Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 127249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 636(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 424(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 636(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 424(@300wpm)
Noah settles on a small chair behind the play table and tackles his part in earnest. He’s good at following the instructions. The recommended age for this set is from eight, but he quickly got the hang of it.
I do my part less enthusiastically, my mind on Jazz and how empty the house feels without her.
When it’s time for Noah’s morning snack, I install him at the kitchen island counter and take a seat opposite him. Emily, who’s rolling out dough for a pie, cut up some fruit for him that’s waiting with a glass of water on the counter.
My mom used to say idle hands are the devil’s tools. With nothing but time on my hands, I can’t stop thinking about the questions I have concerning our marriage and my amnesia.
While Noah eats his orange wedges, I glance at the new phone that lies at my elbow. Dante programmed his number as well as Reino’s and Ulysses’s on the phone. I added Jazz’s number. Other than that, there are no other contacts.
Why didn’t Dante transfer my apps and messages from my old phone? Why give me a clean new phone? Unless I lost my phone when I disappeared. If someone had taken me, they would’ve destroyed it to ensure it couldn’t be tracked. Yes, that makes sense. It won’t surprise me if the data isn’t backed up to the Cloud. Dante wouldn’t let any information, no matter how trivial, float around space where his enemies or law enforcement agencies could get access to it.
I pick up the phone absentmindedly, unlocking it with my face ID before scrolling through the apps. Except for a few photos I snapped of Noah, Jazz, and me in theater costumes and a video I took of Jazz singing one of the songs, the photo gallery is empty.
I hover with my finger over a social media app. I’ve never been big on social media. For security reasons, when Leander and I were still living with my parents, my father forbade us to have accounts. Dr. Chad advised me not to do this, warning me that it could be counterproductive to the healing process, but in an impulsive bout of curiosity, I open the app and type my name in the search field.
Nothing.
I open another app and get the same results, not that I expected to find anything. My parents prohibited my friends and school from taking or posting photos of me. My picture was even excluded from our yearbooks.
Hesitating, I open the search engine app. I’ve done a search on myself in high school, which had come up empty. In another spurt of impulsiveness, I type my name in the search bar and press enter.
A few headlines with my first name pop up, but none of them is about me.
Just as I thought.
I’m about to close the search engine when an idea hits me. It’s a bad idea. I know it instinctively. Yet I can’t stop myself from typing Dante’s name.
A list of headlines appears, all from gossip sites and magazines. The top one shows a photo of him in a tux with a beautiful blonde on his arm. The caption says they were attending a fundraiser.
Something twists in my stomach. I go hot like when I have a fever. I should stop, but my fingers seem to have a will of their own. They click on link after link, opening one article after another with photos of Dante, whom the media nominated as the most eligible bachelor in the city, with different women at his side. Each one is prettier and more glamorous than the last. He’s not photographed with the same woman twice, but they’re all blond.
Wow.
He obviously prefers blondes. I touch my wheat-blond hair that hangs over my shoulder. I’ve never wanted to change my hair color, but I have a sudden desire to dye it brown or black. The bruise that spreads through my chest can only be attributed to jealousy, and I’ve never been the jealous type.
I didn’t think seeing Dante with all those gorgeous women could hurt so much, but that’s only because I’ve never seen him with anyone else. When he worked for my father, he was single. We got together soon after he returned two years later. But there was the in between, the four years I can’t remember.
And damn, how it hurts.
Is that what our trust issues were? Is that why he didn’t elaborate? Did he cheat on me? Or did he sleep with countless beautiful and elegant women after we’d broken up?
It doesn’t matter if he did it after we left each other. My heart doesn’t recognize the fact that dating other women as a single man would’ve been his right. My heart, which has only ever beaten for one man, doesn’t break less.
“Mommy,” Noah complains.