Page 24 of Love What's Left
“Yours. Not mine. You tell him what to do, and he listens. He’s here to protect you from anyone or anything. Even me, if you decide it’s necessary. He’ll take you anywhere you want to go, on this estate or off it. This property is armed to the teeth to keep danger out, but you are Queen here. Dave, Annabel, and Troy are your personal employees. If necessary, they’ll use deadly force to protect you. So will I.”
She watches me with an unreadable expression. Then she lays her hand out palm up and speaks to Dave. “Give me your gun.”
Bad idea. Bad. Bad.“Let’s wait until you feel more settled—”
But Dave’s primary loyalty is to her, not me. The Glock is in her hand before I even finish my sentence.
Her limbs tremble as she allows it to rest flat on both her palms and examines it for an eternity. Then she swallows hard. “Okay. Take it . . . back.”
He collects and re-holsters the weapon. I remember to breathe.
“Do you have any questions for him?” I ask.
“Later. Maybe. Have to—” She taps fingers against her forehead in a gesture so familiar to me. Once. Twice. Three times.Have to think, she means.
“If you ever need him, he or someone else will be here. All you have to do is call.”
“Consider us your personal minions,” Dave says. It’s an old joke between them. I keep doing the same thing—dropping pieces of our past into her hands and hoping they’ll shake loose a memory.
Though her expression doesn’t lighten or show recognition, she nods. “Thanks.”
Her bodyguard squeezes her shoulder, then heads through the door. Sydney watches him go, then her gaze drifts around the room, catching on something on one of the bookshelves. I follow her line of sight.
Stepping closer, she runs a single finger over the pink and tan flared edge of a conch shell. “I always . . . thought I’d l-love . . . the ocean . . . if I saw it,” she rasps.
It’s nearly a direct quote from another time, except she’d said,“I always knew I’d love the ocean.”
“This house was my wedding gift to you. Can you hear the Pacific?” I ask.
She closes her eyes. “Maybe.”
“Would you like to go outside and see it?”
Her full lips press together, but her expression is one of calculating odds, rather than fear.
When I push open the sliding glass doors and walk onto the deck, I glance back to find her frozen in place.
Coaxing her would only make her more suspicious of me. So I turn right to face the coastline and go around the corner until the vista comes fully into view. In the near distance, deep blue water with patches of turquoise foams white where it kisses the black lava rock beach.
Whether she follows or not is up to her.
A salty breeze whips my hair into a frenzy and ripples my untucked button-down against my body like a flag.
Several moments later, a ghost of the woman I married joins me, her knuckles pale where she clutches the teak railing. She watches the ocean, utterly silent, as her hair flies in a tangled banner behind her. Her usually mobile face remains statue-still.
I stand beside her, waiting, for nearly an hour. I want to shake her and shout, “Don’t go. Stay here with me.” But who knows better than I do how it feelsto want to disappear? Or how pointless it is to beg someone to face reality when they aren’t ready to be saved?
When her cheeks and nose gain a glow from the sun, I slide a shade umbrella over and angle it above her.
Eventually, she sways lightly on her feet. Reaching into my pocket, I retrieve the necklace I’ve carried since the day she was taken. Annabel found it, clasp broken, in Sydney’s lab.
I had the gold chain replaced, then I clung to the thing like a talisman. I was waiting until she was herself again to give it back to her. But maybe this Sydney could use it for all new reasons of her own. Maybe, instead of reminding her of the past, it can remind her of now . . . of sun sparkling off the waves and a breeze in her hair and safety.
The little gold conch shell gleams in the sunshine, the new, heavier, box-link chain coiling around it on my palm. I lift her hand and place the necklace onto it, using my own hand to support hers so she doesn’t drop it.
She blinks rapidly, as though waking from a dream, then stares at the jewelry. Her continued lack of expression makes my throat tighten.
Finally, she speaks. “What is this?”
