Forget me? All of these people were insane! They treated me like I was the cruelest beast on the planet for breaking his heart, when I never even accepted it to begin with! I couldn’t see why I was the bad guy—my only crime being that I wasn’t in love with a boy from school.
“Fine.” I jerked away from her. “I only ever wanted to be his friend. He ruined this! Not me.”
“I’m sorry, Ara,” Mike said, “it’s just a shitty set of circumstances, but a choice has to be made here, and—”
“What choice?”
“You have Falcon to protect you,” Mike said. “David only has us.”
“And you’re protecting him from me?”
“You’re the only one that’s causing him any pain, Ara,” he said coldly. “If you had just—” He stopped talking when he saw the tears rolling down my cheeks.
“I don’t understand any of this,” I whimpered, wiping my chin. “I don’t understand what I did wrong.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Ara,” Elora said, forcing me to accept a hug. “You’re a good person, and none of this is fair on you. I know you can’t comprehend the way David feels, and frankly, you shouldn’t have to.” She flashed Mike a vehement glare. “He pushed himself into your life too quickly—”
“What do you mean ‘too quickly’?” I looked up into her green David-like eyes.
“Nothing.” Elora shook her head, and Mike shook his too.
“Just go home, and get on with your life,” Mike said. “Forget David.”
“What about Harry?” I asked timidly, afraid of what the answer would be. “Can I still see him?”
“He took Harry with him,” Mike said.
My lungs dropped out through my stomach. I wanted to reach out—to grab Harry and pull him back home, but I had no right to feel that way. I barely even knew the kid. “Where did they go?”
“Far away,” Mike said with a kind of finality that shut me out. “And it’s probably best for us all if you do the same, maybe at least until things simmer down.”
“Should I go back—to the people in my old life?” I asked. “Am I ever going to be happy here?”
Mike looked at Elora.
“You won’t be happy in your old life until you can find a way to be happy in this one,” Elora said. “When you do, then you can come and ask that question.”
The lump in my chest moved up to my throat. I felt like the victim and the criminal all at the same time here. I wanted to go home to where I was loved, no matter what mistakes I made, but I was too ashamed to tell Brett what I’d said to David. So I hung my head and walked down the steps, forbidding myself to look back as the front door closed behind them.
* * *
If I thought I could just get on with life after that, I was wrong. David and Cal were my first experiences with friends, and losing one in such a horrid way left its mark on me, turning into a kind of wound that just wouldn’t heal. Every song I heard on the radio and every brush of the wind that was filled with eucalyptus—like the trees outside his house—reminded me of David, made me feel bad about our fight. Made me relive every detail over and over again.
I made the most of my schooldays, learning as much as possible so I could leave this school, and this town, behind forever. But Elora’s words stuck in my mind: find a way to be happy again before I even think about going home. She was right. How could I expect to make my old life any good if I couldn’t fix things in this one? Running away from my problems wouldn’t make them go away; it would only make them invisible, but they’d still be there. I could go home and find this family that was waiting for me, but I would still be thinking about David and Harry, and Lors and Ali, even Mike. So I searched for a way to be happy, doing everything those wellbeing blogs recommended—three pillars of happiness: find something to do; something to love, even a cat; and something to look forward to. With that in mind, I read books and watched comedies and documentaries, trying to learn as much about this world as I could.
Step two: find something to love. I started walking the next-door neighbor’s dog every afternoon, which did feel good, but its big sad eyes sometimes reminded me of my own pain.
And the third pillar: something to look forward to. Well, it was almost the end of July now, so I circled Halloween on my calendar and decided that, since I was obviously uninvited to Mike’s Halloween party, I should plan one of my own. But when I mentioned it to my friends, they all just looked at me blankly. It turns out that Halloween is not an Australian tradition. Not really. So I needed something else to look forward to.
After that, I even tried my hand at writing, but my stories were all about families that loved each other no matter what. They were boring and stoic. They lacked life experience, kind of like me. I longed now more than ever for the life, the people, I once knew, and a few times I’d almost asked Brett to take me home—take me back to those that might love me even if I screwed up. Because I had screwed up. David had been gone for four months—to the day—and none of my distractions were making time pass any easier.
“I’m worried I’ll miss Harry’s birthday,” I said to Jane, kicking my legs back and forth as I lay on my bed, while she sat at the desk doing my homework. “Elora said no one can get in contact with them—”
“Where’d they go?”
“On the ocean; David has a big yacht apparently.”
“No way, that’s cool.”
“Yeah,” I said absently. “But what’s Harry doing for school? He must be missing his friends and Mike and Elora.” Maybe me. “And… I mean, his birthday is in a few weeks. Will David give him a cake, and candles?” My eyes started to water.
“I’m sure he would,” she assured me. “He didn’t seem like a nasty kind of guy.”
“But he is, Jane.” I thought back to our last argument. My instincts were right all along: he was dangerous and cruel. “He just looked at me with so much hatred when he told me to get out. I didn’t know anyone could hate like that.”
“I don’t know why you didn’t tell me about this sooner,” she said impatiently. “You’ve been miserable for months—we all knew it. I was beginning to think we’d done something wrong.”
I smiled. “I wasn’t sure I should tell anyone, you know, because he asked me to keep Harry a secret.”
Jane nodded. “I get it. But the secret’s safe with me.”
“Thanks.” I rolled over and looked at the ceiling, thinking about it long before I actually asked the question that was on my mind. “It makes me a horrible person, doesn’t it—that I don’t want to be with him because he has a kid?”
“What? Are you kidding?” She laughed, dropping the pen. She bent to pick it up and then threw it at me. “There’s no way I’d date a guy that has a kid—especially not one that’s our age. Ew! How old was he when he had that kid?”
“I was wondering that too.” I rolled back over again and slid the pen across the floor to her feet. “I was trying to figure out what scenario led to it.”
“Do you think it has anything to do with the scar on his throat?” She made a cutting motion across her neck.
“Maybe.” Which worried me. “Sounds like the poor guy’s been through a lot. His family is pretty protective of him.”
“So do you think he’s insane?” she asked. “And that’s why he was so fixated on you?”
“Fixated!” I jumped up and sat on the edge of the bed. “That’s the perfect word for it!”
“You’re welcome.” Jane smiled, her mask of freckles moving around her face as she did.
“I don’t know, though. I don’t think he was insane, but maybe he was, like… a tortured soul, probably in a bit of a dark place. I think he saw me as some kind of light, you know—and he expected me to save him.”
“Very analytical of you, Doctor Ara.”
I laughed. “I don’t know. I’ve tried to figure this thing out for months; I even put a question up in a forum—”
“Really?” She snorted. “Oh my gosh.”
“I know, right? Lame.” I flopped back. “But I just can’t get it all out of my head. I feel like I lost my best friend and we weren’t even that close. It’s like…” I touched just under my ribs. “It almost feels like I hurt myself when I hurt him, and I can’t escape the pain. I cry myself to sleep every night.”
“Aw.” She cocked her head, one more sad admission away from running over here to hug me.
“Do you think maybe I was starting to love him after all?”
Jane drew a breath as she thought about that. “No. I think you’re fixated now because of the guilt, and I think you need to talk it out with him to move past it.”
I had to agree with that. “If he ever comes back, and if his family don’t slam the door in my face.”
“Well, if they do, I guess you’ll just have to live your life like he’s dead—move on.”
“Yeah,” I said softly, hoping it didn’t come to that. “I guess so.”
* * *
That pregnancy test saved me from using a spell to erase the black band around my ring finger—scorched into my skin by the goddess Lilith as a punishment for loving David. It would have been a mistake to erase it, and I could only see that now with my fingers so swollen that I couldn’t wear my wedding ring anymore. I missed wearing it.
I closed the white-gold band between my thumb and forefinger, kissing it before dropping it back against my chest and then tucking the necklace under my shirt, quickly looking away from my body. Everything on me was swollen. The last trimester with Elora had been a breeze. I was still fighting in battles, having sex, even eating, but with Harry I could barely walk, and anything but warm tea was out of the question.
I propped my feet up on the stool across from the stone-cold fireplace and wiggled my fat toes, feeling breathless sitting like this. Three weeks. I had three weeks left until I was due, and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it.
“Here.” A glass of iced water appeared in my periphery.
“Thanks.” I smiled up at David, grunting and then nearly dropping my glass as the alien inside me kicked.
“Are you okay?” He squatted down beside me, taking the glass.
“He’s so strong.” I winced, slinking down in the lounge chair, a long, deep jab driving itself into my ribs. “I can’t take much more of this.”
“It’ll be over soon,” David laughed, pressing his hand to my belly. And as if Harry knew it was his dad, he moved his feet around and touched them to David’s hand. “God, I never get tired of feeling that.”
“Swap you?” I said.
He laughed, leaning forward to kiss my head. “I would take any pain to offer you comfort, my love, I—”
My eyes flew open. I jerked up on my bed, cold and dark in the icy August air, my curtains blowing around in the vicious storm outside. As I leaped out of my covers and charged across to shut my window, I felt suddenly lighter, my belly flatter. In my chest, my heart raced like wild horses running, and when I looked down, cupping my hands to my belly, I felt the absolute and very sudden absence of life within—like I’d given birth in my sleep and never laid eyes on my baby.
“Oh no,” I cried, crawling back to my bed. I curled up in a ball and pulled the covers over my head, clutching the missing baby. It felt so real. So real that I felt now like I’d lost a child. No, certain now that I had. Why did my brain torture me with these dreams—always putting David’s face on the people I was sure I once knew?
And Harry. No wonder I connected with him so deeply. I was certain, to the deepest part of my heart, that I’d had a child. I didn’t know if that child survived or if maybe it died, but I knew to my core that I once grew life within me. And I wanted it back. I wanted to hold my baby and kiss its head. I didn’t even know if it was a girl or a boy, and I couldn’t make out the face of the man I’d been so in love with. So, so in love with. I could feel the pain of him not being here beside me, but I just couldn’t see his face—only David’s.
As the thunder and lightning struck down hard right outside our house, I sobbed my heart out, wishing I could remember but so afraid to in case I remembered that child’s death.
22
David
There was no ocean far enough away from her that I could forget the look on her face when I told her to go. No ocean deep enough to plunge my heartbreak into so I could ease the pain of losing my beloved wife all over again, but I sailed to the horizon each day anyway, in search of something I knew I would never find. Four months had not healed the wound—hadn’t even began to scab it over.
By now, Ara would have moved on, forgotten about me and her son. I know she’d have felt bad for what she said, even though she meant it, because no matter what truths were in her heart, she wasn’t ever a cruel person. And I accused her of that. I wish I hadn’t. For all I knew, Brett got word of our fight and took her back home to Loslilian. Or maybe she brushed it off because it didn’t matter to her as much as it did to me, and I would return home one day to find her married—maybe to Cal. The only question then would be… should I tell her their love was based on a curse, or should I live and let live?
In my heart, I knew I’d tell her. I’d do anything to destroy her relationship with Cal. Not just because I hated him, but because even though she hurt me, I still loved her. Wished every day that I was home—with her—that I could tell her I was sorry and I didn’t mean what I said.
But at my core, I also knew I did. If not for this curse, the sane man ruling my actions would have left her months ago. She wasn’t at all like my Ara and, quite frankly, there wasn’t much I really liked about her anymore.
The winds changed suddenly then, and I quickly took the stairs up to the deck. It seemed even the ocean was calling me home, but I wasn’t ready yet. I retied the mast and steadied the yacht on a course away from home, losing my mind once again to thoughts of Ara—of our past life together.
The endless blue of the ocean and the clear sky gave my eye no point of interest, leaving my mind too free to wander though. I missed her too easily out here—the Ara I loved before, not this new Ara. And if I could get down on my knees and beg God to bring her back, I would trade almost anything for it.
As the urge to cry shook my shoulders, I pulled it back instantly, feeling a small hand slip into mine.
“Can we go home now, Daddy?” Harry asked.
I squeezed his fingers softly, casting my gaze back out to sea. The boat swayed gently under us, a soothing sensation to the rocky shores within my entire soul, and I tried to imagine myself on land right now—so close to her but unable to see my wife. “I think it’s too soon, Harry.”
“Mommy didn’t mean it—”
“She meant it, Harry,” I insisted. “Mommy has changed. When she died, someone else woke up in her place, and I don’t think we’ll ever get back the mommy we loved.”
“But you didn’t even tell her.” He tugged my sleeve until I looked down at him.
“Tell her what?”
“That I love her too.”
The hope in his eyes held all the innocence of a child—something I rarely saw in Harry. With his ability to read minds, he’d lost that naivety very early on. But looking at him now, how deeply he believed that his love would have changed her heart, I almost believed it too.
“Maybe if you tell her she’s my mom, she might change her mind and love us.”
Love us?
Love us.
And that was it, wasn’t it? I’d been so focused on getting her to love me that I forgot how badly Harry needed her love too. And now, out here, miles from land, I felt bad for running away like that—and taking Harry with me.
“What if she hurts us again?” I said. “Aren’t we better off out here where she can’t find us?”
“No.” He climbed up onto the bench and brought his face in line with mine. “Because then I’ll grow up and she’ll never know that she loved me.”
The idea of that sent an arrow through my heart. I laid a hand to it, closing my eyes. I
t was hard to look at Harry when he looked so much like Ara, and every day I woke up and looked into his little face, I missed her—missed her smile, her eyes, her love. Our love.
“Tell her.” He cupped my cheeks, squeezing them so my lips squashed up like a fish. “Tell her who she is, and if she doesn’t want us after that, we can run away then. And take Lors with us too. And Gran. And Uncle Mike and—”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” I laughed. And he was right, in a lot of ways. I wasn’t entirely sure she meant what she said to me that night—not deep down. On the surface, maybe, but if she knew Harry was hers, I was curious about how she would react. I had to know.
“Where are you going, Daddy?” Harry asked, hopping down to follow me.
“To turn the boat around,” I said. “We’re going home.”
23
Ara
Four months, three weeks and six days passed before the grey cloud over my life lifted. Winter hit, and I hadn’t even noticed the seasons changing until spring was just a few days away. I could count and write my own name now—pretty much do most things my friends could—but I’d done it without a wink of sleep since I last had that dream. Every time I closed my eyes now, I dreamed about a past I was beginning to miss—endlessly searching for that child but so afraid at the same time, because if I found it, and I learned that it had died, I wasn’t sure I could face the world after that. If losing a friend had devastated me so much, what would it do to me to lose a child? I only had to think of the pain of missing Harry to get a glimpse, and Harry wasn’t even my kid. But when his birthday came around, I sobbed for the entire day and even made cupcakes to sing him Happy Birthday, wherever he was. I hoped that even if my song wouldn’t reach him, the love from inside it would.
On my left hand, the ring I’d moved from my right hand since that dream burned. I studied it often, wondering why it was melted, if it had anything to do with my death, and I wondered more often than that where my husband was. Something told me that the reason my past was kept secret—the reason my ring was melted—was because he’d died when I lost my memory. I felt like that was the big thing they all kept from me. And if it was, I was glad, because I could still feel the love I had for him, and if someone told me he was dead, it would kill me. I knew I’d never love anyone like that ever again, but at the same time, if he was still alive, I wondered why he hadn’t come for me. And then I wondered if I would want him to—if maybe this great love was something best left in my dreams—as if maybe the truth, the love itself, might not be so magical in real life.
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