“How long do you think the amnesia will last?” Liam asked, even though he knew the answer.
“There is no way of knowing,” Stephen said slowly. “Although chances are that she will remember. Long-term retrograde amnesia is rare.” His voice softened. “But it does happen.”
“How can we help her?” Liam asked quietly.
“Right now she’s afraid and confused. We want to tread very, very carefully. The mind is a fragile thing, much more delicate than the brain. We don’t want to overwhelm her with frightening information.” At last he looked at Liam. “I think it’s best if we let it come back naturally.”
Liam sighed tiredly. “You’re saying that the kids and I should stay away.”
“I’m sorry, Liam. I can only imagine how hard this is for you. But I think she needs some time to let her mind heal. Can you imagine realizing that you’d lost fifteen years of your life?”
“Yes,” Liam said, “I can imagine it.” He leaned forward and hung his head, staring down at the Oriental carpet so long, the colors smeared into one big bruise.
What in God’s name was he going to tell his children?
Julian went to a pay phone and called Val. “She woke up today,” he said when Val answered.
“No shit. How is she?”
“She’s got amnesia. She doesn’t remember anything of the last fifteen years. She thinks we’re still married.”
“Are you saying—”
“She’s still in love with me, Val. With none of the bad memories of our breakup.”
Val made a low, whistling sound. “Jesus Christ, what did you do—script this? It’s a goddamn fairy tale and you’re the prince. The press’ll love this.”
Julian sagged against the wall. “You don’t get it. How am I going to tell her that I never came back for her. Val? Val?”
His answer was a dial tone.
With a curse, Julian hung up the phone. For the first time since he’d gotten here, he was afraid.
She was alive. That was the miracle Liam needed to focus on. Over the past weeks, he had asked God to heal her, to help her open her eyes. All the while, he’d prepared himself for the physical impairments that could come with an extended coma. Paralysis, brain damage, even death—these he’d readied himself to handle. He’d never asked God to return her memories.
Now, as he drove home, he reminded himself that retrograde amnesia was a common short-term side effect of severe brain injury.
Short term. Those words were the ledge he tried to hold on to, but they kept crumbling beneath the weight of his fear.
What if she never remembered him or the kids?
He concentrated on breathing; it didn’t seem like much, but if he didn’t think about it, he stumbled into a place where panic was inches from his face, where he had to draw in great, sucking breaths just to survive.
Who are you?
Would he ever forget those words? Forget the pain that knifed through him in that single, horrifying moment when she’d said Julian’s name … and then asked Liam who he was.
He knew that her condition was purely medical in nature, a lapse in the function of her traumatized brain. But he was a man as well as a doctor, and the man in him felt like any man would feel. As if in twelve years of life together, of moments big and small, of a love that was enacted in errands and dinners and bedtime conversations, Liam had left no mark on her at all.
As if his love were like the waves that shifted and shaped, but never really changed the shore.
He was being foolish. She loved her children with every strand of her soul, and she had forgotten them, too—
No, that wasn’t right. She’d only forgotten Bret; Liam’s son. She remembered Jacey. And Julian.
He couldn’t shake a terrible, rising panic that in the end, his love would count for nothing. And what would he tell his children? They’d been through so much pain already, so much fear. Poor Bret had courageously visited her day after day, singing her favorite songs to her, waiting for a smile. It would crush him to discover that his mom didn’t remember him. One blank look and Bret would crumble.
Jacey would try to handle this like an adult, but inside, where it mattered, she would break like a little girl. She would understand that everything she and Mike had shared was gone. Every talk, every memory that entwined their lives would be Jacey’s alone now.
Liam couldn’t even think about his own fear right now; it was too overwhelming. “Please, God,” he whispered, “we can’t take this, too. It’s too much …”
The windshield wipers thumped in front of him, punctuating the silence in the car. A light snow began to fall, patterning the glass, piling up on the edges of the wiper’s sweep.
He flipped on the radio. “Memories” by Barbra Streisand blared from the speakers.
He snapped it off. Christ, what was next—“As Time Goes By”?
The snow was coming faster now. He didn’t see his own driveway until he was practically on top of it.
He put the car in four-wheel drive and lowered his speed, maneuvering carefully over the bumpy gravel road and into his own garage.
At the mudroom door, he paused, taking a moment to collect himself, then he pushed into the house. “Hello,” he called out. “I’m home.”
He heard the scurrying sound of slippered feet on the hardwood floor. Rosa appeared, wearing one of Mike’s old saddle club aprons over a black house-dress. “Buenos noches,” she said, wiping a hand across her brow, leaving a snowy trail of flour across her skin. “I am making the … biscuits for dinner. You would like a cup of coffee, sí? Or a glass of wine?”