‘SHE’S DOING WELL.’
Alice looked up at the nurse without hearing what she’d said.
‘Your mother. She’s looking well.’
Alice turned back to Jane Smart, looking at her through fresh eyes. It was true. She looked much better than she had in a long time. The facility was state-of-the-art, but it offered incredible extras. Every day, Jane was wheeled into a beautiful garden, custom-designed for comatose patients. ‘The latest research suggests many of our patients are still capable of absorbing external stimuli—sunshine, warmth, a light breeze, the sound of birds chirping,’ the director of the hospital had explained. ‘Besides, it can’t do any harm.’
Alice had smiled and nodded, acted as she’d thought she should act, when really she felt exactly as she had done in the two months since leaving Statherá Prásino.
Like a ghost, living a half-life, going through the motions instead of actually feeling anything.
She had been wrong on the island. Wrong the night she’d told Thanos how she felt. Wrong in a thousand and one ways.
Wrong to tell him how she felt, because nothing could have been worse than this. Continuing to be with him, even knowing she loved him and he didn’t love her, would have been preferable to this never-ending state of loss.
She’d been wrong to think she’d get over this. Wrong to think this pain was on any playing field even remotely near what she’d felt when Clinton had humiliated her. Even the lifelong knowledge that her father had no interest in her paled in comparison to the all-consuming sense of absolute grief that stalked her daily.
Daily?
Every minute.
It had been two months.
Two months since they’d flown in complete silence over the Aegean, down low into Athens. Two months since he’d accompanied her into his six-star hotel, arranged for a penthouse suite, escorted her to the door, wheeling the luxury suitcase that was stuffed with designer clothes, two months since he’d stood back as she’d pushed open the door and prepared to walk away from him.
He’d kicked his toe in, leaving the door ajar, his eyes holding hers. ‘If you change your mind,’ he’d said quietly, letting the implication fade away.
But she’d known she would never act on that. Even if she did—which she had, many times—change her mind, and decide she would take any pain for the promise of a few more nights of Thanos.
The one thing she was glad for, and proud of, was that she’d stayed strong. She’d returned to New York, and, only a week or so later, had dropped her wedding ring and the enormous necklace into his lawyer’s office, needing any souvenir of their marriage to disappear.
He hadn’t acknowledged that, but the following week she’d received the title deed and keys to a place on the Upper East Side. When she’d caught a cab to look at it, she’d felt as if she were living in some kind of macabre fairy tale.
It was beyond anything she could ever imagine. An enormous four-bedroom apartment with two separate living spaces, decorated and furnished in a manner that would please a queen, with a pool on the wide terrace that boasted sensational views over Central Park in one direction and the city in another.
She hadn’t stayed there
yet.
She couldn’t bring herself to.
Not without knowing if it had once been Thanos’s. Or if he’d bought it with her in mind. Neither option was okay. Neither option made her feel good.
‘I think she likes the sunshine.’ The nurse was still talking.
Alice dropped back into the present with a thud, pasting a weak smile on her face.
‘She always did.’ Tears filled her eyes, but they were tears for Thanos, for Jane, for Alice, for her dad, tears that had come so easily since she’d left Greece.
‘I’ll leave you alone,’ the nurse said softly, excusing herself with a little squeeze of Alice’s shoulder.
She nodded, and when she was alone, she put a hand on her mom’s. ‘You got through it,’ Alice whispered. ‘I wish I knew how.’
And she wondered then if it would have felt different, if she’d had a child.
Thanos’s baby. The very idea made her groan, because having just a piece of him would have kept love warm in her heart, would have filled her with something, at least, to focus on.
But then what?