I study the table and make myself think through what I want to ask him, then he returns.
"Here's your juice." He places a full glass before me, then uses another glass to top it up until the juice makes a bubble at the top, held in the glass only by surface tension and luck.
I laugh, and he smiles and sits down, careful not to jar the table. "You like it full, don't you? I thought so for some reason."
I'm afraid to draw the glass to me, sure I'll spill it, so after a moment's thought I stand up and bend over it then suck the top layer of juice into my mouth, deliberately making a slurping noise.
When I sit down and swallow, I look up at him triumphantly and see him staring with both shock and something more. "What?"
He shakes his head. "Donna wouldn't have done that," he says, with wonder not disapproval in his voice.
"What would she have done?"
"Either brought it closer knowing it would have spilled, or left it alone because she didn't know how to tackle it without embarrassing herself."
I had deliberately embarrassed myself, because I'd known it would amuse him and embarrass him too. "I guess we're not that alike."
He shakes his head. "Not all the time, no."
This is a good chance to ask my first question, so I say, "How did we... you and Donna... how did you meet?" Before he can answer, I wince. "Sorry about that. I know I'm Donna, I just don't feel like I am."
He reaches out and touches my hand. "I get it. Don't worry about how you talk to me, okay? I'm just glad you are."
I frown, confused, and he leans back then closes his eyes. "My mother always says I should stop one sentence earlier."
"I wasn't talking to you before I left?"
He opens his eyes and puts his hand over mine, giving it a squeeze rather than a simple touch. "You were. Sometimes. Things were messed up. The ECT made you make mistakes, forget things like the alarm code for the house, and you hated it. I think you tried not to talk rather than prove how much you'd forgotten."
"Did you mock her for forgetting? Or tease her?"
The waiter shows up then to present us with the bill and assure us there's no rush, although his glance at the long line of waiting customers makes it clear he doesn't mean it.
Ryan ignores the bill and looks into my eyes. "I didn't mock her. At all. I felt terrible for her. Donna was proud of her quick memory, before. I would never have teased her for losing it, especially with what caused it. I didn't want to drive her further into depression."
I nod slowly, and he briefly tightens his grip on my hand then releases it. "You wanted to know how we met?"
I did, but now I'm even more interested in the secret area than before. Donna might well have been using it to keep the things she couldn't remember, and those are probably the very things I need to know.
I'm about to ask him if he knows about it when a woman passes us carrying a baby in a white fuzzy suit with ears on the hood. The kid has bright blue eyes and the kind of cheeks that make fingers itch to pinch. They stop at the table next to us, behind me, and the people there begin cooing over him and exclaiming over how much he's grown.
I look at Ryan and am shocked to see him staring at the woman with hunger. But then someone at the table says, "Let me hold him." Ryan's eyes shift to follow and I realize it's the baby that has his attention.
I'd never imagined a man could want a child that much, but my husband does.
He doesn't look back at me until the woman collects her child and heads off, then he says, "What were we talking about?"
I clear my throat. "We don't have kids, do we?" Surely he'd have told me if we did.
He shakes his head slowly.
I wait for more but he doesn't seem about to speak, so I say, "Did we plan to?"
A slow nod this time but he does also say, "We were trying for about six months with no success, so your doctor referred us to a fertility clinic."
My cheeks go hot. "Trying" means sex, of course, and I have no recollection of sleeping with this man. Or any man. I try to hold myself together, though. "Was there anything wrong?"
He looks deep into my eyes, like he's trying to read something he doesn't quite understand. "He said everything should be fine."
I clear my throat. "Well, good." If I ever remember my past and actually feel married to this guy, we'll be fine having kids. No problem. "Hey, you never told me how we met."
He smiles. "It's a funny story," he begins, then launches into how we were introduced at a gala for my charity. We talked as much as we could there then I called him early the next morning to invite him for breakfast. He'd been surprised at my forwardness but he also liked it.
"You didn't mind Donna chasing you?"
This smile has a tinge of sadness to it. "I knew right away there was something special about her. So no, not at all. I admired that she decided what she wanted and went after it."
But the downside to that was that when Donna wanted to be away from him she'd made it happen and fled to Toronto.
He seems to have made the same connection; he shakes his head and says, "I wish..."
He doesn't say anything else, and eventually I have to ask what he wishes. I'm not surprised when he says, "I wish I could go back in time."
I nod. "So I wouldn't have the ECT."
He frowns. "No, further than that. So you wouldn't be depressed at all."
After unpacking in my new apartment last night I did some Internet research into my condition on the old laptop Jake let me take with me, so I know enough to say, "But depression has a biological basis, so you couldn't do anything about that part. It's in my genes, I guess. And there was nothing you could do about what set it off."
He gives a grim chuckle. "Bet I could."
No, he couldn't. Unless...
Realizing something isn't right here, I lean back in my chair and look at him hard. "You said it started when my parents died. Unless you're confessing to giving my dad a heart attack and making my mom get cancer, I don't think you could have done anything to prevent it."
He's gone pale, and takes a breath to speak, but I'm not done. "Unless that isn't when it started. Unless I got depressed because of something else. Ryan, have you told me the truth?"
Our eyes lock and I wait, hardly able to breathe. There is something else. His whole demeanor tells me so. But I don't know if he'll tell me, and I'm further not sure I want to know.
He closes his eyes. "God, it was bad enough admitting this the first time."
My heart races but before I can say anything he opens his eyes and takes my hands. "Donna, I..." He swallows then leans forward and says, "Donna, I cheated on you."
Chapter Seventeen
It's weird, being told that the husband you don't remember had an affair. I am shocked and disgusted and disappointed, but I don't feel those emotions to the sickening depths Donna certainly must have. My confusion is more intellectual than passionate. "I don't understand. I thought you were in love." When he found me at the police station he seemed like he loved me, like he was deeply relieved to see me safe and sound. Had that all been an act?
"We were," he says quickly. "We are. Well, I am anyhow." He takes my hand. "I still love you, Donna. I never stopped."
I ease my hand away. "Hard to believe, don't you think? Why did you cheat then?"
The waiter arrives. "Can I get you two anything else?"
"No, just the bill," Ryan says without looking at him.
"You have the bill, sir. I left it for you a while ago."
His faint over-emphasis on how long it's been gets through to Ryan, and he slaps some money down on the table and says, "There. Thank you so much for making us feel welcome to stay."
The waiter pales. "I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean to--"
"You did, actually. But whatever." Ryan takes a deep breath, then stands and holds out his hand to me. "Are you ready to come with me?"
He's not just asking if I want to leave, I can tell. He's asking how far I'm willing to go with him
, how I feel about staying with him. I don't have an answer so I get up, ignoring his outstretched hand, and walk out of the restaurant, knowing he'll follow.
Outside, he takes gentle hold of my shoulder and turns me around. "I'm sorry. I know how you must feel."
"Do you? I doubt it. I'm supposed to be remembering that I love you and now I find out you didn't love me."
"I did, I do," he says, his voice low but full of passion. "It was stupid."
"Of course it was," I snap. "Affairs always are. Why did you do it? Who was she? Did I know her?"
He sighs, and I say, "Oh, I'm sorry, do my questions bother you?"
He moves closer, his eyes sparking with a sudden fury. "I hate myself for it, Donna. Every single day since the affair started I've hated myself, and I hated myself ten times more after I told you and saw how much it hurt you, and a thousand times more after it made you run away from me. The only good thing about your amnesia is that you don't remember it all. So, yes, your questions bother me, because I don't want to tell you the whole story and hurt you again and I know I have to."
We stare at each other for another moment, then he reaches out and smooths my hair, the anger in his eyes replaced by such tenderness I can barely stand to see it. "I never wanted to hurt you. I love you. Now and forever."
He pulls off his wedding band and holds it up for me to see those three words engraved inside. "Now and forever," he says again. "I will never stop loving you."
The emotion and honesty in his eyes are killing me. He does love me. He cheated on me, but he loves me. And I don't remember the cheating so the love seems far more important. "Is that in my ring too?" I whisper, hardly able to speak.
He nods, and I slip my rings off my right hand and peer inside. My engagement ring is blank but sure enough, my wedding ring bears the same words.
"I don't know what to say."
He shakes his head. "You don't have to say anything. Just know I love you. I have screwed up in more ways than I could ever tell you, but I love you. Now and forever."
I'm trying desperately to make those three words ring a bell inside me, and that time I can almost hear a faint chime. But am I making it happen? I want so badly to remember my life.
He smooths my hair again. "Don't force it. Your memories will come back when they're ready."
I look up at him. "How did you--"
His smile is sweet and unbearably sad. "I've loved you for seven years. I should know you by now."
I shut my eyes against the pain in his face. I should know him. But I don't.
"Put your rings back on," he says softly, "and I'll take you to Starbucks and answer every question you've got."
I open my eyes and look down at the rings. Should I put them on my right hand or my left? I remember how it hurt him to see me put them on the right the first time, and now that I know him better I don't want to cause him that sadness again. But...
I can't decide, so I hand the rings to him. "You do it." I offer him both my hands. He can choose.
Looking deep into my eyes, he slides the rings onto my hand.
My right hand.
"When you can say you love me," he says softly, "I'll move them. But for now they need to be there."
I nod, then reach up and slide my arms around his neck. He hurt Donna by cheating, no question, but I'm just starting to realize how much she hurt him by running away. One doesn't make up for the other, and his affair is no doubt at least part of why she ran, but his pain is no less real. "Thank you for understanding. Thank you for being here."
He stands startled for a moment then pulls me close, closer than the last time we hugged.
We stay in each other's arms for a long moment, then he draws back and presses his lips gently to my forehead. "I love you," he murmurs against my skin.
It feels so wrong not saying it back.
*****
We sit at Starbucks, the same one we went to after the police station, for ages and he does answer all of my questions. I ask about the affair, and while he doesn't want to describe the woman, Colleen, too much he does say that it was nothing to do with her being better than me physically.
"She wasn't better than you at all," he says, looking deep into my eyes. "It wasn't about that."
"Then what was it about?"
He shakes his head slowly. "I don't know how to say this without sounding like a jerk."
"You admitted you had an affair. The reason won't make you seem any more of a jerk."
"I guess not." He sighs. "You have to know I don't think what I did was right. I should never have cheated on you. Obviously. But..." He sighs again. "It was just so hard living with you. The depression was taking over, and sometimes I didn't even know who you were. You'd been so driven and passionate and you started spending hours in bed, not even sleeping just staring at the wall."
I shiver, remembering doing just that at Jake's place.
"I did try to talk to you about it, and I helped you get medication and took care of you the best I could."
He gives me a sad half-smile and I think I know what's coming, and I'm right.
"But nobody was taking care of me any more. I felt like our life together was all responsibility and no enjoyment."
"And she gave you enjoyment."
He nods. "She was flirty and silly and funny and she made me feel like the only guy on the planet. And I liked it."
I rest my elbows on the table and cup my face in my hands. I can see how it happened. Donna didn't have the energy to give him any attention and this other woman saw her chance and took it. Ryan was wrong to do it, of course, but I can imagine the progression of it.
He touches my forearm. "At first we really were just friends."
I nod. "I get it. Friends first, then she suggests you have lunch together, and once you've done that dinner makes sense, and then a few drinks after, and it just builds from there. A kiss, then you both promise never to do it again, then it happens again and again and eventually..." I shrug.
His forehead creases.
"What?"
He shakes his head. "You've just spelled out exactly what happened, and you don't sound even a little bit upset."
Our eyes meet and he says, "You're not, are you?" Before I can speak, he says, "Because you don't remember any of this."
"No. I do think it's sad," I say, "but it's like something sad that happened to someone else. I don't like it, and I think what you did was wrong, obviously, but my emotions aren't in it."
He sighs. "I wish they were. I wish you'd scream at me. Slap me."
Because that kind of reaction would mean I love him. "Did Donna do that?"
Before he can answer I think of another, better, question. "Why did you tell her? Was she going to find out? Was Colleen going to tell her?"
"I couldn't live with myself any more," he says simply. "I came home one night, late, from seeing Colleen, and Donna was sound asleep. I looked at her, then at our wedding picture on my bedside table, the same picture I showed you, and it just hit me so hard. I woke Donna up and told her, and I ended the affair that night. I haven't seen Colleen since and I hope I never do."
I imagine poor Donna waking from sleep to be told her husband was cheating on her. Ryan obviously thought he was doing a good thing but I can't believe how clueless he was to do it. "What did Donna do when you told her?"
He looks down at the table. "Cried. Cried so hard she nearly threw up. She wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't let me stay with her. She made me leave, so I went to the blue guest room, next to our room, and sat in there and listened to her sobbing for at least an hour until she cried herself to sleep."
My throat tightens as if those same sobs are trying to escape it. I can see the scene so clearly, even though I haven't seen Ryan's house in Ottawa, and while the vast majority of my sympathy is with Donna there's a tiny part of me that feels for Ryan too. "You didn't go out? Or put on headphones or something so you wouldn't have to hear her?"
He looks up, his eyes full of shock
and fresh pain. "It was my fault. I couldn't leave her to cry alone."
"But--"
"I know, she was alone. But I think she knew I was out there, not running from what I'd done to her, and I have to hope it helped at least a little bit."
I have no idea if it helped. I can't imagine it made things much better for Donna but at least he hadn't gone off to Colleen again. "What happened the next day?"
He sips his coffee, and I tense up against whatever bad thing he's about to say, but when he does speak he just says, "She asked if I was sure I was finished with Colleen. I said I was, and that I would never cheat on her again. She said she didn't like it, obviously, but she knew she hadn't been easy to live with."
I don't like Donna blaming herself for the affair. Difficult to live with or not, she hadn't deserved to be cheated on. "So things went on just like before?"
"Not quite." He sips his coffee again. "She wanted to go out for dinner that night, the first time she'd felt up to it in ages, and she said she thought we were ready to have a baby. She hadn't felt ready before, but she'd done some research that day and found that it wouldn't aggravate her depression and might even help. She knew I wanted kids, and she wanted them too, and she said that a baby would be a sign of how much stronger our relationship would be now that Colleen was out of the way."
To me, Donna's words scream, "I'll give you what you want, just don't leave me," but Ryan doesn't seem to have recognized that aspect.
"Donna said something about being afraid she wouldn't be able to keep all her ducks in a row as a mother. I said I knew she would, and as we left the restaurant we went by a tattoo place."
I smile, knowing what's coming, and he smiles back and says, "Yup. I told her that if she wanted to guarantee her ducks would always be in order we should get them tattooed on her. I was mostly joking, but she surprised me by going for it, and we did it that very night."
"We? Do you have ducks too?"
He shook his head. "The guy didn't have time to tattoo us both, and the ducks were more for her anyhow."
"Got it. So, what happened next?"
"We talked about names for hours that night at home, after the tattoo. She was so much more energetic and cheerful than usual, and it was wonderful. I liked Edward after my dad but she wouldn't hear of it because of those 'Twilight' books, and we eventually agreed that Elliott would be great for a boy."
Toronto Collection Volume 2 (Toronto Series #6-9) Page 32
