No one deserved to live a life without love. I rested my hand on the back of Mads’ and remembered how he’d resignedhimself to that fate before we’d met. Nothing made me prouder than to have proved him wrong. It was a responsibility I took seriously.
I was still pondering that when I caught sight of a thin white scar running below Chloe’s right jawline. It threw me back forty-seven years. My father put it there with a fish knife three weeks before Chloe left us. It had been red the last time I’d seen it, angry, and still healing. It was barely visible now, if you didn’t know where to look.
But I did. Because I’d been there. And I remembered the blood.
The thought started me cataloguing. The slightly crooked nose. The small chunk out of her right ear. The scar over her left brow. The small circular burns on her forearm—only one showed below the cuff of her forest green jersey. And there were others, hidden by her clothes but indelibly printed on my brain. All the broken bits she carried from her life before were still there, at least the ones I could see. The emotional scars dug deeper, I knew. Invisible to the eye and far more brutal. But they were there in the way she looked at me and in the memories we shared. It’s why we were there after all. To see what was left between us, if anything.
Is that all there is to this?A venture down a painful memory lane. To what point and at what cost?
I was about to find out.
We both were.
And thank God Mads was there to help pick up the pieces.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Chloe broke the silence first. “Forty-seven years changes a great deal about a person, and yet so much stays the same.”
I huffed, and the words spilled from my tongue without thinking. “You remember the exact number of years then.”
Mads drew a sharp breath and I mentally slapped myself. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t?—”
“Don’t be sorry.” Chloe waved dismissively. “God knows, I deserve to bear the brunt of your righteous anger. But yes, I remember every single day of those years without you.”
I said nothing, unsure of what I thought about her answer or if I even believed it. I waited for her to continue. Chloe had driven this meeting, after all, not me.
After a shorter but infinitely more awkward silence than the first, Chloe’s shoulders dropped, her body folding in on itself to reveal the regret and what looked like shame lying just below the surface. The change was dramatic as she suddenly looked much, much older, and a great deal more vulnerable. It was another thing we had in common, I supposed. A thick suit of armour to keep the bad guys out of our head.
“I’m not sure where you want me to start,” she began in a much smaller voice.
“Oh, I think you probably do know,” I argued, trying to keep my tone if not friendly, then at least neutral. “How about what was going through your head when you drove off that evening. When you left your eight-year-old son with his abusive father and then never contacted him again. What kind of mother does that? Did you even?—”
I came to an abrupt stop when Mads squeezed my thigh.
An epic fail on the neutral tone, then.
Chloe’s hands trembled and her grey eyes glistened. But her cheeks remained dry and her expression seemed oddly blank in contrast to just seconds before. “Okay,” she said in almost a whisper. “I can see you want to get right to the heart of things.” She drew a long, slow breath and sank deeper in her chair. “You’ll have to forgive me if I get anything wrong. My memory isn’t what it used to be. I’ll do my best.”
What the—It was all I could do not to get up and leave right then and there. Her memory wasn’t what it used to be? What the fuck? How do you forget walking out on your kid? If Chloe was as sorry as she claimed, every detail should have been seared into her brain, like it was in mine. I was stopped from acting on the urge by the pressure of Mads’ hand on my thigh once again. My gaze shot to his, full of compassion and understanding.
He nodded gently. “Just let her tell her story.”
I held those beautiful green eyes a moment longer, then sighed. I could do this. I turned my attention back to Chloe and waited.
She glanced nervously between us but didn’t apologise for what she’d said. “Age can be cruel,” she explained. “It takes things from you you’d never willingly give up, memories included.”
Even at fifty-five, I already knew that.Get over yourself, dipshit.
I relaxed.
“You were, of course, supposed to come with me that night,” Chloe began. “At the time, I didn’t make it clear that we were leaving for good, and that’s on me. I’d been planning it for a while. I had a little money stashed and I’d organised someone from the shelter to pick us up. But I really wasn’t sure how you’d react, so I kept things simple. Getting us away was my first priority. I figured the rest would come later.Explanationswould come later. That was a mistake.” She sighed, her eyes full of apology. “If I’d been more open with you, we might’ve made it out of there. But?—”
“I held you back.” I couldn’t stop myself. “It was my fault?—”
“No. No. That’s n-not right.” Chloe leaned forward in her seat, her hands clenched in her lap as she stumbled over her words. “Y-you were just a little boy, Nick. I-I was asking you to do something you knew would get us in trouble,getm-meintrouble. O-of course you didn’t want to do it.” She paused to take a couple of deep breaths, seeming to gather herself. “If he hadn’t forgotten his wallet, it wouldn’t have mattered,” she continued, more settled now. “But fate is a bitch like that, and when your father found us in the driveway, well—” She paused, like she was choosing her words carefully. “—I don’t know if you remember how angry he was.”
I nodded. “I remembereverythingabout that night.”I remember you leaving. I remember the bottom of my world dropping out. And I remember feeling so fucking lost.
Misery shone in her eyes and a heavy sigh split the silence. “You’ve no idea how much I wish I could change that. But one thing I knew for certain that night. One thing was crystal clear in my brain. And that was, if I stayed, your father would kill me.”
