And then I know without a doubt that if I were a whole person, Noah and I would have had a chance together. He is so wise and good, I would have been able to fall in love with him and we would have married and had a family. I saw it all in a flash second. Noah and I. Maybe he saw it too, because at that moment he leaned down and kissed me on the lips. It was a sad kiss, full of what ifs. When he pulls his lips away, my head is spinning and I feel like I have a gullet full of grenades.
“Good luck, Olivia,” he smiles, “Choose wisely.”
And then he lowers himself into the cab and is driven away with all my thoughts trailing after him. I stand on the sidewalk and watch the tires of his cab spray up the day’s rain. It is drizzling outside, but I don’t care. I like the rain. I decide to walk, and as I do, I think about what to do. Surprisingly, there are no thoughts of plotting revenge. I am thinking about my own inner decay and about how selfish I have always been. I count the times I have made good decisions in my life and come up with only five. Deciding to go on that first date with Caleb, telling him the truth about what I’d done, becoming a lawyer, breaking up with Turner, and coming to Rome and meeting Noah. Five good decisions. It seems like such a shabby number. But, my pitiful handful represents a small possibility. Noah saw something in me and he took the time to nurture it. Now, I had to imprint truth in my heart. I was not going to repay evil for evil. Leah had won him and she deserved to keep him.
I wander, wet and shivering, to the Trinità dei Monti, the beautiful church built by Saint Frances of Paola and I stand looking up at the Obelisco Sallustiano. This is where I make my final decision, in front of a building that represents goodness. You better get home before it’s too late. This time the sky was not red. I was sidestepping trouble, saying a final goodbye to it. I wonder if I can make a habit out of doing the right thing and then I smile because I know what a long journey that will be for me.
When I feel ready, I head back towards the De La Ville where Caleb and Leah are staying.
The quietness of the streets speak of the lateness of the hour. I stand looking at his window once again but this time my mind is made up. I am saying goodbye. I think about Caleb as a father and I smile to myself. He would be great at it, like he was at everything else, and then I think of Jessica Alexander. He would have been a dad already, if it wasn’t for me. I suck my lungs full of the sweet Italian air.
“In a sense I’m so far gone, I don‘t know what to say,” I begin. “I love you so much, and there are so many things that I didn’t get to tell you. I was so scared of the way that you loved me, Caleb.” I swipe at a tear that is leaking from my eye and continue. “You changed everything. I was so frightened of losing you that I did everything in my power to drive you away. I thought that if I didn’t, eventually you would see that you were wasting your time with me and leave anyway. I miss you. No, not just miss you, my heart aches every day because you’re not there. I am so sorry for what I did. All of it. Please, please don’t forget me, because the possibility of that hurts more than anything else.”
“I never forgot you.”
I get chills. It takes a minute for the impossibility of the situation to sink in.
“Caleb,” I sigh his name as I turn around to face him. I do not feel terribly surprised at irony’s latest joke. There is something about my life that is scripted with his. We keep crossing—no, crashing together. Caleb is standing a few feet away from me with a plastic shopping bag in his hand. I can see a bottle of wine poking out over the top.
“What are you doing here?” he asks shaking his head in amazement.
“I came to find you,” I say honestly. “To tell you that—” I glance up at his window to indicate the point of my speech.
“You weren’t going to say it to my face?”
“No.”
“It’s a very far way to travel to say something that important to my hotel window.”
“I had no right to come,” I admit, shrugging. “I’m sorry. I broke into your house and found out you were here.”
He squeezes his eyes shut and it looks like he wants to laugh.
“Cammie help you?”
I nod.
“I’m glad you came,” he says softly, “I was just thinking about you.”
I jerk in shock. “You were?” He smiles at the look on my face.
“Sure. I think about you all the time.”
I bite hard on my bottom lip to keep from crying. I am so confused I don’t know what to say.
“Let’s walk,” he says, and I fall into step beside him. “I never forgot you,” he says again.
“Well, you did for a while,” I say, studying the ground.
“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I never had amnesia. I faked it.”
I stop walking.
“You did what?”
“Olivia,” he stops and looks me in the eyes. “I faked my amnesia.”
I feel like the world is falling out from beneath my feet. Caleb and I are in Rome. I am in Rome. He never had amnesia. He thinks about me all the time. He never had amnesia.
“Why…what…why?” I want to grab him by the shirt collar and shake the answer out of him. Instead, I stand with my hands clenched at my sides.
“After everything happened with you and me, I tried to heal. I knew that I needed to forget you and move on. I hurt so much; everyday felt like a death sentence. I mourned you like you were dead and then, I met Leah. We were set up on a blind date and I remember feeling hope that day. It was the first day in a year that I felt hope. We took our time getting to know each other, I bought her a ring.” He shot me a look to see if I remembered the iceberg.
“And then, all of a sudden I missed you again. I mean, I never stopped missing you, but this time it hit me hard. I couldn’t go to sleep for a single night without seeing you in my dreams. I compared everything Leah did to everything I remembered about you. It was like the old wound opened itself up again and I was bleeding out my feelings for you.”
I close my eyes at his words. Words that I want to hear badly but that are making my heart ache so terribly I can barely breathe.
“I went on that business trip to Scranton and I was glad to get away from her for a few days. I needed to think and sort things out before I gave her that ring. Then the accident happened. I woke up in that car with the person next to me dead and I didn’t know who I was. My amnesia was induced by massive stress and the concussion to my head. By the time I reached the emergency room, I remembered everything. I lay on that bed in the hospital and I kept thinking, if only Olivia were here.