Chapter 3 The Imposer

(Lydia)

When I stepped back into the bedroom, I jerked. Sarah was standing there. She eyed me closely and inquisitively.

“Are you pregnant?” she asked.

My face went pale. 

“No … no, not at all,” I bumbled. I didn’t want even Thomas to know, let alone this ungrateful snake.

Sarah’s eyes hardened into steel.

“I’m going to murder both you and that stupid sister of yours if you are!” she frothed.

I clenched my fist at the fact that she’d brought Ruby into this, but then caught an inkling of fear on her face. 

She was trembling.

Seeing her face turn white made me feel a little bit better.

I was about to talk back to her but realized that I now had a baby to think of. As a mother, I could not be petty. 

A mother … The thought inspired a clandestine delight inside me.

“Why are you back?” I asked her instead. I eyed her hairstyle, a braided ponytail – it was exactly how I used to do it.

This way, I had said to her, twisting a lock of her yellow hair into the intricate plait that I had made.

“Thank you for teaching me!” Sarah had said, “Now I’ll look just like you!”

How had I missed the signs? She had always wanted everything that I had.

And she had snatched it all away, I thought.

Thomas appeared in the doorway behind her. He was holding up a box.

“Your things,” he said flatly.

“Just put them on the table,” I said quietly, “And then, could the two of you please leave?”

Thomas set the box on the floor. Sarah grabbed his forearm as they made their way out for the second time today.

***

I had known them both since university but I had always been a bit of an outsider to them; I wasn’t as wealthy as either of these two. 

Thomas and Sarah had always been close, having known one another throughout their childhoods.

But when Thomas began courting me, the three of us became inseparable. 

Sarah had been like a sister to me; she would follow me around everywhere and emulate everything that I did, wore, and said.

Sarah had been there when I had first gotten drunk; she had held my hair as I threw up and she had practiced plays with me as I pursued my degree in theater at Western Illinois. We would get matching outfits and parade around bars on the weekend. 

Now, Sarah threatened me and my sister’s safety just to be with Thomas?

I don’t know how long Sarah had had an eye on Thomas, but when I had woken up from the coma, she stopped pretending.

“You know how much I loved him!” I had squealed, my eyes streaming with tears that I made no attempt to wipe off.

“Oh, Lydia, you were never good enough for Thomas,” she had said, sipping my favorite peach iced-tea that I knew she didn’t even like, “Him and I were always meant to be.”

The two of them had ripped my heart to pieces – Thomas with his betrayal and Sarah with that of her own. It astonished me that she could have done something like this but, perhaps, I had always known.

I had ignored my intuition.

And, now, he was going to marry her.

***

“Christ, can’t he at least get a new ring?” Ruby exclaimed with untrammeled exasperation. She was folding the laundry away and I was sipping a cup of hot tea, having just told her what had happened.

Ruby had arrived yesterday after I had called and told her that I was pregnant. She was calling herself “the caretaker regime”.

Now, she shot a glance in my direction and then walked up to and put her arms around me, “Lydia,” she said softly, “I know you loved the man. But if he had truly loved you as deeply as you did him, he would have remembered everything by now.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“I’ve been doing some research and amnesia isn’t supposed to last for that long. What if he and Sarah were secretly having an affair the whole time?”

“Ruby!” I growled, wounded. I clenched the mug.

“Okay, I’m sorry!” she raised her brows, “I won’t bring it up again.”

She returned to the laundry basket and began folding away the last of the clothes.

“I still think he loves me,” I admitted, “Why else would he have come here yesterday?”

Ruby didn’t say a word but passed me a scolding look before heading off into her bedroom. I crossed the living room to the window overlooking the city and watched the sun set again.

I resented Thomas’s mother for not allowing me to act. But after I had quit my theater auditions, I had made myself useful volunteering in community projects and setting up scholarship funds for students. Thomas had been supportive of me the whole time.

He had always so intently cheered me on and the joy was enough to make my heart burst. All of this only made it impossible to let him go when I lost him to amnesia. 

Thomas was forever on my mind, or as I liked to think of it, etched into the creases of my heart.

The thought of it now made me shudder. 

I would no longer think of him that way. I begged and cried. I had bent over backwards trying to remind him of our love and he had only responded with cold indifference.

When my children arrived in this world, I wouldn’t have time to think about Thomas. My sole focus would be on them: providing for, loving, and nurturing them.

I didn’t want my children to grow up in the same kind of household as myself. I would never neglect them. I would never be the kind of mother who was always staring out of the window in a dimly lit room and cursing her life. 

I wanted to give them the joy they deserved. 

Thinking of this gave me strength; the strength that I’d been looking for all this time.