She tightens her grip on my shoulders, and I see them in front of me, my brother and my father. Stuck next to me in the crushed car, not breathing, not…
I clear my throat. “A piece of metal went straight into my chest. Not deep, but wide. The rescue team had to cut me out of the car.”
“Oh, Victor.”
I say the next part because it belongs to the story, because it’s important, because it’s her memory. But I hate every single word. “Mom spoke to me in the car, when it was just the two of us and the silence, before the sirens came. Told me to hold on. We both made it to the hospital in ambulances, but I was the only one who left. Turns out a giant piece of metal in your chest isn’t as bad as a head injury and internal bleeding.”
The memories of those long, painful days in the hospital are ones I’ve never managed to suppress. Lying in a hospital bed, body half-broken, and being told that Mom had gone. I hadn’t even seen her. They’d wheeled her into surgery, and then she was no more, and I was given Jell-O and pitying glances and the crushing sense of being absolutely and completely alone in the world.
Never again would I feel that powerless. Grandpa saw that desire in me, helped me mold myself into someone who took control. Someone who wasn’t at the mercy of fate.
Cecilia leans back in my hands, shimmering green eyes meeting mine. Her voice is shaky. “I’m so sorry, Victor.”
I close my eyes. I don’t want to see her pity, I don’t want to hear it. Women I’ve dated in the past have always looked at the scar like that. At first, it seems to make them want me more, for some reason I’ve never understood. But then they want an explanation, and the explanation leads to pity.
And I’ve already had so much fucking pity. My entire life was full of it back then, in the months and years after. Every single time someone at school asked an innocent question about my parents and I had to say the words.They’re dead.
“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t want it.”
With the uncanny way of knowing she has, she shakes her head. “It’s not pity. It’s compassion.”
My thumb moves in a sweep over her hip, and I can’t think of a single thing to say. She doesn’t say anything either, just kisses me, and that’s good. That I know how to do.
I lift my head a while later. My throat and chest both feel uncomfortably tight, and it’s not from her glorious weight on my lap. I reach for her left hand and hold it between our chests, running my thumb over her wedding rings.
“Oh,” she murmurs. “I forgot to give them back to you earlier.”
I separate her engagement ring from her wedding ring, pressing my thumb down on the emerald-encircled diamond. “This was my mother’s engagement ring.”
“It was?”
“Yes.”
Her voice is quiet. “Thank you for letting me wear it.”
“It’s been in a safe for over twenty years,” I say, eyes on the rock. “And it’s just a ring.”
“It’s not just a ring.” She starts to worry it off her finger, sliding first the engagement ring off and then the wedding band. Her ring finger looks bare without them. She puts them in my palm, warm from her skin.
I look at them for a long time, but then I slide them back on her finger. “I’d rather they be with you than in my safe.”
“You want me to wear them?” she asks. “All the time?”
I keep my eyes on the rings. “If you don’t mind.”
Her hand closes, rings on. “I don’t mind.”
22
Cecilia
“So this is a code red situation,” Nadine says.
“It’s code black. Code… midnight. Whatever’s worse than red.”
“You’re definitely overreacting.”
“Am I really, though? I talk to her on the phone every single week and I haven’t mentioned this. She’s not going to be happy.”