Chapter 5 #2
“You drove me home and refused to let me carry groceries for a month.”
“Were you difficult?”
“Constantly.”
That faint almost-smile returned.
Leah gave me a grateful look.
She turned her phone toward Noah. “Do you want to see the girls?”
His expression changed.
“Yeah.”
The first photograph showed Emma on a stage in a silver costume, one arm raised dramatically beneath a paper moon.
Noah studied the image.
“That’s Emma?”
“She started dance last year.”
“She’s tall.”
“She complains about it every day.”
His fingertip touched the screen.
The second photograph showed Clara grinning through a missing front tooth while holding a fish nearly as long as her arm.
“Clara?” he asked.
Leah nodded.
“No. She was a baby.”
“She’s seven.”
Noah looked at me as if I had done something.
“She’s seven?”
“Yes.”
His breathing quickened.
Leah swiped to a video. Clara appeared on-screen, yelling his name before launching herself into a swimming pool.
The joy went out of Noah’s face.
He watched the video twice.
“I missed that.”
Leah took the phone back gently. “You didn’t miss it on purpose.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“You called her afterward. She told you the water went up her nose.”
“Do I remember that?”
“No.”
His gaze moved toward the window.
“I sent them things?”
“Every birthday,” Leah said. “Usually too expensive.”
“I did?”
“You bought Emma a keyboard after I specifically asked you not to.”
Noah’s mouth shifted. “Why?”
“Because you enjoy my suffering.”
He tried to laugh, but the sound became a wince. His hand rose toward his head.
I dimmed the bedside light.
“That’s enough screens,” I said.
“No, I want—”
“You can look later.”
His eye sharpened. “Stop telling me what to do.”
The words came out with more force than anything he had said to me since waking.
Leah looked between us.
I stepped back.
“You’re right. Sorry.”
Noah shut his eyes.
The anger drained from him as quickly as it had arrived.
“I can’t think,” he whispered. “Everything comes too fast.”
Leah touched his shoulder. “We’ll slow down.”
He breathed through the pain.
I waited until his face eased.
“Would you like the room quiet?” I asked.
After several seconds, he nodded.
Leah put away her phone.
We sat without speaking.
Noah’s right hand remained near the tea. His fingertips rested against the cardboard sleeve. I wanted to move the cup before he knocked it over. I wanted to adjust the blanket where it had twisted around his hip. I wanted to touch the line between his brows until it smoothed.
I did nothing.
Eventually, he opened his eyes.
“Cake?”
I looked at him.
He pointed toward the café bag.
“You brought cake.”
“I did.”
“What kind?”
“Lemon.”
He considered it. “Do I like lemon?”
“You like cake.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Leah laughed quietly.
I cut a small piece with a plastic fork and placed it on a plate.
“You liked lemon,” I said. “Past tense only because I don’t know what you like now.”
He took a bite.
His expression remained serious while he chewed.
Then he took another.
Leah leaned toward me. “Mountain,” she whispered.
I looked away to hide my smile.
By noon, Noah could barely keep his eyes open.
The ward enforced a rest period after lunch, and even without the rule, he was losing the battle against exhaustion.
Leah brushed a lock of hair away from his forehead.
“I’ll come back this afternoon.”
His eye opened a fraction. “You’re leaving?”
“Only for a few hours.”
“Where?”
“To eat with Reid.”
He looked toward me.
“You come back too?”
The question caught me off guard.
“Yes.”
His eyelids lowered.
“When?”
“Three.”
“Both?”
“Both,” Leah promised.
He relaxed.
I raised the bed rail, moved the table away, and pulled the blanket higher over him. Noah watched my hands with the dazed trust of someone too tired to object.
“Sleep,” I said.
He was gone before I finished the word.
Leah waited until we reached the elevator.
Then she seized my arm.
“You left because he remembered me.”
I pressed the button for the ground floor.
“He needed time with you.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
The doors opened.
We entered alone.
“You saw his face,” I said.
“Yes.”
“He has never looked at me that way.”
Leah’s expression crumpled.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“But—”
“This is good for him.”
“It can be good and cruel at the same time.”
The elevator descended.
When the doors opened, we remained inside until a man pushing a laundry cart cleared his throat.
We stepped out.
At the café, Leah chose soup. I bought a sandwich I did not want.
We found a table in a corner away from the television.
“He remembered my old house,” she said after a while. “The yellow one near the elementary school.”
“I heard.”
“He remembered Emma being afraid of dogs.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“It’s devastating.”
I looked at her.
She turned her spoon through the soup.
“He was so certain she was still little. When I showed him Clara, he looked betrayed.”
“Time moved without him.”
“It moved with him. That’s the part I can’t understand.”
Neither could I.
The years had happened.
Noah had lived every hour of them.
He had laughed, worked, slept, desired, chosen, forgiven. His body had crossed the distance even if his mind had lost the road.
“How bad is it for him?” Leah asked.
“Physically?”
“All of it.”
I leaned back.
“His arm is healing. His pelvis is stable, but he can’t put full weight on his right side yet. They’re hoping to get him standing with support this week. His headaches vary. Some days he can hold a conversation for half an hour. Other days, five minutes is too much.”
“And his memory?”
“He retains new information. Most of it.”
“That’s good.”
“Yes.”
“But the missing years?”
“No change before today.”
Leah looked down.
“I’m glad he remembered you.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
“I hate that I was happy.”
“You should be happy.”
“He knew me, and all I could think was that you were standing there watching.”
I opened the sandwich wrapper.
The smell made my stomach turn.
“He isn’t responsible for what this does to me.”
“Neither are you.”
“That doesn’t change what he needs.”
Leah rested her elbows on the table. “Do you still think he’ll remember?”
“I don’t let myself think much past the next appointment.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I stared at the untouched sandwich.
“Some mornings I’m certain he will. He says something in the same tone he used before, or he looks at the harbor and I think I can see him reaching for it.”
“And other mornings?”
“He looks at me like I’m kind.”
Leah’s eyes filled.
“That sounds good.”
“It is.”
“But?”
“He used to look at me like I was home.”
Silence settled around us.
The café continued: cutlery against plates, machines steaming milk, chairs scraping tile.
Leah reached across the table and held my hand.
“He loved you before he knew what to do with it,” she said.
I shook my head.
“He did. The first time he told me about you, he spent twenty minutes pretending the conversation was about your yard.”
Despite myself, I looked at her.
“What did he say?”
“That his boss was impossible.”
“That sounds right.”
“That his boss never cut corners. That everyone trusted him. That he had these irritating eyes that made it difficult to finish sentences.”
A laugh escaped me.
Leah’s smile trembled.
“He called me two days after your first kiss. He wouldn’t tell me you’d kissed. He said something had happened.”
“He was afraid I’d fire him.”
“He was afraid he’d ruined the only good job he’d ever had.”
“I was afraid he’d regret it.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
“Then hold on to that.”
I pulled my hand away gently.
“It may not matter.”
“It matters.”
“Not if he never feels it again.”
“He will.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t.”
She looked toward the windows.
“What will you do if he doesn’t?”
The answer had lived in me since Dr. Whitcomb warned that Noah might reject our relationship.
“Whatever he asks.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
“What if he wants to leave?”
“I’ll help him.”
Her mouth parted.
“What if he doesn’t want to live with you?”
“I’ll find somewhere safe.”
“What if he falls in love with someone else?”
The question struck so precisely that I could not breathe for a moment.
Leah covered her face. “God, I’m sorry.”
“No.”
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It could happen.”
“I don’t believe it will.”
“But if it does, I don’t get to hold him to a promise he can’t remember making.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks.
I looked at the table because watching her cry made mine harder to contain.
“I love him,” I said. “That means his life belongs to him, even if the life he chooses no longer has me in it.”
Leah wiped her face with the heel of her hand.
“That is the most awful thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“It feels worse from this side.”
She laughed through her tears.
We ate enough to satisfy each other.
Afterward, Leah led me to a pharmacy across the street where a photo-printing kiosk stood beside the greeting cards.
“You said he studies pictures,” she said.
“He does.”
“Then let’s give him more than a phone screen.”
We selected photographs carefully.
Family first.
Leah with Emma and Clara.
Noah at the yard.
Caleb and Owen.
Marlowe sprawled across Noah’s lap.
The apartment kitchen at Christmas.
Then photographs of us.
Not kisses.
Not bed.
Nothing that demanded intimacy.
A picture of Noah leaning over my shoulder while I worked at the desk. One from a summer cookout, his hand at my waist. Another taken on the deck of a ferry, both of us laughing into the wind.
I nearly deleted that one.
Leah stopped me.
“He looks happy.”
“That’s the problem.”
“No. It’s the truth.”
We printed twenty-four photographs.
The machine produced them slowly, each page sliding forward with a quiet mechanical hum.
Leah arranged them in a small album.
At three, we returned to the ward carrying dinner from a deli Noah liked and the blue album tucked into her bag.
He was awake.
A menu lay on the table before him, and frustration had drawn a deep line between his brows.
“Trouble?” I asked.
He looked up.
The smile he gave me was polite.
Then he saw Leah.
His entire face changed.
I turned away under the pretense of setting down the food.