I Won’t Remember You
Aidan & Vicky Book Six
By Mairsile
I Won’t Remember You
© 2016 by Mairsile. All Rights Reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form, without written permission from the author.
Cover Design: Mairsile
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Acknowledgement
Many thanks to my handsome nephew lawyer, Ken, for helping me with some particulars.
And as always, my two besties, Joyce and Fox, for everything.
Dedication
June 12, 2016. Life must go on. Love must prevail. Hate will never win. Love is love.
May they rest in peace in God’s loving arms.
Mairsile
Chapter One
Aidan looked out of the small porthole at the thick, bulbous clouds reaching twenty thousand feet into the sky. She didn’t see the contours of the soft, puffy clouds or the way they seem to cushion the airplane she was sitting in. She didn’t see the faint rainbow underlying a few of the clouds, a clear indication that the sun had found its way through, to shine down over the Atlantic Ocean. She didn’t see anything at all except the tears streaming down her mother’s face as she walked away from her at the Dublin Airport. As mad as she was at her mother at that moment, those tears haunted her. That was not how she wanted to remember meeting her mother for the first time.
The flight attendant edged the beverage cart down the narrow aisle, coming to a stop in front of Aidan and Vicky. She locked the wheels on the oblong handcart, took out a tiny ice scoop and began dipping ice into small plastic cups.
Vicky tucked her purse beside her right hip, and pulled her seatback tray down in anticipation. She didn’t have to wait long as the attendant pulled out a bag of pretzels and picked up a cocktail napkin, and handed them to her. Vicky passed the pretzels over to Aidan, who tossed them on her tray. It had been a long time since Vicky flew coach, and she had forgotten how claustrophobic it could feel wedged in between two other passengers. At least it wasn’t so bad with Aidan being one of the two passengers beside her. When Aidan insisted on flying home with her, there were no extra seats available in first class, so Vicky exchanged her ticket for coach. She’d rather sit in coach beside Aidan, than enjoy champagne in first class without her. Aidan tried to talk her out of it, but Vicky refused, knowing that she could never be comfortable with Aidan so close, yet untouchable.
The attendant handed Vicky another package of pretzels and a napkin, and then asked Aidan for her drink order.
“Beer, please,” Aidan ordered.
“And I’ll have a wine spritzer, please,” Vicky said.
“Oh, and make sure my beer is American,” Aidan added.
Vicky looked understandingly at her wife. She knew where that request was coming from, and it wasn’t because Aidan preferred domestic over foreign beer like Ireland’s Guinness stout. It was because the one thing Aidan had dreamed of all her life, having a mother, had turned into her worst nightmare. Vicky wrapped her arm around Aidan’s and rubbed her shoulder against hers. It was going to be a very long eleven-hour flight, if she couldn’t get Aidan to open up about her mother. Aidan hadn’t said much of anything since they boarded the plane almost forty-five minutes ago.
“Are you very mad at me, sweetheart?” Vicky asked, as the attendant set their drinks down.
“Mad at you? God, no. I’m sorry, I’m being a jerk, aren’t I?”
“No, honey. You’ve just been so quiet that I was worried about you,” Vicky assured her.
“Then I am a jerk, because you are not someone to be ignored,” Aidan countered, as she took Vicky’s hand and kissed it. “I guess I’m just mad at myself right now.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Nah, you already know everything.”
“Okay, well then, I’ll talk, and then you really will be mad at me,” Vicky stated, ignoring Aidan’s shaking head. “While you were at the counter buying your ticket, I went looking for your mother.”
Aidan and her mother, Brigid O’Malley, could have passed for sisters, they resembled each other so closely. Both were tall and lanky, with a handsome face swathed by short auburn hair. Aidan had her grandfather’s green eyes, and Brigid had her mother’s hazel eyes. And were Aidan had a natural tan, Brigid’s skin was pale. But their resemblance was only skin deep. Aidan had been told that her mother died giving birth to her. She grew up dreaming about what it would be like, if her mother had lived, not knowing that her mother was in fact, alive. She couldn’t know that her mother ran away to protect her when Aidan was a baby. She couldn’t know the guilt her mother lived with for those twenty-nine years that they were apart. She couldn’t know because she wouldn’t give her mother a chance to explain.
Aidan looked keenly at Vicky. It’s not that she was surprised by her actions, Vicky always thought with her heart. And in truth, Aidan really wanted to know what her mother said to her, but she was far from being ready to forgive her mother, so she clung to her stubbornness as protection against the insult.
“That’s okay, I don’t want to hear it.” Aidan’s anger surfaced faster than she could suppress it, and she clenched her fist on the armchair.
Since they were kids in grade school, if Vicky had something to say to Aidan, she said it, regardless of Aidan’s wishes. “As I was saying, I warned your mother not to come between us again.”
“Good, so did I,” Aidan remarked. “I don’t care if I ever see her again.”
“Well, I do, Aidan. That’s why I asked her not to give up on you. Yes, she made a mistake, pretending that she didn’t know who you were, but I believe she was afraid that your adoptive father would find her.” Vicky involuntarily shivered at the thought of Aidan’s adoptive father, Harold Cassidy, the man who raped her when she was thirteen. The man who they would be witnesses against at his trial. Vicky shook off the bad memory, and continued. “She also did it because she wanted to get to know you better, and I was in the way of that.”
Aidan clinched her jaw until her muscles bunched and leaned forward in her seat. She took Vicky’s drink from her hand and sat it on the tray, and then she placed Vicky’s hand in both of hers.
“She made the mistake, Vicky, not you. You could never be in the way because you are my way. I never stopped thinking about you after I ran away, and I never stopped planning for the day when I could be with you again. And finally, my wish came true, and we were married. You’re my wife, my heart and soul, and I will never let anyone come between us, not even my mother.”
Vicky smiled, her eyes blurring with tears. “I feel the same way, honey,” she responded, kissing Aidan’s hand.
They had loved one another since they were children living next door to each other. But after reuniting as adults, the love swelled so large that they now clung to each other emotionally, spiritually, and physically. They would die for each other, and had come close to it too many times.
“I know it was Brigid who suggested that you were in the way, even knowing that we were on our honeymoon. I can never forgive her for that.”
“Honey, listen to me. Brigid has been through more than we can ever know. Considering we only just met her, we really don’t know that much about her. Only what little your grandfather told us. Remember,
she was a victim of Harold’s, too, just like I was.”
“Maybe so, but you’re not devious and underhanded. You didn’t let it stop you from getting on with your life. You suffered as much as she did, maybe more so. Your baby didn’t live, and hers did— oh shit, I’m so sorry, Vicky. I didn’t mean to bring up such a sad memory for you.”
“It’s okay, Aidan. She’s never far from my thoughts, good or sad. When we get back, I plan to go to the cemetery and put out some fresh flowers. Want to come with me?”
“Sure, but I went out there right before we left, and put new flowers and a new teddy bear on her little grave,” Aidan explained.
“Why didn’t you tell me, I would have gone with you?”
“You were so busy with hospital stuff that I thought I would help you out and make sure everything was all right.”
“That is the sweetest thing I have ever heard. Thank you for doing that.”
“I feel like she would have been my baby too, you know?”
“Aidan, when I was artificially inseminated, it was your face I envisioned, and your name I gave to my child. She was your baby in my heart.”
Aidan smiled knowingly, and rubbed a tear from Vicky’s cheek with her thumb. She couldn’t imagine what kind of mother she would make, but Aidan would have liked to find out. She could see herself holding Vicky’s baby in her arms, cradling it as it slept. Could see herself lying next to Vicky with the baby gurgling between them. But now, she could only see how much pain Vicky’s eyes tried to hide. So much pain to bear for one so young.
“But don’t you see, Aidan. When that terrorist shot me, and caused me to miscarry, I had you by my side to help me through the loss. Brigid had no one. She was alone in a foreign country. Her only contact was a monster who terrorized her repeatedly. Even after she was rescued, the nightmare continued. It followed her back to Ireland where she tried to suffocate it inside a whiskey bottle. Oh, honey, can’t you imagine how bad it was for her?”
Aidan couldn’t argue with Vicky’s reasoning, no matter how mad she was at her mother’s betrayal. She knew firsthand the kind of terror her adoptive father could inflict. She had endured it for fourteen years. Longer if she considered his re-emergence back into her life just a few months ago, when she learned that he was stalking Vicky. Aidan’s heart softened at the thought of Vicky having to face her rapist father in court in a few weeks. Right now that should be all that mattered, all that she would allow to matter. She needed to put her anger at her mother aside, and concentrate on Vicky and the trial.
“I hear what you’re saying, kid,” Aidan said, as she tucked a strand of Vicky’s blonde hair back behind her ear. “I just can’t help but feel guilty that I let her ruin our honeymoon.”
“Were we on the same honeymoon? I thought it was the most fantastically fun, romantic, arousing trip I had ever taken. We made love beside the Blarney Castle, in the wilderness by a river, even in a field with sheep watching us. We met dignitaries like the Prime Minister, and you gave a stirring speech that made everyone stand up and cheer.”
“And that’s when it began to fall apart,” Aidan said disdainfully.
“Because you met your aunt?”
“Because I met my mother, disguised as my aunt’s assistant. She had every opportunity to tell me who she was while she was showing us around Dublin. She could have asked me anything, and I would have told her the truth. I could have protected her if she had only trusted me. Why did she have to play games with us?”
“Because she was afraid,” Vicky reiterated.
Agitated at herself for continuing to sulk about her mother, Aidan changed the subject. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Right now, I only have room in my heart for you. I can only think about you and what you mean to me. I can’t allow anything else to interfere with that.”
Vicky gazed into Aidan’s emerald green eyes, and saw the same concern she had heard in her voice. “It’s because of the upcoming trial, isn’t it, sweetheart?”
“Yes. We can’t have any distractions now. Harold will come at us with everything he’s got, and I can’t let him see any weaknesses, like my screwed up feelings for my mother. I will get the truth out of him even if I have to wring the bastard’s neck.”
“Well, for your sake, and mine, I hope it won’t come to that.”
Aidan nodded, although she disagreed. Harold would string her along until the day he died, and she wasn’t going to let that happen. Not with Vicky at his mercy. A tiny seed of an idea began to grow in the back of Aidan’s mind. A seed that would ensure he’d never bother either of them again.
Aidan had endured so much physical abuse from her father that her life had already been shaped into an angry, harden introvert, able to take on the toughest bully on the back streets of Chicago. Only one thing kept her from becoming a permanent member of that Irish street gang, and that was the unwavering desire to be with Vicky again. She only ran away because Vicky's mother had caught them necking in the treehouse and Aidan thought that was the only way to protect Vicky from her mother's wrath. Fifteen years later, Aidan and Vicky found each other again and resumed their love for one another. And that’s when Harold resumed his malicious torment on his daughter and Vicky. If only I hadn’t run away, he never would have touched her.
“Aidan, just consider something for me, and I’ll drop it for now,” Vicky said. Aidan nodded, and Vicky continued. “We found each other again after you returned from Iraq with memory loss. I had to pretend that I didn’t know you in order to help you. It broke my heart not being able to tell you, to touch you, to hold you. It was one of the most painful things I have ever had to endure.”
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Aidan said.
“Honey, I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel sorry for me. I’m telling you because of the similarities with your mother.”
“Vic, my mother wasn’t trying to help me like you were. She was trying to help herself.”
Vicky decided to let it go for now. She wasn’t going to get past Aidan’s wall of disappointment until Aidan was ready to listen. She smiled at Aidan, patted her hand, and then leaned back in her seat. She took a sip of her drink, and laid her head against the headrest. Her thoughts about Aidan’s mother, Brigid, continued to swirl through her mind. She knew that Aidan just needed some time and distance to come to terms with Brigid’s betrayal. Vicky just worried that it may take too much time. She’d seen people give up on reconciliation under far less difficult circumstances. The only way Vicky was able to face her rapist was through the help of Dr. Richard Kline, her good friend and the chief psychologist at the same hospital were Vicky worked as the CEO. From what little Vicky knew of Brigid, she had turned to the bottle to help her cope. Vicky could understand Brigid’s mistrust. Just as she got herself sober and embarked on a singing career in Ireland, Aidan showed up and completely disrupted the balance. To her, that had to be too good to be true. As if Harold had set it all up as a way to torment her some more.
Vicky was grateful that he didn’t know just how much anguish he was still causing. It was going to be hard enough to face him in court and put up with his boisterous, self-inflated ego, without him bragging on how he interrupted their honeymoon, as if he had done it on purpose. Vicky knew that Aidan was right, they needed to concentrate on the trial and Harold’s antics right now.
Vicky laid her head on Aidan’s shoulder, wrapping her arm under hers. “Honey.”
“Yeah, kid,” Aidan kissed the top of Vicky’s head, inhaling the sweet smell of her hair and sighing.
“I love you,” Vicky said in a melodious voice.
“I love you, too, baby,” Aidan replied with a smile.
As she sat there, enjoying the warmth of her wife’s body next to her, something caught Aidan’s eye, and her natural inquisitiveness pushed her other thoughts aside. A man sitting three seats up on the left side of the aisle, was bouncing his knee incessantly, as if he was very nervous. There was something about him that seemed vaguely familiar, but she cou
ldn’t put her finger on it. She watched as he unlocked his seatbelt and stood up. Trying not to be obvious when he walked by her seat, she observed his copper hair, pale skin, and a scar on his left hand. That scar?
“Excuse me, ma’am,” the flight attendant said as she walked up and looked at Aidan. “The Captain sends his regards, and asked that you pay him a visit in the cockpit.”
“Me?” Aidan questioned, forgetting the nervous man.
Vicky sat up and looked at the attendant. A pretty brunette with an average body and an outgoing smile on her lips.
“Yes, just you, please,” she replied.
“Well, tell him I said thanks, but I don’t go anywhere without my wife,” Aidan responded.
“Oh, um,” the attendant looked at Vicky, “of course, you are welcome to join her.”
Vicky raised an eyebrow and looked at Aidan, who shrugged. Grabbing her purse, she followed Aidan and the attendant up the aisle, through the first class section, and to the flight deck. The attendant tapped in the code and a moment later, opened the door, waving Aidan and Vicky inside. Even though the Boeing 767 was a wide-body airplane, seating over four hundred passengers, the cockpit was anything but large, especially with six people jammed inside it. It looked more like a spaceship with all its buttons, lights and monitors flashing. Aidan stooped to keep from hitting her head on the overhead panel.
“Pacific 137, contact Shanwick Oceanic on 127.8,” the radio crackled.
The first officer flipped a switch, then spoke into her headset, “Pacific 137 on 127.8, go ahead.”
“Shanwick Oceanic, Pacific 137, level one twenty thousand.”
“Pacific 137, Shanwick Oceanic, roger, altimeter 30.15.”
“Shanwick Oceanic, Pacific 137, roger that.”
The First Officer took off her headset, and she and the Captain turned in their seats to look at Aidan, who sized them up quickly. The Captain was the personification of what a captain should look like. His thick hair was a distinguished gray, his face strong and his body trim and fit. The First Officer, looking stoic in her crisp, white uniform, was a beautiful young woman with shoulder length brunette hair, and sparkling brown eyes. The Second Officer, sitting beside the door, was medium height, and medium age, with thick, curly auburn hair, jade colored eyes and a handsome, hairless face.
I Won't Remember You (Aidan & Vicky Book 6) Page 1
