All the answers, my friends. Thank you for your response to that last chapter and for continuing to go on this journey with me, Aiden, and Elisa.  Lots of love, xo Ani.

 

11

Phenomenon

There is no question about reality back inside the cottage. If anything, it has never felt more real, more full of life since my parents’ accident. The fire crackles in the fireplace; Mum and Dad are still dancing on the small TV screen. But the most tangible life comes from the two people on each side of me. I’m curled on the sofa with my head on Reagan’s shoulder, soaking her blouse with my tears, while Javier has wrapped both my socked feet in his callused hands. He clutches them every so often, probably at an inner thought he does not speak, while Reagan combs my hair with her fingers.

And yet, even with all this life suddenly flowing within these walls, I feel like I’ve just returned from another funeral. A funeral for the deepest, best part of me—for the brightest star of them all. Aiden, Aiden, Aiden. It’s as though his name has breached through the ramparts and now my mind cannot stop saying it, sighing it, sobbing it. I didn’t even invite him inside the cottage. He would have liked this for me. He would have imprinted every book and teacup in his eternal mind, and they would have lived inside him. But could I have ever let him go if I had let him in? Especially now that Javier and Reagan have told me everything he did to save us, to give me this one moment full of life. Things that recast the final day Aiden and I had together in America under a new, blinding light.

I now know how Javier was arrested by ICE that early May morning. How he called Aiden’s phone because mine was still in the trunk of his old Honda. How Aiden told him he would do what he could to help—yet he never told me. Whether to protect me from the distress or to ensure I hated him more, I will never know. But he kept his word to Javier. It was Aiden who sent Benetto at Javier’s hearing, who paid every dime of Benetto’s fees without telling anyone until Benetto himself told Javier in the end. It was Aiden’s Marines who moved the Solises with his parents so they could be safe from ICE, while Aiden and his military mentor at the CIA, General Sartain, secured a safe, solitary cell for Javier. And at the trial, Aiden himself took the witness stand. He testified that he commissioned Javier for a painting as a family gift—not as illegal work—and that the painting supplies were at his home, never stolen. He anticipated every threat and prepared for it with military precision long before any of us could even see it. And it still didn’t work in the end. Judge Lopez still ruled Javier should be deported but no one expected Aiden’s Plan B.  He had mobilized Senator Kirschner—a name I overheard myself that last day—to campaign for Congress to intervene. Such a rare, historical avenue, with such slim chances of succeeding, no wonder Aiden kept it to himself.  But his stock with the U.S. Government must be high indeed. Senator Kirschner and General Sartain—with their vast political networks—managed to give Aiden this one gift, perhaps as a small repayment for everything his country cost him. The Senator used Congress’s legislative power to abrogate the court’s ruling for humanitarian reasons and grant Javier and his family immediate amnesty. And this congressional act means that ICE can never deport Javier or any of the Solises, that Javier is now a legal resident of the land he wanted so much. A freedom, a new life—all possible in the end because of Aiden’s torture in Iraq.

How small and feeble my own sacrifice now seems compared to his. But for his part, Bob kept his word and attended Javier’s trial. When it was over, he told Javier I had left and released the funds to him. Javier was getting mad while talking about that so he skipped over it quickly to the happy parts. How the Solises reunited with squeals that may have actually cracked a window. And how, after Maria and Antonio learned what I had done, they decided Javier should come with Reagan right away to check on me. How Aiden flew them here in a private jet with advance parole from ICE to get to me as soon as possible. And how none of them will touch my one million dollars so I can still use the money to return to America.

But how could I after all this? I didn’t leave America because of Javier’s fate. I left America because I could not live there a single day without my love. And that has not changed. In fact, it’s stronger now that I know everything he did to save the Solises. And I have never felt more bound. But that does not mean Aiden should remain bound to me. And if I returned, the green card deal requires that I invest my money in his company, that I remain in his life. And I can never do that to him. No matter what it costs me, he must have a chance at freedom, at happiness, away from the obligations and pain I trigger for him. Not to mention that I could never abandon this cottage again or give up on the bravery protein that will help Aiden more than I ever could. I have to work even harder now, day and night, to give him some peace.

These are things I cannot tell Javier and Reagan who have travelled across the world to see me.

“Isa, are you sure about this? I hate to see you so upset.” Reagan breaks the long silence, asking the same question for the sixth time since I ran back in, sobbing.

But Javier stops her now. “Not anymore tonight, Reg. You’re both exhausted. Actually, I think it’s time for bed. Things might look a little better after some sleep.” He lumbers up and sets down his empty bowl of pea soup as though to make it final. Then he douses the fire and checks all the windows and doors like he would do back at his home even though Burford has not had a break-in since 1976.

“Bed!” he says again when he is done, and marches us up the narrow creaky stairs even though he has no idea where he is going. I put him in the guest room I had prepared for Reagan. I guess the roses brought some good news after all. But Reagan refuses to sleep in my old bedroom, saying she’ll stay with me tonight.

Curled up on my parents’ bed, she’s on my dad’s side that has been empty for so long, holding my hand. And she starts again.

“Oh, Isa, why did you let him go? You don’t still think he reported Javi, do you?” she whispers, and I know she has been holding this question in because she never told Javier my suspicions. How can I ever thank her for that?

“No!” I shake my head hard. “No, I was wrong about that! You were right all along. It wasn’t Aiden. It was Feign. Did that not come up at the trial?”

“That fucking little weasel,” she hisses in the dark. “That’s who Javi suspected! And no it didn’t. The tip was anonymous like Benetto said.”

At least the Solises never believed Aiden a monster. At least they always saw him for what he is—a good man.

“So why leave him, Isa? If you know it wasn’t him.”

“Because I want him to be happy. I want him to be happy more than I want happiness for myself. And I can’t give him that.”

“But why? I’ve seen you two together and it’s like seeing your parents in the videos. Same look, same love. I don’t get it.”

Same love, same end. I can’t speak. How can I tell Reagan about Aiden’s eidetic memory that holds him prisoner, about his PTSD that will never allow him to give us a life together? How can I tell her he attacked me and now with his memory every time he sees me, he will see bruises and pain, not peace and calm like I used to give him? How can I tell her that Aiden’s love is forever but only from a distance and always at the cost of himself? These are his secrets that I will protect until my last breath.

“Is it because of that thing you can’t tell me?” Reagan guesses.

I nod. “It is, Reg. It’s exactly that thing.”

“I KNOW YOU’RE STILL TALKING OVER THERE!” Javier shouts down the tiny hall. “STOP IT AND GO TO SLEEP. DON’T MAKE ME COME OVER AND PUT YOU BOTH IN DIFFERENT BEDS.”

Reg giggles and, to my surprise, I giggle too. It feels nice, like a soft blanket or rosewater on parched skin. “He’s such a big brother,” I say, reveling in the sound of his free voice reverberating through the cottage.

“Yeah, he is,” Reagan agrees but her smiles fades away. And now that I’m not sobbing, I hear a sadness in her tone, a sadness that has nothing to do with me. I sit up and switch on the side lamp.

“Reg, what’s the matter? What’s wrong?” I touch her cheek, trying to lift up her lips back into a smile. She does it but it’s forced. Her heart-shaped face is pale, her eyes tearful.

“It’s nothing,” she says. “So small compared to what you’re dealing with.”

“Nothing is small to me if it makes you feel this way. Tell me.”

She traces the rose applique on the comforter with her pinky, not meeting my eyes. “I’m an idiot,” she says. My kindest, smartest, strongest friend in the whole word who has been carrying so much weight on her delicate shoulders thinks she is an idiot.

“What lunacy is this? Why would you say such a thing?”

“FINAL WARNING!” Javier howls again, and I see it then. I see the way she closes her eyes as her breath catches at his voice. The way her cheeks flush crimson. I throw my hand over my mouth to stifle my gasp. Her wide eyes match mine, except mine are happy for once and hers are terrified.

“You and Javier!” I mouth the words in case he’s stomping down the hall.

“Shhhhh,” Reagan bolts up right, clamping her hand over my mouth. I try to grin with my eyes. “There’s no me and Javier,” she whispers so low I see the words more than I hear them. “There’s just me and . . . me.”

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” is all I can manage before Reagan throws the comforter over both our heads. “He doesn’t know?” I confirm though it’s obvious from the way she looks toward the door even under the blankets.

“Of course not. And he cannot. Isa, swear it!”

“Why ever not?”

She freaks out—that’s the only way to describe it even though it’s entirely silent. Head shaking, hands in fists . “No, no, no! He… he . . . he just sees me a sister, Isa, just like you.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just know.”

The bedroom door bangs open and the lights switch on as the source of all of Reagan’s suffering bursts in. “I warned you,” Javier says while under the covers Reagan turns about five shades redder than her curls. “Are you under the covers? What are you, Anamelia’s age?” He rips off the comforter, glowering at us in his long underwear and a white T-shirt. I see him now with new eyes—not as a brother, but as a man who apparently can turn my best friend into rubidium-hued puddle on the floor. He is rugged and toughened in every way from his worker hands and arms to his full beard. Except his artist’s eyes. Javier has always had the softest eyes. Bloody hell, my big brother is kind of good-looking! How did I not notice this before?

“What are you looking at?” he demands and I giggle again to keep his eyes on me rather than Reagan whose hand is trembling in mine.

“Sorry, Javier, we’ve just missed each other, that’s all,” I mumble in my best little-sister voice. It works. His already-lined forehead relaxes and he perches on my side of the bed. From his weight, the mattress shifts and I can swear Reagan almost tips over.

“I know you have,” he pats my head, and looks at Reagan for the first time. She’s staring at the rose appliques like they’ve come alive and are crawling on her hands.            “Come here,” he says softly, wrapping his arms around us both like a bundle. Reagan’s hand grips mine, and I know in that clasp exactly how she feels about him.

“Listen.” Javier pulls back, clueless about the havoc he is wreaking. “It’s almost light out. Please try to get some sleep. And if you do, I promise to make carnitas for dinner instead of whatever that thing is you Brits call food. Hm?” He smiles and we both grin at him, for entirely different reasons I’m sure.

“Now go to sleep,” he says and tucks us in, kisses the tops of our heads, and turns off the lights. “Dulces sueños.”

When the door closes, I wrap my arms around Reagan as she hides her face in my neck. I see her predicament now. Being a brother is so embedded in Javier’s DNA he can’t see himself as anything else. “We’ll figure it out,” I tell her. She nods but doesn’t speak. At length, as the sky lightens on this endless night, her breathing slows and her faint little snores blow warm gusts of air on my skin. I think about her love story, about how it must have started when she was visiting Javier in jail every day, how Javier could not possibly resist her if he could only see, how easy and perfect it would be, and how it should have a happy ending unlike mine. I’m not guarding my thoughts as carefully as I do so I don’t see where they lead me until the pain stuns me again, pinning me to the mattress until I can’t breathe. I try to match my breath to Reagan’s but it doesn’t work. She stirs, probably reacting to my body that has gone rigid with agony. Hydrogen, I think habitually without hope because I know tricks like that are futile against this kind of pain. It’s worth it for him, I tell myself over and over again. And I can help him from far away without him knowing. It will not be the life I wanted, but it will be life.

My body isn’t buying any of it. Pain radiates in shockwaves until my fingertips tingle. I know the pain is in my mind, but it doesn’t make it less real. I slip out of bed carefully and tiptoe out not to wake Reagan. Down the hall, I listen at Javier’s door, at his deep, rhythmic breathing. The hell he has lived through eclipses all of ours combined and yet he is still here, worrying about me. I kiss his door—I hope he sleeps for days. I hope he never frowns again. Thank you, God, thank you for saving him. I tiptoe down the stairs, skipping over the creaky ones, throw on Mum’s parka over my pajamas, grab my muddy wellingtons, and slip out into the garden. The crisp rose-scented air immediately fills my lungs, jolting them back into a rhythm. It’s staccato but at least I’m breathing.

“Morning,” I tell the roses. “How did you sleep? What a night, eh?” The blooms sway lazily, as though not ready to welcome any visitors, butterflies, or bees.

The spot where Aiden stood is still there, but there are no footprints anywhere, except my heart. I stuff my hands in my pockets and start walking the trail I used to walk with him in my dreams, sensing a routine in the making.

The sun is peeking over the horizon, its heat turning yesterday’s rain into mist. It rises like steam from the earth, a shallow sea of clouds instead of grass. I can’t see James’s tent anywhere but across the field of epiphanies, the town’s nightlights are still blinking. Which of those lights is Aiden’s? I hope none of them—I hope he is sleeping. I love you, I tell every window I can see in case it’s his. For a moment, I wish I had thought to give him back his letters. Perhaps I still should but now I want to keep them. I want that little paper universe where he and his love had a happy ending.

Elysium starts shimmering as the early sun varnishes the willows’ garlands and the river’s crests. The steam rising from the earth is sultry, but I’m still cold. I start pacing to warm up and then halt on the spot. Because there, in the middle of Elysium, Aiden’s unmistakable frame emerges from the mist with his precise, fluid stride. He must see me too, shaking where I am in my wellingtons, because he is coming straight toward me. I will my feet to move but they’re sunk dead in the muddy grass. I rub my eyes—am I always going to worry he was only ever a dream? But the closer he gets to me, the clearer I can see his face, there is no doubt he is real. Because my mind would never dream up the agony in that face. My psyche could never have fathomed it. My body erupts in chills like every pore is a counterpoint to his pain.

He comes to me at last, the first rays of sun glimmering like fingers on his face, as though the sun itself cannot resist caressing him. And I finally see his Aiden eyes. Bottomless, dark as though someone has doused the fire that burned underneath. But then they alight on my jawline as used to be their habit, tracing it slowly down to my throat, along every line of me he first saw in my painting. And the tectonic plates that always tell me the truth start shifting, jolting my heart with them. With a blink, the darkness recedes until all that’s left is the brilliant turquoise that belonged only to me. A single neuron registers with shock that apparently all the subsequent pain I caused him didn’t extinguish this light. All the other one hundred billion neurons are utterly absorbed with him and the fact that—somehow, against all reason—he is still here before me. Ashen, burning, but real.

“I couldn’t sleep or make it a good dream,” he speaks first.

“Nor could I,” I manage, wrapping my arms tightly around my ribcage. That way my heart might actually stay inside of me.

“I had to see you again. See you in daylight.”

“Why?” I whisper. Whisper is good too—it hides how my voice is shuddering with me.

“Sit with me for a minute?” he asks in his husky timbre. I glance back at the cottage where Reagan and Javier are sleeping wondering if my legs can make it that far.

“Here,” he says, his eyes missing nothing. And he takes off his rain jacket—it’s a monumental tribute to his beauty that I only now notice what he is wearing, a simple black T-shirt and jeans—and sets it down on the soggy grass. Then he sinks down gracefully, as though his legs might be having a similar problem.

I sit as far as I can, almost on the jacket collar, folding my legs under me, not trusting myself to be this close and not touch him, not forget all the reasons why I had to let him go. He watches the distance between us and then slowly rests his palm there. If it’s an invitation, I’m utterly frozen—unable to move, breathe, or blink.

“You didn’t answer my questions earlier,” he starts, eyes boring into mine.

“Which ones?” Still a whisper.

“First, if this is really what you want.”

I break the connection with his eyes, knowing my resolve will dissipate like the mist around us if I gaze there much longer. I look instead at the wildflowers that are peeking through the ground fog. Keep him safe, keep him free. “It is,” I force out the words in another whisper, twisting a blade of grass between my fingers. Maybe he couldn’t even hear them. I’m not sure the air could carry such a lie.

“Why is that?”

A blue forget-me-not, similar to the color of his irises is rising above the daisies, lifting its face toward the sun. Make him happy, give him light.

“Please look at me,” he says, his voice as soft as the flower’s petals. “I have crossed the ocean just to see your face even though it’s seared in my memory forever.”

I meet his eyes then; I can’t resist. I would have swam the ocean if I had known I could make them lighten again. “That’s better,” he smiles but there is no dimple in sight. “Now, please tell me. Do you want this because I’ve hurt you so much that you’ve decided to move on? Because you can’t trust me with your happiness? Or is this all for my benefit?”

Each word like a magnifying lens straight into my soul. “What difference does it make if it leads to the same end?”

“It makes all the difference in the world to me. All the other answers in the dichotomous key, all the other reasons I’m here—none of them matter without this.”

How can I not answer if he needs it so badly? How can I not give him everything? Make me brave, make me strong. “I’m doing this because I want you to be happy so much it hurts right here.” I press my index finger in the very center of my chest where the wound is festering. He looks at it with tenderness.

“Does it feel like a dull, jagged knife has cut a huge chunk out of your lungs and you can’t breathe?”

“Yes!” I marvel. “Exactly like that!”

“I’m familiar with the feeling.” He takes a shuddering breath, wincing as though he is testing his own lungs.

“And that’s exactly my point,” I say, seeing the proof of his pain right here. “I want you to be happy and free from having to save me, from all the pain I’ve caused you.”

He opens his beautiful sculpted mouth as though to protest. “But,” I add and he stills. “I also think losing you again would finish me. I can’t always live in fear of when you’ll push me away next. Always worried I’ll step on a live wire that will electrocute us both. Never trusting that you won’t decide to banish me for my own good again if you think it’s the right thing to do to save me.”

It’s all out now—all my truth. His face is burning again, like each of my words was a branding iron. But he reigns it back in, masterful as always. “Yes, I understand all that. But if there was a world where those things didn’t happen, would you want to be with me then?”

I gaze at this little meadow Dad named after me, sparkling with all my childhood memories and my future emptiness. But, look, there we are, Aiden and I, grey and old like the Plemmonses, like my parents should have been, waddling together, arm in arm. The vision stuns me with longing.

“Elisa?” Aiden prompts.

I glance at the blue forget-me-not like his eyes and the truth comes out again. Even if I can only manage it as a faint “yes.” He must hear it because from the corner of my eye I see the palm of his hand close into a tight fist on his jacket.

“Yes you would want me or yes you heard me?”

“Yes, in another world, I’d be with you.” I modify because I want him in every world.

“And what does that other world like to you? What would you want to be happy?”

Old Aiden and Elisa are down by the river now. He’s snow-haired and still so tall, although a little hunched over, and his shoulders are finally at rest.

The real Aiden’s index finger hovers under my chin as he used to do when he wanted to tip up my face. He doesn’t touch me—perhaps he knows I couldn’t handle it or perhaps he too cannot—but it has the same visceral effect. I lift up my eyes to meet his and blurt out the truth again.

“I want the man and the woman from your letters.”

The V forms between his eyebrows and another brain cell wonders if he knew I have them. “Tell Benson thanks by the way. He only gave them to me to help and they did. Please don’t be mad at him. I’ll give them back to you.”

He shakes his head, waving his hand. “Don’t worry about that. They were always yours.  Please explain what you mean though.”

And suddenly my words tumble out fast like the river. Like they sense this might be the only time I’ll ever voice my dreams since I lost them all. “I want to wake up in the morning with your face next to mine. I want us to have breakfast tea over there in the garden with my mum’s roses. And then we’d go to work, to a job we love that gives us a purpose, that helps people. Then we’d come back and walk to our little cottage arm in arm along the river. And maybe tango or garden like we did in Portland that one time. You looked so happy and carefree in that moment. And then night would come, and we would fall asleep together in the same cozy bed. And then with birthdays or anniversaries, or when we’d visit the Solises or your parents, you’d come with me because nothing else would matter if you weren’t there. Maybe we would even have a little Peter or a little Clare. And we’d grow old together like that, you and I. And whichever one of us goes first—and I hope it’s me—would be holding the other’s hand.” I stop abruptly, sensing tears. And he cannot see them.

But for once his eyes are far away, toward the cottage, as though he is trying to see the same dream. Then they’re back to me. “Elisa, I want all those things too. Whether in England or America is logistics, but the point is, I want every single thing with you.”

“But you can’t give them. You told me so when we were at your Alone Place, and I didn’t listen. Another mistake . . .”

Another truth like a grenade on the peaceful meadow. Old Aiden and Elisa disappear with the very last molecules of mist. “But what if there was a way?” he asks then. “If there was a way—even if uncertain—that we could have that life, would you give me another chance? And not because you feel indebted to me for Javier or anything else, but because you would want it—me—for yourself? He looks abruptly intense, the V etched deep between his eyebrows, eyes burning into mine as though trying to see through my skull.

What a ridiculous question. I want him for myself most of all. But can I fault him for wondering after what I said last night? “Of course,” I shrug. “But there isn’t such a way. You’ve said so yourself.”

He smiles the first real dimpled smile I’ve seen in so long. It knocks me breathless even if it barely touches his still-ravaged eyes. “That’s all I needed to hear. Because, as it turns out, there might be.”

“What do you mean?”

“First, please know I had no idea about any of this. Zero. I couldn’t have even dared to imagine it, let alone do it. Corbin only realized it after you had left.” He winces at the last word.

“Realized what?”

“Something that might change everything. That might give us a chance.”

The morning falls silent—I can’t hear a single chirp, babble, or flutter. “What did he discover?”

“It’ll take a moment to explain, but please bear with me. Now, you know how my memory works: every time I see someone or something, my memory will summon with perfect clarity the very first time I encountered that person or thing from the details of their appearance to the depths of my emotions.”

“Yes, and everything else that followed after that first time.” Even though I try, my voice breaks. This is why I now cause him both pain and peace.

He shakes his head, surprising me. “Not exactly. That’s what Corbin realized.”

“I’m . . . confused.”

“Picture a computer file for a minute. Every time you open it, read it, and then close it, the file changes: all the metadata, when last viewed, for how long, etc., right?”

“Right.”

“Well that’s how memory at large—not just mine—works. Each memory is a computer file. Every time we recall a memory and revisit it, it changes. So most people’s memories become faint and false with time. Mine is different in one crucial way: it doesn’t become false, it becomes more potent. When I revisit a memory, for example Marshall’s execution—” his shoulders ripple at the mere word—“I retrieve not just the torture of the moment, but also the pain of every single time I have replayed that memory in my head, in the thousands, snowballing into a massive network of pain in my brain.”

My hands plop to my sides as air leaves my lungs. I can’t understand why he thinks this gives us a chance, it sounds even more terrible. As if he can hear my thoughts, he changes. He turns to face me, crossing his legs, his palms up like he is holding the idea there for me to see. “That snowball has been growing constantly until my attack on you.” Another shoulder ripple, another wince. “But then something changed. You remember Corbin sedated me with Versed—that was standard procedure for my attacks. But when I woke up, the very first thing I saw was you sitting by my side—and that was new. Something showed itself to Corbin then. In essence, he observed that in the minutes, hours, days, and weeks that followed, I was able to speak and move and function in some form. Remember that?”

In some form? He implemented an entire defense strategy for Javier even as broken as he was. “I remember. But I can’t imagine how you were able to do so. You were so broken.”

“That’s precisely it. But it had nothing to do with me. It was because of you.”

“I’m not following.”

“After Marshall, or after I attacked my mom, I couldn’t do anything, and Corbin had seen that. I couldn’t move or speak or eat. I was catatonic for weeks. But not this time. And that’s not because I love you less.”

“Then why is it?”

He smiles another lopsided, dimpled smile that this time lights up his eyes. “It’s because at a deep cognitive level, you have changed my brain. Technically, psychiatrists call it interfering with my memory’s reconsolidation process.”

“Umm, what?”

“When I opened my eyes and recalled that unspeakable moment of hurting you—you, my entire universe—at the same moment I was literally covered in you. You were holding me with all of your body, your voice, your smell, your touch, your taste flooding all of my senses, telling me all those loving things that only you and I know what they mean. And your calming effect—of course, my memory retrieved that too at the same time as I was relieving all the terror. Except you won out! Eventually, but sooner than any other time in my life, I became calmer. Remember?” he asks urgently, hands closing in fists like everything depends on me grasping this.

“I remember. I remember Corbin saying it was extraordinary.”

“Yes!” Aiden says the word with force. “Yes, exactly. Extraordinary. Your calming effect cancelled out the new layer of horror that would have been added to the snowball if I was left to my own devices without you there. So, in essence, the snowball shrunk. By just one layer, but it shrunk, Elisa! For the first time in known history, my memory changed by one tiny fraction. It bowed to you.”

Elysium disappears as my own memory replays that excruciating moment in Aiden’s bedroom under this light. How little I cared what Corbin thought. Every part of me focused on the first tear I had seen in Aiden’s eyes. He says his memory bowed to me but all I can think is I bowed to that one tear. “Aiden, are you sure? How does that even work?”

“None of this is sure. But Corbin and I contacted some memory experts at The University of York and Oxford ironically. They had mapped my brain initially when I was seven and we first discovered my memory, and periodically every five years since. They agree something is different. They’re theorizing now that my memory works a little like phobias, which tend to get stronger with time. Every time I was replaying all the horror of Marshall and my mom in efforts to desensitize myself and prevent it from happening around you, in fact I was only making my memory stronger and making me more deadly. I was a ticking time bomb even more than usual.”

“But now?”

“I still am, there is no question about that. But there is hope.”

And here is another heavy four-letter word. Hope. A word I cannot afford to hear. Because if I hear it and let it in, I will never survive losing it. “I don’t see the hope part.”

“Yes, it’s there, faint but it is.” His voice breaks as it would in my dreams when I refused to see what was on the field of epiphanies. “The hope is this: next time I recall a horrific moment, instead of replaying it and wallowing, I would flood myself in you. Your calming effect should erase the dread I feel while I’m remembering—as it did after your attack—and, with time, the layers will keep melting off the snowball, shrinking it until it becomes more manageable and, if we dare to dream, disappears.”

I don’t dare to dream anymore, I want to say. Dreams kill you more painfully than all other murderers combined. So I try to stay clinical, skeptic, focusing on something that hurts only a little less. “But I’ve caused you pain too. What about your memories of that? Won’t your brain summon those too and add them to the snowball?”

He shakes his head, smiling but I’ve made the dimple disappear. “Never forget the first principle about my memory: my initial impression is always dominant. And when it comes it to you, you will always give me peace first and foremost. You could pick up a knife right now and dig it into my chest and the first thing I’d feel is calm.”

I shudder at the image of hurting him even in a hypothetical. “That’s wrong.”

“No, it’s exactly right. And it’s my best hope to give us the life we want.”

That four-letter word again. I was wrong a moment ago. Hope is a more brutal killer than even dreams. I focus on logistics instead. “Flood you in me how? I’m here, you’re in Portland or will be . . .” I can’t finish. He will leave soon. In an hour, a day, a week, but someday because he always pushes me away in the end. My calming effect only dulls terrors; it doesn’t give self-worth, it doesn’t make him accept love. And I will be here alone on this idyllic meadow, looking for the forget-me-nots among the roses—never forgetting him, always missing him in my heart. When it comes to him, I might as well have eidetic memory myself.

He must sense the finality in my thoughts because anguish enters his eyes again, slowing down the tectonic plates to a grind. I give him time to work through it because I need a moment too. At length, with another shuddering breath, he begins. “This is why I am here, Elisa. Not just to see you or bring you your family. I’m here to ask you this one last thing. Flooding me in you can happen in two ways: I can do it on my own back in Portland, using your pictures and paintings after I replay a horror. I’m sure Reagan will give me more pictures of you now. It might work, it might not. Or we could do it together. Fight for it together. Have the real you with me. Not because it might work better for me or because you feel obligated. But because, from what you said earlier, we both want the same thing in the end. Will you fight with me?”

In his flawless face, the Dream Aiden, the Old Aiden, and the Real Aiden merge. The triple beauty is blinding, and I have to close my eyes. I would fight for all these Aidens until that one last heartbeat. But fighting with Aiden is a whole other different plane of existence, one I don’t know if either of us can survive. “What would fighting with you look like? In practice, I mean.”

“We have to break my rules, except the startle reflex. We still have to be religious about that until we know if this works. But other than that, we have to do the exact opposite of what we were doing, of what I was forcing us to do.”

Another four-letter word. Rule. Rule his mind, rule my heart, break a rule, rule us out.  “But your rules are everything to you. They give you the structure you need.”

“No. You’re everything to me. And the rules have to go anyway. Going by those rules, anticipating how I might hurt you every hour of every day while distancing myself from you was apparently very dangerous. Layer after layer of snow added to the snowball every single time. So, if you were to fight with me, we would do it the experts’ way. We would guard against my startle reflex. But other than that, we would live.”

L-i-v-e. “How?”

“Here is what the experts recommend but we could find another way if you feel more comfortable. In the morning when I wake up, I will intentionally recall a painful memory, top to bottom, but only once—probably Marshall because that’s where it all started. Then as soon as I finish, I’ll open my eyes and, if you do this with me, you would just be close by so that you’d be the very first thing I’d see, smell, hear, feel. And, if the experts’ theory is right, your calming magic will do what it does to my brain on its own, melting that fresh layer of deadly snow each time. We would just get on with our day. Do what we want for once, as best we can with me still so limited. And, during the day, I would have the very hard job of not letting my mind go to the negatives, the terror, the what-ifs. I’d have to use everything I have to stay there in the moment with you.”

S-t-a-y. “And what about during the night, when you’re asleep—wouldn’t the nightmares undo all your day’s hard work?” I want to ask another question. Would he sleep with me if I were to do this? But that question is too hard, too close to h-o-p-e.

He may hear my unspoken question anyway because a blue flame flashes in his eyes. Like the fire that burned there when we were together alone, bodies tangled so close I didn’t know where I ended and he started. “We have a solution for that,” he says, and his voice is huskier. “I still think it’s risky but Corbin and the experts think it might help.”

“What solution?” I try to keep my voice calm, scientific—in an effort to douse the f-i-r-e that now has caught in me.

“First, I’d take a medication against nightmares—it’s called prazosin. Then, while I’m asleep, we would need to do something that I associate strongly with you. They think this should help me stay asleep. We’ve tested it in the last two weeks and it works, but of course, I didn’t have anyone in bed with me.”

The flame in his eyes is now wildfire. He looks at me as though he is seeing past my coat and pajamas, through my skin—straight into those deepest parts of me that respond only to him. S-k-i-n. Another logistical question to extinguish these thoughts. “I don’t understand. How can you do something in your sleep that you associate with me?”

He smiles and the dimple appears now. “That part is easy. We play Für Elise.”

The answer is so unexpected I forget everything else for a moment. “You’re serious? Trying to shrink the snowball with my song while you’re unconscious?”

“Especially while I’m unconscious when I can’t interfere with it and make it bigger. I have to use every minute I can. I’m thirty-five years behind.”

“And Für Elise works to keep you asleep?”

“Like a charm.”

“How did you discover that?”

The dimple vanishes. “That’s a very long story, for another day, if you will give it to me. For now, let’s just say that whatever neural association my brain has built between you and that melody—maybe because we played it on our first morning when I was happier than I’d ever been—it works. Just like you’ve changed my brain, you can keep me asleep. And I didn’t even know it.”

A long silence falls between us then. I don’t know if he has said everything he had to say or if he is lost in another place, another time I cannot see. But the silence is good. It gives me time to think, to breathe into these new feelings and points of fire he has lit in me. To sort through all my questions for the most important. And to see a way through the fear. Make me brave, give him life.

“Please tell me what you’re thinking,” he says when minutes pass and I’m still unable to speak.

“Just taking it all in.”

His index finger hovers under my chin and my eyes meet his instantly, helplessly as always. The blue flame is gone. There is nothing but an achy tenderness there. “I know it’s a lot. I know I’m asking you to give me a chance based entirely on a theory that may not work when the pain I’ve caused you is very much real. I can see it here with my own eyes, the way you hug yourself, the way your hands shake, the way you can’t look at me anymore. And it’s tearing my heart out. So don’t say yes because you think you have to do this. You don’t. At all. You have changed my internal landscape permanently, and I can never go back to who I was before you. That’s just a scientific fact. My only option is to go forward and I will. Even if you don’t do this with me, I will keep trying with all my memories and pictures of you. So you’re not hostage to this. All you have to do is say the word “no”—no explanations, nothing, you don’t even have to look me in the eye as you say it. Whisper it if you need to. Or just give me a signal—raise your index finger for example if you don’t have the strength. And I promise I will leave. I will let you go on with the life you’re trying so hard to rebuild. I will never interfere. I will never ask anything of you again except to be happy. Like you asked me. And then some day, if I ever become safe, I promise I will call. Even if we are old and withered. It might not be as fun then, but it would be worth it if I could die next to you, just as you said. And if you have met someone by then—” his breath hitches and, for the second time in my life, I see a single tear tricking down his cheek. He smiles as his eyes become oceans. “Well then, won’t he be so very lucky to always have my heart with him?”

“Don’t!” I say as my own tears spill over at the same time that my fingers fly to his face to wipe his. “Don’t say that! I don’t want anyone else. I’m just afraid. Afraid I’ll screw up again. Afraid it won’t work. Afraid it will kill us both if it doesn’t. Afraid I’ll lose you again.” Why couldn’t I have figured out the bravery protein already? To make us both strong and fearless. Help us, Dad, help us please.

“I know, my love.” L-o-v-e. He takes my fingers in his strong hand and brings them to his lips, kissing the very tips that are wet with his own tears. “I wish I could tell you there is nothing to fear. I wish I could promise you this will work. But I can promise you this: you will never lose me, even if I’m not with you. I’ll always be yours even when you’re not mine as you said last night. And you could never screw up.” He kisses the tips of my fingers again and then gently places my own hand back on my lap.

“I screw up all the time,” I sniffle, missing his touch already.

As if his entire system is hardwired to my needs, he wipes my tears. Gently like butterfly wings. “Elisa, didn’t you listen to anything I said? Even these screw-ups as you call them have given us—me—a chance. If you had listened to me and had left after I attacked you or even before, we would have never discovered this. If you hadn’t believed me about Javier, I would have never found Für Elise. I’ll admit I wish you hadn’t abandoned your green card but you had to face England, I see that now. And it might be easier for us here at first if you do this. I have no memories of this village other than the ones I’d make with you. You might have given us a blank slate, and you didn’t even know it.”

His hands leave my face slowly. More l-o-s-s. He watches me as though he is extracting every pixel from this moment, every eyelash, every pore, every blink. Like he is lifting all thirty trillions of my cells to store forever in his impossible mind, to help him carry all the burdens of its terrors. And I see in that look the force with which he wants this to work. How he has cashed in all his hopes, all his dreams into this one small theory that my mysterious effect on his brain will be strong enough to undo the horrors. A shudder runs through me, and another, and another. What if this doesn’t work for him? What if my calming effect as he calls it is not strong enough to overcome decades of trauma? What will happen to my three Aidens then?

“Love? What is it? Is that a shiver from the breeze or from the storm I’ve put in your head?”

“How would we know if this works?” I ask.

His eyebrows knit at my change of direction but he answers. “That part is straightforward enough. We trigger my startle reflex in a controlled laboratory—away from you or anyone else who could get hurt—and see what happens. If it has worked, we should notice a change. Maybe it will be slower, or shorter, or less violent, we don’t know. But the hope is that there would be some reduction.”

I don’t ask what happens if it doesn’t work. I will need to have my bravery protein first before I can do that. Because I know then I will lose him forever. But as much as that rips the wound in my chest wide open, it’s not as paralyzing as my terror for him. That then he will lose himself, not just me, once and for all. Another shudder runs through me. “When would you do the test?”

“In ninety days.”

“Why ninety days?”

“Because that’s about how long it takes for my memory to shift from short-term to long-term. My memories of you are still new and need time to get cemented into the same brain areas that the old horrors live. At the crux of it, I have ninety days to tattoo you in every single part of my brain. If it doesn’t work by then, it never will.”

Ninety days. Nine million heartbeats. Will our love always be measured by deadlines and clocks? Tic toc, tic toc. Racing constantly against laws, governments, wars, and now against ourselves.

“Are you scared?” I ask him.

“Terrified.”

Trembling, I take his hand in both of mine and bring it to my lips. “Well then,” I say, looking up at him. “Let’s fight.”

Shock flashes through his beautiful face, changing his breath to a loud gasp. It lingers in his open mouth for a second and then it becomes my name. “Elisa!” he says, and brings his mouth to mine.

The moment our lips touch, an electric pulse courses through my body, as though his kiss is jolting it back to life. His lips mold with mine like they are speaking an ancient language to each other, “hey you, I’ve missed you, you’re mine”— words he first wrote on me with the quill on our very first night. The heat of his mouth stills my shivers and spreads over my skin like wildfire. His perfumed breath steals inside my lungs, healing them, filling them with him until my breathing sprints into a strong, healthy, jagged rhythm. At the sound, he moans and his kiss changes. It becomes urgent now, hands fisting in my hair, soldering me to him and yet it’s not close enough for me. I throw my arms around his neck, my fingers knotting in his hair as a frenzy ignites inside me. He responds with such force that I fall back on the grass. His weight pins me against the meadow, each hard line of his against every soft line of mine. His hands memorize my face, my throat, my shoulders, my waist, the entire length of me. With each grip, the ache in my chest disappears. With each stroke of his tongue, the wound heals shut. With each brush of his lips, the last two weeks blow away. And when he frees my mouth briefly to trail kisses along my jawline and my throat, my voice speaks only one word, freed and clear: “Aiden!”

His glorious face is right above me then, smiling—an exultant light in his incandescent eyes. And in this pin dot in time, there is no ache or sadness or fear there. Nor in mine. Only love. With a stunned gasp of my own, my mind—freed too—cracks the code. I smile at the brilliant blue sky beyond Aiden’s luminous face. Thank you, Dad, I think at him. I know now.

©2021 Ani Keating