The Wife He Couldn't Forget

He looked at his reflection in the small mirror and rubbed his hand around his jaw, ruffling the beard that had grown during his stay here. He looked like a stranger to himself. Maybe that was part of Olivia’s reticence. The beard would have to go when he got home. Xander gathered his things off the floor and shoved them in the bag Olivia had brought and opened the bathroom door.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“Let’s go then,” she answered with that beautiful smile of hers that always did crazy things to his equilibrium.

Had he ever told her how much he loved her smile, or how much he loved to hear her laugh? He couldn’t quite remember. Another thing he would have to address in due course.

They stopped at the nurses’ station to say goodbye and collect his discharge papers, and then they began the walk down the corridor toward the elevator. It irked him that Olivia had to slow her steps to match his. It bothered him even more that by the time they reached her car he was exhausted. He dropped into the passenger seat with an audible sigh of relief.

“I’m sorry—I should have gotten you to wait at the front entrance and driven round to get you,” Olivia apologized as she got in beside him.

“It’s okay. I’ve had plenty of time to rest. Now it’s time to really get better.”

“You say that like you haven’t been working hard already.” She sighed and rested one hand on his thigh. The warmth of her skin penetrated the fabric of his trousers, and he felt her hand as if it were an imprint on him. “Xander, you’ve come a long way in a very short time. You’ve had to relearn some things that you took for granted before. Cut yourself some slack, huh? It’s going to take time.”

He grunted in response. Time. Seemed he had all too much of it. He put his head back against the headrest as Olivia drove them home, taking solace in the things he recognized and ignoring his surprise at the things that had changed from what he remembered. Auckland was a busy, ever-changing, ever-growing city, but it still disturbed him to see the occasional gaping hole where, in his mind at least, a building used to stand.

“Did the school mind about you taking time off to spend with me?” he asked.

“I don’t work at the school anymore,” Olivia replied. “I stopped before—”

“Before what?” he prompted.

“Before they drove me completely mad,” she said with a laugh that came out a bit forced. “Seriously, I quit there just over five years ago, but I’ve been doing really well with my paintings since. You’d be proud. I’ve had several shows, and I’m actually doing quite well out of it.”

“But it was never about the money, right?” he said, parroting something Olivia had frequently said to him whenever he’d teased her about not producing a more commercial style of work.

“Of course not,” she answered, and this time her smile was genuine.

By the time they arrived at the house he felt about a hundred years old, not that he’d admit it to Olivia, who, to his chagrin, had to help him from the car and up the front stairs to the house.

As she inserted a key into the lock and swung the door open he couldn’t help but twist his lips into a rueful smile.

“Seems like not that long ago I was carrying you across that threshold. Now you’re more likely to have to carry me.”

He regretted his attempt at humor the moment he saw the concern and fear on her face.

“Are you okay?” she said, slipping an arm around his back and tucking herself under his arm so she supported his weight. “You should rest downstairs for a while before tackling the stairs to the bedroom. Or maybe I should just get a bed set up down here for you until you’re stronger.”

“No,” he said with grim determination as they entered the hall. “I’m sleeping upstairs tonight. I’ll manage okay.”

She guided him into the sitting room and onto one of the sofas.

“Cup of coffee?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

While she was gone he looked around, taking in the changes from what he remembered. French doors opened out onto a wooden veranda—they were new, he noted. There’d been a sash window there before and—he looked down at the highly polished floorboards—there’d been some ancient and hideous floral carpet tacked onto the floor. Seems they’d done quite a bit of work around the place.

Xander levered himself to his feet and walked around the room, trailing his hand over the furniture and the top of the ornate mantel over the fireplace, which was flanked by wingback chairs. Had they sat here on a winter’s evening, enjoying the warmth of the fire? He shook his head in frustration. He didn’t know. He sat in one of the chairs to see if it triggered anything, but his mind remained an impenetrable blank.

“Here you are,” Olivia said brightly as she came back into the room. “Oh, you’ve found your chair. Would you like the papers?”

“No, thanks. Just the coffee.”

“Still struggling with concentration?”

He nodded and accepted the mug she handed him. His fingers curled around the handle with familiarity and he stared for a while at the mug. This, he knew. He’d bought it at the Pearl Harbor memorial when they went to Hawaii for their honeymoon. He took a sip and leaned back in the chair.

“That’s good—so much better than the stuff they serve in the hospital.” He sighed happily and looked around the room again. “I guess we did it all, huh? Our plans for the house?”

Olivia nodded. “It wasn’t easy, but we completed it in just over a year. We...um...we got impatient to finish and hired contractors to handle a lot of it. I wish you could remember haggling for those French doors. It was a sight worth seeing.”

He must have pulled a face because she was on her knees at his side in a minute. She reached up to cup his cheek with one hand and turned his face to hers.

“Xander, don’t worry. It’ll come back in its own good time. And if it doesn’t, then we’ll fill that clever mind of yours with new memories, okay?”

Was it his imagination or did she sound more emphatic about the new memories than him remembering his old ones? No, he was just being oversensitive. And overtired, he thought as he felt another wave of exhaustion sweep through him. It was one thing to feel relatively strong while in the hospital, when there were so many people in worse condition he could compare himself with. Quite another to feel the same in your home environment, where you were used to being strong and capable.

He turned his face into her palm and kissed her hand. “Thanks,” he said simply.

She pulled away, a worried frown creasing her brow. “We’ll get through this, Xander.”

“I know we will.”

She got up and smoothed her hands down her jeans. “I’ll go and start dinner for us, okay? We should probably eat early tonight.”

He must have fallen asleep when she left the room because before he knew it he was awoken with another of those featherlight kisses on his forehead.

“I made spaghetti Bolognese, your favorite.”

She helped him stand and they walked arm in arm into the dining room. It looked vastly different from the drop-cloth-covered space he remembered. He looked up at the antique painted glass and polished brass library lamp that was suspended from the ceiling.

“I see you got your way on the prisms,” he commented as he took his seat.

“Not without a battle. I had to concede to the ugliest partner desk in all history for the study upstairs to get this,” she said with a laugh.

He smiled in response. There it was. The laugh he felt had been missing from his life for so long. Odd, when it had only been nine weeks since his accident. It felt so much longer.

After dinner Xander propped himself against the kitchen counter while Olivia cleaned up. He tried to help, but after a plate slipped from his fingers and shattered on the tile floor, he retreated in exasperation to the sidelines to watch.

“Stop pushing yourself,” Olivia admonished as she swept up the last of the splinters of china on the floor with a dustpan and brush.

“I can’t help it. I want to be my old self again.”

She straightened up from depositing the mess in the kitchen trash bin. “You are your old self—don’t worry so much.”

“With Swiss cheese for brains,” he grumbled.