Page 31 of Lover
Another mistake.
“Callum,” she snapped, turning to glare at me with silent tears streaming down her cheeks.
I was making a mess of this. I sat up fully, taking her face in my hands, wiping the tears away. We were here now, at the threshold of her confession, and there was no reason to delay it.
“Tell me,” I said softly.
“Two years ago, I woke up in Our Lady of Grace.”
“The hospital.”
“Yes. In the psychiatric ward.”
With panicked speed she told me all: her stay at the hospital, her amnesia, her terror that perhaps she had done something unforgiveable in the years she’d lost. At last, she’d laid her burden at my feet. I wanted so badly to reassure her, to help fill in the missing pages of her life, the ones we’d written together. She hadn’t committed crimes or run a brothel. She’d lived and loved, and she had suffered as no woman should ever suffer. To protect her from the agony of all that had happened, her mind gathered those moments of joy turned heartache and hid them away.
She grew silent, watching me with wide eyes, waiting for me to dismiss her, leap from the bed in disgust, kick her out of Willowfield, and vow never to see her again.
“I know,” I said, with as much gentleness as I could.
“You what?”
“Of course I know.”
“What do you meanyou know? How?”
I had to make something up, and I would have preferred drinking hot ash.
“Don’t you think I’d make it my business to know everything about a stranger entering my home? Dr. Hannigan worked at that hospital. He recognized your name when he met you in Boston in the little bookshop.”
“He told me he hadn’t been there when I was!”
“You were a special case. Many of his old colleagues continue to share information with him concerning confounding illnesses, and it just so happened you were one of them.”
“You knew before hiring me and still accepted my application?”
She could detect the mistruth. It tapped at the corner of her consciousness, raising suspicion. She was too smart to believe this claptrap, but I barreled on.
“Who else has your qualifications? It was a damn miracle Dr. Hannigan even came across you. The fact your history is unfortunate had no bearing on the decision.”
“Why?”
And here, this was where I could finally breathe honesty into my answer.
“Millie, we can’t exclude people from life because of their struggles.”
She began to sob.
“I’mextremelyangry with you, Callum. How dare you keep that from me? I was so afraid. I…”
I gathered her to me.
“May we have a lifetime for me to beg your forgiveness.”
She cried for a long while, her grief and her relief inspiring tears to form in my own eyes.
“You don’t really know anything about me,” she wailed against my chest.
“Then tell me everything, my love,” I said. And she did.
