Page 89 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

How could I forget that?

How could I ever pretend I didn’t owe her?

I owed her more than I could ever repay.

What I didn’t owe her was my wife.

Alessia should never have been dragged into the orbit of my mother’s world. She was—and always would be—the only person I had ever truly called mine. The one person I wanted beside me when everything else fell apart. The one I had promised myself I would keep untouched by the poison that had seeped through my family for years.

But my mother had reached into my sanctuary and dragged Alessia into the mess.

And the most gut-wrenching part was that I had been blind to it. I didn’t see it. I failed to protect the one person who mattered the most.

A hard tension gathered behind my teeth. I held myself still, forcing the anger back down before it could spill into my voice.

My mother stood there, already wearing a dazzling smile. She stepped toward me with open arms, her perfume reaching me before she did, and wrapped me in an embrace.

I stood stiff beneath it, my arms hanging uselessly at my sides. I couldn’t bring myself to return the gesture. Every instinct in me wanted to step back, to put distance between us, but I stayed where I was and let her play out the welcome she had prepared.

“Oh, what a pleasant surprise,” she purred, pulling away with a soft laugh. Her hands remained on my shoulders while she studied my face, the warmth in her smile never reaching her eyes. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Why are you surprised?” The words came out colder than I intended, but I didn’t soften them. “I told you I was coming. I told you we needed to talk.”

The smile on her lips held, but I watched the slightest hesitation pass through her expression. I caught it.

I’d spent too many years learning to recognize what my mother tried to hide.

When I saw her at Alessia’s workplace, all I wanted was to get her out of there.

She didn’t belong there. She had no right to step into her world, no right to bring her poison anywhere near her.

So I told her we would talk later, and I poured every second that followed into Alessia, clinging to the desperate hope that I still had a chance. That I still had time to fix us.

Now Alessia was gone.

And I had nothing but time to finally confront the woman who never should have been near her in the first place.

I had always kept them in separate worlds. I never wanted them to meet, never wanted my mother’s presence contaminating Alessia’s life.

The only time their paths crossed was at our reception, one night spent surrounded by people, smiling for photographs and announcing our marriage to the world.

Afterward, I built the wall again.

I thought it was high enough.

I thought it would hold.

Then, almost a year ago, Alessia told me she had run into my mother.

My mother, who was supposedly too sick to do anything beyond rest, had still refused to cancel one of her precious tea parties. Instead, she had asked Alessia to help her.

I still remembered the way my stomach dropped when she said it.

I refused immediately.

“No,” I told Alessia, the answer leaving me before she had even finished explaining. “Absolutely not. You are not getting involved in this. I’ll hire a team of planners. I’ll handle everything.”

Alessia had looked at me with that stubborn softness I had never known how to resist.