Page 90 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

“I want to help her, Cassian. It’s just this one time.”

I should have heard the warning hidden inside those words.

Because it wasn’t just once.

It became a pattern, a secret commitment that unfolded right under my nose.

I should have fought harder. I should have been more vigilant. I should have burned that bridge between them myself.

Every day, I uncovered another way I had failed Alessia, another mistake I had made that I could never take back.

She waved me off. “I’m always surprised to see my son.”

I barely held back a flinch.

Son.

I hated hearing her call me that. Hated the claim buried inside those two syllables, the reminder that no matter how far I ran or how much I tried to build a life beyond this house, I would always be the boy who owed her something.

Every time she said it, I felt that invisible debt close around me again, pulling tight until breathing took effort.

“Can we talk inside?” I asked. The words came out strained, thinner than I wanted them to. I cleared my throat and forced myself to meet her eyes, refusing to let her see how badly I wanted to turn around and leave.

Her eyes narrowed as she studied me. She took in my face, my rigid posture, the tension I couldn’t quite hide. Whatever she saw seemed to satisfy some private question, because she stepped aside without another word.

I crossed the threshold, and my chest constricted.

The instant I stepped inside, the air changed. Familiar pressure closed in from every direction, and I had to fight the instinct to retreat. Nothing had changed. The same walls. The same hallway. The same rooms that had once felt impossibly large when I was a child with nowhere else to go.

My childhood home.

Calling it bittersweet would have been too kind.

These walls had given me a roof when I was a child with nowhere else to go. I should have been grateful for them. Instead, they became the place that taught me to despise the person I was.

This was the place where my mother’s moods could turn without warning, where one wrong word could bring a storm down on me. Where every scream taught me to brace for what came next. Where love and pain had always existed side by side, so tangled together that I could never tell where one ended and the other began.

“What would you like to eat?” she asked, turning toward me with a little gasp. “Should I make your favorite risotto?”

Risotto wasn’t my favorite.

It had been my father’s.

I forced my throat to work. “Ma…”

She turned to face me fully, her attention sharpening beneath that pleasant expression. “Yes, son?” she asked, giving the word a softness that made my stomach twist.

This time, I couldn’t hide the flinch. It cut through me before I could stop it, swift and instinctive, dragging every buried thing to the surface.

I closed my eyes, drawing a steadying breath. This wasn’t about me. This wasn’t about the old debts or the ghosts in this house.

When I opened my eyes again, whatever hesitation had held me back was gone. “Let’s sit and talk.” The words came out calm now, stripped of the strain that had gripped me moments ago.

She straightened, her eyes sharpening as they moved over my face. A beat later, her smile returned, smooth and practiced. “Of course,” she said softly. “Let’s sit.”

She crossed to the couch and lowered herself onto it with effortless elegance. I took the chair opposite her, leaning forward with my hands clasped between my knees.

I didn’t bother easing into it.