Page 59 of Love What's Left
“I also had the hallways and break areas at your lab painted powder-blue and installed a giant ‘Hang in there’ mural with a kitten dangling from a tree branch.” He spreads his hands to demonstrate.
I scrunch my nose. “What? Why?”
“You told me to do something about the institutional white walls, and I’m an overachiever.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was trying to get your attention,” he says.
“Did it work?”
“My phone rang within fourteen seconds of you getting off the elevator. I was watching on the security monitors to see how you liked it,” he says smugly.
“Tell me I won that battle.”
“We repainted the walls tan, but kept the mural, because kittens are adorable and the world could use more encouragement.”
“And I married you.”
Jade-green eyes serious, he lifts his left hand to show me his ring. “You did.”
A flash of memory has me straightening and lunging for the bag that contains my clothing.
“Whoa.” He drops his hand on top of mine. “You need gloves. Put your feet up. Let me get a cross breeze in here and a blanket for you first. You said you’d be careful.”
I nod, sit, then wait impatiently until he passes me a pair of surgical gloves, pulls over the ottoman for my feet, and opens the door to the patio. Then, with the bag still resting on the small round table next to me, I slide open the closure because I know exactly why I wanted it in the first place.
The smell of mildew, dirt, old blood, and body odor assaults me. I look up with a grimace. “How could you stand to touch me when I smelled like that? You carried me out of the warehouse. You h-held me in the hospital.” I can’t remember all of it, but I’ve gotten enough back to piece that much together.
“The hard part was letting go. I’d have climbed into the MRI with you if I could have.”
My heart aches at his words. I’ve been looking at this experience from my own perspective, but he’s been through hell too. Reaching for his hand, I squeeze it. “‘Thank you’ seems weak. It’s not enough. I am so grateful for you. More than I could possibly say.”
He squeezes back, then runs his thumb over my cheekbone. “Right back at you, sunshine.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then he releases my hand.
Straightening, I reach into the bag, but I don’t drag the entirety of the dress out. I don’t need it, and, at the moment, I don’t really want to see it. Instead, I find the wide sash used to keep the wrap-style closed. Slowly, inch-by-inch, I pull the belt from the bag until I reach the end. “Never buying a dress w-without pockets again.”
A series of knots appear in the sash. Maybe they looked like something I did from anxiety or boredom, but I tied them for a far more precious reason. I pick at the knots, but having washed the dress in the sink multiple times means those knots got wet, then tightened as they dried. The gloves make it even harder.
After several minutes of unsuccessfully attempting to pick the first one loose, my fingers grow stiff, and I make a sound of frustration.
My husband crouches beside me. “May I?”
I pass the sash. “Maybe I went overboard.”
He eyes me curiously, then goes to work, eventually utilizing the long skinny handle of a rat tail comb to assist. When the last knot loosens, then comes free, a light clatter sounds on the wooden table before us.
Breath whooshes from my lungs. I thought I knew but was afraid to trust myself, worried the maze inside my mind had played tricks on me. “I kept them safe.”
Fingers reverent and shaking, the man I call McRae lifts my wedding rings from the tabletop.
I’d been desperate to hide them from my captors. They were mine, a part of myself I refused to lose. So, I hid them. And then I forgot until they were gone, even from myself, and, still, I protected them, refusing to give up the dress when someone I can’t remember offered me new clothes. Clinging to it. Holding those knots tight to my chest like a talisman, even when I had no idea why I did it.
Somethingof the ferocity of that act seeps into my whisper as I repeat, “I kept them safe.”
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