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
