Page 21 of Chosen Road

I did.

I could still feel the coarseness of her hair between my fingers. At the time it sickened me, angered me that it wasn’t Amber’s soft locks wrapped around my fist. I gripped harder, perversely satisfied to see her blue eyes widen with shock before closing to half mast with lust which made me vaguely sick, and then my memory went blessedly blank.

I sat down hard on the couch, grasping what was left of my thinning hair.

Shock, regret, remorse.

Disgust.

If I’d known this was the memory that was missing, I never would have gone after it.

My eyes wide, reeling with shock, I realized I was not the man I thought I was.

That man would never cheat on his wife, even if his marriage was a sexless sham. That man would not disrespect his son’s mother. That man would never risk his career by crossing the line with a co-worker, married or not.

And that man would never give up on the woman he loved more than life, either, but the papers in my desk drawer upstairs provided unshakeable evidence that I was not that man.

The late afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows along the back of the house and spilled across the floor. Light meeting shadow. Showing me the time of day better than any clock, telling me Amber was due home any moment.

Did she know? Was this the reason for the sadness and the anger in her eyes? Was this the reason for her tears in the dead of night?

How many times had I woken to find her crying? How many nights in the past three months had I pulled her into my arms? She always resisted before clinging to me, burying her face in my chest while she struggled to even out her breathing.

My stomach rolled, and bile shot up into my throat. I made it to the bathroom and emptied my stomach into the toilet, then flushed and rinsed my mouth out at the sink.

She would never tell me what it was that made her cry. I thought it was fear for the future, worries about the past, anxiety and stress for her young clients.

I wondered if all this time she had been waiting for me to tell her.

The memory of Jacqueline on her knees with her sly smile flashed against the canvas of my mind. I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes and went upstairs to brush my teeth.

Amber

Could I stay with him?

Of recent weeks, this thought never strayed far from my mind. I closed my car door and walked slowly up the driveway.

After seeing Jacqueline at the hospital, I began preparations to move out, and now had a fully furnished rental ready and waiting for me.

At the time, it seemed like the only way forward. I would stay and care for Gus until he was on his feet, and then I’d leave, but his memory loss threw a wrench into my plans.

Would it be fair to leave him for something he didn’t even remember?

The first few weeks were horrendous. It was difficult to access my love for him beneath the anger and deep, burning humiliation that simmered barely beneath the surface. But Gus was in so much pain, and the drugs, on top of the concussion, addled his senses to the point that he did not notice the avalanche of my feelings, or perhaps he attributed them to the stress of the situation. He’d long since learned better than to ask me. I never shared, and if he pushed, I pushed back.

And the situation was stressful. It hurt to witness the change in him. My husband was a big man. Tall, broad, friendly, quietly charismatic, and confident. He walked into a room and filled it.

Not that he exhibited a lot of those traits over the past two years. I’d worn him down with my complaints and criticisms, watched him shrink under my constant rejection. I saw it happening, knew I was responsible, but felt powerless to fight my feelings. I hated myself for it, but I never imagined I’d see him so diminished as he was now.

I tried counseling in the past, unbeknownst to Gus, a couple of times, but nothing ever came of it. I couldn’t open up in there any more than I could open up with Gus. While I could identify my feelings, I could never unlock my words. Not pertaining to my feelings about my own history.

Ironically, I was a therapist for whom therapy seemingly did not work.

During those first few weeks, I forced myself to take care of him. Those days when my hate won out, it was a necessary obligation, one that I grudgingly fulfilled. Other days, which came more and more frequently as the weeks passed, those minutes I spent caring for him became the highpoint of my day.

He looked at me the way he used to.

He told me the accident was a wake-up call.

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