Blank Slate Kate

Chapter 29

I've already missed two possible trains and have less than an hour until the last one of the night, but I can't leave until Ryan and I have things straightened out.

So far they're still far too twisty.

"I need to understand," I say yet again, "why Donna didn't tell anyone anything. Nobody would be surprised she didn't like Colleen after what happened, and from what I hear of Colleen nobody much likes her anyhow." The pain of seeing my husband's other woman rips through me again and I add, "Except for you."

He sighs. "I don't, trust me. I don't think I really knew her until I told her I wouldn't see her any more. She always seemed so sweet, but her nastiness when I ended it... But that's not the point."

"No, it's not. Why was Donna so secretive?"

Ryan shakes his head. "She just was, Kate. I don't know what you want me to say."

"Why am I not secretive then? I admit how I feel, I talk to people more openly than it seems like she ever did. Why? We're the same person on the inside. We lived the exact same life until we were seventeen, so why are we so different?"

He sighs, looking suddenly so old. "I can't help you. There's nothing I can say."

We've been dancing around this for hours and I think we both know it's time to say it. So I do. "Ryan, what about us? You say you love me, and I know I love you." Even meeting his mistress didn't change that. "So what are we going to do?"

His eyes fill with such pain and such love that I can barely breathe. "I don't know," he says softly, then looks down at his hands.

I look down too, at the diamonds on my right hand. I really believed, at the beginning, that I'd eventually become Donna again and move my husband's rings back to my wedding finger. It doesn't look like either of those things is going to happen.

"Ryan, you do love me, right?" I whisper.

He doesn't look up. "Yes."

It's what I want to hear, but oh, does it sound final. Like a door slamming, not one opening. "It's not enough, though, is it?"

We sit without speaking for a long time. The silence answers my question, and it's just salt in the wound when he looks up at me and says, "No."

My eyes fill with tears at the sadness and finality in his face. "But..."

He shakes his head. "I hurt Donna so badly. Over and over. If I can save you from that..." He stops and stares down at his hands again.

"You think sending me away will save me from pain?"

His fingers brush his wedding ring. "Donna thought it would. That's why she left."

"You don't know that."

His shoulders slump and he says, "Come on. Why else would she have gone?"

I have no answer and he knows it. I've seen nothing to make Donna leave except her relationship with Ryan.

"Kate, I can't do it. I loved Donna and I broke her heart. I love you too much to do it to you as well."

Fighting to keep from crying, I say, "So, what then? I should just walk away? Do I go back to Toronto or stay in Ottawa? Do you even care where I go?"

His head snaps up and he grabs my hand in a painful grip. "I care. Don't ever think I don't. I'll always care. I love you."

I pull my hand away. "Not enough to stay with me."

"If it makes it easier to think that, then do it."

"Don't you dare," I say, fury tearing through me. "Don't put it off on me. What would make it easier would be to have my husband by my side helping me figure out who I am."