PART2
I knew that name at once.
Mike’s family moved not long after. Callahan stayed and saw my name in a newspaper a day or two later.
“A girl named Merritt had survived badly scarred,” he said, repeating the words he’d read all those years ago. “That shook me.”
A few months later came the car crash. It took Callahan’s parents, his brother, and his sight. For 20 years, he carried the guilt alone.
I sat there crying without noticing when the tears had started. My wedding night had cracked wide open and become a room full of ghosts I never invited.
For 20 years, he carried the guilt alone.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked.
Callahan laughed once. “At first, I wasn’t sure it was you. Then you told me your name, and I got afraid.”
He confirmed what he suspected through a friend. The woman he loved was the girl from the explosion. He tried to step back. He couldn’t.
“I kept thinking if I told you too soon, you’d walk away before I could love you properly, Merry.”
“You took away my choice,” I whispered.
Callahan lowered his head.
“You let me marry you without telling me what you knew,” I snapped. “What you did.”
“I know.”
The woman he loved was the girl from the explosion.
That was the maddening part. He wasn’t hiding behind excuses. He knew exactly which parts of me this truth would tear through, and he had told it anyway only after vows and rings had sealed us together.
Part of me wanted to scream at him. Part of me still wanted to reach for him, because he was the same man who had called me beautiful five minutes earlier, and that contradiction made me feel split right down the middle.
“I need air,” I said.
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