chases her into the restroom, where she experiences vivid visions of James underwater dodging bullets, struggling to shore, and collapsing on a beach where a dark-haired woman tends to him. Aimee faints.

By July, one year after James's funeral, the café is ready for its soft launch. When her lead barista quits, Ian steps in and is hired as shift manager. He gives Aimee a framed print of his photograph Belize Sunrise, and their tension builds, though Aimee stops him from kissing her. She confesses she believes James may still be alive, citing Lacy's claims, the missing paintings, and the resort card. Ian reveals that a psychic he recognizes as Lacy once helped his father find him as a lost child and tells Aimee he has already fallen in love with her.

At the soft launch, a waitress delivers a postcard promoting El estudio del pintor, an art gallery in Puerto Escondido, featuring an image of one of James's missing paintings. The woman who left it is confirmed to be Lacy. Aimee hires a private investigator, Ray Miles, whose report months later confirms all official records of James's death and finds no trace of Lacy. Then a package arrives from Oaxaca containing an original painting by James and a note from Lacy on Casa del sol stationery: The danger has passed, James is safe, and it is time he learned the truth. Aimee books a flight to Mexico. Ian volunteers to accompany her.

In Puerto Escondido, Aimee meets hotel manager Imelda Rodriguez and locates the gallery. The next morning, a man who resembles James jogs toward her. He has a scarred face, a thick accent, and introduces himself as Carlos. Aimee calls him James. He shows no recognition. Over the following days, she registers for an art workshop and discovers James's missing paintings in Carlos's private studio, along with dozens of canvases depicting a woman with Caribbean-blue eyes, painted in progressively closer approximations of her own features. When she confronts him, Carlos is furious and orders her to leave.

Ian shares his theory that Carlos has dissociative fugue, a trauma-induced condition in which a person loses all autobiographical memory and constructs a new identity without awareness of any loss. If James's memories return, Carlos's identity and his memories of life in Mexico will vanish. Recovery is not guaranteed. Imelda then confesses the full story: She found Carlos washed up on the shore without memories shortly after her husband's death left her bankrupt. Within hours, Thomas arrived and paid off her hotel debts in exchange for creating a false identity for James as Jaime Carlos Dominguez, a Mexican citizen and Imelda's adopted brother. Thomas arranged facial reconstruction, fabricated documents, and shipped James's paintings to furnish the new life. Feeling guilty, Imelda asked Lacy, a frequent hotel guest she calls Lucy, to find someone from Carlos's past.

Carlos takes Aimee to his beachfront home, where she discovers he has two young sons and that his wife, Raquel, the physical therapist who helped him recover, died during childbirth. In a long conversation, Aimee tells Carlos the full story of James's life, including a secret she has never shared: On the day James proposed, his cousin Phil appeared drunk, pinned Aimee to the ground, and sexually assaulted her, declaring that James and Thomas had taken everything from him. James pulled Phil off and vowed to handle Phil himself.

Surveying Carlos's home and the evidence of a full life, Aimee accepts that Carlos is needed here more than she needs James. She removes the engagement ring and places it in his palm, refusing to force him to be someone he is not. She recognizes that Carlos is living the free, artistic life James always dreamed of.

Back at the hotel, Aimee confronts Thomas, who reveals that Phil is actually the half-brother of James and Thomas. Phil was laundering drug money through the family business, Donato Enterprises, and Thomas and their father, Edgar Donato, had been cooperating with the DEA. James discovered the scheme and, enraged by Phil's assault on Aimee, flew to Mexico to confront Phil directly. Phil tried to kill James on a boat. Thomas arranged the concealment to protect James and preserve the DEA case, but what was meant to last weeks stretched into years as the investigation dragged on and James built a new life. Thomas admits he paid off the private investigator and secretly covered Aimee's café lease. When Aimee asks what was inside James's casket, Thomas answers: sandbags.

Aimee returns home and removes all of James's belongings from their shared spaces. Several weeks later, she attends Ian's new gallery exhibit, which for the first time features photographs of people, including a luminous portrait of Aimee dancing. Ian tells her he gave her space, hoping she would find her way back. Aimee tells him she loves him, and he promises breakfast the next morning and every morning after.

In an epilogue set five years later, Carlos wakes from a dream of a blue-eyed woman and a boat where his brother pointed a gun at him. He does not recognize the child calling him "Papá," the house, or the photographs on the walls. The older boy retrieves a locked box containing identity documents, Aimee's ring, and a letter Carlos wrote to himself explaining that his name is Jaime Carlos Dominguez and he was once James Charles Donato. The letter ends: "I AM YOU" (292).