A Wife I Couldn't Remember

Rico took the phone before I dropped it.

"I don't know why you were told that," he said. "But you had a family. You have one."

"Then tell me what happened. Start with the night I disappeared."

He pulled a chair close, leaving a little space between our knees.

"You were driving to meet Marcus. You'd worked with him on a relocation project called Haven. You told me you needed to straighten out a problem with the accounts."

"What kind of problem?"

"You didn't say. We argued because I wanted you to wait until morning. You said you were tired of being treated like a guest in your own life."

His mouth tightened.

"I remember that part very clearly."

I pressed my hands between my knees.

"Was Leo with me?"

"No. He was home with me. Your car was found beyond a turnoff near the river. Burned. There was blood on the road, and your wedding ring was recovered beside it."

"But no body."

"No body. For months, I searched. Then a man connected to Haven brought me photographs from what he said was an attempted rescue. A covered stretcher. Your bracelet. Records with your name."

"You believed him."

"Not immediately. I hired people. I threatened people. I went places I shouldn't have gone." His gaze stayed on mine. "Eventually I believed you weren't coming back. I never stopped being angry that I couldn't bring you home."

I tried to picture that night. A steering wheel. Headlights. My own hands with a ring on one of them.

There was nothing.

"Marcus told me my parents were dead. That I didn't have anyone except him."

"Your parents are gone," Rico said gently. "That part is true. Your father died when you were nineteen. Your mother two years before we married."

"No brothers? Sisters?"

"No."

A small, miserable relief passed through me. At least I hadn't forgotten more people who were waiting for me.

"How long were we married?"

"Five years when you disappeared."

Five years. There were marriages shorter than the hole in my head.

"Were we happy?"

He looked away for the first time.

"Sometimes very. Sometimes you wanted to throw my phone into the harbor."

"Why?"

"Because I answered it at dinner. Because I thought money could solve things that required me to show up. Because I kept deciding what you needed before I asked."

I watched his bent head.

"That's an honest answer."

"I've had eighteen months to improve it."

I stood too quickly. The room blurred. Rico caught my elbow, and I pulled back before I could stop myself.

He let go at once.

The hurt crossed his face before he hid it.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"You don't owe me that."

"It isn't you. I just don't know what to do with any of this."

He nodded. He looked like a man being asked to stand still while his house burned.

"There's something I'd like to show you," he said. "You can say no."

Upstairs, he stopped outside a closed room.

"Our bedroom. I haven't changed it much."

The curtains were blue. A paperback lay facedown beside one lamp. On the dresser sat a little ceramic dish full of earrings, coins, and a hair elastic gone brittle with time.

I had expected a shrine. Flowers. A giant wedding portrait.

What undid me was a pair of slippers beneath the chair.

One had a split seam. Someone had mended it with blue thread that didn't match.

I knelt and picked it up.

"You wouldn't let me replace them," Rico said.

"Why?"

"You said they'd finally learned the shape of your feet."

My eyes filled.

I didn't remember saying it. I would have said it yesterday.

He opened a drawer. Inside lay a small knitted hat, a hospital bracelet, and a folded card with a child's handprint on the front.

Rico handed me the card.

The writing inside was his.

He helped with the paint. I helped with the spelling. We both love you.

I sat on the edge of the bed and cried.

It wasn't graceful. I bent over the card, making ugly little sounds, and Rico stayed near the dresser until I reached for him.

He came immediately.

I caught his sleeve. His hand settled between my shoulders, warm and steady.

"I missed him," I said. "I didn't know who I was missing, but there was something wrong all the time. I couldn't explain it."

His breath shook above my hair.

"I know."

We sat like that until my headache eased.

Then a small voice spoke from the doorway.

"Mom?"

Leo stood with a toy truck clutched against his chest. Dante was behind him, looking apologetic.

I wiped my face.

"Hi, sweetheart."

Leo studied the tears. His mouth pulled down.

"Did I do bad?"

I left the bed so fast that Rico barely had time to move.

"No. Come here."

Leo approached cautiously. I knelt in front of him.

"You didn't do anything wrong. I'm crying because I learned something important, and I have a lot of feelings about it."

He considered that.

"About milk?"

A laugh broke through my tears.

"Bigger than milk."

He held out his truck. I took it as though it were something precious, because it was.

I couldn't tell him I remembered his first steps. I couldn't tell him I remembered his birthday or how he liked his sandwiches cut.

But I could stop letting him wonder whether I wanted him.

"I'm your mom," I said. "I didn't know for a while. I know now."

His eyes searched my face.

"You forgot?"

"I was hurt, and some of my memories are missing. It wasn't because of anything you did."

He touched the scar below my ear.

"Still hurt?"

"Sometimes."

He pressed his mouth to my cheek, a quick, clumsy kiss.

"Better."

Behind him, Rico turned toward the window.

I gathered Leo into my arms and held him while his truck dug into my ribs.

That evening, I called Rosa and asked her to bring the things I needed from my apartment. I told Marco I would need a few days off, and I made an appointment with a doctor who had no connection to either Marcus or Rico.

Then I stood in the hall outside the guest room.

"I'll stay here for now," I told Rico. "For Leo. For answers. Because I want to."

His eyes closed briefly.

"The guest room is yours as long as you need it."

"I'm not ready to sleep in that other room."

"I know."

He stepped aside to let me pass.

On my pillow lay a dinosaur with one missing eye.

I carried it to Leo's room. He was pretending to sleep, badly.

"I'll bring him back in the morning," I whispered.

His eyes stayed closed. A smile appeared beneath them.

I kept that promise too.