Undeniable

I shake my head.

She laughs. “Yes, but when I got married, and then Daniel,” she looks at me, “my brother got married too and moved into the master suite, I took the suite I use now - It used to be my grandmother’s- for whenever I came here with my husband.”

She looks a little sad as she talks. I imagine she’s thinking about her brother and her husband. They had both died in the plane crash that made her a widow and Jackson and Blythe orphans.

“I didn’t know.” I say.

She shrugs.

‘I’m surprised it’s still the same though.” I say. "The same as when I left.”

“Yes,” She pauses, looking as if she’s not sure if she should tell me. “I wanted to redecorate it,” She says finally, “but Jackson didn’t want that.”

“Oh.” I’m momentarily lost for words. Did he keep the room here as a reminder of what... what we had been, or as a reminder of a mistake he made in the past. I have kept my memories too, made icons of everything he ever gave me, but that’s because I loved him with my whole being. What reason could he possibly have for keeping this reminder of my presence in Halcyon?

“He stayed away for so long,” Constance continues, still talking about Jackson. “I thought he was working too hard, trying to prove that he was something more than the latest Lockewood heir.” She looks at me, “and he did prove himself you know? Even though there was always a position for him at Lockewood holdings, he preferred to make his own way, going to business school and taking an entry level position in an investment and management firm. That was before he started his own company, made a success out of it, and finally agreed to take over Lockewood holdings.” She pauses, “The family has always lived off our investments, but Jackson’s built more than just a company managing an investment portfolio. He’s taken the risks to build a productive business corporation.”

I know that, I want to say. I know all that because we talked about those plans all those years ago, and afterwards, when I left Halcyon, I read everything about him that has ever been published, on the internet, in magazines, from articles on his business methods to his active social life. How pathetic did it make me? That while he worked hard and played hard, I obsessed over him day and night?

“He was always very driven.” I say.

She nods, “Yes, driven, determined and disciplined, except when it came to you.” After a long pause, she continues. “I didn't see it then. It wasn’t until after your accident that I realized you were the reason he’d been home so often in his senior year and that you were also the reason why he never came back after you left. He couldn't bear to come here and be reminded of you in every single room of this house.”

Blythe had said almost the same thing, and even Jackson. “Another reason why he hates me.” I say with a small laugh.

Constance frowns. “I wouldn’t assume that he hates you, dear.” She sighs. “When I remember what he was like after you left, I can’t imagine why I didn’t put it together sooner. If you had seen him then, seven years ago, you wouldn’t doubt that he loved you.”

“Loved,” I reply, “Which means it was in the past, where all these talk and memories should remain.” I look squarely at her. “I’m not here to fan the dead embers of a long ago relationship which was always a mistake and should never have happened in the first place. After my job is done, I’ll leave, and all our lives can go back to what they were before I came back here.”

She sighs. “You’re so angry.”

“Yes.” I cry. “You know what I went through, and I went through it all alone, even more than what you’re aware of. So I’m angry, and I have no desire to remember, or relive the past in any way.”

Her eyes are glistening as she looks at me. “I can’t stop feeling that I failed you in so many ways.” She sighs. “I should have told him about the baby.”

I close my eyes as her words fill my ears, feeling the familiar pain starting to resurface. When I open my eyes, my fists are clenched so tightly I can feel my nails digging into my palms.

“Don’t even mention that, Constance.”

“Why not?” She demands, her frown one of confusion, “he deserves to know, he always deserved to know.”

“No.” I say firmly, trying in vain to shut down the memories and the pain invading my mind. When I left Halcyon, my only thought had been to get as far away as I could from every reminder of Jackson’s rejection.

I still remember with clarity how he had made love to me, and then told me coldly that he hated himself for it. The next morning, I left, and found my way to Chace’s new apartment in New York, where he was happy for me to stay until the fall semester resumed, or even for longer if I cared to.

Being Chace, he was too involved in his books and research to notice that there was anything wrong with me, and I kept my misery to myself, letting the pain grow inside me like a cancer and eat away at my happiness until I felt like a shadow of who I used to be.

I didn’t start feeling ill until school, when I was suddenly too weak to do the things everyone around me was doing, and feeling like I would collapse every time I exerted myself. It wasn’t long before I ended up at the school clinic and found out that I was three months pregnant.

Jackson had always been careful, except for that one time in the gazebo, when his anger had made him forget, or stop caring. My baby had been conceived in anger and pain, but it was Jackson’s baby, the only thing I had left of him. I knew what my options were, but I never wanted anything as much as I wanted that baby. I was willing to sacrifice school, a career even, for a lifetime to treasure the one thing Jackson had given me that he could never take away.

The next few days I alternated between euphoria at the knowledge that I was going to have a child of my own, to outright dejection at the thought that the father of my child wanted nothing to do with me. It was one of those days that I’d had the accident. I still don’t know what happened. One minute I’d been standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross, and the next, a cyclist shoved me out of the way, and that’s all I remembered when I woke up in the hospital.

Aunt Constance was there. She was the one who told me I’d lost my baby. The agony was the worst thing I’d ever felt, and the knowledge that it was my fault.

Constance had guessed then that the baby was Jackson’s, and when she asked me, I confessed everything, and begged her not to tell anyone about the baby, especially not Jackson.

I left the hospital even more heartbroken than I’d been before, and in the next few months, I spiraled into a debilitating depression, where I spent whole days crying, unable to get out of bed, and not caring if I lived or died.