Saturday, February 11 #2
It was a good thing Angelica wasn’t in their bedroom; he paced all night.
He didn’t see her before leaving and picked up his marathon in front of the dealership at 11:30 a.m. His eyes kept shifting between watching the southbound road for Dominick’s car and keeping an eye on his sedan, parked a few feet away.
How soon does rigor mortis set in? Will they be able to get her out of the trunk? How soon do bodies start to decay? Smell? Dom must get rid of her where she’s never found. He can’t use the lake or the river.
He was so focused on his crisis that he didn’t hear Angelica’s car, didn’t see her pull up, get out, or take Sofia out of the infant seat in the back.
What he saw was his wife, in the corner of his eye, approaching the black sedan.
She was early! Was it because a storm was brewing on that life-changing day? He never found out. Never would.
“Angelica, we’re not taking that car today. We’ll use your SUV,” he yelled.
“I want the stroller from the trunk, Nicholas.”
“We don’t need it … I’ll carry the baby.”
“Don’t argue with me. I don’t even know why I’m here. Oh, maybe it’s so you can see your daughter one last time before I move out. If you didn’t hear me last night, we are through! That’s your birthday present to me.”
He dashed toward the car just as she clicked the remote and the trunk popped open.
He slammed it shut with his outstretched hand as Angelica stood there, stunned, all the color draining from her face.
She saw! His feet felt as heavy as his heart when their eyes met.
Before he could say a word, Angelica bolted, clutching their daughter to her chest with white-knuckled hands as thunder rumbled across the dark, ominous sky. What could he say, anyway?
He called her name, but she didn’t stop; she just ran faster and faster. The thunder was as relentless as Angelica’s running and Sofia’s wails.
Angelica ran past the new cars and the certified pre-owned models. She ran past the loaner cars. She ran past the service shop. She ran frantically as the heavens roared. When lightning struck behind her, his daughter squealed even louder.
He needed to get his wife out of the storm. No matter what had happened between them, he wasn’t going to lose his family to a damn thunderstorm. Though she had a head start, he took off after her, shouting her name.
She turned around once, then kept running.
Angelica couldn’t get far enough away from him.
In her frantic flight, she raced down the driveway and onto the street.
His wife didn’t see anything; she had already seen enough.
Her desperate race to escape ended violently when she ran into the path of a pickup truck.
Just seconds before Angelica was hit, she let out an ear-splitting scream that carried on the wind.
The same wind that carried the truck away.
When he reached them, it was already too late.
Too late for his beautiful baby girl, lifeless on the cold city pavement like a broken doll.
He let out anguished cries as he dropped to his knees and lifted their child.
Grief-stricken, he hugged his deceased daughter and crawled to his wife’s contorted body.
White as death, Angelica lay immobile, catatonic.
Blood flowed like a rapid from the side of her face, drenched her hair, and, racing down her neck, streamed over the shoulder of her open jacket before meeting her blood-saturated clothes.
The heavens opened, and the color of her life mixed with the chilly rain and gushed down the street’s black asphalt.
Her lifeline formed puddles at the curb.
He fell face down onto her blood- and rain-soaked chest, never letting go of their deceased daughter.
Riding in the ambulance, he clutched Angelica’s small, battered hand while refusing to let go of his beloved daughter. It might have been too late for his precious girl, but he wasn’t ready to give up Sofia. He wouldn’t loosen his grip on his little child, who would no longer be his.
His life had completely disintegrated. His daughter had died, his wife might be next, and the body of a dead girl hung over his head. Were bad things supposed to happen in threes? Who the hell has these kinds of problems?
While Angelica was in surgery, he stepped outside and called Dominick. He got his point across in a few words. Good as done. Then he returned to the surgical waiting area. One problem might have been solved, but he felt no better.
Angelica took so damn long to wake up. Day after day, week after week, he barely left her side—except for Sofia’s funeral.
With a shattered, fractured body, she resembled a white mannequin in her body cast. Each passing week that his wife lay pale and still, her chances of survival diminished.
Every second felt like a hundred years to him.
He prayed and prayed that she would live and not remember.
As she lay mute and unresponsive, her body worked to mend the bones, and her brain took a long rest. A three-month rest. A week after they removed the plaster cast, she opened her eyes.
Thank God, Angelica had emerged from the other world.
His heart leaped with joy at having his wife back.
He knew he would have to live eternally in grief over his daughter, but damn, he couldn’t live without Angelica.
He was going to make amends and be the best husband in the world.
Stop messing around. Truly love his wife the way she deserved to be loved.
Through a groggy haze and slitted eyes, the love of his life, struggling to speak, murmured, “Nicky?”
He leaned over and kissed her forehead, grateful and blessed by the miracle of her survival. “Angel, my beautiful wife.”
Weary and drained, with a feeding tube in her nose and down her throat, her dry voice cracked, “Not … your … wife.” Then she closed those big, beautiful brown eyes and drifted back to sleep.
He blinked, and his head spun. He couldn’t believe what his wife had said. Coming out of a coma, she must have been confused. She’d remember when she woke up. But that wasn’t the case.
What didn’t his wife remember? She didn’t remember much.
His prayers had been answered. She didn’t forget just that terrible day; she wiped out years, going all the way back, even before they were engaged.
She erased everything! No, not everything.
The woman with a memory interruption had one recollection—the morning he drove her for the damn procedure when she was in high school.
Because Angelica never remembered the accident, he didn’t tell her. He didn’t because he couldn’t—he simply couldn’t bring himself to reveal the truth. While grieving the loss of his daughter, he also mourned the loss of his wife.
After Angelica forgot, he undid everything tied to their life in the condo.
He transformed their home, which she had skillfully decorated, into a bachelor pad, complete with an oversized sectional sofa and glass-top tables.
Amid his heartbreak, he dismantled little Sofia’s bedroom, donating her crib and furnishings to charity.
He turned it into the guest bedroom—Angelica’s room. Nicholas never entered that room again.
Angelica’s walk-in closet in the master bedroom seemed to call out as the walls became more empty space. Empty, without the scent of her perfume.
He rifled through her purse, searching for her driver’s license.
Dominick knew people who could change or create a new identity and documents overnight.
He could do just about anything with money.
He might have laughed when he found her license if his heart weren’t so broken.
She never changed her name. Wasn’t that fitting, since she believed she was Angelica Whitely? Mrs. Nicholas Ponte never existed.
But it didn’t end there. All their cherished memories and keepsakes, except for two photos and their rings—engagement and wedding—were placed in a storage unit, waiting—just in case she recalled the happy moments.
Over the past five long, anxious years, the only thing that changed was that the items gathered dust.
Can eighty people keep a secret? They absolutely can, and they did.
Without Angelica by his side, he gathered their wedding guests in the same church where they had taken their vows and where he had held his daughter’s funeral mass.
He pleaded with them and pledged them to secrecy if they loved Angelica and little Sofia.
They all loved both of them, just as he did.
They were Blankvilleites—loyal to their own.
Later, he paid them all handsomely. Money has its perks.
For all the years Angelica lived with him, he never came near her. He couldn’t. Guilt ate at him—guilt over their daughter’s death and over nearly killing his wife.
How the hell do you live with that kind of guilt?
He opened two more dealerships. Even so, his bed remained empty when he finally made his way to it late at night.
Since Angelica didn’t even remember she had a husband, why was he burdened with all this guilt?
So last spring, just before she left, he proposed.
She turned him down. His own wife turned him down!
The heart-shaped diamond necklace he gave Angelica for Christmas was meant to be her twenty-fifth birthday present. Instead, his wife spent that day not in his arms but on life support in the critical care unit at Capital City Hospital.
When he left for his usual Sunday-morning visit to their daughter’s grave on New Year’s Day, it was unthinkable that Angelica would enter the bedroom and look inside the open safe.
The safe he had forgotten to close. Yet he was so distracted.
He wanted to run out, come back as soon as possible, and make love to her.
Was it his subconscious at work, or an oversight? Damn you, Angelica.