Runaway Bride

Chapter 27 The Truth

Darío Magghio

Hours later, I am still waiting in the dining room for Tatiana’s return. I shooed her away as if she were really guilty of some atrocity. My demons of the past made my present vilely affected. Now, feeling the house empty and knowing that I was responsible for Tatiana’s departure, I begin to understand that I must get used to my new present and stop focusing on the wrong things someone else did to me in the past. And that someone is none other than Arianna. Because of her, after so many months since her death, I take responsibility for not reaching her in time when she jumped off the balcony. Just thinking about it, my body freezes, and I feel raging anger over the months I have learned to control.

What the hell was this woman thinking? What kind of depression so strong wrapped her up that suicide was the only alternative she found to her pain? Did I, unconsciously, mistreat her? Did I judge her so harshly as the days went by when she confessed her infidelity to me that she wanted to die? That she tried to escape from family life and her own newborn child?

I don’t understand how it was possible that a mother, minutes after giving birth, could have the fortitude or rather the emotional weakness so strong that, regardless of my calls, she would throw herself over the cliff without caring that she was leaving her child an orphan, without thinking about the future he would have or the circumstances he would suffer growing up without a mother.

“You’re not going to dinner.” It’s more of a comment than a question. In the meantime, she approaches.

That woman knows me better than I know myself. She was there every step of the way; it was even her idea to declare Arianna’s death a loss when giving birth to Dante. It wasn’t fair to tarnish my son’s memory, nor my family’s name, by making it public knowledge that my wife, my late wife, was so fed up with me, with the situation she had with me, with her son who had just been born, that she had been so lost as to save her and decided to kill herself at the last minute.

No, I didn’t want that in my son’s life. I don’t want it still, and I will never want it again. My son deserves all the happiness in the world... and that is what I intend to give him.

Even if I am blind now, so blind that I don’t know how I will succeed in bestowing him that happiness for which I have striven so hard, I will make him happy.

“I have said things...” I run my hand through my slowly growing beard. It itches a little, but it’s more the anxiety of not knowing if Tatiana will return.

The driver told me he took her to her parents’ house. I knew that was the house because he brought us to the castle on the wedding day.

That day I wanted so much to kiss her. Her scent intoxicated me, stunned me. I didn’t know I could feel something so strong for a woman I barely knew.

“Your mouth is your measure, Darío. So you must learn not to do or say the first thing that comes into your mind.”

“It’s just that...” I glance at my cell phone, which I still hold in my hand.

I can’t see it, but I can feel it. I grip it tightly and think about the conversation with David, who called to follow up on my first hours out of the hospital and his care. One thing led to another. Finally, after several minutes of chatting, I decided to ask him the question that has tortured my head so much since Tatiana left.

“Yes, it’s likely. But, as I told you before you had the surgery, there are moments that you can erase without realizing it. First some irrelevant details, later names, phone numbers, lunchtimes, until in the end it’s so bad, you forget almost everything, even a whole day.”

“You say I can forget moments. How could that be possible? I don’t forget my son’s smiles, documents to be signed, chats with my employees, or conversations with my housekeeper. Yet you say it is still possible to forget instant.” I didn’t understand anything. It was either one thing or the other.

“It can be worse when what happens to you is marked in such a strong way that your mind prefers to obviate it and cover it up.” He was silent for a few seconds, then gave some instructions to a nurse and continued, “although you may not understand it that way, your type of amnesia is not only because of the atrophied nerve, but you have preferred to forget specifically what triggered your nerve fissure.”

“Arianna’s death.” I understood little by little what he was referring to.

“I’ll be honest, Darío, will you let me?”

“I’m listening.” I needed answers. I didn’t care which way they came.

“Your wife’s death: seeing her throw herself, you jumping behind her to catch her and not making it in time, meant not only a blunt force trauma to you as you fell into the garden from a second story, but an internal pain that may have affected your mind minutes before hitting a nerve.”

“Are you trying to tell me that I lost part of my memory because of trauma? Because I couldn’t save Arianna?”

“It’s a possibility,” David said something to the nurse again and apologized before continuing. “The brain is a complex thing, and it’s not an organ that can be fixed in one fell swoop. A lot of times, the glitches are mental and emotional. You lock yourself in, and you don’t recover. You don’t heal.”

“Likewise, I’ll stay blind.”

I hated reality. I hated having to feel so helpless. I couldn’t call myself unprotected or insufficient because none of it sunk in. I believed it, let alone felt it. I was always strong and capable of fending for

myself without help from others. Although given the circumstances, I had to rely on those around me and who I trusted the most, I did not feel that I was a visual invalid.

“I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again: your vision loss is temporary. I am very positive. I know that soon you will call me and tell me that everything is back to normal.”

“Before you go, tell me one last thing.” My chest tightened, and I gasped for air with my mouth, as the oxygen did not want to enter my lungs as it should. “Is it possible to forget something that happened but believe that the event was the product of a dream?”

“Yes.” David didn’t hesitate for a second. My heart leaped happily inside my chest.

My dream with Tatiana was not a dream.... it was a reality! The most beautiful reality I had in months, maybe more than a year. She was real. The woman of my dreams, the one with brown hair and seductive voice, who let me love her on the riverside, was her.

Tatiana tried to tell me, and I didn’t believe her.

I said goodbye to David without giving him the reason for my jubilation.

Now I am here, sitting here waiting for her to come back to be by my side again. I would like her to stay with me forever. I need to have a chance to apologize to Tatiana. I offended her too much! How could I have been able to believe and tell her that maybe it was with my brother that she was with?

“I misjudged her,” I say after a while.

Donatella sits down next to me on one of the chairs at the dining table. She places a hand on my shoulder, and I feel her warmth sear my skin. All content © N/.ôvel/Dr/ama.Org.

“Yes, you did. You got married to give your son better welfare. It’s not all about economics. You’re running away from your own happiness and judging a poor, innocent woman for sins someone else

committed.”

“I know. I know now.” And I also know what an idiot I was.

“You’ve grown up in so few days, though...” Donatella stops talking.

I begin to despair because I can’t see what she is thinking. I have always been able to see in others what they think long before they utter the words, except with Tatiana. With her, I was so blinded by Arianna’s infidelity. I didn’t give myself a chance to see what was before my eyes. So wary of becoming...

“It will be good for you to finish the sentence. I have enough to do without seeing you, that I can’t listen to you either.”

I don’t want to think about how I feel about Tatiana right now. It’s too soon. It’s too...

I just can’t.

Let alone when she’s not here to help me understand this thing that fills my heart.

“Good evening, Donatella. Would you be so kind as to leave me alone with my husband for a while?”

That voice.

It’s her.

She’s back.

I get up immediately. The sound of her voice tells me she’s near, but my feet don’t want to move. They don’t cooperate at all. Even if they were to move, my heart has frozen the transit of blood through my body.

She came back.

She came back to me.

And this time, I will not lose her, not unless she really wants to leave my side