The Girl in the Locket

Chapter Thirty

Six months would seem a short space of time if my world wasn't spinning on an axis at a hundred miles per hour. Today though marked a six month period of time that dragged so painfully slow that it was hard to even imagine some days that the night would ever come and take away my pain. So much had happened and yet nothing that would resolve that pain or mute its interference in my daily comings and goings. I floated through it all watching the clock like they tell you not to. They tell you not to watch the clock because in an attempt to wish the hands would pass quicker and faster, you would actually cause the hands to limp slower and weaker to the next minute. Within those agonising minutes and hours of the previous six months I had managed to lose so much. I lost my ability to hide the fact James and I had wandered into a new phase of our lives, and that it would be as friends and no longer husband and wife. I learnt that love was not enough alone, you needed to give everything to the person you were in love with, and I, as was evident the previous year of our lives, I was not giving half of what I needed too, to make him happy. James had been incredible, and he had listened as I had told him all about Amber's story and my previous life as Sydney. He had taken time when we had got home to try and accept all of that truth no matter how hard it had become to hear. We took counselling at his request for two months when we returned from Europe to try and save our marriage but there was only one thing we could agree on, the girls, they would have to come first as we moved forward in our lives, separately. We would remain friends as best we could, and I truly believed we would. The fact was, James and I loved each other dearly, but for me it wasn't in the capacity that James needed anymore. The next two months were spent separating our combined lives piece by piece. James wanted me to remain in the family home with the girls, but I had no interest on carrying on my charade as a suburban housewife. I had to find my way back to myself, and that started with moving myself and the girls back into an apartment, a block from the art store in the city, where it had all begun. I told James I had wanted nothing from him financially, he could keep everything, and so he did. He would have the girls on weekends and come by and see them any time he wanted in between. The girls were coping with the change in home and family structure well. Clark was the hardest on my heart at first, she would ask about James constantly and demand his presence at all times knowing he wasn't with us all the time anymore. After a month living in our new digs she had figured out that James wasn't abandoning her at all, and in actual fact she got more attention and time with him now than she had before. The weekends were hers and Beas, and she thrived on that one on one time with both him and I. Clark and Bea had become my bed fellows, to their delight, sleeping in a chaos of baby snores and little limbs covered in bunny Pyjamas thrown over my face and torso at all times of the night. Sleep though had forsaken me a long time ago.

Six months of minutes and hours were passing painfully. James was finally taking steps into dating again which I wanted desperately for him. He was the kindest and most genuine guy and he deserved a soul mate, not a lost soul.

I had spent many of my minutes as day turned to night sat by my bedroom window watching the seasons pass by over the mountains, and eventually watching them become snow-capped. The girls would distract my days perfectly with their wonderful mischief. Clark with her growing intellect and Bea with her newfound freedom on two feet. The nights though were when the pain set in like cold did to the bones of the frail. Every part of me ached. The paper Amber had handed me with Drew's name was placed on my refrigerator and I frequently pulled it down from under Clarks art work and went to dial the number. Words though, they failed me, and so I rejected the call before it even dare ring.

I was scared, petrified even. Amber had left me hungry for information and I was desperate for it. The thing was though, that she had dragged me further into the rabbit hole of my memory than I had ever been before and small pieces of information had returned to me naturally. The month that followed her confrontation in Paris had rocked me emotionally and physically to a point that I hadn't reached before, and the trauma had unravelled what I would describe as a cinematic reel of memories. I could reach memories that were once so far from me and unattainable. I remembered her laugh, it echoed in my mind and made me smile before taking a knife to my heart and thrusting it deeper than I knew possible. I remembered the way she touched me, tenderly and passionately. The memory made me blush. The small reel of memories were like watching a movie that I had acted in many years previously. Acted but not real life. That was the reality of it. I had remembered Amber Rose Beaton in part only, a part of her but not the entirety, and it would take seeing her, to try and resolve that, if it was even possible. Each time I heard or felt her in my memories my thoughts returned to the one thing I couldn't deny, I had loved her fiercely, and she was owed the closure I could now give her.

I felt my finger linger on the last digit before taking a deep breath and lifting the phone to my ear. My reflection in the bedroom window from the lamp beside me threw my form onto the mountains in the distance.

"Hello?" Came the distant voice as I pushed the phone away to my chest with panic. I turned and found my gaze fall on Clark sleeping peacefully in a star fish position on my king size bed, and the panic was pushed away by the heaviness of my responsibility to finally bring myself home. I lifted the phone slowly back to my ear and took a leap of faith.

"Drew...hi...its Sydney"