Carides's Forgotten Wife (8 page)

It made his chest feel like it was cracking to say it. But his daughter would always have questions about what had happened to her mother. And if Isabella had to live in a house where her presence was resented he would never be able to forgive himself. He doubted he would forgive himself for any of this anyway. But for his sins, he had to do something to make it up to Isabella.

He waited. He waited to see if Rose would be angry. She would have every right to be. But it didn’t change the truth and what he said. She had every right to be angry. She had every right to punish him. She had every right to leave. But he had to protect Isabella.

“You mean I shouldn’t be involved with her if I can’t treat her like my own child.”

He shook his head. “I can’t ask for a promise quite like that. I only mean if you find it impossible not to resent her. If you cannot be in the same room with her. Those things... I deserve them. But she doesn’t.”

“I know.” She blinked. “I feel like I’m being scolded. And you’re the one who deserves to be scolded.”

“I’m not trying to scold you. It’s just... This kind of beginning... If I don’t make up for what I did to her then what future does she have? I signed my rights away. And now I’ve taken them back, but only because her mother has abandoned her. I never want her to feel like she was a child unwanted by so many. I don’t want her to be wounded beyond repair because the adults in her life were too selfish, too broken, to see beyond themselves.”

Rose nodded. “I understand. She’s just a baby. I’m not angry at her. It was hard for me to look at her. It was hard for me to hold her.” Another tear slid down her cheek. “Because I wish she were mine.” She pulled away from him, leaning back against the wall, drawing her knees up to her chest. “I wish that things had been different. If they had been, then she very well could have been mine.”

“I can’t fix the past. I can’t even guarantee the future. I can only try and fix what we have now. She can be ours. And I don’t say that lightly. I don’t say it expecting that you can drop every last piece of baggage you’re carrying because of this. I don’t say it as though it’s a magical fix. But she is here. And so are we. I still... I want to make this work with you.”

“Sometimes I feel like you’re just going to keep asking impossible things of me,” she said, sounding weak, sounding reduced.

“Someday I hope you’re able to ask something impossible of me, Rose.” He leaned in, cupping her cheek. “And I pray that I am able to rise to the task.”

“I want to try.” Rose nodded. “For both of us. For all of us. I want to try. Where is she?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

O
VER
THE
NEXT
few weeks things seemed to progress slowly with Rose and Isabella. They employed a nanny—a married, grandmotherly sort, at Rose’s request—who helped care for Isabella during the day. Though Leon tried to assume as much responsibility as he could. It was just that given the state of things, he wasn’t sure he entirely trusted himself. What if he forgot some essential bit of information regarding the care and keeping of babies that everyone else knew? Or, more likely, what if he had never possessed it, but didn’t know enough about himself to ask the appropriate questions?

Employing someone to assist had seemed the best option. He could hardly ask Rose to interrupt her life to care not only for him, but for his child.

Still, Rose was beginning to take some charge of Isabella on her own. When Isabella cried, Rose was often the first to move to comfort her.

Seeing them together made his chest feel like it was being torn in two. Earlier today Rose had been standing by the window, Isabella held tightly to her chest as she stared out at the garden below.

It had been like looking at something much clearer than a memory—especially since he had none that extended beyond the past few weeks. But it hadn’t been wholly reality, either. It was a window into a life he didn’t truly possess. Something the two of them didn’t really have.

In that moment it was easy to believe this was his wife and child, and they had nothing but love between them.

Rather than the dark, tangled mass of lies and betrayal that wound itself around them like a vine covered in thorns. Thorns that wrapped themselves tightly around his gut, making it hurt every time he breathed.

He rubbed his hand over his face and eyed the bar on the other side of his bedroom. It was stocked with alcohol, evidence of the man he’d been before, he imagined. A man who had a drink as he brushed his teeth in the morning and at night.

A man who had sought oblivion with tenacity.

He laughed bitterly, the sound echoing in the dimly lit room. He had his oblivion now. And with it, he found no peace.

Improvement only described the relationship between Rose and Isabella.
Improvement
did not apply to his relationship with Rose. She would not touch him. She would barely talk to him.

He had imagined—erroneously, as it turned out—that after he had held her in his arms while she wept in her bedroom that she might continue to seek out an intimate relationship with him. That was not the case. She scarcely made eye contact with him unless she absolutely had to. She very solicitously inquired about his well-being, never asking about his memories, as she assumed—rightly—that if there were any change he would let her know.

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 other 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?”