Forgotten Vows

Chapter 2

“Are you awake?” I heard a muffled voice from a distance. It was hard to open my eyes, almost as if my eyes were glued together. “Can you open your eyes for me, Mrs. Aurora?”

When I finally opened them, I set my eyes on the doctor standing by the hospital bed I was in. My head was hurting so much that I could barely keep my eyes open for long.

“What… What am I doing here? What happened to me?” I asked, looking around in confusion. I didn’t remember anything that prompted me to be in this state. What really happened to me?

“You were in a car accident. It was thankfully not fatal, but I would like to perform a little test on you. Do you mind telling me your name? Your full name, I mean.”

“Aurora. Aurora Blackthorn. What’s going on? Where’s Lucian?” I looked around, groaning in pain. “What car accident? I don’t remember it.”

The doctor hummed in response, writing something down in his clipboard as he asked another question. “You don’t have to worry about Mr. Lucian. He was listed as your emergency contact, so we called him. And what year is it?”

I paused as I looked around. The last time I remembered anything that had to do with a date…it was 2022.

“It’s 2022, isn’t it?” I responded.

This time, the doctor paused as he looked at me. “Aurora, I don’t want you to strain your mind thinking about this, but I want you to know that it’s 2025.”

“Repressing your memories will only do harm in this situation. What’s the last thing you remember?” The doctor said,

That was impossible. It couldn’t be. The last thing I remembered was Lucian standing in the kitchen. We were having a conversation, but I couldn’t remember what it was about.

Before I could say anything, the door opened and Lucian walked in with a panicked look on his face while a nurse tried to hold him back.

“Aurora, are you okay? I got here as soon as I heard,” he said, running toward me.

“Lucian! They’re… I’m fine. I have a headache, but I’m fine. They’re saying it’s 2025. I don’t understand. Isn’t it 2022?”

Lucian went still as he stared at me. That was all I needed to know that I had lost a huge chunk of my memories. It really was the year 2025.

“What do you remember?” He asked.

“I still remember us,” I said quietly. “Our wedding. The house. You… You hate it when I burnt my toast. I don’t… My mother…”

Lucian gave a small smile. “You always burned your toast on purpose.”

I smiled faintly, then I frowned. “Is that everything? What else have I missed? Was there a major change? I can’t live like this.”

“You’ll be getting your memories when you recover. They’ll come slowly, but they’ll come. The part of your brain responsible for your long term memories has been bruised, but it’ll heal,” the doctor informed.

After the doctor left, Lucian and I were alone. He pulled a chair to sit beside me. “You don’t need to worry about anything. Just rest and I’ll take care of everything.”

The knot in my chest eased. He sounded in control, just like always.

I fell asleep not long after and when I woke up, the nurse informed me that I was being discharged. Lucian was already signing the paperwork.

He barely looked at me as he helped me into the waiting car, but his hand hovered near my back, ready to catch me if I stumbled.

When we pulled up to the Blackthorn estate, I stared up at the grand facade house. It looked almost the same, but there were little changes that didn’t get past me. Changes I didn’t remember. I hated that I couldn’t remember when they were made.

“This is…different,” I commented as we walked into the house. The entryway still smelled like citrus, but my favorite vase was missing. The candles I used to light on rainy days were gone.

There was no warmth in the house. Everything felt wrong. Did a lot really change in three years? Would I really get it all back?

“Your room is ready. I had the sheets changed this morning,” Lucian said behind me.

Didn’t we share a room anymore?

I turned slowly, my eyes narrowed. “My room?”

He cleared his throat. “Our room. Sorry. It’s just… Let’s go.”

I followed him upstairs, trying not to trip over my own thoughts. When I stepped into the room, my heart twisted. Everything was off. The closet was half empty.

The drawers, too. No makeup bag on the vanity. No robe slung over the chair. This wasn’t mine. Lucian was hiding something from me.

“Where are all my things, Lucian?”

“You were planning to donate most of your clothes, remember? You wanted a change. You packed them all up before the trip where the accident happened.”

Donating my clothes. I thought about a world where something like that was possible and I wasn’t so attached to the clothing items I had.

“That doesn’t sound like me.”

Had I really changed that much in three years?

Lucian smiled softly. “It didn’t at first, but once you started clearing things out, you said it felt… freeing. I didn’t understand it either, but it made you happy.”

I wanted to believe him. I did believe him. But something gnawed at the back of my mind. There was something he wasn’t telling me. I hated that I didn’t remember it. Was he lying to me?

Before I could question it, Lucian pulled out his phone. “I’ll call Elena. She’s your favorite shopper, right? She’ll bring you new clothes.”

“You don’t have to ”

“I want to,” he interrupted. “Let me take care of you, Aurora. Please.”

I sighed in defeat and let him do what he wanted.

The next day passed in a strange, foggy blur. Elena arrived with racks of designer clothes. Lucian made all the decisions on the styles, sizes, colors. I let him do just that because he knew what I liked.

But that wasn’t the strange part. The strange part was that I caught snippets of hushed conversations behind closed doors. He called people and walked away to talk to them in private. He never used to do that. He never hides anything from me.

“I wanted to let you know that she’s back,” I heard him say to someone over the phone one evening as I walked down the hall. “She doesn’t remember. You’re not to mention it in front of her. Do you understand?”

If he was talking about someone who doesn’t remember, it had to be me. Why would he be talking about me in secret? What couldn’t they mention in front of me? I leaned closer to the door to hear more of it.

“No. We’re going to do this my way. The divorce doesn’t exist. Got it?”

My blood ran cold. That was it. He wanted to divorce me.

The door creaked open as I stood there and Lucian turned to look at me, startled.

“What divorce, Lucian?”