It's weird, being told that the husband you don't remember had an affair. I am shocked and disgusted and disappointed, but I don't feel those emotions to the sickening depths Donna certainly must have. My confusion is more intellectual than passionate. "I don't understand. I thought you were in love." When he found me at the police station he seemed like he loved me, like he was deeply relieved to see me safe and sound. Had that all been an act?
"We were," he says quickly. "We are. Well, I am anyhow." He takes my hand. "I still love you, Donna. I never stopped."
I ease my hand away. "Hard to believe, don't you think? Why did you cheat then?"
The waiter arrives. "Can I get you two anything else?"
"No, just the bill," Ryan says without looking at him.
"You have the bill, sir. I left it for you a while ago."
His faint over-emphasis on how long it's been gets through to Ryan, and he slaps some money down on the table and says, "There. Thank you so much for making us feel welcome to stay."
The waiter pales. "I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean to--"
"You did, actually. But whatever." Ryan takes a deep breath, then stands and holds out his hand to me. "Are you ready to come with me?"
He's not just asking if I want to leave, I can tell. He's asking how far I'm willing to go with him, how I feel about staying with him. I don't have an answer so I get up, ignoring his outstretched hand, and walk out of the restaurant, knowing he'll follow.
Outside, he takes gentle hold of my shoulder and turns me around. "I'm sorry. I know how you must feel."
"Do you? I doubt it. I'm supposed to be remembering that I love you and now I find out you didn't love me."
"I did, I do," he says, his voice low but full of passion. "It was stupid."
"Of course it was," I snap. "Affairs always are. Why did you do it? Who was she? Did I know her?"
He sighs, and I say, "Oh, I'm sorry, do my questions bother you?"
He moves closer, his eyes sparking with a sudden fury. "I hate myself for it, Donna. Every single day since the affair started I've hated myself, and I hated myself ten times more after I told you and saw how much it hurt you, and a thousand times more after it made you run away from me. The only good thing about your amnesia is that you don't remember it all. So, yes, your questions bother me, because I don't want to tell you the whole story and hurt you again and I know I have to."
We stare at each other for another moment, then he reaches out and smooths my hair, the anger in his eyes replaced by such tenderness I can barely stand to see it. "I never wanted to hurt you. I love you. Now and forever."
He pulls off his wedding band and holds it up for me to see those three words engraved inside. "Now and forever," he says again. "I will never stop loving you."
The emotion and honesty in his eyes are killing me. He does love me. He cheated on me, but he loves me. And I don't remember the cheating so the love seems far more important. "Is that in my ring too?" I whisper, hardly able to speak.
He nods, and I slip my rings off my right hand and peer inside. My engagement ring is blank but sure enough, my wedding ring bears the same words.
"I don't know what to say."
He shakes his head. "You don't have to say anything. Just know I love you. I have screwed up in more ways than I could ever tell you, but I love you. Now and forever."
I'm trying desperately to make those three words ring a bell inside me, and that time I can almost hear a faint chime. But am I making it happen? I want so badly to remember my life.
He smooths my hair again. "Don't force it. Your memories will come back when they're ready."
I look up at him. "How did you--"
His smile is sweet and unbearably sad. "I've loved you for seven years. I should know you by now."
I shut my eyes against the pain in his face. I should know him. But I don't.
"Put your rings back on," he says softly, "and I'll take you to Starbucks and answer every question you've got."
I open my eyes and look down at the rings. Should I put them on my right hand or my left? I remember how it hurt him to see me put them on the right the first time, and now that I know him better I don't want to cause him that sadness again. But...
I can't decide, so I hand the rings to him. "You do it." I offer him both my hands. He can choose.
Looking deep into my eyes, he slides the rings onto my hand.
My right hand.
"When you can say you love me," he says softly, "I'll move them. But for now they need to be there."
I nod, then reach up and slide my arms around his neck. He hurt Donna by cheating, no question, but I'm just starting to realize how much she hurt him by running away. One doesn't make up for the other, and his affair is no doubt at least part of why she ran, but his pain is no less real. "Thank you for understanding. Thank you for being here."
He stands startled for a moment then pulls me close, closer than the last time we hugged.
We stay in each other's arms for a long moment, then he draws back and presses his lips gently to my forehead. "I love you," he murmurs against my skin.
It feels so wrong not saying it back.
*****
We sit at Starbucks, the same one we went to after the police station, for ages and he does answer all of my questions. I ask about the affair, and while he doesn't want to describe the woman, Colleen, too much he does say that it was nothing to do with her being better than me physically.
"She wasn't better than you at all," he says, looking deep into my eyes. "It wasn't about that."
"Then what was it about?"
He shakes his head slowly. "I don't know how to say this without sounding like a jerk."
"You admitted you had an affair. The reason won't make you seem any more of a jerk."
"I guess not." He sighs. "You have to know I don't think what I did was right. I should never have cheated on you. Obviously. But..." He sighs again. "It was just so hard living with you. The depression was taking over, and sometimes I didn't even know who you were. You'd been so driven and passionate and you started spending hours in bed, not even sleeping just staring at the wall."
I shiver, remembering doing just that at Jake's place.
"I did try to talk to you about it, and I helped you get medication and took care of you the best I could."
He gives me a sad half-smile and I think I know what's coming, and I'm right.
"But nobody was taking care of me any more. I felt like our life together was all responsibility and no enjoyment."
"And she gave you enjoyment."
He nods. "She was flirty and silly and funny and she made me feel like the only guy on the planet. And I liked it."
I rest my elbows on the table and cup my face in my hands. I can see how it happened. Donna didn't have the energy to give him any attention and this other woman saw her chance and took it. Ryan was wrong to do it, of course, but I can imagine the progression of it.
He touches my forearm. "At first we really were just friends."
I nod. "I get it. Friends first, then she suggests you have lunch together, and once you've done that dinner makes sense, and then a few drinks after, and it just builds from there. A kiss, then you both promise never to do it again, then it happens again and again and eventually..." I shrug.
His forehead creases.
"What?"
He shakes his head. "You've just spelled out exactly what happened, and you don't sound even a little bit upset."
Our eyes meet and he says, "You're not, are you?" Before I can speak, he says, "Because you don't remember any of this."
"No. I do think it's sad," I say, "but it's like something sad that happened to someone else. I don't like it, and I think what you did was wrong, obviously, but my emotions aren't in it."
He sighs. "I wish they were. I wish you'd scream at me. Slap me."
Because that kind of reaction would mean I love him. "Did Donna do that?"
Before he can answer I think of another, better, question. "Why did you tell her? Was she going to find out? Was Colleen going to tell her?"
"I couldn't live with myself any more," he says simply. "I came home one night, late, from seeing Colleen, and Donna was sound asleep. I looked at her, then at our wedding picture on my bedside table, the same picture I showed you, and it just hit me so hard. I woke Donna up and told her, and I ended the affair that night. I haven't seen Colleen since and I hope I never do."
I imagine poor Donna waking from sleep to be told her husband was cheating on her. Ryan obviously thought he was doing a good thing but I can't believe how clueless he was to do it. "What did Donna do when you told her?"
He looks down at the table. "Cried. Cried so hard she nearly threw up. She wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't let me stay with her. She made me leave, so I went to the blue guest room, next to our room, and sat in there and listened to her sobbing for at least an hour until she cried herself to sleep."
My throat tightens as if those same sobs are trying to escape it. I can see the scene so clearly, even though I haven't seen Ryan's house in Ottawa, and while the vast majority of my sympathy is with Donna there's a tiny part of me that feels for Ryan too. "You didn't go out? Or put on headphones or something so you wouldn't have to hear her?"
He looks up, his eyes full of shock and fresh pain. "It was my fault. I couldn't leave her to cry alone."
"But--"
"I know, she was alone. But I think she knew I was out there, not running from what I'd done to her, and I have to hope it helped at least a little bit."
I have no idea if it helped. I can't imagine it made things much better for Donna but at least he hadn't gone off to Colleen again. "What happened the next day?"
He sips his coffee, and I tense up against whatever bad thing he's about to say, but when he does speak he just says, "She asked if I was sure I was finished with Colleen. I said I was, and that I would never cheat on her again. She said she didn't like it, obviously, but she knew she hadn't been easy to live with."
I don't like Donna blaming herself for the affair. Difficult to live with or not, she hadn't deserved to be cheated on. "So things went on just like before?"
"Not quite." He sips his coffee again. "She wanted to go out for dinner that night, the first time she'd felt up to it in ages, and she said she thought we were ready to have a baby. She hadn't felt ready before, but she'd done some research that day and found that it wouldn't aggravate her depression and might even help. She knew I wanted kids, and she wanted them too, and she said that a baby would be a sign of how much stronger our relationship would be now that Colleen was out of the way."
To me, Donna's words scream, "I'll give you what you want, just don't leave me," but Ryan doesn't seem to have recognized that aspect.
"Donna said something about being afraid she wouldn't be able to keep all her ducks in a row as a mother. I said I knew she would, and as we left the restaurant we went by a tattoo place."
I smile, knowing what's coming, and he smiles back and says, "Yup. I told her that if she wanted to guarantee her ducks would always be in order we should get them tattooed on her. I was mostly joking, but she surprised me by going for it, and we did it that very night."
"We? Do you have ducks too?"
He shook his head. "The guy didn't have time to tattoo us both, and the ducks were more for her anyhow."
"Got it. So, what happened next?"
"We talked about names for hours that night at home, after the tattoo. She was so much more energetic and cheerful than usual, and it was wonderful. I liked Edward after my dad but she wouldn't hear of it because of those 'Twilight' books, and we eventually agreed that Elliott would be great for a boy."
I wait for him to say what name they'd chosen for a girl, but instead he lowers his head and stares at the table. Though I'm scared, I say, "Did you agree on a girl's name?"
Without looking up, he nods, then after a long pause says, "Kate."
My body feels like I've been electrocuted. "Kate? Really?"
He looks up, his eyes sad, and nods again. "I guess maybe that's why she used it as her alias when she ran away. It... surprised me, when I heard that name from you on Thursday."
His wife had given herself a new name, one they'd picked out together for a baby they hadn't been able to conceive. Yes, that would have been surprising. Why had Donna used that name? Would we ever know?
We sit silent for at least a minute, then a dreamy half-smile creeps over his face and he leans closer before saying softly, "I'd never had sex without protection before and it was incredible. Terrifying, but so incredible. I fell in love all over again that night."
I don't know what to say to this, and something in my face must tell him he's gone too far with the details because he leans back and says, "Well. Sorry. It's one of my favorite memories of our years together but maybe not the best one to share with you." He shakes his head. "Sorry. Sometimes I forget I'm not talking to the Donna I know." He gives me an attempt at a smile. "It's just, you guys look a lot alike."
I smile back. "True. Except for the clothes." I'm wearing the jeans and gray sweater I was wearing the day I met Jake, but Ryan told me when we met at the mall that he'd never seen those clothes before. Donna must have picked them up before leaving for Toronto.
He clears his throat. "I do like what you wear now, though. You look different. Happier." He puts his hand over mine. "Are you happy at all? I know everything's messed up, but... even a little bit?"
I have to think about this, and he sits waiting, although his eyes show his anxious hope, until I say, "You know, weirdly, I kind of am. Or at least not sad. Maybe the ECT worked this time and I won't get depressed again."
"It's always a possibility," he says. "And then we can--"
"Ryan, there you are!" Claire's shrill voice pierces the relaxed atmosphere of Starbucks like a wire clay cutter sliding effortlessly into Jake's sculpture. "I've been searching the city for you."
Ryan mutters, "Hell. Should have gone somewhere else."
Then she's upon us. "I'm glad I thought to come check here for you. I was hoping we could go shopping. There are so many great stores here that we don't have in Ottawa."
Ryan glances at me. "Feel like a little shopping?"
"Oh," Claire says before I can answer.
Ryan and I both look at her, and she says, "No, of course that's fine. I was thinking I'd get to spend a little alone time with my son but that's quite all right. We'll get that driving back to Ottawa, won't we? Since Donna's staying here."
Claire has such a way of dropping tiny little daggers into the conversation, almost unnoticed except for the stinging pain they cause their target. It'd be impressive if so many of them weren't aimed at me.
"Yup, we'll get it driving home," Ryan says. "So of course it's fine if we all go shopping."
"I was afraid you might have been shopping already and wouldn't want to go," Claire says. "What have you been up to?"
"Brunch," I say. "Then chatting."
"For hours? What on earth about?"
I'm about to point out that I have lost fifteen years of my life so it'd take more than a few hours to get even just the pieces that involve Ryan filled in, but fortunately he steps in before me, with a much less confrontational response. "I was telling her all my secrets."
She smiles at him. "Oh, Ryan, you have no secrets. A big open book, that's you."
He gives a forced laugh. "That's what I like people to think." To me, he says, "All those secrets I shared with you today, nobody knows them. Guard them with your life, okay?"
I know what he's trying to tell me, and I'm thrilled that his mother doesn't know he cheated on me. No doubt she'd be certain it was all my fault. I smile and pretend to lock my lips shut.
He smiles back, and his mother says, "What secrets did you share?"
He raises his eyebrows at her. "If I told you, they wouldn't be secrets, would they? Nothing big, Mom, just... stuff."
"But--"
She's obviously not going to let it go so I say, "Deep dark secrets. Like his favorite candy, and where he buys his socks."
Ryan laughs, then gives me a mock glare. "Don't give them away!"
I clap a hand over my mouth in fake shock and he gives my other hand a squeeze.
"So, shopping," Claire says, sounding like she's not keen on the... would we call this 'flirtation' between Ryan and me? I think so. I am flirting with my husband. And he is certainly flirting back. "The stores are only open another two hours or so. Are we all going?"
I would rather go home to my new apartment and paint a wall so I can watch it dry than hang out with Claire. "I'll leave you guys to it," I say. "It's been a busy day and I could use a little time alone."
Claire gives me a big sweet utterly fake smile. "Of course, dear. You get your rest. Ryan, are you ready to go?"
He nods, but looks to me instead of getting up. "Did you have any more questions you need answered right now?"
In front of his mother? I think quickly then say, "Yes, about Bubbly Words."
Claire says, "What, dear?" but Ryan knows what I mean. "The game? What about it? I can't help you play, I never tried it."
"It's not that." I explain the existence of the secret area in the game. "I have no idea how to get into it though. Do you?"
He shakes his head, and I search his face but don't feel like he's lying. "I never touched it and Donna definitely didn't mention that."
"You'll get to see all of your secrets if you figure it out," Claire says. "Then Ryan can see yours like he's told you all of his."
My eyes meet Ryan's, and I know he doesn't want to read how Donna really felt about his affair. I'm not sure I do either, but learning more can only improve the chances of my memories coming back. "If I find out where Donna buys her socks, I'll let you know."
He winks and we all get up and head out. On the sidewalk, he gives my shoulder a squeeze. "Have a good evening. We'll be heading back to Ottawa after breakfast tomorrow, so how's about you and I have breakfast and then Mom and I will make the drive?"
He's been very clear with who's going to be where, and I like it. "Sounds good. Why don't I talk to my friend Hannah about where we should go and let you know first thing in the morning?"
There's a slyness to his smile that suggests he knows I'm trying to make sure Claire can't find us. Knows, and likes it. "Works for me."
He pulls me closer into a half hug, and I wrap my arm around his waist and squeeze him back.
Claire looks like she smells something bad.
Another question hits me. "Ryan, I emailed Ethan on Thursday but he hasn't written back. Any idea how responsive he usually is?"
Ryan pulls away from me. "Did you put his name in the subject line?"
"Nope. Should I have?"
"His school gets a lot of junk mail so their spam filter is really picky. Try his name. Okay, Mom, let's go."
She nods, looking distracted, and they leave and I walk toward the subway thinking through all I've learned today. What a crazy and saddening life Donna had. Do I want any part of it?
I can see how I might someday want Ryan. But I certainly don't envy Donna her mother-in-law.
I've only gone a few feet when Claire calls, "Donna!"
I turn back to see her heading toward me with Ryan in tow. He looks tense and unhappy, but puts on a smile when he sees me looking at him.
"Donna, dear, Ryan forgot to tell you." She pats his arm. "Poor boy, so much on his mind. But I remembered as we were walking away so I reminded him. Tell her, honey."
Ryan clears his throat. "If you put the words 'monkey butler' in the subject line of your email, it'll get to Ethan right away. He's got it set up somehow to make sure those words get through."
I blink. "Monkey butler?"
He shrugs. "Don't ask me why, but that's the phrase. Sorry, I should have said so before. I didn't think of it."
He looks so sorry, like he thinks I'll be furious. I'm not, though. He certainly does have quite a bit on his mind, what with his wife disappearing and all that, so I just smile and say, "I'll try it. Thanks."
We say our goodbyes again and go our separate ways, but doubts hit me as soon as we part and I spend the whole trip home wondering why he didn't tell me this right away. Busy mind or not, I can't really believe he forgot the code phrase when I mentioned my email not being answered. It's pretty memorable. Did he not want to say the words in front of Claire in case she used them to email my brother? But no, Claire already knew about it.
Or could it be that Ryan was considering not helping me get in touch with the only person who can help me remember my childhood?
But why?