A Husband She Couldn't Forget

by Christine Rimmer

  She told her therapist everything, all the bits of her recent life that she’d been remembering, the stuff she’d yet to share with Connor or her family.

  Dr. Warbury said, “It’s wonderful that it’s all coming back to you—and pretty quickly, too.”

  “I’ve read up on my kind of memory loss. It usually takes longer than it has for me, doesn’t it?”

  “When it comes to the human brain, no two cases are alike. Recovery is a different story with each and every individual. You’re making progress, exceptional progress. That’s what matters. I’m so pleased for you.” Then she asked, “What about your family and your ex-husband? How’s it going with them?”

  “It’s good. My brothers and my dad are actually getting along with Connor now, so that’s a big step...”

  Dr. Warbury jotted something in the notebook she kept open across her lap during their sessions. “You’re hesitating. Is there something else you want to tell me?”

  Aly confessed, “It’s only, well, I haven’t told anyone else about the things I’ve remembered.”

  Dr. Warbury waited. She was really good at that, just letting the silence stretch out until Aly decided what she wanted to say.

  “I just don’t want to share that with them yet,” she said. “I’m not sure why—not concerning my family, anyway. But with Connor, I like how it’s working out between us. I’m afraid that admitting how much I remember might have him saying it’s time for me to move on—move out of his house and back to my parents’ place.”

  “Has Connor said or done anything that leads you to believe he wants you to move out?”

  “God, no. He seems happy to have me there. I think he’s enjoying our time together as much as I am. Still, I don’t want to tell him that my memory is returning. I don’t want to tell anyone but you. Not yet.”

  “Then don’t. Trust yourself. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. You’ll know when the time is right.”

  * * *

  The next morning Aly was in the baby’s room at her mom’s house, folding baby blankets and tiny onesies, feeling like a happy little homebody, getting everything ready for when the new baby came.

  She’d just set a stack of receiving blankets on the open shelf above the changing table when her phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and checked the display. It was Jane Levelow, her immediate superior at Strategic Image.

  At the sight of Jane’s name on the display, Aly’s heart started racing. It was beating so hard it made her ears ring. Sweat bloomed on her upper lip and underarms. And out of nowhere, she had a headache coming on.

  She just couldn’t answer it. What would she say? What if she somehow slipped up? She would have to explain everything—the accident, her partial amnesia, the fact that there was no guarantee she’d get all the important parts of her memory back.

  Jane was a dynamo. She had no patience with colleagues who couldn’t keep up.

  Aly had never had a problem staying on top of her job. She had good ideas and excellent follow-through. She’d worked long hours and her dedication to the job had paid off.

  Answering this call could be the beginning of the end of her career.

  But then she remembered how it had been with her New York girlfriends. As they messaged back and forth, her memories of them had returned to her.

  Plus, dealing with Jane was ultimately inescapable. Aly would have to talk to her at some point.

  She made herself take the call.

  Her heart pounded wildly in her ears as Jane apologized for calling during her family leave. “If you hang up on me now,” she said, “I will completely understand.”

  They both knew she was joking. No one at SI ever refused to talk to Jane.

  Aly laughed and said it was fine.

  And right about then, she realized that it was fine. Her terror of facing her own life had vanished, along with the ringing in her ears and her sudden splitting headache. She felt bizarrely confident that she could handle whatever Jane threw at her.

  Jane mentioned a certain account.

  Aly remembered it. She knew all the players and exactly where they’d been on the project when she left for Oregon.

  Jane said, “I want to switch to video chat, if that’s okay, and bring Bill in on this call?” Bill Turlington was handling the account in Aly’s absence.

  “Of course,” Aly said. “Give me five minutes to check on my mom and grab my laptop.”

  Four minutes later, she was on with Bill and Jane.

  Bill had some questions and Aly knew most of the answers—and if she didn’t have what they needed, she did have concrete suggestions for how to get it. Jane joked that it was really impossible to get along without her at SI.

  Aly felt so good, she told Jane and Bill to give her a call any time there was something she could clear up or help out with.

  She probably shouldn’t have done that. After all, she was on leave. She was supposed to be taking a break from SI, concentrating on her family.

  But Jane was happy and Bill was happy.

  And the call had reminded Aly of how much she loved her job. It reminded her that her real life was on the other side of the continent.

  She still loved Connor. She always had. Maybe she always would.

  But she needed to remember that the future didn’t hold a whole lot of promise for them as a couple.

  They wanted different things from life.

  Chapter Nine

  Something was wrong.

  Connor swam up through the layers of sleep and opened his eyes. It was ten after two on Saturday morning and he was alone in the bed.

  He sat up. “Aly?”

  And then he saw her, huddled in the leather club chair by the window. He turned on the lamp. They both blinked against the sudden flare of light.

  She’d wrapped herself in the spare blanket and gathered her knees up under her chin. For several tense seconds they just stared at each other.

  Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  She poked a hand out of the blanket and shoved her sleep-tangled hair back from her forehead. “I remembered,” she said, her voice desolate. She looked wrecked, ruined, like someone she loved had died.

  She also looked absolutely furious—at him.

  He wanted to go to her, to hold her, comfort her. She seemed so lost and alone. But judging by the fire in her eyes as she glared at him, no way would she welcome his touch. “You remembered what?”

  “It was a dream, at first. But then I woke up in the middle of it, and I knew. I remembered it all—how it happened, exactly how it was. How you promised you wanted to go to New York with me, how you said we would make the move together. I remembered all our plans. Years of them, yours and mine. Or so I thought...” She rubbed at her temples.

  He needed to say something to make it better, make it right. But there was nothing, no excuse he could give her. No way to make it all better.

  Everything she’d said so far was only the truth.

  She grabbed the blanket tighter around her. “But they weren’t your plans, were they? In all those years, you never said a word about what you really felt. You lied to me and lied and lied. You were lying the whole time. And then, when it came right down to the wire, out of nowhere, you burst out with the truth. You didn’t want to go and you weren’t going to go.”

  “That’s true.” What else could he say? “It’s all true.”

  She went on accusing him. “You said that I should call my new job and tell them never mind. You said it didn’t matter, all the money we’d put down on that little apartment in Washington Heights. It was just money and so what if we didn’t get it back? You said Daniel needed you here and you couldn’t go. You wouldn’t talk it over. You wouldn’t budge an inch. You—”

  “Aly.”

  She
scowled all the harder at him. “What?”

  Gingerly, he reminded her, “I told you all this. I told you everything, what I did, what a jerk I was. Do you remember that I told you?”

  She let out an angry bark of laughter. “Of course I remember what you told me. Don’t you dare look at me like this is some new problem with my memory. My memory is...waking up. And it’s all getting clearer, day by day. Times like right now, I really wish it wasn’t.”

  “I’m just trying to understand exactly what you’re angry about, that’s all.”

  She scrunched deeper into the blanket and muttered, “It’s not that you didn’t tell me.”

  He nodded at her. Slowly. “Okay,” he said pointlessly, on a rising inflection.

  “You told me and I got over it. I forgave you, I really did. But now I actually remember it myself. And you know what?” She jumped from the chair, grabbed the blanket tightly around her and paced back and forth at the foot of the bed, a corner of the fabric fluttering in her wake. “I’ll tell you what. Now I know it for myself, now I remember exactly how it was, I’m furious with you all over again. It’s so much more real, to relive it as it happened, to know how you were, what you did. You just flat out refused to go with me. You canceled your plane ticket and stayed home. You never reached out. Two months went by. I waited to hear from you—a call. A text. A one-line email. Anything. But there was nothing. Until the divorce papers.”

  “Aly, come on...”

  She paced all the faster. “You were such an absolute, unmitigated jackass.”

  He nodded. “You’re right.” He put up both hands in complete surrender. “I was an idiot. A thoughtless, stupid kid. I know it. I’ve said it was all my fault.”

  She sneered at him. “You don’t have to be so damn...understanding about it.”

  “Aly. We’ve been through this. If I’m understanding, it’s because I know I was completely in the wrong.”

  She stopped stock-still and faced him. “I was wrong, too,” she said through clenched teeth. “I should have tried harder. But at least now I know why I didn’t.”

  Where were they going with this? “Um. Okay...”

  “You keep saying that—‘okay.’ With a dot-dot-dot at the end of it.”

  “Because I don’t know what to say.”

  “You should have told me earlier that you were worried for Daniel, that you didn’t want to leave him to run Valentine Logging alone. You should have been honest with me. You should have explained to me from the first all the reasons your heart was here and you just couldn’t go with me. I might have felt I had to go, anyway. I might still have ended up brokenhearted without you, but at least I wouldn’t have had to be so full of rage and bitterness about what you did.”

  “I get it. I really do.”

  She lifted her arms and the blanket flapped like a cape, revealing her bare body for a fraction of a second before she grabbed it close once more. “It, well, it hurts a whole lot to have to live it all over again.” Her blue eyes shone with rising tears.

  “Aly, come here.”

  Crying silently, glaring at him through her tears, she didn’t budge an inch.

  “Come on.” He dared to hold out a hand.

  She sniffed and swiped at her wet cheeks with the blanket. “I sat in that chair over there for about a half hour, watching you sleeping so peacefully, wanting to chuck a lamp at your big, fat head. I was really hoping for a fight, I truly was. But no. You have to be all adulting and reasonable. I ask you, what happened to the self-absorbed, inarticulate ass I once married?”

  “He grew up.”

  “Oh, Connor...” Her tears flowed freely now.

  He tried again. “Come on...”

  She put a hand to the side of her skull. “My head aches.”

  “Come here.”

  She sucked in a big breath and blew it out hard. “Fine.” The blanket fell to the floor, revealing her naked body again. Damn, she was beautiful. Looking at her did something to him on an elemental level. She rearranged the molecules in his body. She made everything burn.

  He caught her fingers, pulled her back onto the bed and into his arms. She sniffled some more. He just held her, rocking her.

  When she’d calmed, he asked, “How’s your head?”

  She gave a sad little chuckle. “Still aches a little. But it’s better already.”

  “Come on. Let’s get you under the covers.” He settled the blankets around them and pulled her in, spooning her.

  “Connor?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I have a confession.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “In the past several days, it’s been slowly coming back to me, about my life in New York, about my job and my friends there.”

  He wasn’t surprised. He kissed the side of her neck. “I’m so glad.”

  “You’re not angry that I didn’t tell you?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re not doubtful that I really did lose seven years in the accident, that I haven’t been somehow faking you out this whole time?”

  “I’m not, no.”

  “But it’s all coming back pretty quickly. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if maybe it was just some bizarre trick of my own mind that had me losing the seven years we’ve been apart.”

  “You sustained a concussion. You were out for several minutes. Those are the facts. Don’t go searching around for a reason to be hard on yourself.”

  “Oh, Connor...” She reached back, cupped her hand around his neck and turned her head to meet his lips in a quick, hard kiss.

  When she let go, he scattered a few more kisses along the slope of her shoulder. “Do you remember the accident itself?”

  “Uh-uh. It’s a blank now, that whole day is. My brothers have told me that I remembered more at first, at the hospital right after the accident. They said I could recall everything up to when I passed Camp 18 on the Sunset Highway. But then, when I woke up before dawn the next morning, it was all gone. I lost seven years, including that last day. I don’t remember leaving New York or the plane ride to PDX. Driving home is a blank. Dr. Warbury says I might never remember the immediate period surrounding the accident.”

  He whispered, “So, then. Tell me about what you do remember.”

  “It comes in flashes. And sometimes in dreams. I wake up and the dream I just had is a memory.” She took his hand and pressed it close to her heart. “Dr. Warbury advised me to get in contact with friends from New York. I reached out to a couple of girlfriends. We were messaging back and forth and it all just came back to me, the things we did, the times we’ve had together. Every day I feel that I understand it all better—the past seven years, what my life is like now.”

  Her life. Which was not his life. He needed to remember that, not let wishful thinking take over, not start imagining that she might decide she wanted to move home permanently, not start hoping that they would end up together.

  He kept telling himself he knew that she would leave in the end. But on some deep level, he saw her as his. On some deep level, no matter how he’d tried over the years to deny her and her hold on his heart, she’d always remained the one who mattered, the one he couldn’t forget.

  “I’ve been afraid to tell you all I remember,” she said in a small voice. “Afraid you would decide I didn’t really need to be here with you anymore, that it wasn’t good for us to go on the way we have been. I was scared you would ask me to move out.”

  He smoothed her hair away from her ear and whispered, “Never.”

  “I’m so happy to hear you say that.” She wiggled around in his arms until she faced him. Her eyes were midnight blue, shining up at him. “I want this time together, you and me. I really do.”

  “And I want you here. No way I’m ever asking you to leave.”

  Her smile bloomed wide. “Exc
ellent.” She kissed his chin and then rolled to her back.

  For a minute or two, they were quiet. He gazed up at the shadowed ceiling, wishing that this, right now, with her, could go on forever, knowing that wishes never did turn into horses and beggars rarely got to ride.

  She said, “Yesterday, while I was at my mom’s, my boss called from New York...” She spoke of her fear to answer the call, of her terror that she would show herself as unable to do her job anymore. “But it turned out the same as it did when I got in touch with my girlfriends. I just knew what I needed to know. And the memories of my years at SI flooded back, along with how much I love my job.”

  “I’m glad that it worked out so well.”

  “Me, too.” She got up on an elbow and reached across him to turn off the light.

  He pulled her closer. “Sleepy now?”

  “Mmm-hmm. You?”

  He made a low sound of agreement. She said no more. He held her and listened to her breathing even out into the shallow rhythm of sleep.

  Things were so good between them. But he needed to accept that it wasn’t forever. The basic issue between them had never changed.

  He was a hometown boy. He needed to be close to his family. And he was proud of what he and Daniel had built at Valentine Logging. He couldn’t really see himself living anywhere but Valentine Bay.

  But Aly? She was a big-city girl all the way.

  * * *

  For Aly, the next week and a half went by fast. Cat was doing well at home. She’d had no more bleeding and only minor contractions. She seemed relaxed and upbeat.

  Aly puttered around her parents’ house, cooking and keeping things tidy, enjoying the role of Santangelo family housekeeper. She’d never been big on playing the homemaker. But for now, for her mom’s sake, she was more than happy to cook and clean.

  Really, everything was going so well. Her mom was doing fine—and Aly’s relationship with Connor just got better and better.

  They spent their evenings together, she and Connor, acting like an old married couple, sharing dinner, taking long walks along the nearby beach. And then later, in bed, he made love to her as though she was the only woman in the world, urgent and yet so tender. As though he couldn’t bear to waste a second of their time together.