Carides's Forgotten Wife (9 page)

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 anymore. I didn’t want someone to care for me. I didn’t want to care for them.” He closed his eyes and a single tear rolled down his lean cheek. “What kind of father cannot protect his son? If I accomplish all these things, earn money in unimaginable quantities, improve my station in ways others would see as impossible... What does it mean if I allowed my little boy to die?”

“Leon... You didn’t let him die. It was a tragic thing.” Emotion was creeping over her, threatening to choke out her words. This was his grief, and yet she felt as though it was a part of her. “It was something you couldn’t have prevented no matter what.”

He dragged his hand over his face. “I suppose there should be comfort in that. And yet I do not see any. I see only the futility of being at the mercy of fate.”

“I’m not sure it’s fate. Life is a series of unpredictable things. Beautiful. Terrible. Some are direct consequences for our actions, and others don’t make sense. They aren’t payments or punishments. They simply are. But the measure of it is what we do after. Those are the things that you can control.”

“And what have you controlled? What have you controlled in your life, Rose?” His words were hard, cynical. He sounded much more like the Leon she had spent the past two years married to than he had over the past few weeks.

“Nothing.” She blinked back tears. Tears of frustration, of sorrow. Tears because everything about this situation hurt, and no one was left undamaged. “I went along with everything my father wanted from me because I had the idea that if I did he might be happy. That was how I chose to deal with the loss of my mother. I thought you would be my reward. But I’m realizing something.”

“What is that?” he asked, his voice sounding rung out, scraped raw.

“Another person can’t be your reward. Because they’re yet another thing you can’t control.” She laughed, but nothing was funny about it. “A person isn’t cake. They can’t just exist to be a treat for you. They have their own baggage. Their own needs and desires. And it wasn’t until just before your accident that I started to fully realize that you weren’t just going to magically become that reward I felt I deserved. And it wasn’t until this that I... Leon, I didn’t know about your son. I’m embarrassed to admit how little I know about you. I expected you to be something for me,
only
for me. And I never realized that whatever you were, as broken and debauched as it was...maybe you needed to be that for yourself. For your own pain. I never... I never once considered that.”

It didn’t fix the past. It didn’t make her trust him. It didn’t really even make her forgive him. But understanding that he had suffered a loss greater than any she could possibly imagine did help cast him in a new light. It helped explain some of his behavior. His drinking.

It didn’t remove the deep wound from her heart. There was no magic here. Only grim understanding that didn’t do a thing to revive the scorched earth that surrounded them.

“I was afraid when I came in here,” he said, not addressing what she had just said. “I was afraid that she would be...”

“She’s fine,” Rose said, knowing that the assurance was empty.

Because she knew what he would always see. She knew what he would always fear as he approached the crib.

And she knew then with absolute certainty why he had signed away his parental rights to Isabella.

“That’s why,” she said. “It’s why you didn’t want her.”

“If you had asked me what love was after my accident I would have told you... I don’t know. But if you ask me now... Love is pain, Rose. It is a hope that blooms with no thought for what might lie ahead. No cares about what could go wrong. And that makes it all the more painful when it’s cut away. Devastating. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to do this again.”

“She’s here now,” Rose said. And as hard as it had been for her to accept Isabella, she couldn’t imagine sending her away. It was a process. There was no getting around that. For Rose, there had been no magical maternal bond between herself and this little baby. But there was something growing in her chest. Blooming, just as he had described it. The beginnings of love.

And protectiveness. She felt that, too. The desire to prevent Isabella from feeling unwanted. Unwanted by Leon or herself.

“Yes,” he said, “she is.”

“You can’t send her away.”

“I never said I would,” he responded.

“It’s my turn to be fearsome about it,” she continued. “Things are changing. You are changing. The more memories fall into place, the more you’re going to become who you were. And if you think that your original reasoning can stand in light of that—”

“I don’t,” he said, pushing himself up from the floor, beginning to pace the length of the room.

“And if you do? If you do then I’m going to fight you. Every step of the way. No more secrets. We can’t afford to have any between us. This is our life.” She was making a stand, a stand she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to make. A commitment. “I want to be a family.”

“I don’t know if I can promise that.”

“You will promise it. You will, or I’m going to have to fight you. For this house. For her.”

“You couldn’t win a fight against me. As you’ve already explained if you do not stay married to me for three more years you don’t get the house. And as for Isabella... Biologically she’s mine. You don’t have a right to her.”

She was remembering now. Remembering all the ways he could be so impossible. So arrogant. It had been easy to forget because the Leon of the past few weeks had been held at a disadvantage. But this was the man she had always known. Strong. Driven. Occasionally ruthless.

He had done nothing but reveal vulnerability over the past weeks. And she could tell he was fighting now to reclaim these traits.

“So what, then? What is it you want?”

“You will remain my wife.”

“And you think you will continue to live as you did? Only instead of abandoning me alone in the manor you’ll leave Isabella here, as well?” She stood, closing the distance between them. “That would be in keeping with your past behavior. Shut away the women that cause you grief, that might get in the way of your good time.”

“It is not so simple, and you know it. Especially now that you know about Michael.”

“Love scares you.
You
, big bad Leon Carides. It terrifies you, and you run from it.”

“Only a fool isn’t afraid of a lion, Rose. Even I know well enough to be afraid of things that can be fatal.”

She was pushing too far. She knew it, but she couldn’t help it. “I know you’ve suffered loss. I know you’ve suffered pain. But it doesn’t give you the right to put other people through hell while you protect yourself.”

“You spend your whole life hiding in this mansion, hiding yourself behind the convenient lies you tell yourself, little girl. Hiding in books. You think you know pain because you lost your parents. I buried my
child
. Do not lecture me on pain. Do not lecture me from your safe little nest. You know nothing. Nothing at all.”

He turned on his heel and walked out of the nursery, leaving Rose there alone with Isabella.

She debated going after him, but decided against it. She turned and walked to the crib, leaning over the side, letting her knuckles drift over the soft skin of the baby’s cheek.

She knew more about Leon now than she had before walking into the nursery. She had a piece of who he was. An explanation for why he was. And yet she felt no closer to him than she had before. If anything, she felt like there was a greater distance between them.

She was beginning to believe that they would never be able to bridge this divide.

The more reality crept in, the more it filled this space between them, the more impossible it seemed they could ever find their way back to each other.

He was not her reward. She thought of everything they had. A broken marriage, loss, pain. She couldn’t see the reward in any of it.

She looked down at Isabella again. Maybe there were no rewards at all. Maybe there was simply life. And what you chose to do with it.

“I don’t know that my father ever knew what to do with me,” she whispered into the silence of the room. “But I loved him anyway. He loved me, too. He didn’t know how to show it, but he did. You see, much like your father he lost someone he loved very much. My mother. I think it becomes difficult after that to show love.”

She only realized just now, talking to an infant who didn’t understand a word she was saying, that it was the truth. Her father was more comfortable with work, with Leon, because it was simpler than love. Taking a protégé on, helping him succeed...it cost less than loving.

Love was so terribly expensive. And she was only fully grasping that now.

“I loved your father,” she continued, a hot tear slipping sown her cheek. “But he’s never loved me. That hurts. It makes me want to curl into a ball and never love anything ever again. But I think you’re going to need someone to love you. I will. I’ll love you like no one has ever hurt me. We didn’t choose this. And you certainly deserve better than me. But it’s time for me to start making some choices. It’s time for me to stop waiting. I choose you, Izzy.”

She swallowed hard past a lump that was rising in her throat. “I don’t know what your father will do. I can’t... I can’t make him into the man I want him to be. I can only be the woman I want to be. I can only try to be the mother you deserve. I don’t know how to be a mother. I barely remember my own. But I know what I missed having. I can give you those things. He’s right about one thing—I do hide. Well, I’m not going to hide anymore.”