by Maisey Yates
But she didn’t look at him the way she had. Those blue eyes, that only real, organic memory in his mind, had changed. They were icy. Angry. Or, on the very worst of days, completely blank. This woman had loved him. And he had destroyed that love.
There were no fresh starts. It was easy to buy into the idea that they’d had one here. That just because he didn’t remember what he had done those things didn’t exist. But his consequences had now reached their home. Consequences that didn’t care whether or not he remembered committing the sin.
That fresh start had always been a lie. He was not a new man, reborn from the fiery wreckage of his accident. He was the same old man. A man who had betrayed his wife, a man who—according to Rose—loved no one but himself. A man who had abandoned his child. He was that man. With Isabella here it was impossible for him to absolve himself in the way he had been attempting to before her arrival.
There was no absolution. He just had to find a way to move ahead. To move ahead desiring the new things that he desired. Carrying the sin on his shoulders, a weight he would try to bear as best he could. A weight he would try not to put on to Rose.
He wanted to walk on, caring for Rose in the deep, real way he had come to. To try to make her care for him again.
He had a feeling he would have to work hard to earn her affection. As it had taken such a massive betrayal to destroy it in the first place.
It was late now. He would have to worry about these things another day.
He crossed the room and got into his empty bed, feeling a deep ache and loss over the fact that Rose wasn’t in here. Not because he would go to bed without an orgasm—though he was not thrilled about that prospect—but because of the reasons she wasn’t here. Because of the distance between them that it represented.
But even with that regret looming over him it didn’t take long for him to drift off.
He woke with a start. The baby monitor he had plugged into the wall was nearly vibrating with the sounds of Isabella’s rage. She was crying in the middle of the night, which she had never done before. Something was wrong. Both he and Rose had baby monitors in their rooms, he knew that. They had decided that given the size of the house it was the wisest thing to do. But he was going to have to be the one to go and handle his daughter.
He could hardly expect Rose to get out of bed at this hour to deal with a baby that she scarcely wanted.
He made his way out of the bedroom, but each and every step he took down the hall he found his feet grew heavier. A strange, terrified sensation grabbed hold of his chest, freezing his heart, freezing his lungs. He didn’t know what was happening to him. His face was numb, his fingertips cold. His mouth tasted something like panic, which was strange, since he wasn’t entirely certain panic had a flavor.
The baby wasn’t crying anymore. He couldn’t hear her. He could hear nothing but the sound of his own heart beating in his ears.
He suddenly felt like he was walking down two different hallways. One in a smaller house. An apartment. And the one he was actually standing in. This was a new feeling. A strange one. The feeling of existing in two places at once, in separate moments of time.
And he realized suddenly, that this was a memory.
The second memory. Second only to Rose’s eyes.
It was a foreign sensation. And it was still entirely nebulous. He couldn’t grab hold of it, couldn’t force it to play out. It simply existed, hovering in the background of his mind, wrenching his consciousness in two.
He tried to catch his breath, tried to move ahead. It took a concerted effort. Perhaps this was what happened to someone with amnesia when their memory started to come to the surface. Perhaps it was always terrifying and foreign. Always immobilizing. If so, then the process of recovering his memories was going to be the death of him. Because this nearly stopped his breath.
He continued to walk, battling against the icy grip of foreboding that had wrapped its fingers around his very soul. He had no idea what he was afraid of. Only that this was fear, in its purest, deepest sense.
The image of the past imposed itself over the present again. Just as he walked into her room, he saw Isabella’s crib, and he saw another crib, as well. Smaller, not so ornate. There was no puffy swath of pink fabric hanging down over a solid wood frame. This one was simple. A frail, fragile-looking frame in a much smaller room.
He took another step forward, and found himself frozen again. Isabella wasn’t making any sound. And he was afraid to look into her crib.
Suddenly he felt as though he was being strangled. He couldn’t breathe. His throat was too tight, his chest a solid block of ice. He was at the mercy of whatever this was—there was no working his way through it. There was no mind over matter. He didn’t even know the demon he was fighting, so there was no way to destroy it.
He was sweating, shaking, completely unable to move.
And that was how Rose found him, standing in front of Isabella’s crib like a statue, unable to take another step. Terrified of catching a glimpse of his child.
That was what was so scary. He didn’t want to see her lying there in the crib. He didn’t know why. He only knew that he couldn’t face the sight of it.
“Leon?” Her soft voice came from behind him, and he couldn’t even turn to get a look at her. “Is everything all right with Isabella?”
“She isn’t crying,” he said, forcing the words through lips of stone.
“Did she need anything?”
“I don’t know.”
He heard her footsteps behind him, and then she began to sweep past him and he grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her back. “No,” he said, the word bursting from him in a panic.
“What?” she asked, her blue eyes wide, terrified.
“You can’t… You can’t go to her.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m having a memory. It hurts and I can’t… I can’t move.”
She examined him for a long moment, the expression on her face shaded. “I can.” She pulled herself free of his hold and moved forward to the crib, reaching down and plucking Isabella up from inside of it.
Terror rolled over him in a great black wave, and he forgot to breathe, bright spots appearing in front of his eyes.
Then Isabella wiggled in Rose’s hold and suddenly he could breathe again.
He took a step forward, and the crib mattress came into full view. It was empty, because Rose was holding Isabella. But yet again, he was seized with the sensation that he was standing in two different places. That he was looking inside a different crib.
He stopped. Closing his eyes he let the images wash over him, along with a dark wave of grief that poured over him and saturated him down deep. It was so real, so very present, so overpowering he felt as though he would never smile again.
And then, it wasn’t the same. He wasn’t seeing images superimposed over reality. He was just remembering.
Michael didn’t wake up for his feeding like he normally did. The silence was what had woken Leon out of his sleep. Amanda wasn’t awake. It was all right—Leon didn’t mind going and checking on his son.
He walked down the hall quickly, making his way to the nursery. And from there, the vision in his head seemed to move in slow motion. He could remember very clearly being gripped by a sense of dread the moment his son came into view.
And then he reached down to touch his small chest, finding him completely unresponsive.
There was more to that memory. So much panic. So much pain and desperation. He tried to close it all out. Tried to prevent it from playing through to its conclusion. There was no point. Nothing would change the outcome.
And nothing would fill the deep dark hole that was left behind in his soul. The pit that he dumped all of his excess into.
He waited, bracing himself. Wondering if ot
her memories would pour forth in a deluge, overtaking him completely.
As intense as it was to remember anything at all, he would have welcomed more memories. Would have begged for more if the option were available to him. Anything other than being left here with this, and this alone.
He no longer had only empty blackness in him. No, the blackness had been filled. It had been given substance. It had been given form.
Grief. Loss. Death.
Emptiness—he could see now—was a blessing in contrast.
He didn’t question whether or not this memory was real. Didn’t question if it belonged to him or to someone else.
It was real, and it was part of him. He knew it down to his marrow. It was such a strange thing to have this memory, with a great gulf between it and the present.
To have the image of that child back in his past so clear in his mind with this child right in front of him.
Suddenly, his legs began to give way and he found himself sinking down to the floor.
“Leon?” Rose’s voice was filled with concern.
She placed Isabella back in her crib and turned to him, dropping down to her knees in front of him, placing her hands on his cheek. “Leon,” she said, her tone hard, stern, as though she was trying to scold him back to the present.
His breathing was shallow, his face cold. He despised this. Being so weak in front of her. And that realization nearly made him laugh in spite of the pain, because it was always fascinating to simply know something about himself even when he didn’t know why it was true.
There was nothing fascinating about any of this, though. Nothing good about this memory. He wished it could have stayed buried. Of all the things to return to him, why had this returned?
“Michael,” he said. It was all he could say.
“What?”
“I had a son. His name was Michael.”
Saying that brought back more memories. Amanda. Finding out she was pregnant. The fear. The joy. They had been young, but there was enough love between them to hold it all together.
Until that light had been extinguished.
“What?” Rose asked again, the word hushed.
“I just remembered. I walked in here and I remembered everything about him.”
“What happened to him?”
He looked up at her, his chest so tight he could hardly breathe, the words like acid on his tongue. “He died.”
* * *
Rose looked at her husband, shock and horror blending together, making it difficult for her to process his words. Difficult for her to do anything but sit there in frozen silence as his words cut into her like broken glass. She could feel every bit of pain in them, all of his trauma, his agony.
“You can’t have had another child. That isn’t possible,” she said.
“Do you not know about him?”
“How would I know?”
“I don’t know anything about my life, Rose. I don’t know what you know about me. I don’t… I don’t have any idea who I am. Not really.”
She swallowed hard. “I didn’t know about this.” She kept her voice soft, even.
She was angry with him. She had been angry with him from the moment the revelation about Isabella had come to light. She didn’t know what it meant for them. What it meant for their relationship, for their future. But she couldn’t withhold comfort now. Not now when he looked like a man in the throes of fresh grief.
“Can I tell you?” he asked, his voice tinged with desperation. “Can I tell you before I forget it?”
“You won’t forget.”
He reached out, grabbed hold of her arm and held her tight. “Someone else has to know. I lost this. I lost the memory of him. Who else knows about him? If I don’t tell you… Who else will know?”
She nodded slowly. “Tell me about him.”
“Amanda and I were sixteen when we met. We were far too young to have a child. Far too young to have any idea of what we were getting into. And yet that was where we found ourselves. I had come to the United States a year earlier, by myself. I’d managed to find some sponsorship, to enroll myself in school. That was where I met Amanda. Her parents were not impressed that she started a relationship with a broke Greek boy who barely spoke English and lived in his own apartment. No parental supervision.”
“I can imagine,” Rose said, her voice muted.
“Their concerns were founded. She got pregnant. But we were young and in love, so I imagined that whatever challenges we might face as a result we could overcome.” He cleared his throat. “It was us against everyone. And we fought hard. She had a boy—we named him Michael because I wanted him to have an American name. I wanted him to have his place here in this country that I was beginning to love.”
He let out a long, slow breath, and leaned back against the wall. “It is amazing. I’m remembering all this now. It is so simple, but there are other things…”
“You still don’t remember everything.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Tell me the rest of the story,” she said.
It had a terrible ending. She already knew that. But it was his story. A blank space filled in not only in Leon’s own memory, but in hers, as well. She didn’t know about his life before he came to work at her father’s company. Didn’t know how he had come to this country. She didn’t know who he was. All of these little revelations that were coming to light were more and more proof. Beginning with Isabella, ending with this.
The man she thought she loved was a construct of her imagination. A man she had imagined Leon might be.
But of course, she had been so young when she had first formed feelings for him. In her mind, he had sprung from the earth fully grown and handsome, perfect and kind.
A man created to dash away her tears when she had been stood up for prom. A man designed especially to stand at the head of an aisle in a church, looking beautiful and perfectly pressed in his tuxedo as he took her hand and faced her, making beautiful vows to her that she had taken straight to her heart, because she had allowed herself to believe they had come from his.
Now she was seeing the truth of it. He was a man comprised of struggle, of pain. A man who had lived a life full of happiness, loss and untold grief before she had ever met him.
What a shortsighted fool she had been. What a silly little girl.
“Her family would have nothing to do with her or the baby,” he said. “I told her I would take care of her. I told her that I had come here to make my dreams come true, and I would make hers come true, as well. She continued to go to school in the few months after Michael was born. I got a job working in the mailroom at Tanner Investments. I paid close attention to the way everything worked, and I started offering suggestions on various different stocks and patterns I was noticing to anyone who would listen. Your father heard about this and allowed me to shadow a few of his best employees while I continued to see to my duties in the mailroom. I thought… I thought it was the key to changing our lives. To giving Amanda everything I promised.”
“I doubt there are very many people on earth who could have accomplished what you did,” she said, her voice husky.
“But my business accomplishments aren’t really the point of the story. Interesting though they might be.” He let out a heavy breath. “Michael died of SIDS in January. He was almost three months old. I have never felt… I am not a man who accepts life. I left Greece, I left my parents, such as they were. I had every confidence that I could make a way for myself here. I believed with great conviction that if I set out to make a home with Amanda, to make a life with her, that we could. And I promised my son that he would want for nothing. And then I walked into his nursery and he was gone.” His words were thick, labored as he fought against emotion. “And there was no fighting that. It was too late. Too late.
He was gone before I ever knew he struggled. There was no bargaining, no negotiation to be done. I have never felt so helpless. I have never been so aware of the finality that exists in life. Because I was so young and I simply didn’t believe rules applied to me. Here I was beating the odds at work, finding my way in this country, but there was nothing that could be done for my son. I was not too special, too strong, or too clever to be defeated by death.” His shoulders sagged. “I couldn’t help Amanda through her grief, not when I was so lost in my own. Not when I wanted to disappear into each and every new job opportunity that presented itself. A chance to change something. A chance to control something. Of course it wouldn’t bring Michael back.”
He cleared his throat. “I came home one day and she was gone. I never looked for her. I didn’t want a girlfriend anymore. I didn’t want someone to care for me. I didn’t want to care for them.” He closed his eyes and a single tear rolled down his lean cheek. “What kind of father cannot protect his son? If I accomplish all these things, earn money in unimaginable quantities, improve my station in ways others would see as impossible… What does it mean if I allowed my little boy to die?”
“Leon… You didn’t let him die. It was a tragic thing.” Emotion was creeping over her, threatening to choke out her words. This was his grief, and yet she felt as though it was a part of her. “It was something you couldn’t have prevented no matter what.”
He dragged his hand over his face. “I suppose there should be comfort in that. And yet I do not see any. I see only the futility of being at the mercy of fate.”
“I’m not sure it’s fate. Life is a series of unpredictable things. Beautiful. Terrible. Some are direct consequences for our actions, and others don’t make sense. They aren’t payments or punishments. They simply are. But the measure of it is what we do after. Those are the things that you can control.”
“And what have you controlled? What have you controlled in your life, Rose?” His words were hard, cynical. He sounded much more like the Leon she had spent the past two years married to than he had over the past few weeks.