Unchained

by Roze, Robyn

  “When they took me, I had such a long list of regrets, with nothing but time to dwell on them. Thinking you might die, or worse, does that to you. I’d taken everything in my life for granted up to that point. Everything.” She blinked away the swell of tears. “Never again. Because I learned how quickly it can all disappear. Harper and I are committed to having as short a list of regrets as possible.” The sunshine in her smile chased away the storm cloud of awful memories. “We’re really happy, Mom.”

  “I always thought you two were a great couple. And I’ve never questioned his devotion to you. Neither did your father.”

  “Are you happy, Mom?”

  The sudden change of topic surprised Shayna, leaving her taken aback by the doubt in Danielle’s tone and penetrating stare.

  “I definitely felt tension between you and Uncle Scotty yesterday. You both seemed better at dinner last night, but…” she trailed off, “I don’t know, there’s something off about you. Is it Sean? Are you two taking a break from each other? Because after getting a second chance with you, it’s hard to believe he’d let you out of his sight.”

  Shayna sat speechless, thrown by her daughter’s frankness and intuitiveness.

  “You know I would have come to your wedding, right?”

  Shayna nodded, feeling a tinge of guilt.

  “I understand why you didn’t want to wait, why you wanted to seize the moment with Sean. No matter how selfish I acted when you and Dad divorced, I never wanted you to be alone. I just want you to be happy.” She looked long and hard at Shayna, then she leaned in closer. “Are you happy, Mom?” Concern and skepticism riddled the repeated question.

  Oh, Scotty. Your sweet little niece is not as naïve as you believe her to be.

  “Look, sweetheart—”

  Gabrielle’s entrance cut off Shayna’s response.

  Mother and daughter looked on as the saleswoman wheeled in a garment rack filled with high-end fashion, and a bin below brimming with accessories. She appeared proud of her colorful selections but seemed to sense she had walked in on a private moment in the cozy room. “Take your time looking through these. I’ll check back with you,” Gabrielle said, gracious in her articulation, and departure.

  “Good Lord, Mom. We could be here all day,” Danielle said, wide-eyed, as she scanned the rack of clothing.

  “Fine by me.”

  The two laughed in tacit agreement.

  Then Shayna turned more introspective, circling back to Danielle’s earlier question still hanging in the air. “I don’t want you to worry about me, Dani, because I am fine. And, no, Sean and I are not on a break. He has business to wrap up, and I would just be in the way. So, here I am.”

  “And I’m grateful you’re here, but I’m not letting you off the hook, Mom. Are you happy? Tell me the truth.” Her pointed question held the expectation of a straightforward answer.

  Shayna contemplated her daughter’s seemingly uncomplicated request against the backdrop of a personal history replete with heartbreaking betrayals, devastating losses, shocking lies, and, yes, pockets of happiness.

  Am I happy?

  It was not a question she often pondered. Instead, she had always accepted hard truths, adapted to new realities, and then marched forward in her life. Happiness be damned.

  How do I explain ‘my truth’ about happiness?

  Since Shayna’s childhood, painful truths had been the fatal antidote to enduring happiness. An endless cycle of slash-and-burn, where unchecked happiness summoned the looming, upending truths of her life.

  Even now…

  “Happiness isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition, love. It’s not one question with only one answer. Am I happy to be apart from my husband right now? No. Am I happy to be here right now with you? Yes. Am I happy to be in a city with the memories of your father everywhere I turn? No. And yes,” she admitted, wistfully.

  Happiness diluted with truth.

  Truth mitigated by happiness.

  Each forever shifting under the fluctuating weight of the other.

  “There are so many ghosts here, Dani, it feels suffocating at times. I’m reminded of wonderful trips here with your father and how good things were between us, then, once upon a time…” Her voice wandered off and she glanced away, her gaze moving between her multiple reflections in the mirrored panes over Danielle’s shoulder. “And then I think about how everything changed. I don’t understand why it did. Except that I understand change is the one thing I have always been able to count on in my life. Whether or not I liked it. Whether or not I was ready.”

  She locked eyes with her daughter. “The universe doesn’t care whether we understand, Dani. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. That’s just how it is. We aren’t owed an explanation for it. What matters is how we deal with it.” Admiration warmed Shayna’s heart for her brave, beautiful daughter. “Look at the remarkable way you’ve chosen to deal with what happened to you.” She paused, sweeping a lock of Danielle’s hair back over her shoulder. “As simple as you may believe your question is, I know in my life how complicated the answer has been. Still is.” Shayna brushed away the worry on Danielle’s pale cheek. “Yes, I’m happy, love. And,” one brow lifted in caution, “no, I’m not. You need to accept my answer, even if it makes no sense to you. Because it’s my truth.”

  For a few silent seconds, Danielle considered her mother’s words, her features relaxing in apparent comprehension. “I think I understand what you mean, Mom. After what happened to me, then losing Dad, no matter how happy I am, it’s like there’s a background app always running in my brain that won’t let me forget things are different, and always will be. I’ll probably always look over my shoulder. I don’t think I’ll ever feel as safe as I once did, because I’m not oblivious anymore. I still don’t jog with earbuds in—never will again.”

  She drew a deep breath, a trickle of tears on her cheeks, her dark lashes splayed against tearstained skin. “There are so many things I wish I could tell Dad. Sometimes I still grab my phone to call him before I remember…” She swiped at her wet cheeks, her breathing uneven, trying to regain her composure, the gravity of the unspoken heavy between them.

  Shayna drew her into a tight embrace, squeezing her in a wish that could never come true. This was why she had agreed to a quick wedding with only Scotty in attendance. Why she had dreaded this moment since marrying Sean. Because she had known she wasn’t ready for this. Facing her daughter’s heartbreak, not just knowing who was responsible for it, but compounding her own complicity by marrying the man who had set it into motion.

  Before Sean had materialized behind her that day at the villa, dust clouds rolling behind her accomplice brother’s car after he ditched her there, it had been easier to distance herself from the day-to-day reality of what Sean had done—thinking he was dead. Thinking she could be angry at him for what he had done on that cliff. And still love him for everything else he had done, believing her private torment could remain forever unreconciled in a limbo suffered only by her. Thinking the consequences had been laid to rest.

  Twice.

  But that is not how her life had ever worked. And now was no different.

  As her daughter quaked in her arms, her shoulder damp with Danielle’s anguish, a grim acceptance settled over Shayna. She needed to face what had been pecking at her day and night since Singapore. Resentment. There. She hadn’t needed to say the words out loud to feel the relief from at last admitting it to herself. She loved Sean. She would love him until the end. But she resented him, too. For this. For hurting Danielle. And her.

  She needed to make peace with those feelings. Just as she needed to resolve her conflicted emotions about Frank. A man who had also hurt both her and Danielle. A man she no longer loved, but one whom Danielle would love to the end. As her mother, Shayna would do everything in her power to help Danielle keep her father’s memory alive.

  Soothing her now quiet daughter,
Shayna spoke softly next to her ear. “Your father told me countless times that you were his greatest achievement, the best thing he ever did. The best thing we ever did; he was right. He would be so proud of you, Dani.” She pulled back to see Danielle’s red-rimmed eyes swimming in a mixture of sadness and hope.

  Unknotting the silk scarf at her throat, Shayna slipped it off and dabbed under Danielle’s eyes, across her cheeks, and above her lip. “You and I can always talk about him. Like we did before I married Sean.” She waited a moment, wondering if she had read her daughter correctly. “I know I haven’t been as available with all the traveling Sean and I’ve been doing. I don’t want you thinking because I’m remarried I can’t or won’t talk with you anymore about your father. I have a lifetime of memories with him to share with you, stories about him you don’t know.” She patted Danielle’s knee. “The next time you want to call him, you can call me. I know I’m a poor substitute for your father, but I’ll do my best. Okay, love?”

  Danielle nodded with an air of reservation. “You’re sure Sean won’t mind?”

  Shayna’s back straightened, and she cupped Danielle’s brightening face. “He won’t mind. Even if he did, he has no standing in matters between you and me, and he never will.”

  Danielle’s relieved expression confirmed Shayna’s suspicion that her daughter had supposed her father to be an off-limit topic, believing him to have been ceremoniously erased by her mother’s new husband. As worried as she was about Sean, as upset as she was that he sent her away, and as disquieting as the memories here were, this important conversation with Danielle had been necessary. Ready or not.

  “It’s time for a fashion show, and you have a closet to fill,” Shayna said with a smile, gesturing toward the packed garment rack.

  A pinch of color returned to Danielle’s cheeks, and she rose to sort through the array of outfits, oohing and ahhing as she pulled items from the rack. She stepped into the fitting room with her first selections, face beaming, and teased, “Be careful what you ask for, Mom.”

  For a few breaths, Shayna reflected on her own thorny run-ins with the timeworn phrase. Then she chose the present over the past. It was an easy choice with the tempting charms of the present swirling around her, so vibrant and infectious. She closed her eyes, cheeks pushed high in a broad smile, infused with her daughter’s bubbly laughter and excited chatter echoing all around her in the small space. It was the best therapy for what ailed her, and her worries faded away.

  For a brief point in time, the whole of Shayna’s world in its purest, fleeting form existed only within the confines of this little private lounge.

  And she was happy.

  Chapter 18

  Before Shayna and Scotty waved off Dani and Harper from Platform 8 at the Gare du Nord train station, destination Berlin, the intervening days had been eventful for all of them, and a welcome diversion for Shayna from her restless nights. Scotty had remained sober and was back to his jokester self since their testy showdown at Dani’s. He understood the pressure weighing on her, and, besides, neither had ever stayed mad at the other for long. While Harper worked during the day, the trio had filled the hours with museums, a river cruise, a day trip to Versailles and Giverny, and all the gastronomic indulgences their stomachs could handle. In the crisp September evenings, with Harper joining them, the foursome had enjoyed casual, late dinners, and even a show at the Moulin Rouge.

  However, savoring the safety and closeness of her family, wrapped in their laughter and love, had provoked in her an increasing sense of disloyalty to Sean, who, at any given moment, could face the threat of death a continent away. And disloyalty to Frank, whose potent presence here demanded a verdict for his ending back home.

  To mute the mental fatigue from the constant battle in her mind, and to wear a smile around those she loved, Shayna had committed herself to dueling, yet similar, unrealities. In one, she imagined her current husband safe and out of danger. In another, she pretended her former husband was safe and out of danger. Two makeshift lies that crumbled at her feet in her suite each night when the door clicked shut on the bleak reality waiting to ambush her there.

  However, tonight had been different. Perhaps it was the growing, urgent drumbeat to face her inner demons that had caused the untenable split inside her. In the end, she didn’t care what had liberated her, what flash of insight had broken the shackles choking her head and heart. She only knew she was no longer willing to live her life this way—shrinking with worry, waiting for catastrophe. Waiting for others to act.

  It was time for her to act, to resume control of her life. It was time for everything to change.

  Again.

  At this late hour, when it seemed the whole world slept in peace, Shayna sat up in bed, alert and receptive, emboldened with the force of mental clarity. A new path revealed. A path she would take.

  The glow from the Eiffel Tower shuffled unwelcome shadow puppets around her bedroom, teasing her with difficult, unsettled memories that had tormented her long enough. One murky spot had been holding her focus as she sat with her back resting against the upholstered headboard, knees circled in her arms. She felt him there, judging her, pointing his finger at her. Always tapping her shoulder. Always forcing his way into her dreams. He had been following her since leaving Italy, harassing her since Singapore, and smothering her in Paris.

  The time had come to face her ethereal stalker.

  No, she did not believe in ghosts. She knew who needed this conversation. Who needed to speak the words and hear them spoken. She was ready to address the memory of the man she pictured cloaked in the shadows in the corner of her bedroom. The stern face her conscience would not stop sending to the surface, demanding her attention. Her reflection. Her penance.

  “Hello, Frank.” She cocked her head as the grainy shadows played tricks on her mind, conceiving a whispered answer from the amorphous soul she knew was not there. “You’ve been a real pain in the ass.” She chuckled at herself, at the absurdity of talking to a figment, and she pictured him agreeing.

  “I don’t know where to start with you, how to make you understand. I’m not certain I even care if you understand. I just need you to leave. Once and for all.”

  She drew a deep breath, curled and stretched her painted toes on the soft linens, and pushed forward with the one-sided conversation. “Our daughter is as smart and beautiful as ever. A survivor. She’s tougher than either of us would have imagined, and she still struggles with everything that happened. But she seems to have come through her ordeal stronger and wiser. You’d be very proud of her, as am I.”

  Her head tipped back against the headboard, a tender smile on her face.

  “She has a wonderful life with Harper. He’s respectful and devoted to her. He’ll always keep her safe.” She paused, remnants of melancholy weighing on her heart. “I wish you didn’t have to miss seeing the woman she’s becoming.” She swiped at an unexpected tear. “But you have.” Her posture stiffened; emotions hardened. “And it’s your fault. Not mine.”

  His retort thundered in her head.

  “Sean isn’t the only one to blame. You played a part in everything that happened. The decisions you both made were out of my control. Yet I was left to deal with the aftermath from all of it.”

  Her focus sharpened. “I almost lost our daughter forever because of you. And she lost you forever because of Sean. It was a steep price to pay for what you did to me. But when I ask myself, ‘What would my world be like right now if Sean had never been in it?’ I don’t like what I see. I don’t like knowing our daughter would’ve been lost forever. I don’t like knowing you would’ve been responsible for the horrors she would’ve suffered.”

  She continued to assess her illusory phantom from her guarded perch on the bed, resignation and resilience settling deep in her heart. “I can’t change what Sean did, any more than I can change the things you did. I don’t like any of it. But here I am, fitting together the broken pieces I in
herited the best I can. It’s what I’ve always done. Any doubts I had about the motives behind Sean’s actions, or yours, pale in comparison to the truths I’ve come to realize along the way.”

  She zeroed in on the ghost from her past. “Because what I know for certain is that what Sean did was out of love for me. And what you did—all of it—was not. It’s not important that you understand how I could marry a man who did what he did. After all, look at what kind of man you turned out to be. You squandered everything, Frank. You and you alone.”

  She held back her next words for a moment.

  “I loved you once. But when I had to face the ugly truth about you—about us, everything changed. Everything, damn you.” The bite of fingernails in flesh sprung her clenched fists open as she calmed the rapid beat in her chest. “I won’t be bound by your sins. You made your choices. Now, I’ve made mine. Choices I never needed your permission, or anyone else’s, to make.

  “There are a lot of things beyond my control, but you are no longer one of them. I won’t allow you to haunt me for another day or night. I won’t allow you to eat away at my peace of mind, or happiness. You had the chance for a wonderful life, and you blew it.” The flutter of a sheer curtain across the room drew her attention. “You blew it,” she muttered, her focus locked on the narrow space she had set ajar earlier between the French doors.

  She imagined her phantom slipping through the gap, taking her guilt and doubts with him, his power rebuked and revoked. She slid off the bed and followed, stepping out onto the terrace to confront the memories of the man symbolized in the shining iconic tower she had been shunning with drapes drawn tight.

  Until tonight.

  Delicate veils of autumn air unfolded with each exhale, cold concrete pressed to the bare soles of her feet, her flesh raised from the nighttime chill, the growing heat inside her melting it away. She gazed at the shining wrought iron and lattice from pinnacle to base, from the first memory borne here to the last, recognizing the familiarity of where she found herself. Not only her location on the globe, but, more so, her current point along life’s circuitous journey, her lifelong mantra still holding true. Accept hard truths; adapt to new realities, then march forward.