Page 66 of Hidden in Memories
He was every bit as stylish as before, in a dark-blue suit and a silk tie.
Just like a movie star.
She felt nervous going over to take their order, she couldn’t get the words out, but the candlelight bathed everything in its warm glow and hid the embarrassed blush on her cheeks.
She noticed Sean as soon as he walked into the dining room, the way his attention immediately focused on her. He didn’t take his eyes off her as she moved from table to table, his gaze followed her all the time; she could actually feel it burning into her back.
It is still impossible to understand why a man like him, so worldly wise and elegant, would be interested in someone as insignificant as her. However, she doesn’t think she’s imagining things. It was as if he didn’t even see any other women. As if they were two magnets, helplessly drawn toward each other.
When she eventually brought their dessert, a beautiful, freshly browned glace au four, he watched her secretly, almost hungrily. She got a sense of something dangerous yet unbearably exciting, as if they were the only two people in the room.
Her skin was covered in goosebumps, her nipples hardened.
The memory makes her genitals throb in a strange new way.
Monica places her hands firmly on top of the covers. What she is thinking about is forbidden. Plus he is married, and she shouldn’t be dreaming of another woman’s husband in this way.
And yet it is impossible to stop thinking about Sean.
Her hand slips inside the covers, slides down her body; she can’t control her fingers.
She has read about love at first sight in magazines. How you just know it’s right, from the very beginning.
Why couldn’t that happen to her?
All those romantic stories can’t be made up.
She is certain that Sean wouldn’t look at her like that if he wasn’t serious. He is a gentleman, she has known that from the start.
You can’t control your emotions.
He is married, she reminds herself again, but she can’t help imagining the two of them together. Sitting beside him in the hotel dining room next Christmas, looked after and cherished, treated like a fine lady instead of working as a waitress.
She really can picture herself in a delightful silk dress, with diamonds in her ears and a shiny wedding ring on her left hand.
He would never deliberately hurt her. Her heart tells her that his intentions are honest.
53
When Alice wakes and starts crying at two o’clock in the morning, it is Daniel’s turn to get up. He was lost in a dream, deep in the forest with bloody knives scattered across the snow.
The day’s events linger in his subconscious.
With gritty eyes he picks up the little girl from her cot and is greeted by the familiar odor of a dirty diaper. When he has changed her, he goes into the kitchen to make up a bottle. It takes only a couple of minutes to open the packet of formula and measure it out, but the few seconds required in the microwave feel like an eternity.
As soon as Alice’s little mouth finds the food, blessed silence reigns once more.
Daniel takes her into the bedroom and gently lays her down on the double bed next to Ida. She is fast asleep; Alice’s screams don’t seem to have woken her this time.
He lies down beside his daughter, who is clutching the bottle tightly. Her eyes are half closed, all she cares about is assuaging her hunger. A trickle of formula runs down from the corner of her mouth onto her pink pajamas.
In six months she will be the same age as Daniel was when his father walked out on their family.
He still can’t get his head around it. He’s been seeing a therapist for over a year, and he can neither understand nor forgive his father’s behavior.
He was so small back then.
How could his father abandon him and Mom like that? He didn’t even come home; he just left a short message on the answering machine to inform them of his decision, then vanished from their lives.
