Bound by Secrets

by Angela M Hudson

  “Come on.” Harry dragged me by the hand to sit back down, while I fought for an excuse to leave. But he put me in my chair then sat in my lap, linking my hands around his waist like a seatbelt. Before I knew it, David’s lips were at the microphone and his deep, husky voice came through announcing his name. My heart melted with only the words David Knight and then it liquefied and bled right out of my soul when he smiled shyly and averted his gaze from the crowd to play.

  My eyes took in every angle of him, my soul tight with the sound of his voice. I barely even noticed Mike on the keyboard beside him, but the piano intro to the song was unmistakable. Wicked Game. A Chris Isaak song, but David and Mike seemed to perform it a little slower and with less rock and more soul.

  That same deep, husky voice that announced his name moved through the mic and out of the speakers with the words of the song, surrounding him or maybe covering me with something I couldn’t escape. I was forced to see him through new eyes.

  As he looked past the crowd in the bridge of the song, he smiled at Harry, but though I tried to catch his attention and tell him how amazing he was, he wouldn’t look at me. He looked everywhere but me.

  Then he closed his eyes and sung the chorus, the muscles in his upper arm more defined where they pressed against the top of his guitar, the emotion he connected to in that song pouring out of him for all to see. He was admitting right there, openly, how broken he was. Admitting that he’d resisted falling in love with me. But why? What was so awful about me that he couldn’t love me?

  “This is the Daughtry cover,” Harry said, looking up at me. “It’s great, isn’t it?”

  “The what?”

  “Chris Daughtry did a cover of this song,” he said. “Dad’s playing that version.”

  I nodded. “I like it. A lot.”

  “He knew you would,” he said, and turned back to watch his dad finish the song. I wanted to ask what he meant by “he knew you would”, but he was eight. It wasn’t right to bring him into this thing between David and me.

  David finished the song to a soulful note, carrying it with his voice so effortlessly that I was suddenly jealous of him, but that wasn’t what bothered me the most. What bothered me was that I knew he’d get off that stage, lay his guitar down and sit among his family, celebrated as a musical genius, but he wouldn’t sit with me. He wouldn’t stop beside me to kiss my cheek and ruffle Harry’s hair. He wouldn’t look at me to see what I thought. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to love me, and it broke my heart. Made me question everything I was. Made me want to run to the nearest mirror and try to see what was so terrible.

  I had to accept it, I realized. As much as it hurt, he was and would forever be Ara’s man. Nothing would make his heart stray. Not even another version of her.

  * * *

  Harry decided he was done drawing pictures for the day, so he went off to play with his friends outside, and I sat at the kitchen table, practicing my own artistic skills. I’d just made the finishing touches on a Halloween witch, themed for Saturday night’s party, when David snuck up on me.

  “Since when could you draw?” he said lightly.

  “Um…” I looked at the page, swiping off a rubbery roll of eraser. “Cal taught me a few months ago.”

  “I didn’t know you had it in you.” He sat down, motioning for the book. “May I?”

  I reluctantly handed it over. His Ara couldn’t draw. She was a brilliant pianist, cook, loved to read and even write, but this version didn’t. I mean, aside from piano. I did love piano, but I still hadn’t told David that.

  He flipped through the pages one by one slowly, looking at each drawing like I had when I first saw Harry’s kindergarten scrapbooks—the same ones I actually made when he first started school the year I died. He stopped at the middle of the book—the point where my skills improved marginally—and traced a finger over the charcoal face of his son. “You really drew this?”

  “Yeah.”

  After considering it for another moment, he slid the book back to me, his eyes meeting mine a few seconds later. “You’re very talented,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure what to say. He hadn’t looked at me like that since we first met, and I felt a little put-off, in a good way. “Do you wanna see some more?”

  His eyes travelled to the book again. He clearly didn’t want to, but said okay anyway.

  “You don’t have to.” I shut the book. I’d seen an open door—a way to relate to him—but he closed it when he saw it himself. He always did that, as if, by relating to me, he was further burying his wife.

  “No. I want to,” he insisted, placing his hand over mine. “I just… I’m sorry, I never knew you had that in you.”

  He never knew she had that in her.

  “Or… that she did,” he added, catching me off-guard. “You’re both so different from each other.”

  We weren’t that different. “I’ve been trying to tell you that.”

  “I…” He moved my hand off the sketch book and opened it. “I can see that now.”

  I sat holding my breath, while he looked through a book so personal. On the margins of almost every page, there was some poem or little quote about being yourself or about a broken heart. I wasn’t sure he even noticed them, but it made me feel very exposed. When he turned the page, actually, a fraction of a second before he turned the page, I remembered what I’d drawn there—twenty pages in, three months in to my new skill.

  “Wow.” His eyes rounded, and mine shut tight to hide my shame. “Ara.”

  I opened my eyes when he touched my arm, turning the book sideways to show me the picture.

  “You hate me that much?” he said.

  His exact likeness grinned back at me from the page, the devil horns and spiny tail reaching into the deepest part of my regretful heart and jabbing it. “It was right after a fight. I didn’t mean it.”

  But, rising above all expectation, David just laughed, shaking his head as he flipped over a page. I watched him, expecting him to yell at me, and when he didn’t, I couldn’t handle the suspense anymore—just waiting for it to burst out of him. “Please don’t be mad at me.”

  He looked up from the book with a smile in his eyes, but it wasn’t the usual arrogant one that accompanied harsh words in an argument. And it softened away to nothing as he looked at my face. “I’m not mad, Ara.”

  “You aren’t?”

  “No.” He cast his attention back to the book. “I think I drew one of you like that too.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, but not as detailed,” he said, “and it had two heads.”

  I laughed.

  “And it was a stick figure,” he added, closing the book as he reached the end. He slid it back to me and lifted my hand to place it on top. “These are amazing.”

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling quite proud of myself.

  When he hopped up to leave the room, he didn’t just walk away without a word, like he usually did. He actually stopped beside me and bent slightly, holding onto the back of my head with a soft touch as he pressed a kiss to my hair. Then he walked away. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I took it as a kind of silent apology, and I wasn’t sure why.

  40

  David

  She’d stayed over every weekend since we told her who she was, and joined us for dinner here every weeknight, tucking Harry into bed before going home to finish homework or working her shift at the café. She took it all in her stride, as I knew she would, but I gave too much credit to the old Ara. That girl could have taken on the world, moved mountains, but she had a lifetime to become that way. When she was a teenager, she was moody and spoilt and unmotivated. Not at all like this Ara. To be fair, this Ara didn’t have any of the training or worldly experience, and yet she outdid her old self in every department.

  I was proud of her, now that I’d stepped back long enough to see her, and I realized, laying here in the dark by myself, that I needed to tell her that. It wouldn’t be enough to jus
t come out with it, though. It would be through my actions that I let her know how I felt—how sorry I was that I pushed her away for the simple crime of being herself. Let her know that I could see her now, and that I was starting to realize just how amazing she was after only two days.

  There were so many angles to her, so many things that she’d become now without the stress of such a tragic life. So much joy in her innocent heart and so much trust—trust that I had broken, repeatedly, with my cruelty. No one had ever been cruel to her in her short life, and I hated the fact that I taught her what it was.

  My mission now wasn’t so much about getting my Ara back. It was about making this girl realize that I did still care for her. Even though she couldn’t remember the past, she was still a sweet girl, still talented and beautiful and always smiling. Still the mother of my children. The kids had both accepted her for who she was now, as did Vicki and Mike, even Em, but I seemed to be the last one to get on that train.

  I put a shirt on and crept downstairs to the den, intent on waking her to hold a late-night conversation about nothing, like we used to, but the covers on the couch were folded neatly and the pillow placed on top, with no sign of her anywhere.

  I checked the kitchen and the bathroom, quietly whispering her name, but she was gone. It was only when I realized she wasn’t here anywhere that I saw the note on the hall-stand by the front door.

  Good morning, Harry, she wrote. I remembered I had some homework to finish so I went home after you fell asleep. I’ll be back after school tomorrow. Love, Mommy.

  I scrunched the note up in a tight fist. She didn’t have homework. I knew for a fact that she’d finished all of her assignments early, because I heard her telling Cal on the phone. So where had she gone?

  Outside, the hot spring air had left a dewy cloud of moisture over the grass, and fresh footprints marked her direction. I grabbed Mike’s brown garden boots from the doorstep on my way out and walked with quiet footfalls down the street. I couldn’t track her like I once could with my immortal senses, but I was pretty sure she did actually go home. Not to Cal’s. If she’d walked there, her footprints would have been headed in the other direction.

  When I made it to her house, I expected it to be dark with everyone asleep, but the lights were on all through the house and as I reached the front door, I could hear voices. I knocked lightly, the door opening before the second rap.

  “What are you doing here?” Falcon said harshly.

  “Why did she leave?”

  Ara appeared in the doorway then, her eyes red from crying. She took one look at me in my long-sleeve shirt, plaid bed shorts and garden boots, and laughed, stepping back to let me in.

  “What happened?” I asked her, cupping both of her arms in firm but loving hands. “Why are you crying?”

  She looked at Falcon, and he knew the look as well as I did.

  “Are you sure you want me to go?” he asked. “I can stay and—”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  He nodded, backing away, and then he vanished, the front door closing behind him. I looked at Ara. “What happened?”

  “Mike offered me the spare room. He said he’d clear out all the junk and…”

  “And?”

  “And I wondered why he never had before.”

  My brows inched closer in confusion. Good question. And why hadn’t I offered?

  “He said that, since it looked like I was never getting back with you, I might as well move in there and make it my room,” she said, and started crying. “And I realized that I’d been kept on the couch like a temporary guest until I could learn to love you—”

  “Aw, Ara.” I went to hold her, but she pushed me away.

  “He figured I’d sleep in your room when I finally ‘came around’, and I just felt so unwelcome—”

  “Ara, please.” I moved in to hold her again, but she shook her head, walking away from me.

  “These people used to love me,” she said. “They were once my best friends, and now they can’t love me unless I love you—”

  “Please don’t say that,” I said, because it hurt to hear it out loud, knowing it was true. We had all just expected that she would fall for me again when she knew about our past. None of us had been prepared for an Ara that didn’t love me. None of us wanted that Ara. She was right. We had shut her out. We had been unkind to her. We had formed a posse of sorts and told her she wasn’t in the club unless she changed her heart. And I was so sorry for that now. So sorry it had gotten to the point where she noticed—where she felt unloved. I still loved her. The old version and this one. In fact, this one was more humble and forgiving, sweeter in a lot of ways and, while she had less compassion, it was not to the detriment of others but more to the salvation of herself. I wanted to tell her that, but it really was too late. She was hurt. Deeply. And there was no apologizing for it now.

  I sat down on the lounge under the window and kept my eyes on her. She looked up from her feet after a while, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, and she smiled.

  I smiled back, patting the seat next to me. As deeply as she was hurt, it was clear she wanted resolution. She didn’t want to feel like this any more than I wanted to let her.

  As she sat down, I tried to think of something to say, but all that came out was, “Hi.”

  Ara laughed through her nose, wiping it on her hand after. “Hi.”

  “I’m David.” I put my hand out to shake hers.

  She rubbed the tears and snot off on her jeans and then put hers in mine, not sure what I was doing. “Ara.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  As I released her, her face pulled in amused confusion. “What are you doing, David?”

  “Oh, I’m just sitting, you know—thought I’d go for a nice midnight walk in ridiculous clothing—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said, but laughed anyway.

  “I know.” I put one arm around her, making her seize up like a piece of stone, my other hand on hers, cupping it tightly. “I don’t want a life of regrets, Ara. I lost someone very dear to me, and I… in fact, all of us have been taking that out on you. But even though you are her in some ways, in many more you’re…” I didn’t want to say ‘not’ because that wasn’t it. She was Ara, but she was also… “You’re also you.”

  She smiled, her shoulders going back slightly as she opened up to me.

  “And I’m not the man Ara married either. This human version of me…” I thought about all the crying and the misery, and the abuse. “She wouldn’t like me. And she wouldn’t like the way I’ve been treating you.”

  Ara laughed then, looking so much like my Ara that it hurt.

  “I don’t want to sit here apologizing for the past all night, because, frankly, I’m ashamed of it and I just want to move on—let it all blow in the wind.”

  She nodded, looking down.

  “But I am sorry,” I added. “And I want to start fresh—as me and you. Not Ara and David.”

  Her eyes moved up to meet mine, crushing my heart with memories passed. I shut them all away and saw her for her, seeing me for me through the reflection of her eyes. I looked different too, and the truth was, I had changed. So had she. If we couldn’t love each other changed then we didn’t deserve to find what we had before.

  “I can’t promise things will be smooth,” I said, pulling her hand until she leaned into me, her head on my shoulder, “but I can promise you that I’ll be nice, and I’ll stop pretending you’re my wife and start getting to know you.”

  “I feel like I’ve heard this before.” She sat up. “It’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

  “It won’t.” I softly touched her cheek, running my thumb down to the corner of her pretty lip before pulling my hand away. “Because what I saw in front of me before was the woman I’ve known for over twenty years. And what I see now, with eyes as clear as the day, is a girl that’s barely a year old, with a heart just as big and a soul that needs time and space to grow and bec
ome something else. You’re in a state of metamorphosis, Ara,” I said, and as the words came out, I thought back to a moment in our past—by the lake, when I likened her to the butterfly spending its life in the shadows until it broke free of its cocoon and became what it was always supposed to be. And it was such a profound realization that I couldn’t speak.

  “What?” she said.

  “You’re just becoming the person you were always meant to be—before life got in the way.”

  Our eyes locked to each other’s, and suddenly, in the place where I’d seen pain and sadness, I could finally see light, hope. Without this curse, I wouldn’t love her like I did before. She wasn’t the same girl. But I knew now that I could fall so easily for this one, and my Ara wouldn’t feel betrayed by that, as I guess I’d thought all along. I’d been so blinded by the need to have her by my side again that I missed the fact that she was standing right here all long. But with wings. Beautiful bright blue wings that would carry her away if I didn’t hold onto her tightly and tell her she was everything I could ever have wanted and more.

  But damage had been done. She wouldn’t accept my love now as easily as she would earlier this year. She would, however, accept my friendship—my unending and unconditional friendship.

  I smiled, knowing exactly how to get that point across.

  She looked down at my hand as I offered my pinkie. “What’s that?”

  “A finger,” I noted, wiggling it.

  “And why are you aiming it at me?”

  I took her hand and picked out her skinny little pinkie from the tight fist, wrapping mine over it. “This is a pinkie promise, and it’s not like any other promise.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you break it, the magic of the universe makes your pinkie fall off.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” I laughed, loving her sweet naivety. “So I promise you, Ara-Rose, that I will be your friend from now on, no matter who you are, who you want to be, or who you fall in love with.”