Page 83 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

The team had needed me. That was what I had told myself. I had convinced myself that I owed them my time, my loyalty, every last ounce of energy I had left.

But didn’t I owe my wife more?

And when I finally came home, I couldn’t even give her a proper conversation. All I could think about was how tired I was, how badly I wanted a shower, a bed, a few hours without having to carry anything else. She had stood there in front of me, and all I had seen was another demand on a mind already stretched to its limit. Now I could remember her face. The hurt she had tried to hide. The way she had still been reaching for me even after I had given her every reason to stop.

I had been so consumed by my own exhaustion that I hadn’t noticed what I was doing to her.

What kind of husband had I been during those last few months?

No.

It went back even further.

For an entire year, my mother had been exploiting Alessia, and I hadn’t known a damn thing about it. The fact that Alessia hadn’t told me the details didn’t absolve me. She shouldn’t have needed to spell out every wound before I noticed she was hurting. I was her husband. I should have known something was wrong. I should have paid attention to the woman beside me instead of waiting for her to break badly enough for me to finally notice.

She hadn’t known the full extent of what I was dealing with, yet she had still noticed my burden. She had seen the strain I was carrying even when I hadn’t explained it to her. She had tried to make things easier for me, tried to stand beside me, tried to carry some of the weight when I couldn’t carry it alone.

I had been given the same opportunity to do that for her.

And I had left her to carry it alone.

When had I become this insufferable, oblivious man, so consumed by his own world that his wife could suffer right in front of him and he would still fail to see it?

How could I ever fix this?

The answer came without mercy, filling the space she had left behind.

Maybe I couldn’t.

I should let her go.

The thought hit hard enough to make my chest seize. No. Every part of me rejected it before the word had even formed. Letting her go wasn’t an option. Loving Alessia had never felt like something I could choose to stop doing. She was my wife. My home.

I had always believed I knew how to make her happy. It was one of the things I had been most proud of, one of the few things I had never questioned. No one could love her the way I did. No one could know her the way I did, care for her the way I did, give her the life I could give her. I had clung to that belief through every mistake, every argument, every desperate attempt to keep her from slipping away. It had become the excuse beneath everything.

Then the question came, crueler than the rest.

When was the last time I had actually made her happy?

The answer refused to come.

My mind reached for a memory, any memory, and found only fragments that hurt to touch. Alessia laughing until she had to cover her mouth. Her eyes lighting up over something small. The warmth of her smile when she caught me watching her. Those moments belonged to another version of our marriage, another version of me.

When had I last seen that woman in her?

My chest ached.

All I could see was the night she left.

Her tears.

The suitcase in her hand.

The look in her eyes when she had walked out of the house.

There had been no anger left in her then. No fight. No hope that I would finally understand. Just a painful acceptance that told me she had already reached the end of what she could endure.

And I had done that to her.