“How did we get away with this?” I lifted my left hand, admiring the ring on it.
“No one ever thought to check.”
“It’s legal?”
He nodded.
I hesitated for a second. “Were we going to tell Club D?”
“Yes. We had our first dance in front of them a bit late.”
“What stopped us? From telling?”
“Life,” he said in Italian.
Even when I narrowed my eyes, he said nothing else.
I turned from him again, running my hands along the other pictures. The two of us in the Cayman Islands for our honeymoon. Another concert, and this time, I couldn’t stop the grin that spread across my face. When we were in the car, heading to New York, and Cilla gave Aniello shit about the slow jam he was listening to—we were at that concert.
“You loved music,” he said. “All music. You’d find concerts and we’d go. Even if you didn’t know the band. You’d listen to the music and learn the songs before we’d go. You once told me it was like eating out. You had to dine in to really see if you’d enjoy it. You really enjoyed ‘older music.’”
He seemed like he wanted to grin at the “older music” comment, since that was his music, or close to it, but he refrained.
“Crowded,” I said. “Better to hide us in.”
“At first,” he said.
“Did something special happen this night?” I asked, running my hand over the picture.
“Why do you ask?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I studied the picture a little harder. “We seem…happier, maybe?” Even though it was hard to describe because I always looked so happy, and he always looked…taken with me…but there was something different about those pictures. Maybe that night?
He didn’t answer, and even though I wanted to know, I didn’t press. The answers were coming to me as fast as I could devour them, but I was starting to worry that I was filling up too fast. It was hard to catch my breath, my entire body trembled, my skin was coated in sweat, and my head and heart hurt more than I could describe in words.
How could I forget this?
How could my mind have done this to me?
How could my heart have allowed it?
What kind of punishment was this?
Club D didn’t have to punish us. This was enough.
I had to live these times through pictures, through my husband’s memories, and it was doing something to me physically. I could feel how it felt to lose them, when they were viciously being ripped from me. It was the equivalent of having my heart torn from my chest.
Even so…I couldn’t stop looking at them, inhaling them, wanting and needing them.
They were healing me.
They were destroying me.
Then the pictures seemed to merge with his words like background music to a movie.
“You told me you were pregnant.”
My eyes jumped from each picture documenting a pregnancy I couldn’t remember as he gave me specifics. I wasn’t sure if I heard all he was saying or only the things my heart echoed.
