Page 24 of Don't Leave Me
I didn’t think I had any more tears left to cry, but still they came.
When I’d first left Marc, I’d spent a month crying. In fear, because I didn’t know if I was capable of being a single mother. In despair, because I worried Marc might never know he had a son. Might never have the chance to love him or hold him.
I told myself I had no choice. Every day, every night, I worked to believe it was true. That the only way to escape Evan, to truly remove him and his threats from my life, was for him to believe I was dead. A plan I’d hatched on my return trip from San Diego. When a bodyguard once told me that runaway princesses always fucked up their escape.
Which meant Marc also had to believe I was dead. Everything I told him yesterday was true. When I looked back at the arc of us, it seemed so clear. I loved Marc. I always had and I’d believed he’d felt the same. Then I had to ask myself if I believed it because it was true, or because I wanted it to be true so badly.
There were times he tolerated me. He hated me. He wanted me. There were also times I knew he needed me.
Was that love? Or was it obligation? That’s why he made a deal with my father to bring me home from Switzerland. That’s why he married me. At the time, I’d convinced myself I was essential to him. Providing him the endless well of love he craved because his mother had abandoned him. But when you have nothing but time and distance, and nothing to do other than think, it was easier to be objective.
Easier to be rational, when there was nothing rational about love.
Love didn’t make good decisions. Love didn’t behave soberly. Love wasn’t wise or smart or practical.
It was everything else, and, as my belly grew and my pregnancy became more real, I realized I had to jettison the emotion when it came to Marc. I had to walk away from what had been so much pain and sadness, and start fresh.
Not that having the name Campbell wasn’t a constant reminder that for a short time, I’d been his wife. There also had been a sense of satisfaction by writing that name on Daniel’s birth certificate. Danny was a Campbell, and he always would be, whether Marc knew of his existence or not.
Only now, Marc did know. and, truly, I didn’t know what that meant.
I left the nursery and headed for my bedroom. Danny and I lived modestly, in a one-floor bungalow, in a planned community only twenty minutes from the bakery. Sandra was my nanny because I could afford the luxury of not having to put him in daycare. A result of planning my escape well.
I got into the bed, Danny’s monitor on the nightstand next to me, and thought about what it meant now that Marc had found us.
It was easy to see how, in these last few months, I’d become complacent. Relaxed in my life where any new drama couldn’t touch me. I now owned the bakery, purchased from the woman who’d given me a job when I’d first arrived in Tampa. A short, stocky, older German woman, named Helga. She’d taken one look at my useless résumé and my round belly, snorted, and told me to put on an apron.
I had to admit to her I’d never baked so much as a cookie, but she didn’t seem to mind. Every day for months she showed me her recipes. Explained her technique. Hammered in the importance of absolute precision when measuring.
In a short amount of time, partially because I was a fast leaner, and partially because I was desperate to have something for myself before my son arrived, I, for the first time in my life, had a skill to be proud of. A job. A single mother who hadn’t taken the easy way out, but who had built something from scratch, so when I eventually told Daniel the story of how he came into being, he would be proud of me.
When Helga was ready to retire, I’d surprised her by having the money to buy her out. She’d assumed I was pregnant and penniless. There’d been no reason to correct her. Working wasn’t about money for me. Working meant standing on my own two feet.
Then Daniel came, and she gave me three months off to figure out how to be a mother, and, when I was ready, I could come back and run the business myself. I had the health certificate transferred to my name…
“The health certificate,” I muttered, to the empty bedroom.
I hadn’t asked Marc how he found me. I’d been too overwhelmed at seeing him again to think about asking.
Careless, I thought.
Or had I done it subconsciously? One last bread crumb I left. Because there were no other traces of Marie Campbell anywhere else easily searchable.
Yes, I took Marie Campbell’s name because I wanted Marc to come looking for me someday, but after that day at the prison, when I’d asked him if he loved me and he didn’t answer… it was the first time I believed he might not.
Not the way I’d loved him.
How could he? I’d been the reason he’d been sent to prison. The reason all his plans for a successful future were put in jeopardy.
I didn’t tell him I was pregnant with his child.
If George were here, he would say it wasn’t my fault. That it was Arthur and Evan’s, but, as many times as he said it, I couldn’t make myself believe it. If I’d been nothing more than the girl next door Marc happened to grow up with, none of what my father and Evan did to me would have impacted him.
If I’d been nothing more than the girl next door Marc happened to grow up with, I wouldn’t have Daniel.
There could be no regrets. I’d done what I’d done to protect my baby, and I would continue to do it. At the time, I had no choice but to keep Marie’s name. But the truth was, I changed my identity once. I could do it again now.
If I really meant to make a clean break from Marc, then the sensible decision was to leave Florida. Pay for a new identity, take Daniel away to some place new, where no one could find us. This time, leaving no breadcrumb trail to find. Because if Marc attempted to exact revenge from Evan and failed, I was in trouble.
I wasn’t sure why, but I had this sense that if Marc followed through with his plans to expose Evan, and was successful…I was still in trouble.
I could get up right now and start looking for places I could hide.
Instead, I rolled over to my side, closed my eyes and tried not to think about anything at all.
