‘Tell me what’s happening,’ I said, looking from her to my father and then back. They were a wall of grim, with beetled brows and tired eyes. My father kept shaking his head, which was never a good sign. ‘You’re scaring me.’
And then I looked at Carolyn, because I figured she would know, and she certainly wouldn’t go out of her way to spare me the blow. And what I’d learned since That Day was that there was always, always, a blow.
‘Did he slip back into his coma while I was driving?’ I asked, hearing the uncertainty and the beginnings of a new panic in my voice. ‘Is that what you’re not telling me?’
‘No.’ Carolyn’s voice sounded almost strangled. She couldn’t meet my gaze. Were those tears glinting in her eyes?
I felt someone grab onto my hand from behind – Brooke or Lianne, I couldn’t tell – and I was absurdly grateful. I held on. Tight. Carolyn held one hand over her heart, like it hurt her from within, and I was too freaked out to even think the usual sardonic thought about that. Much less express it.
‘He’s awake,’ Carolyn said in a very odd voice. As if she were trying to be formal. Or careful. But that didn’t make any sense. ‘The thing is, he doesn’t remember anything.’
‘Anything?’ My mind raced. Because I wasn’t even remotely as mature as I wanted to be, I thought first of television shows, not real life. Alias, for example, as Brooke and I had already discussed. ‘Are you talking about amnesia?’
‘It’s a kind of amnesia,’ my father chimed in then, in his lecturing professor voice. ‘Did you know that some people have to relearn all their motor skills? Language?’
‘Tim can’t speak?’ I asked numbly. My mind wouldn’t accept that. I couldn’t make sense of it. Whoever was holding my hand squeezed it.
‘No, no.’ Dad sighed. ‘He’s one of the lucky ones.’
There was another silence. I heard Brooke mutter something behind me, and I couldn’t blame her. I was about to kill somebody myself.
‘What doesn’t he remember?’ I demanded, frustrated and afraid. ‘Will someone just tell—’
‘Me,’ Carolyn blurted out, her face twisting, her hazel eyes nearly black with unshed tears. ‘He doesn’t remember me. The last six months are just … gone.’
‘Six months?’ I echoed stupidly.
‘Six months,’ she threw back at me, with what felt like more aggression than the moment called for. ‘The last thing he remembers is your birthday party.’ She let out a hollow laugh. ‘But not the most important part of it.’
It took me a moment to understand that she was, in fact, confirming the fact that she had hooked up with my husband at my own birthday party back in June. I blinked, but couldn’t quite bring myself to summon up the necessary outrage. I felt … empty. And the truth was, I didn’t want to imagine it. Them. How it all began. I didn’t want to plot it all out in my head and use it to torture myself. There was quite enough in there already.
I realized that I had absolutely no idea how I felt about any of this.
‘You should go talk to him,’ Carolyn said then, much more quietly, and her voice shook. My stomach twisted, and then lurched when she reached out as if to touch me. Whatever she saw on my face made her drop her hand. ‘I know that you hate me, and probably him, too—’
‘I don’t hate anyone, Carolyn,’ I said, interrupting her. And it was true. ‘I’m numb all the way through.’
She looked at me for a moment, and then nodded, as if she’d talked herself into something. Or, knowing her, out of it.
‘He’s scared, I think,’ she whispered. Her face twisted. ‘And all alone. He needs you, Sarah.’
I snuck up to the entrance of his room and stood there, uncertain, before peeking around the curtain. When I did, it was hard not to make a noise – to gasp or cry out or otherwise react.
He was propped up in his bed, his blonde head turned toward the window. The winter light poured in and he looked thin. Drawn. Cold in such an antiseptic room. It felt so strange, now, to see him sitting up at all. To see him with far fewer machines connected to him. He looked tired. Sick.
But he looked like Tim again. I told myself the strange feeling creeping through me then was gladness – that he was alive, awake, him – but it wasn’t quite that simple.
I hovered there, not sure what I wanted to do, not sure what I was supposed to do. And then he turned his head on his pillow, not without difficulty, and saw me.
For a moment, we only looked at each other.
His eyes were still so blue. Wide and confused now, but still that same summer-sky blue that I’d always loved so much. Even thin and pale, he still had the look of the friendly, focused man I’d always known, if reduced somewhat today beneath those thin layers of hospital blankets. I felt a sharp pang, deep inside.
He looked like the man I’d married.
The one who would never do the things he’d done. The one I’d trusted to adhere to our plans, to believe in this life we’d built. The one I’d chosen, deliberately and purposefully, because he’d made me believe that he could be trusted in the first place. That he would be safe. Permanent. Easy. There was such a riot inside me as I looked back at him. Pain and betrayal, yes. But something deeper and richer, running like a deep vein beneath. Grief, I thought, and felt it twist through me in some kind of dark confirmation. But surely I should be happy he was awake? That he wasn’t dead? That was what mattered here, didn’t it?
It was a pity I was still so small inside, I thought then. That I couldn’t help but think about myself at a time like this, when if I was any kind of person, I would be more concerned about him. What did his memory loss mean for me? For us? What would it do to this tragic little triangle we were in? A better person would have waited before entertaining such thoughts. I was disgusted with myself.
I had to acknowledge, again, the part of me that had seen this accident of his as an opportunity to hold onto him a little bit longer. To keep us from being as over as we’d seemed before his car had spun out on that icy road. That part of me was deep in grief today, and I understood it. Some part of me would always grieve for what we’d lost, long before the accident. Him. Our marriage. Whatever happened now, whatever had happened while he was in his coma or in those six months with Carolyn, I’d loved him.
It didn’t matter what he remembered. I would always mourn the loss of the way I’d loved him, all the way up to the moment I stripped that blue blouse off of my body and everything changed.
‘Sarah—’ he began, but his voice was raw, unused. It was little more than a croak, and it spurred me into action.
‘Don’t talk,’ I managed to get out past the lump in my throat, rushing inside the room and making my way over to him. ‘Don’t say anything now. You need to rest, Tim. You’ve been through a horrible ordeal.’
And what was funny was that I meant that. I had no urge to yell at him here, in this state, while he looked at me with all of that confusion and panic on his face. I had no desire at all to punch him in the face, as Brooke or Lianne would have done. I didn’t want to think about any of the things that loomed here with us in this tiny room, elephants dancing in circles all around us, demanding to be named and noticed. I didn’t want to think about the things he’d done, or the things I’d done, or even the conclusions I’d come to when I’d assumed he would wake up with his memory intact. I didn’t want to think about anything at all. I wasn’t sure I could.
I’d given all of that up. I’d moved on. But that was before – before it turned out he didn’t remember any of it. It was one thing to walk away from the guy in the hospital who didn’t want me, but what if he didn’t feel that any longer?
If he didn’t remember what he’d done, did I have to?
‘I don’t …’ He shook his head as if his mouth wasn’t working the way he wanted it to. ‘I don’t know …’
He reached for me when I got to the side of his bed and I didn’t think. I sat down on his bed with him and hugged him. I pulled his head to my shoulder and w
rapped my arms around him, and I felt him breathe, ragged and a little bit wild, against my collarbone.
It had been so long since I’d held him. Longer still since he’d held me. Something that felt like stone inside of me seemed to melt a little bit.
‘I don’t understand what’s happening,’ he told me, his voice the smallest whisper of sound, the words more garbled than not. It wasn’t Tim’s voice at all. It wasn’t his easy, confident way of speaking. But it was Tim. Awake. I let it wash through me, over me. I held him tighter and rocked him a little, stroking his hair with my hand. Soothing him. Soothing myself, too. Reminding us both that he was alive, and conscious, and everything outside of that was a detail. Just a tiny detail. And maybe the fact that he couldn’t remember his own details meant we got some kind of do-over here. A chance to live as if none of this had happened.
And who wouldn’t want a do-over?
‘It’s okay,’ I whispered. ‘You’re okay.’
I stared past him toward the window, where the world waited, cold and harsh and unforgiving. There would be no escaping what we’d have to work through. There was a baby on the way, innocent of all of this despite what its parents had done, but a complication all of its own, nonetheless. And I had no doubt that Carolyn had every intention of fighting her way back into Tim’s memories, his life, however she could.
But none of that mattered today. Now. It couldn’t. I wouldn’t let it. He might not have protected us when he’d had the chance, but I could. I would. Didn’t I have to?
‘You’re awake, Tim,’ I murmured to him, holding him close, letting myself love him the way I had for all those years, as he clung to me the way I knew he wouldn’t if he’d had access to his own history. I let myself do it anyway.
Once upon a time he’d kept me safe, I thought then, my eyes drifting closed, my cheek on the top of his head. Now I could do the same for him.
And I wanted to.
I did.
17
But it turned out that his dramatic awakening wasn’t quite the Christmas morning miracle I might have been a little too tempted to imagine.
The real story came out later, after Tim was transferred to a rehabilitation centre for the rest of his recovery and I was forced to interact entirely too often with Carolyn, who Tim said he didn’t want to see but who lurked daily in the clinic’s lobby or outside my house so she could prise information from me. She was remarkably consistent. Determined, even.
Today, I realized with some surprise as I pulled into my driveway to see Carolyn’s car already there, engine running and kicking up clouds in the late-afternoon cold, was New Year’s Eve. It felt as if much more than a week had passed since my Christmas Eve in Vermont – but I couldn’t let myself think about that. Not when there was so much else to do. Like watch Tim work so hard to recover all of his speech, his ability to walk, parts of his memory. Like be the proper wife he’d asked for the moment he’d been capable of asking for something. As if we could erase the past few months, just like that.
I was clinging to that. Maybe more than I should. It was easier to simply fall back into my old role. I knew it so well it hardly required thought. It even felt good. Right, I told myself. It feels right.
‘How is he today?’ Carolyn asked, climbing out of her car after I parked mine and started toward the front door. She looked defensive and miserable, and yet I couldn’t seem to take any pleasure in that the way some part of me wanted to do. If anything, looking at her made me feel sad. For all of us.
‘Better,’ I told her. I outlined the progress he’d made today, the steps he’d taken, both literal and more metaphorical, and the doctors’ new thoughts on his prognosis. I did this as quickly as possible. There was no point holding things back; she would find out eventually and anyway, I wasn’t her. I didn’t have anything to hide. ‘If he keeps going at this rate, he should be back home in a couple of weeks.’
‘That’s great!’ she breathed, more to herself than me. Then she frowned up at the house. ‘Will you move him back in here?’
‘This is his home, Carolyn,’ I pointed out as I unlocked the front door and pushed my way inside. Maybe a little bit testily.
I let her follow me into the house and shut the door behind her. I didn’t even complain when she slumped into one of the chairs around the little table in the eat-in kitchen with entirely too much weary familiarity. My knee-jerk reaction was to toss her out into the cold, but I contained it. For one thing, barring Carolyn from my house after finding her with Tim in my bed seemed way too much like making a big production of slamming the barn door long after the horses had galloped wild and free. And for another, this was actually the rare occasion when I wanted to talk to her. Possibly the first time I’d wanted such a thing since September.
‘When’s the earliest they think he might be able to leave that rehab centre?’ she asked me now. I shuffled through the stacks of mail, an assortment of catalogues and bills, then tossed it all on the kitchen counter. I didn’t go over and sit with her. That seemed far too civilized for the mood I was in.
‘Earlier than you might think.’ I studied her for a moment. Her jet-black hair was showing a hint of grey at the roots. Her eyes seemed to sport permanent bags. She shrugged out of her coat and sat there, looking listless and sad, her hands rubbing her belly. I decided it was an unconscious gesture on her part, that it wasn’t for my benefit. But that didn’t change what I suspected she’d done, did it? ‘Earlier than I would have thought, certainly. But then, Tim didn’t suddenly wake up in a searing burst of clarity on Christmas morning, did he?’
I watched Carolyn flinch. She shifted in her chair, almost as if she were nervous. She was slow to meet my eyes.
‘That depends on what you mean, exactly,’ she said. Much too carefully.
‘I mean that he was twitching and thrashing a little bit before I went to New York,’ I said, keeping my voice cool and very nearly prosecutorial. ‘But apparently, while I was away, he started opening his eyes and seeming to track conversations. He grunted responses. All signs that he was coming around. He started talking on Christmas morning, but he’d been waking up for days.’
She didn’t have to answer. I already knew. And even if I hadn’t been sure, I could see the truth written all over her face.
‘That was why you were so angry with me when I came back from New York that morning.’ I shook my head, still trying to take it in. I’d cried when I’d finally understood what Tim’s doctors were telling me. I was finished crying now. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, or that I wasn’t stunned by what further depths she was willing to go to. ‘I thought it was because you knew I’d seen a private moment between you and Tim, but that wasn’t it, was it? You didn’t want me to know he was coming out of it already.’
‘Sarah …’ she began, her hands reaching out like some kind of supplicant. Except that wasn’t Carolyn’s style, was it? She wasn’t beseeching me about anything – she was trying to get me to calm down. Same gesture, different meaning. It was a crucial distinction and I needed to heed it. Carolyn wanted Tim. I was in her way. That was the whole story, the end.
‘What I have to ask myself,’ I said slowly, staring at her, wondering how she’d turned into such a monster right in front of me this past year without my ever noticing it, and how I’d managed to be so incredibly oblivious for so long, ‘is whether you were ever going to tell me. What was your plan, Carolyn? How long were you going to keep it a secret?’
She wrapped her arms around her waist, and blew out a breath. She didn’t try to argue. ‘I didn’t think it would matter.’
‘How can you possibly think that’s true?’ I was flabbergasted – more that she would admit it than anything else. ‘What kind of sociopath are you?’
‘Well, I didn’t.’ She lifted her chin. Defiantly. ‘The fact is, if Tim could remember the last six months, he would want me with him, not you. I’m not trying to be mean. It’s the truth. So why tell you that he was waking up? You would have foun
d out eventually. And he would have gone ahead and divorced you, the way he planned.’
‘Do you listen to the things you say?’ I asked her, in some kind of amazement. ‘I get that you think that you and Tim have some magical connection, and who knows? Maybe you do. But I’m still married to him. I’ve been married to him for years. What makes you think you’re the only person who cares about him?’
‘I’m in love with him,’ she said, and it was the way she said it that set off some kind of air-raid siren inside me. She was so matter-of-fact. So calm, as if there was no room whatsoever for debate. I had to repress a shiver. She met my gaze, and there was no shame in hers, only that strange directness, like she didn’t care what the consequences were. Or maybe it was only strange because I’d never owned anything like that in my life. ‘Are you?’
‘Of course I love him,’ I snapped at her.
Because what did it matter what she owned? This was about me, too. This was my life she was playing with. I had the passing thought that being back here, playing the wronged wife, felt something like good – it was black-and-white, anyway. It was easy. And Carolyn had no leg to stand on, did she?
‘That doesn’t change because he did something horrible,’ I continued, my voice warming. ‘I wasn’t the one who had the affair, Carolyn. I wasn’t the one who wanted a divorce. I didn’t get the option of deciding whether to love or not love Tim, the two of you took it from me.’
‘That’s not the same thing as being in love with him,’ she replied immediately, and I remembered, then, that she’d thrown something like that at me on That Day. It was hard to recall her exact words; they were still buried in all the screaming. Most of it mine. ‘I think you’re comfortable with Tim, Sarah, but you don’t love him. Not really. Not the way I do, and not the way he deserves to be loved.’
I scraped my hair back from my face and tried not to scream bloody murder. Much less commit it. I told myself that seeing red got no one anywhere they wanted to go and waited, therefore, for my vision to subside to something a bit more calmly orange before I replied.