Mikaela turned the pages slowly, mesmerized by the images of the life she’d led.

She had forgotten how young she was when she married Julian.

At first, in the pictures, she was bright and beautiful and always smiling, but as the photos accumulated, she saw how thin she’d grown, how jaded her look had become.

In all the photographs of Mike with Jacey, it was just the two of them, alone. No smiling father. And later, as they waited for Julian, the pictures of them had been taken by strangers.

She sighed. “Oh, Mama.”

Rosa flipped through a few pages, until she found the first pictures with Liam. “You see it?”

“See what?”

“Your smile. It is coming back here. I notice this the first time you send me pictures of you and Liam.”

An aching sadness spread through Mikaela. “Why didn’t I love him, Mama? What’s wrong with me?”

“You know the answer to this question.”

“I’ve made a mess of my life.”

Rosa laughed. “You are young. It takes many years to truly make a mess of your life. This I know about.”

Mikaela turned to her. “How will I fix it?”

Rosa’s smile faded. “Let me tell you something else I know. When you hide things away, and keep them secret, they have a … power. Take your life apart, Mikita, look at it for once … and maybe you will be surprised at what you see.”

Chapter Twenty-six

Mikaela counted the moments until she could see her children. After Rosa left, Mike had spent an hour with the physical therapist, trying to relearn how to gracefully use a spoon. Who would have thought it would be so damned complicated to stick a spoon in a bowl of oatmeal and get the gruel to your own mouth? At one point, she’d wanted to hurl the whole breakfast at the wall. Then she’d remember why it was that men had temper tantrums and women didn’t: cleanup.

Now it was nearly noon. She stood at the small window of her room, staring out at the parking lot below. The outdoor Christmas decorations were in place. Multicolored bulbs twined around the street-lamps. At night, she knew, the sparkly lights transformed even this ordinary parking lot into a winter wonderland.

It saddened her, this evidence of the coming holidays. Usually she was a Christmas addict, a whirling dervish who maniacally put up decorations and gathered her children around her on the sofa for the yearly viewings of It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. This year all she felt was a yawning, aching sense of loss. She couldn’t get a true sense of where she belonged anymore, and somehow, at Christmas, that sense of being lost was even worse.

There was a knock at the door.

Mikaela turned so fast she stumbled. Her right leg was still weak, and it couldn’t keep up with such quick movements. She clutched the windowsill and hung on to avoid falling onto that ugly speckled linoleum floor.

Liam stood in the doorway. He looked awkward and uncertain, his tall, lanky body tilted to one side, his too-long hair falling across one eye. Quietly he closed the door behind him. He moved into the room but stopped short of her.

She could see the uncertainty in his eyes; he didn’t know where he stood with her. And how could he, now that he knew everything she’d hidden from him? She felt an overwhelming shame. She’d hurt him so much …

“Hello, Liam.” She wanted to say more, but she didn’t know where to start; she didn’t know if there even was a beginning that could take them where they needed to go.

He looked at her, still unsmiling. “Rosa tells me that you’ve regained a huge chunk of your memories.”

She let go of the windowsill and limped toward him, holding her weakened right arm against her suddenly upset stomach. “Yes. There are still a few blank spots, but a lot of it’s back.”

“That’s great.” There was no enthusiasm in his voice, just a dull flatness that didn’t sound like him at all.

She gazed up at him, noticing the network of lines that had gathered around his eyes. They were new lines, etched on by the trauma of her injury.

I love you, Liam. Those were the words he needed to hear. She could have said it, easily in fact. She did love him; she always had. But it was a watery version that had more to do with comfort and friendship than passion.

If only Julian were simply the first man she’d loved. That would have left room in her heart for falling in love with Liam. Hardly anyone stayed with their first lover anymore.

But Julian was more than that. She’d always called it love, what she felt for him; now, standing here with her husband, she saw what it truly was: obsession.

First love was like a sweet song that turned you weepy and nostalgic. Obsession, she knew, was different; a dark and secret need that never mellowed into something pretty. A first love could someday let you go. An obsession, she was afraid, held on to your throat until you died.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Liam,” she said softly.

He smiled. It was sad and tired, that smile, worn as thin as ancient blacktop. “I don’t know what to say to you anymore, Mike. It’s like … treading water in the deep end.”

“Liam—”

He held up a hand. “Let me finish. I’ve got some things that have to be said. You could have told me more of the truth, you know. We might have had a chance if you had.”

Mikaela turned away from him and limped toward her bed, climbing in, pulling the sheets up to her chin—as if a little layer of cotton and acrylic could shield her from the emotional punch of his words. “I know.”

A flash of anger darkened his green eyes, but was gone almost before it began, replaced by a resignation that tore at her heart. “Don’t you know what it was like for me … loving you all those years, knowing it wasn’t enough for you, and needing so goddamn badly for you to love me back?” He sighed. “I love you, Mike. I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you …”

“I only did it because I knew you,” she said. “I knew what it had been like for you, growing up in Ian’s shade. I didn’t want you to always wonder about Julian. I thought … if you didn’t know who he was, you’d be able to forget I’d been married. Same with Jacey—I thought Julian would be too … big for a child to ever forget, and she needed you as a father so much.”

“I know all that, Mike.” He said her name softly, on a sigh. “I just want to say this: no more lies. That’s all I’m asking. While you were sleeping, I woke up. Before, I could hold on to the illusion that someday it would change. I kept thinking I could love enough for both of us, but I couldn’t, could I?” He touched her face with a gentleness that made her want to weep. “Maybe you were right to hide the past from me. When I didn’t know, I could pretend not to see the little things. I let you have your secrets and your silences and your sadnesses. Can you imagine what those silences would do to me now? I’d constantly be wondering, Is she thinking of him?”

She could feel the tearing of her heart, and the pain of it was worse than anything she’d ever imagined.

She’d planted the seeds of that pain herself and fertilized them over the years with her own obsession.

He leaned toward her and held her face in his strong, steady hands, and very slowly, he kissed her. In that one, tender touching of lips was all the heartache and desperation and joy of a deep and lasting love.

While she was still gasping for an even breath, he turned and left the room.

It was three o’clock. An hour until the kids would be here.

Mikaela lay in bed, staring dully at the television tucked up into the corner of the ceiling. In beautiful black-and-white images, It’s a Wonderful Life unfolded.

It was nearing the end now. George Bailey—Jimmy Stewart—had just realized what the world was without him, and everything he’d always wanted and longed for had changed. He was tearing into that drafty old house now, breaking off the banister …

As always, Mikaela was crying, but this time she wasn’t crying for George Bailey; she was crying for herself. When the townspeople started showing up with their money to save the savings and loan, she automatically looked for Liam, to tell him that his favorite scene was on.

But there was no Liam beside her, no Christmas tree in the corner, no children rattling packages under the tree and whining that they’d seen this movie a billion times.

She threw the covers back, got up, and walked to the closet. There, sitting forlornly beneath a row of empty hangers, was a small brown leather suitcase. She reached down and picked it up with her left hand—the right one was still too weak to use—and dragged it to the bed, flipping it onto the mattress. Then she unlatched the small brass closures; the suitcase twanged open.

She ran her fingers across the clothing. It had to be Liam’s doing, this artful arrangement of her favorite things. A black broomstick skirt and white turtleneck, with a matching tapestry vest. The silver concho belt she always wore with the skirt. A pair of black riding boots. Bra and panties. He’d even remembered her favorite gold hoop earrings—the ones that dangled a pair of cherub angels. And all of her makeup, even her hairbrush and perfume.

She couldn’t help thinking how it must have been for him as he’d stood in her huge, walk-in closet, choosing clothing to go in a suitcase that might never be opened …

She would have grabbed anything to get out of that closet, stuffed mismatched clothing in a brown paper bag.

But not Liam. No matter how much it hurt, he would have stood there, thinking, choosing, touching. She imagined that if she looked closely enough, there would be tiny gray tear spots on the white cotton of the turtleneck.

She stripped out of the flimsy hospital gown and tossed it onto the molded pink chair. It was difficult to dress herself—her right hand was barely any help at all—but she kept at it, pulling and tugging and strapping and buttoning until it was done.

Then she went into the bathroom and wet down her hair, combing it back from her face. There was no way she could put on makeup with her left hand, so she settled for pinching her cheeks.

She walked down the hall, with no idea where she was going. When she ended up at the hospital chapel, she realized she must have been heading there all along.

Kneeling in front of the utilitarian Formica altar, she stared up at the brass cross, then closed her eyes and imagined the altar at St. Michael’s.

“Please, God, help me. Show me the way home.”

At first there was only darkness. Then a small, yellow ray of piercing sunlight. She heard voices as if from far away, a child’s high-pitched giggle, a man speaking to her softly.

She saw herself at a funeral, standing back, away from the group of mourners at the grave site. Ian’s funeral. The melancholy strains of a lone bagpipe filled the cold winter’s air. Liam turned and saw her. She barely knew him, and yet she was moving toward him. She took his hand and walked him back to the car. They didn’t say a word. He got into the limousine, and she watched him drive away …

The image shifted, went in and out of focus. After that, the memories came one after another, unconnected by time or space, just the random moments of life. She and Liam dancing at last year’s Tex-Mex hoedown … him drying the dishes while she washed them … him driving her to the feed store in that rickety red truck they called “the heapster.”