Through His Eyes: An Institute Series Novella (The Institute Series Book 4) (4 page)

FORGOTTEN

I stayed with William after that, refusing to follow Allira down the dark path she was taking.

But upon morning, as William started stirring, a strange pulling sensation took over me. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt this pull, and it usually happened before I’d blink somewhere else.

When I reopened my eyes, I found Allira’s sleeping face next to mine. We were in the spare bedroom, and all I could do was hope she’d changed her mind and hadn’t gone through with her plan.

My stomach churned when she opened her eyes and sat up straight, looking around the room like she was lost.

Grabbing at her head, she winced in pain. “Why am I in the spare room?” she asked herself aloud, but her voice didn’t sound like her own. It was coarse and gruff. At least she knew where she was, that was something.

She rubbed her eyes, and let out a groan, climbing out of bed.

As she walked into the living room, her eyes landed on William who was sitting in his little baby bouncer. Allira’s parents must have woken up to him.

Seph was in the kitchen, preparing a bottle. She looked tired and worn-down. She clearly hadn’t slept well.

I wanted to cry out when Allira furrowed her brow, looking at William. There was no recognition in her expression at all. Anywhere.

“What have you done?” I whispered.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Miles said, sitting at the dining table with a cup of coffee. “Why did you sleep in the spare bedroom last night?”

“I … uh …” she muttered, still looking at William. “Whose kid are we babysitting?”

Seph dropped the bottle of formula, the contents spilling all over the kitchen floor. She cursed under her breath, and ran to get paper towels to clean up.

Miles, looking aghast, gaped at Allira. “What do you mean, whose kid are we babysitting?”

“Uh … nothing. Never mind.” She took a seat at the table, opposite her dad, her eyes never leaving William.

Seph and Miles shared a look. The room fell silent as Seph finished cleaning the mess on the floor and went back to fixing William another bottle.

Allira remained staring at William while she rubbed her temple.

Seph placed the bottle in front of Allira, but she didn’t grab for it, just looked at it, confused. “Did you want me to feed …” she looked at William, her expression giving away her perplexity. She didn’t even know the kid’s name.

“What did you do?” Seph paled. “You used my … Oh my god, how did we not see this coming. Oh my god, it’s all my fault. Why didn’t we—”

“Seph?” Miles asked, worried. He stood and walked over to her, embracing her. “What are you saying?”

“Lia, who’s … Chad?” Seph chokes out.

Allira narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean ‘who’s Chad’?”

“Do you know who Chad is?” Seph asked, slower this time.

Allira’s eyes began to water. “It’s still too fresh,” she mumbled quietly.

“What’s still fresh, sweetheart?” Miles asked.

“He only died a month ago. I don’t want to talk about him. I’m not ready.”

Miles flinched, and Seph gasped.

A month ago? She only managed to erase what … eleven months?

She remembers me, but not her son. She erased William instead of me!

NO HOPE

“Lia, concentrate.”

“I am! But it’s hard to concentrate on something I don’t remember!”

They were both getting frustrated. Breaking the news to Allira that she’d erased her memory hadn’t been easy, but they didn’t give Allira time to freak out. Seph went straight into ‘fix it’ mode.

“Your bedroom. Now,” she’d said. She turned to Miles, “You take Liam for a walk. This is going to be a while.”

Her dad didn’t even hesitate or question, he was out of the apartment quicker than anyone with a two-month-old should’ve been physically able to leave. With all the bottles, nappy bag, stroller … the kitchen sink.
Who knew babies had so much crap to drag around?

They’d been going at it for well over an hour, and they hadn’t made any progress.

“Deep breaths, Lia!” Seph placed her hands on Allira’s head and closed her eyes. Her eyelids fluttered as her eyeballs moved rapidly below her skin. “I just have to find them,” she muttered. “Where are they?” She gritted her teeth while trying to find Allira’s lost memories.

Allira threw her hands up in defeat. “It’s no use! I understand why I wanted to do it, but I just don’t understand why it’s so important to get those memories back. Why do I want months of grieving to flood my mind?”

“Lia, it’s important. You …” Seph couldn’t find the words.

“Don’t tell her,” I urged. “She can’t handle it.”

“Maybe we need a break,” Seph said.

A part of me had hoped she heard me, but I knew it was impossible.

***

I’d never seen a room full of such heartbreak before. Everyone was there. Only a few days earlier, they were a group of people celebrating a wedding, and now they’d turned into a group of people flooding Allira’s parents’ apartment with solemn anguish.

Miles distracted Allira and William by taking them out for the day, so Seph could organise this meeting to work out what they were going to do from here. After spending days trying to get Allira’s memories back, she knew it was time to tell everyone what Allira had done.

Shilah, Tate, Ebbodine, Drew, Aunt Kenna, and Paxton all filed into the small apartment, taking up seats in the living room. Ebb and Drew grabbed dining chairs, bringing them over to sit on.

“Something happened a few days ago,” Seph started. “The only reason I didn’t tell any of you sooner was because we were hoping we could fix it. Now we don’t know what to do.”

“Mum, what happened?” Shilah asked. “Is it William?”

Seph shook her head. “Allira.”

“What’s she done now?” Tate asked, his tone cold.

“She left this,” Seph said, taking out the note Allira wrote before erasing her memory. As she read the words aloud, everyone drew quiet, and most of them had tears pooling in their eyes.

Tate grabbed hold of Shilah’s hand, Ebb covered her mouth with her hand, and Drew sat staring straight ahead, his expression grim.

“When did she do this?” he asked.

“It … uh … was the night of the wedding,” Seph said, avoiding eye contact with Shilah and Tate.

“Shit,” Drew muttered under his breath, but then went silent. His leg bounced, he avoided eye contact with everyone, and he started chewing on his nails.

“But there’s more. She went through with it, but it got messed up somehow. She ended up erasing William, not Chad. She erased everything from the day she found out she was pregnant. She’s sunk into an even deeper depression because she’s back to where she was a year ago when Chad first died. She thinks he’s only been dead a month.”

“How did you explain William to her?” Kenna asks.

Seph looks down at her shoes. “We didn’t. We told her what she’d done, and her first reaction was to assume Liam was her new baby brother.”

“And you didn’t correct her?” Tate yells.

“In the fractured state she’s in, do you really think telling her she’s actually his mother would help her mental state? I’ve been working with her, trying to re-piece her memories together, but all she can seem to remember is wanting for forget Chad. That’s it. That’s all I could get from her for now.”

“How did you try to get her memory back?” Ebb asks.

“Erasing time is easy, picking and choosing memories to alter is really difficult, and I’ve never even tried it. I’ve been too scared of doing something like what she’s done. Through meditation and a whole lot of concentration, I’ve been attempting to get inside her head and piece back together what I could, but after three days of it, I just don’t know what to do anymore. Nothing is working, and the more I push, the more she’s getting fake memories back. Either that, or she’s lying to reassure me that it’s working. She swears she remembers me being pregnant with Liam.”

The room fell silent, too silent for a cramped room with seven people in it.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Seph said in a tone that begged the others to tell her what to do.

“Maybe she just needs some time away from William,” Aunt Kenna said.

“What? She should be spending more time with him,” Tate countered. “She needs to bond with him.”

“She can’t do that when all he does is remind her of Chad,” Ebb said.

“What do you suggest, then?” Shilah asked Ebb. She shrugged in return.

“She needs a distraction, an escape,” Kenna said. “She can’t continue to live here with William. It might be making her worse, having to see him every day.”

“She’s his mother!” Tate yells. “Are you seriously telling me you want to take her kid away from her?”

“She wanted it,” Seph said. “She was at breaking point, and she’s been at breaking point ever since she found out about him. I think … with everything … she finally snapped.”

It was clear the room was divided down the middle. Shilah and Tate wanted to force Allira into living her life, Ebb, Kenna, and Seph wanted her to take a break from it all.

Drew remained quiet the whole time, but shifted in his seat uncomfortably. I could tell he was beginning to wonder if he was partially responsible for Allira finally breaking.

“She can move in with me,” Paxton offered. He was the only other one who hadn’t had any input so far.

Tate and Shilah shared a smug look, one I couldn’t decipher.

“It’s expected of me to have someone accompany me to political functions and events,” Paxton continued. “We can make it sound like she’ll be doing me a favour. She can live a normal life for a while, something she’s never had the opportunity to do.”

“And how long do you expect her to live this ‘normal’ life, full of benefits and socialising?” Shilah asked.

“If you think Allira would go for that – dressing up, wearing makeup, and smiling at people, hell just getting her to smile in general – you don’t know her as well as you think you do,” Tate said.

“Maybe you don’t,” Ebb said. “Yes, she hates those things, but she’ll do them if a friend asked her to. She’d do anything for her friends and family.”

Tate scoffed. “Not anymore.”

“Okay, so what are we doing?” Shilah asked. “We’re just going to let her forget she gave birth to a child? Is that really something someone could forget? Wouldn’t her body be all … you know … different after giving birth?”

Seph shrugged. “She doesn’t seem to feel any different, from what she’s told me. I know my body was different after having you two, but you were fifteen months apart. We didn’t exactly give my body a break before I was pregnant again.”

Shilah screwed up his face. “Not really something I want to hear about, Mum.”

“All I’m saying is, she might have no clue that she gave birth a little over two months ago, or maybe she does but she’s just not ready to admit it.”

“This feels wrong,” Tate said. “We’re making decisions for someone else’s life. Doesn’t she get a say?”

I had to agree with Tate, but he hadn’t seen what she’d been like the last few days. She had no desire to get any of her memories back. “I think she needs space too,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to admit it, but I had no idea what else to do anymore either.

“Maybe we could get her involved in the clinic Ebbodine and I are starting,” Kenna suggested.

“We can put that to her after she’s settled in with me,” Paxton said, his voice authoritative.

I was sure I was reading into it, but he seemed overly eager to get her to move in with him. Surely he wasn’t after her romantically …
right?
I shook the idea from my head, it was insane, but I couldn’t keep the nagging feeling away. Something wasn’t right with his offer.

“You’re awfully quiet, Drew,” Tate said, his sneer unmistakable.

Drew shifted in his seat again. “I don’t feel like it’d be right for me to have an input in this.”

“Why not?” Shilah asked. “You and Allira are finally friends again. Pretty good ones, too, from what I can tell.”

Drew cleared his throat but didn’t answer.

“Are you going to tell them, or should I?” Tate asked.

He knows what happened.

“Get out of my head, Tate,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Drew and Allira hooked up the night of the wedding,” Tate states.

Drew ran a hand through his hair before resting his elbows on his knees. “No … we … it …”

“What the hell, dude?” Shilah exclaimed, standing in a flourish of anger.

Drew stood also, his hands going up in surrender. “It’s not what you think. Nothing happened. She just … kind of … kissed me. But I pushed her away. I knew she wasn’t ready for that kind of thing. I stopped it, I swear.”

“So you rejected her right before she erased her memory?” Shilah yelled.

“Would you have preferred me to sleep with her?” Drew yelled back. “How was I to know she’d do this? This might have nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the fact that she’s not dealing with Chad’s death the way she should be. Maybe it has everything to do with William and nothing to do with me.” He ran his hand through his hair again.  “I need some air,” he said, walking out to the patio.

“I was not expecting that,” Paxton said, sitting back in his seat.

Ebb’s mouth was wide open. “I don’t think anyone expected
that.
”

Shilah was still seething.

“Shilah,” Kenna said in a soothing tone. “It’s not his fault. Allira’s not herself anymore, and you’re looking for people to blame. Drew may be an easy target, but he doesn’t deserve that. You know how he feels about your sister.”

“How is this not his fault?” Tate lashed out. “A few hours after making out with him, she wants to forget the guy who
actually
loved her?”

Shilah’s shoulders slumped forward as he sighed in defeat. “No, Tate. Aunt Kenna’s right. I’ll go apologise.”

“I’m not going to apologise,” Tate muttered.

***

Before Shilah was even out the door, the room had gone back to debating what to do about Allira again, and I just didn’t want to hear it anymore. I decided to follow Shilah out to the balcony where Drew was sitting on one of the patio chairs.

“So, do they all blame me now, too?” Drew asked, his eyes not leaving the horizon where he was staring off into the distance.

“We don’t blame you.” Shilah took the seat next to Drew. “Well Tate does, but I think he’s trying to deflect the blame off of himself. Those two haven’t gotten along in months. Longer, really.”

“I shouldn’t have taken her home from the wedding, but I just wanted to make sure she was okay. It was a bad idea, I know that now.”

“You weren’t to know what was going to happen. She’s really messed up. How did it happen anyway, aren’t you dating someone?”

“You want me to give you the details of your sister throwing herself at me?” Drew raised an eyebrow. “And you say
she’s
messed up.”

Shilah laughed. “Not
that.
It’s just, I thought you had a girlfriend. Stella, yeah?”

“Allira didn’t know about her, though. We weren’t really serious enough for me to tell her. I’m sure she wouldn’t have kissed me if she knew. Besides, it doesn’t matter now. Telling Stella I made out with my ex didn’t exactly go down well. As soon as I realised that my first thought after kissing Allira
wasn’t
about my girlfriend, who I’d just cheated on, I figured it was time to end it.”

“How did she take it?”

“About as well as I expected. She threw her shoe at me.”

Shilah laughed. “Her shoe?”

“Yup, her shoe. She was storming out and her high heels were at the door, so she picked one up and pegged it at my head. Then she took the other one home with her. I still have the one she threw at me.” He shook his head, like he still can’t believe it happened.

Shilah laughed again, but his expression quickly turned sombre. “So if you told Stella about the kiss, does that mean you want to be with Allira?”

Drew let out a loud sigh. “I think I’ll always have ‘what-ifs’ with her, but like I told her when she tried to take my shirt off, I’d give it a chance if it’s what she truly wanted. But it’s not. I always envied the way she looked at Chad. She was in awe of him and used to look at him with such adoration. Even when we were ‘dating’…” he used air quotes, “she only saw me as a high school crush. It was nothing compared to how she saw him.”