Vacant Heart

Chapter Thirty-Nine

With my coat on my lap, I sit idly, watching my mother watch television.

It feels odd to be here, but Samantha told me I'd gotten to the point where I was here every day with her. She told me we'd managed to heal a lot that was broken. Watching her like this, so distant, so far away, seems like a cruel joke.

Because last I remember, the dementia was barely affecting her. She could live on her own. She could cook her meals. She was sharp as a whistle. Now, I'm here and she's aged considerably.

She's hardly here, and I missed it all. The old me found closure. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

We're both sitting here, without a damn clue.

I'm more frightened, more confused than I've ever been in my life. Everyone is on the outside. Everyone is moving consistently all around me and I can't keep up, because every time I think I'm gaining hold on something, rugs are ripped out from under me-another confession, another event I've lost-brought to my attention.

My last memory is in a restaurant with a man I can't even remember the name of. He found me at the bar while I waited for Samantha. It was nearly Valentine's Day. He offered me a rose he'd bought on the corner of the street and I saw the impending hope of what he thought he'd gain from speaking to me-which I knew would never come to fruition-and I pointed out a girl who'd been alone in a booth the entire night, telling him he'd make more progress there than with me.

They left together. I remember it clearly.

I'd just taken off my engagement ring, free of its binds. Free to do what I want, act how I want. It was a process still, of course, remembering how to adapt to life on my own again, life without Bradley. He was the first man I lived with, the first man I allowed close enough that breaking his heart was inevitable.

Now, he's here, one of the only things that I'm sure of. I've lost sense of who I am, tortured by the person people had begun to see me as-someone so different than the solid foundations I'd entrusted myself to.

Aidan Hughes knows me. I have no clue what prompted me to disclose so much to him, what made me desire him more than my life here.

He's striking. He's so striking to look at, and I'm sure that was one of the factors. I can picture him in the diner, or in the moment he walked into the hospital room when I reemerged, and marvel at the way his face is shaped, the way his smile can touch and transform every angle on it, washing the lasting sadness from them so long as his mouth is curved.

He's clearly brilliant. In the hospital, he'd read, nearly every time he wasn't focused on me. I'm pretty sure it was to get away from me, from that room. He did it to escape.

I don't know how to understand his love. I don't know how to get back what I lost, or even if I want to.

Was I happy? Truly?

Samantha says I was. She says I was bright, that you could catch my glow from a mile away. She said she was jealous of what being with him did for me, how fast he changed the very fabric of who I was. She said I was more alive than I'd ever been.

And just that-just that makes me more frightened than I can even fathom.

What if I go to him, try to force that kind of perfection upon us, only to come out disappointed? There's no way it'll work. There's so much to love about him, but I banished love from my life a very long time ago.

And sitting here, with my mother, studying her frailty and her rapid decline, brings forth a weight to my chest, crushing like an elephant. To love is to hurt.