Leave a Trace: Book Two

Chapter Twenty Three: Hippocampus

Chapter Twenty Three: Hippocampus

Rosabelle

All I've learned from this extensively painful experience with Alexander Caulton is that there at multiple different kinds of heartbreaks.

There's the most common kind, one where you lose a significant other. There's kind where you lose a best friend. The kind where you lose a pet. There's a kind where a family member dies.

But the most bitter, the most insufferably painful one, is the kind where you lose your significant other when neither one wants it.

I did everything I could. He let me push it to a month, and I took him anywhere I ever remembered going in Spokane. I got access to both of our old houses, and even Colton's. I took him to the high school we met at, stood him in the exact same spot. He already remembered that part but he doesn't remember anything.

I took him to California where he got Alice back and he remembered that. That memory came back, but I was hardly even in that memory, and he didn't remember the drive up. I took him to Dallas and got him to stand on the exact field that he won the Super Bowl on. I took him to the hotel where he found out I was pregnant. I took him to the mall in Milwaukee.

He didn't remember anything except for when he saw the message about Reagan on my phone.

And I know without a shadow of a doubt, that when we walk in the door tonight, he's going to pack.

He's going to pack up all of his things and he's going to leave, and I'm going to be alone to raise our kids.

And he doesn't know. He doesn't know me. He doesn't know.

I brought him to my parents house with the whole family and we tried to jog his memory but he just couldn't remember a thing. I too him to the gym, to his old house where he lived with Alice, I took him to the gym Alice goes to and the one I went to, I took him to the drive in theatre where we first messed around. I took him to the fair we went to for our first date, and the restaurant we went to.

I took him anywhere I could, even to my old house where we lost our virginity, where he found out about his mom.

I don't know what else to do. I don't know how else to help. He keeps telling me he's sorry and I just stopped answering him.

I know he's sorry. I'm sorry too.

That bitch that hit him...I'm going to sue her for all I have. I want her ass thrown in jail.

She ruined my entire life. My whole entire life.

Because he's my entire life, and he's gone.

She ruined my husband. She ruined me. She ruined our sons.

She ruined my happy ending.

I seriously didn't think this was the end, but now I'm nearly convinced.

I would make him fall back in love with me. I could do it easily, but he doesn't want to. He wants to start over.

"Where are we going now?" He whispers in the silence of the car.

"The hospital." I sniffle. I'm trying my best not to cry.

"Why?" He asks.

"You have a checkup appointment." I say dully.

"Okay."

"I'm sorry." He whispers. "I want to remember."

"I know." I say with a sigh. "It's not your fault."