Page 63 of Remember Me

Loss.

Love.

How much longer can I keep up this masquerade? This charade?

But I have no choice. If I reveal my identity, their lives may be endangered.

And now, he’s engaged to another.

Plus, he thinks I’m married.

Maybe I should leave him.Them.

But how can I go on without them? Let my husband share his bed with that dragon lady? Leave my precious daughter in her wicked claws?

The ache in my heart competes with the ache in my core.

Tomorrow, I have another day off. Sunday. First thing in the morning, I’m going to call the one person who can help me. The one person who can help me see the light. When the road ahead is uncertain. And so dark.

CHAPTER 40

Skye

“Thank you, Sister Marie, for meeting with me on such short notice.”

“Of course, my dear. Anything for you.”

Clad in her black and white nun’s bib, we’re sitting side by side on the bench where we always sat. The rehab center’s park-like grounds are still under the spell of summer. Beneath the mid-afternoon sun, the leaves of the trees glimmer like emeralds, the surrounding flowers and shrubs like other precious gems.

Patients, dressed in bathrobes, stroll by. Many escorted by nurses, others on their own. Some are in wheelchairs. Memories of my time here swirl around in my head. Three and a half years of recovery. With bumps in the road and mountains to climb. Sometimes, it was so painful, so exhausting I wanted to give up. But Sister Marie, God bless her, never let me. She made me persevere, always telling me there was a light at the end of the tunnel. That some people get new hearts; others new limbs. A few like me, new lives.

“We miss you,” she says, cutting into my mental ramblings.

“I miss you too. How’s Sally doing?”

Sally is an inpatient who was abused by her husband. He almost beat her to death.

“She’s progressing beautifully. She’s strong enough to testify at his trial.”

I smile. “That’s great.”

“What about you?”

I answer with silence. I let the choir of chirping birds fill the air around us. Sister Marie’s brows knit together.

“Something’s wrong.” She knows me so well.

I nod.

She tenderly cups a warm hand on one of mine. “Tell me, my dear.”

I collect my thoughts like someone frantically gathering their treasured possessions at the onset of a fire.

“Finn . . . ”

“What about Finn?” She knows all about my husband.

“He’s my employer. I’m working for him. I homeschool his daughter.”