“Demanded it, more like it,” I say. “He wasn’t going to let me go to my aunt in Florida. He didn’t like her husband and he said I’d become a lost cause in that household. ‘Charlotte lets her boys play too many video games, but there’s still hope for you, boy.’”
Cecilia chuckles. “Was he like you?”
“No. He worked all the time. Didn’t really have a lot of close friends, either. Just people he considered… worthwhile to have as acquaintances. He tried to raise me like I was my father, the son he’d lost. A chance to do it over again.”
“Victor,” she says. “That sounds like you.”
I reach above my head and search blindly for her wrist. I find it and bring her hand back to my hair. “You’ve gotten a lot bolder since I married you.”
“I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
Her words are soft, matter-of-fact. But it takes me several seconds to process them. “You were afraid of me before.”
“Of course I was,” she says. Despite the seriousness of the topic, her voice is teasing. “You told me several times in the first couple of weeks how useless I was. Mason covered for me twice when I had to run into the bathroom.”
“Run into the bathroom?”
“To cry,” she says. “But you didn’t break me.”
I can’t reconcile the emotions I had toward the assistant back then, can’t match them with the Cecilia I know now. But I can’t deny the words she attributes to me. They sound like mine.
Shame tastes like ash on my tongue.
I’d made her cry. I hadn’t even known her first name or cared enough to learn it, but I’d been able to make her cry all the same.
I am like him, only worse, because he worked for something. For the family legacy and the family name. I’m working to prove him right about me, but he isn’t even here to see it.
“You’re still alive under there?” Cecilia says, lifting the towel from my brow. “You have to let me know if you need an ambulance, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I haven’t said that before, I think. But I’m sorry for not treating you better when you were my assistant.”
She’s quiet. A hand smooths down my cheek, the softest touch, and it feels like forgiveness. We don’t speak for a long time, not until my eyelids feel heavy and my skin cooler.
Cecilia changes channels until she finds a movie. It’s one I’ve seen before, many years ago. A romantic comedy. She puts the remote down and rearranges behind me again. This time, she stretches out too, and her arm ends up draped over my chest. I glance down to see her hand tracing my scar. The ragged line is faint now, the only remaining evidence of the car crash.
I don’t have the energy to protest, and her hand feels cool against my warm skin.
“A long time ago, this,” she murmurs.
I close my eyes. “It’s from a different life.”
She sighs, a soft sound of relaxation. “Maybe you have many in you. That’s what my mother would say.”
Maybe I do, I think. And maybe this is the start of a new one.
19
Cecilia
I blink my eyes open to sunshine. I turn over in bed and search for the best pillow, the one with the perfect level of firmness, and pull the comforter up below my chin. Why is it sunny? I always draw the curtains.
I yawn and open my eyes, curled on my side, and look out at the view. I’ll never tire of it. Central Park, the trees, the skyscrapers that line the other side. In one of those buildings lives Tristan Conway and his son, the apartment I was in with Victor over a month ago. When we toasted to our marriage.
Victor. We had been on the couch last night.
How did I get up here?
Either my memory has betrayed me, or I was asleep when he brought me upstairs. Did he lead me, half-asleep on my feet? Did he carry me?