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?”
OVER 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
