Page 71 of Enigma: The Final Chapter
“We exchanged contact details, but before I knew it, I was married myself.” I lace my fingers with Hugo’s, shocking him. “And four years just flew by.”
“Oh golly gosh, time does fly when everyone starts having babies and getting married. I remember when I was—”
“Yes, so as you can imagine, I’m dying to see her again,” I interrupt when she gets that gleam in her eyes that says she’s ready to give us her entire life story. “So, if you could help us reconnect, I'd be eternally grateful.”
She smiles. “Of course.”
When she gestures us to follow her to the counter, I squeeze Hugo’s hand before shadowing her. “Thank you so much.” My voice is laced with both excitement and graciousness. “I can’t wait to reconnect with Ophelia again.”
Her hasty movements halt before she pivots around to face me. My breathing lowers when I notice her eyes are once again tainted with suspicion. After crossing her arms in front of her chest, she glares at me. Her stare is so white-hot, a sweat mustache forms on my top lip.
“Ophelia?” she questions, her brow raised.
I try not to balk when Hugo bands his arm around my waist and pulls me into his side, but the slightest bit of hesitation crosses my face. “Her name wasn’t Ophelia, sweetheart.” He presses a kiss to my hairline, muttering for me to follow along. “Sorry, you must forgive her, she's pregnant, and even though she's only three months, the baby brain is already kicking in.”
I slap Hugo on his chest, feigning daftness. My act must be convincing as she appears to be accepting Hugo’s bogus claims.
“Congratulations.” She sighs as the glint I referenced earlier returns stronger than ever. “When I was pregnant with my first child, I had baby brain horrendously. For months and months, I couldn’t even remember my own name, let alone a friend I met years before.”
I force a fake smile on my face when her story drags for another ten plus minutes. Once she finalizes her brain-sucking story, she cranks her neck, then shouts, “Olivia, there's a lady here requesting to see you.”
Hugo tightens his grip on my waist to stop me from tumbling to the ground in a heap when Ophelia emerges from behind the pharmacy counter. She's wearing a white pharmacist coat with Olivia stitched on the top right-hand side in black thread, but I know it is her.
That feeling of loss I was experiencing earlier overpowers me when my eyes scan her face. She's even more beautiful in real life than her photos showed. Her smile is bright and heartfelt. Her eyes are unique and dazzling, and her skin is even clearer since she's no longer in her teen years as she was in the photos I regularly scanned of her.
Her eyes flick between Hugo and me, seemingly confused. “Hello.”
I can’t breathe, much less formulate a response to her greeting. I’m standing across from a woman who has more influence on the man I love than I do. This can’t get any worse.
The longer we remain quiet, the more Ophelia’s brows join. Thankfully, the awkwardness inflicting our gathering weakens when a little boy with dark hair charges across the room. “Mom, you should see the size of the fish we caught! The water was so freezing, the fish was frozen with its mouth open.” He stops talking to pull the face of a fish out of water. “Pa tried to make me kiss it, but fish are disgusting. It smelled so bad, I wasn’t going to kiss it.” He talks so fast, his words come out in a mumbled slur.
My chest weighs down with heaviness when it dawns on me that he's calling Ophelia his mother.
“You shouldn’t kiss fish.” Ophelia scrunches up her pointed nose while running her fingers through the boy’s messy hair. When she glances behind my shoulder, her eyes narrow into slits. When I follow her gaze, I spot a gentleman in his mid-fifties pacing toward us. “Pa shouldn’t be encouraging you to kiss fish.”
The gentleman laughs a hearty chuckle before he places a kiss on the pharmacy tech’s head. “I was just ensuring he got his daily dose of fish oil.”
Ophelia giggles, making the stranglehold on my heart intensify. “We have vitamins for that.”
I remain quiet with my eyes flicking between the little boy, who I'd guess is around the age of six, and Ophelia. The swirling of my stomach kicks up a gear when I recall Isaac sharing information about the night he fought Ophelia’s brother, CJ. About her being overdue for her period and having a stomach bug the two weeks before the fight.
I suck in shallow breaths, weakening the dizziness making my footing unsteady before shooting my eyes back to the little boy. When he glances up at me with a smirk etched on his plump lips, I can longer hold in the contents of my swishy stomach.
After excusing myself, I dart out of the single glass pharmacy door.
“Oh, poor dear, she must still be suffering from morning sickness. When I was pregnant…” is the last thing I hear before I lose my frosted flakes breakfast in the waste receptacle on the sidewalk outside of the pharmacy.
I use the sleeve of my shirt to wipe away the remnants of vomit off my chin when Hugo gathers me in his arms. His woodsy smell helps to settle the flips and turns my stomach is doing, but nothing eases my despair.
Not a word seeps from his lips when he sits me into the passenger seat of our rental car, buckles my seatbelt into place, then jogs around to hop into the driver’s seat. I try to formulate words, to articulate something about what just occurred, but my words stay trapped in my throat, refusing to be relinquished.
I’m not surprised when Hugo drives us straight to the private airstrip we flew into yesterday afternoon. We agreed last night that as soon as we unearthed what really happened to Ophelia, we’d immediately inform Isaac of our discovery in person. My agreement was the only way I stopped Hugo from calling Isaac last night.
When we pull into the airport hangar thirty minutes later, Isaac’s private jet is on the tarmac, warm and ready to go. The crew was advised that the plane must be ready for departure with minimal notice required because Isaac didn’t want any delays separating us longer than necessary. My heart was initially warmed by that statement, but now it’s full of panic because every mile I get closer to Isaac means I’m closer to losing him forever.
For the past three hours, Hugo has aimlessly flicked through outdated magazines. He’s not reading any articles. He’s too busy eyeballing me to pay attention to anything else.
I put his gawking to good use. “How old do you think Ophelia’s son is?”
