Amnesiac Ex, Unforgettable Vows

by Robyn Grady

  “I remembered a miscarriage,” Laura murmured, her gaze turning inward. “I remember pain. And blood. Lying in the hospital and…” She cocked her head as though she were trying to see the memory from a different angle. Then her face screwed up as if someone had pinched her. “I remember…crying. But that can’t be. I’ve never been pregnant. I’ve never lost a child. If that ever happened…”

  Stripped of defenses, she found his gaze and unshed tears filled her eyes.

  Bishop leaned his hip against the rail. Now the process had begun, the memories would flow like water from a running tap. First the miscarriage, then the growing distance between them, the fall, the arguments, the total disintegration of trust. Of anything remotely resembling faith. He couldn’t help but believe that last night, when they’d made love without contraception, had brought this about. What would she have to say when the final pieces settled into place? More importantly…

  Last night had they created a baby?

  “We’ll go sit down.” His hands on her waist, he encouraged her away.

  “It doesn’t make sense, does it?” Wincing again, she held her head. “It’s all mixed-up.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. He’d never felt more helpless in his life. “Come on, Laura. Come inside.”

  Finally, she agreed and carefully they made their way back to the house. He took her into his office and helped her as she lowered into the Chesterfield couch, confusion still stamped on her face.

  Anxious, she rubbed her palms down the lap of her negligee and sent him a lame smile. “I suppose I do need to see that doctor later in the week.”

  He found a blanket. After wrapping it around her shoulders, he folded down close beside her. “You’ll be okay.”

  She smiled, but then searched his eyes. “There’s something that’s been bugging me more than anything.” Her lashes were wet and a pulse beat erratically at the side of her throat. “Last week, you said something,” she started. “You said that you wished you’d told me more often how much I meant to you. I said it didn’t quite make sense.” She inhaled, then blew the breath out in a shaky stream. “Bishop, now I want to know. Tell me. Please.”

  His head began to tingle. Nausea burned up the back of his throat.

  You knew this would happen. You thought you’d be prepared.

  But he wasn’t. He was seriously low on preparedness. All the things he’d rehearsed in his head didn’t seem even half-adequate now.

  She stiffened as her hands wound into that red silk. “Whatever it is, don’t hold back. I trust you. I want to know. I want to know everything.”

  He took one of her hands in his and held it tight. His voice was deep, but remarkably calm.

  “I wasn’t sure what to do. But when the doctor said I could take you home…that you’d remember in time, I was cornered.”

  “Cornered in what way?”

  “When we got home, things got more mixed-up for you. Certain things were making less and less sense, right?”

  She examined their entwined hands and nodded. “I didn’t want to worry you. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I’d find clothes, shoes, dishes I couldn’t remember buying. I thought the plants around the house had grown or perhaps I’d shrunk. Even looking at our wedding photo…” Her face blanched. “Something didn’t sit right.”

  He siphoned in a breath. Where to begin? He wanted to save her as much pain as possible without coming across as the biggest jerk of all time. He’d slept with this woman when she’d been far worse than vulnerable. Could she even begin to understand?

  She sat straighter. “I don’t have some degenerative disease, do I? Is that why I fell? From losing my balance? My mind?”

  “I don’t know how you slipped on that footbridge. Either time.”

  She shook her head, trying to understand. “Either time?”

  There was no easy way, so he’d simply say it. “When you fell last week and hit your head, you lost a portion of your memory. More than just the time directly before and after the accident.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How much more?”

  “This last week, you’ve been living in the past. Two years in the past.”

  Her hand slid away from his. Her smile looked slightly hysterical. “Okay. Sorry, but that doesn’t make sense. Am I hearing you right? You’re saying we’ve been married over two years?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. This time two years ago…” He let out a long breath. “You fell pregnant.”

  Laura felt as if a bowling ball had smacked her in the stomach, leaving her winded and seeing stars.

  What Bishop had suggested was ludicrous. Absurd. So crazy she wanted to laugh in his face. She could swallow that she’d lost part of her memory. If she’d been pregnant, however, she sure as hell would’ve known.

  Inside her head a squeaky cog turned and, taken aback, she blinked several times.

  Hadn’t he implied the same thing a few days ago? She’d laughed at him then. Had been more than a touch offended, in fact. And yet now…the way he was looking at her, as if nothing more serious had ever been said, some part of her was inclined to believe him, except for one rather obvious point.

  “If we were pregnant, Bishop, where’s the child? And if you say we gave her away, that I won’t believe.” His face remained grave and Laura’s heart contracted then sank. “She didn’t…die?”

  His nostrils flared and his gaze dropped away.

  An unbelievable anger jetted up inside of her, heating her face and making her want to slap his. Did he truly expect her to believe that she’d carried a baby for nine months, given birth and didn’t remember? She couldn’t bear to even think such an impossibility was true.

  Her throat convulsed and the anger turned dangerously close to rage. As well as an unexpected urge to cry.

  “You’re lying.”

  He held her arms and his voice deepened. “Listen to me. You had a miscarriage in your second trimester. You were devastated. I couldn’t get through to you. Nobody could.”

  That flash came again—pain, mess, anguish, so powerful and real, it threatened to tear her apart. She searched the eyes of the man she loved…had loved?…and like a ball circling then rolling into a shallow hole, the memory fell into place. She and Bishop were no longer married. They were divorced, and had been for an entire year! Much more than that—

  All the breath left her lungs. A feeling crept over her, heavy and black, like a tainted, rough knit shroud. She remembered Grace being there to console her. The doctor explaining there was no reason not to try again. And Bishop…

  She saw Bishop sitting in his home office, staring at his computer screen, that Rubik’s Cube rolling around in one hand, no emotion on his face.

  “I’d been afraid of what might happen if we conceived,” he was saying. “With my history, I worried about losing the child after it was born. I never considered a miscarriage. It left me numb, Laura. I tried to tell myself it could be worse even though I knew that sounded heartless. And I wasn’t there for you. I tried to be, but I didn’t know what you needed, what to say, and whenever I tried to get close—”

  “I pushed you away.” She looked at him, her eyes stinging. “I was so angry with you. Angry because you were right. Us falling pregnant was a bad idea. I thought I was strong but afterward…” Fresh hot tears sprang to her eyes. “I wasn’t. But you were.” Her slim nostrils flared. “And, God, how I hated you for it.”

  More memories fell, raining down now, pummeling her brain, weighing on her heart. She pushed to her feet. “We had arguments.” Looking inward, she blindly crossed the room. “We spent more and more time apart.”

  “You didn’t want to try to fall pregnant again, and I didn’t want to push.”

  Then another memory landed and she held her stomach. “I fell.” She spun on her heel and hunted down his gaze.

  He was nodding. “Off that footbridge. That was the first time, eighteen months ago.”

  The room began to swirl and close
in.

  Yes. She remembered. Remembered it all. She’d been walking across the bridge very early. The planks were wet with dew and there was gravel in a patch to one side. She’d slipped—she remembered the sound—and fell straight under the rail and onto the river stones below. But now hedges grew where the stones had once been. Because Bishop had planted them after her fall, she recalled. Just in case…in case she “fell” again.

  She studied Bishop, every mesmerizing, anguished inch. A moment ago she’d been in love with this man. Now, not only did she recall the disappointment, she felt it. The sensation made her physically ill. Her heart had been shredded and the scars were as fresh as if the wounds had been inflicted only yesterday.

  A tear slipped from the outside corner of her eye.

  “How could you, Bishop? I was hurting so badly, I needed you to prop me up, support me, and when I fell…”

  “I didn’t know what to think. You’d been so—”

  “Unstable?” Fisting her hands, she cursed at the ceiling. “I’d lost a baby. But no matter how down I felt, I would never try to hurt myself. I slipped—it was an accident—and at the hospital…” Her voice dropped to a hoarse, pained whisper. “You wouldn’t even look at me.”

  He found his feet. “I was wrong.”

  Holding her stomach, she asked in a soft injured voice, “Why didn’t you say that back then?”

  “I tried.”

  She sent him a withering look. “Don’t lie to me, Bishop. Don’t you dare lie to me now.”

  He took two steps forward. “I’m trying to talk to you, for God’s sake.”

  “Don’t you think it’s too late for that?”

  Throwing up his hands, exasperated, he spun to face the wall. “This is why I left—”

  “Why I asked you to leave.”

  “—because no matter how long we hammer it out, we’ll never get past this.”

  A realization struck, so strong, so shocking, Laura’s knees turned to water and every scrap of strength disappeared out her toes. She thought this situation was bad, but it could get a hundred times worse.

  She balanced her sagging weight against the edge of his desk.

  “Oh, God, Bishop. Oh, God. Last night.”

  His back to her, he scrubbed a hand over his face. “I know, I know.”

  She held her stomach again, lightly this time.

  “What if I’m pregnant?”

  Bishop turned back as Laura’s expression changed from one of shock to outright alarm. He stood tall, ready to take whatever came. Shouts, tears, accusations that he probably deserved.

  Her beautiful green eyes rimmed with red, she dragged herself away from the desk and toward him. “You knew…this entire week, you knew. And you had sex with me—”

  “Made love.”

  “—knowing how I really felt? You took advantage of me.”

  “Did I? I’ve wondered whether some part of you was purposely holding back. You wanted to be with me, didn’t you?”

  Her face screwed up as if she’d tasted something sour. “What kind of question is that?”

  Damn it. “It’s a question a husband asks his wife.”

  “Divorce, Bishop. Remember that word? We’re not married anymore.”

  “We have been this past week.” Growling, she pivoted away. But he grabbed her arm and swung her back. “Tell me you weren’t in love with me last night, the night before and the night before that.”

  As if he’d slapped her, her head drew back. “That’s not fair.”

  “I don’t care about being fair. I care about you. Laura, I care about us.”

  Glaring at him, she sucked down a shuddering breath as a tear sped down her cheek. More calmly she said, “You have a strange way of showing it.”

  He released her arm, then set his hands on his hips. “You’re taking this badly enough when you’re ready to hear it. What would’ve happened if I’d sat you down that first night and laid out the facts, cold and hard? Should I have done that? Would that have made me less of a jerk?”

  She lifted her chin. “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  The spark of malice in her eyes faded the barest amount. She moved to the windows, set her hand on the jamb and stared out for a long considering moment.

  “No.” She admitted, “I suppose you could’ve done that…been brutally honest. Or you could’ve just walked out of the hospital when you found out I’d lost my memory.”

  “Or, when your sister phoned, I could have flat-out refused to come at all.”

  She curled some hair behind her ear. “And you did make that appointment with Dr. Chatwin. Took that time off work. That was amazing, even before I knew you loathed the sight of me.”

  What did he have to do to prove it to her? “I never hated you.”

  “Is couldn’t stand the sight of me better?”

  He growled. “Laura, I wanted to work it out.”

  “I’m sorry, but you didn’t do a very good job.”

  He locked his shoulders and coughed out a mirthless laugh. “Know what? If you want to blame me, go ahead. I’m used to it.”

  “It’s way too late for that.”

  “No kidding.”

  She searched his eyes with a laser beam and he wondered what she’d come up with next.

  “Why did you do it?” she finally asked. “Why did you have sex with me…make love to me,” she conceded, “without protection, when we’d lived apart for over a year? When it was all finally finished?”

  “This last week proved we weren’t finished. Over these past days, I came to hope, to believe, that you and I might be able to work things out this time.”

  Laura pressed her lips together then, as if she were afraid he’d see tears fall, abruptly peered back out the window. When she only continued to stand there, one hand on the jamb the other bunched by her side, he moved closer.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said. For God’s sake, don’t close up again.

  Her throat bobbed on a deep swallow. “I’m afraid to.”

  “Do it anyway.”

  She blinked her tear-rimmed eyes before she spoke. “There’s some totally crazy, masochistic side of me that wants to be…”

  He said it for her.

  “Pregnant?”

  Looking bereft, she nodded at the view.

  He cut the remaining distance between them and threaded his hands around her waist. He waited and gradually she let her gaze edge up. When her eyes met his, he smiled, warm and reassuring.

  “We’ll work it out.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “You said that once before.”

  He brought her mercilessly close. “Did you know that when you were in that hospital room, your sister said this might be another chance for us?”

  “Grace said that?”

  “I know. Hard to believe. I thought she was talking out her ear.” His grin faded. “But then I took you home and little by little, day by day, my perception changed.”

  Her head tipped to one side and he felt her slide a notch nearer to surrender. But then her hands found his at her back and tried to pry them away. “You’re doing this on purpose.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Trying to confuse me.”

  “I’m trying to unconfuse.” She stilled and, despite every-thing, gave in to a smile. He grinned, too. “And, yes, that’s not a word.”

  With his fingers threaded through hers, he shepherded her back toward the couch. After an eternity, she sat, then he folded down, too, and waited for her to speak…to say what she’d wanted to say for two long years.

  Her gaze wandered around the room and he knew she was taking herself back. Remembering.

  “You agreed we could try to fall pregnant,” she began in a faraway voice. “And it happened straightaway. I was so excited. You seemed happy, too, but you were busy at work, expanding something or other, and you spent more and more time away, staying in the city apartment.” Her fingers dug into the couch. “But when you were h
ome, I saw the look growing in your eyes. You like to be in charge of the next move. Every move. When we conceived, what you wanted to control most was taken out of your hands.” She blew out a stream of air to compose herself before going on.

  “I said we should buy some furniture and linen for a nursery. One day in Sydney I saw those symbols I liked in a jewelry store window. I wanted to buy them—the heart, cross and anchor—but you said next time. Then, after the miscarriage—” her eyes filled again “—I felt as if some part of you was relieved. That you were proven right in some way and the risk was gone. You had the reins back and you weren’t about to let them go again. Then I had that accident,” she went on. “Fell off the footbridge. You thought I’d been so upset that I’d tried to hurt myself.” Her head lowered. “We didn’t make love again after that.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and her shoulders winged in, as if something sharp had pierced her chest. Bishop felt the ache in her throat as deeply as he felt his own. He remembered her wanting to buy those little gold symbols. She’d been so animated and committed. Although it wouldn’t have made a difference to how things had worked out in the end, he’d been wrong not to get those trinkets. Truth was that he didn’t have faith that her falling pregnant would turn out well. He would have tried to deny his pessimism back then, but he’d proved as much by not going into the jewelry store that day.

  “When I lost my memory,” she said, “you were happy for me to forget about that time in my life, weren’t you?”

  “It only made you sad.”

  “But it was a part of me. I want to remember, no matter how much it hurts.”

  “So you held on to the grief and the hopelessness to the bitter end,” he concluded, unable to keep the frustration from his voice, “even if it meant killing what we had.”

  “I needed your support, Bishop,” she said, almost pleading now. “Not your cold shoulder. You left…” She shifted in her seat, glanced dejectedly around the room and grudgingly conceded, “But you left because I told you to go.” She blew out a long, resigned breath. “Let’s face it. I drove you away.”

  His mouth swung to one side. He’d been disappointed with himself when he’d finally accepted defeat and had walked out. He’d failed and that had been a blow not only to his ego, but to his sense of self; Samuel Bishop always came out on top. Still, he’d maintained that a man would need to be made of high tensile steel to have withstood the ice storm he’d endured all those cold, bitter months after the miscarriage. Now Laura was telling him she’d felt the same way. Isolated. Lonely. Wanting to reach out. Or be reached.