Unforgotten Tides

1
The moment I learned that my husband, Sean, was actually Adrian Stephen, the sole heir to the Stephen fortune who had vanished in a plane crash, I did the sensible thing. I drew up a divorce agreement.
He tore it to shreds.
Ava, I don't remember any of that! he pleaded, his voice ragged. I want to go home. I miss the smell of the sea, I miss Goldie and Patches. He grabbed my arm. "Let's go back to Seaside Cove. Let's not waste another minute with these people."
I looked up. Victoria, the woman who had been Adrian's wife before his memory loss, was staring at me with a look of pure, venomous despair. Nearby, a little boyAdrian's sonwas crying, trying to run to his father, only to be held back by his nanny.
I swallowed hard, my fingers stiff as I pointed to the signature line. "Sign it, Sean."
"You can let me down," I whispered, "but you can't abandon the wife and child who have been searching for you for six years."
...
Sean's eyes went red. This gentle man I knew roared, shoving Victoria away as she tried to approach him.
"Don't touch me! How many times do I have to tell you? I don't remember anything from before! You're Adrian Stephen's wife, that's Adrian Stephen's son! What does any of that have to do with me, with Sean?"
He clutched his head in anguish. "I'm begging you, just leave me alone! Are you trying to drive my wife away? Is that what you want? I don't have a single memory of being Adrian Stephen, so why are you all trying to make me responsible for his life?"
Seeing his pain, Victoria opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Her eyes grew vacant, and only when she looked at me did a flicker of life return to her hollow expression.
She hated me. With every fiber of her being.
In her eyes, I was the other woman who had stolen her husband, the homewrecker who had destroyed her family. And from a certain point of view, she wasn't wrong.
The year I met Sean, he was a married man.
But I didn't know that. And neither did he.
I found him on the rocks near my small fishing village, Seaside Cove. A shredded parachute was still strapped to his back, and half his face was caked in dried blood, but even then, his handsome features were undeniable.
I took him to the small police station on the island. He couldn't remember a thing, not even his name. He joked that he might be a merman who had swum up from the depths of the ocean.
Officer Miller took one look at his dazed expression and figured he was a mentally ill man abandoned by his family. He took a routine blood sample for the database and told me to take him home for the time being.
"Ava, he might be a few cards short of a deck, but hes built solid," Miller had said. "You don't have a man around the house. He could be a great help. A hot meal for a strong back? Sounds like a good deal for you."
"We'll contact you if we ever find his family."
So, I took him in. I even gave him his name: Sean. He said he was a merman from the sea, so I picked the name of a merman from an old storybook.
And just like that, Sean became a part of my life.
For six years, he went from coming back with empty nets to being the undisputed fishing king of Seaside Cove. From a man who couldn't cook to a master fish filleter who moved with ruthless efficiency. He went from being the hired hand at Ava's place to being Ava's husband.
I thought our simple, happy life would go on forever. Then Officer Miller showed up at our door again.
He looked at me, his expression grim. "Ava... whatever I'm about to tell you, you need to be strong..."
"Sean... he wasn't abandoned. We got a DNA match. He's Adrian Stephen, the only son of the Stephen family, the wealthiest family in Northwood City. He went missing in a plane crash."
"The impact must have caused his amnesia. And before the crash... he was already married. With a child."
"Ava," Miller said gently, "I think your merman has to swim back to the sea."
My heart plummeted into the pit of my stomach with a silent, sickening thud. I stood there, frozen, until Sean's enraged shout snapped me out of it. He had flipped over Officer Miller's desk.
"Miller, you've got a thing for my wife, don't you? Is that why you're stirring up this trouble? So that's why you're still single, you're trying to steal her from me!"
"Don't think I won't deck you just because you're a cop! You dare spread lies about me, I'll..."
Sean was detained for a week for obstructing an officer. The day I picked him up from the station, I dragged him onto a plane to Northwood City.
I had to know the truth. Was he someone else's Adrian, or was he my Sean?
The answer, as it turned out, was not the one I wanted.
Officer Miller was right. Sean was the missing Stephen heir. He had a wife, and his son was now eight years old.
From Victoria's perspective, I was the villain. The homewrecker, the cause of all her pain.
Sean clutched my wrist, his eyes pleading like a big, abandoned dog's.
"Ava, don't leave me," he whispered. "I don't know them. How can I be responsible for them?"
He looked terrified. "You haven't found someone else, have you? Is that what this is? Are you using this as an excuse to get rid of me? If that's it, we can figure it out. You know I'm not a jealous man."
Victoria's breath hitched, and she looked as if she might shatter into a million pieces. The hatred in her eyes shot toward me like poisoned arrows, a constant reminder that the happiness I'd found had been stolen directly from her.
I bit my tongue, hard. The pain jolted me back to reality.
Steeling myself against the dull ache in my chest, I pulled my hand from his grasp.
"Stop it, Sean... Adrian."
"The Stephens have hired the best therapist for you. I'm sure your memory will come back soon."
I took a shaky breath. "Do you remember Mrs. Gable next door? Her husband ran off with another woman while he was working on the mainland. You were always giving her fish. You know better than anyone how hard her life is, raising her son alone."
"You always said that a child without a father is the most pitiful thing in the world. Well, look at Cole. He's your son. Are you going to be the kind of man who abandons his own wife and child?"
Eight-year-old Cole bit his lip, fighting back tears, refusing to cry in front of the 'bad woman.' He stared at Sean, his small face a mixture of stubbornness and hurt.
The man and the boy mirrored each other, the same expression on their faces. It was a bond of blood, something that could never be truly severed.
Victoria, seeing the flicker of pity in Sean's eyes, gave Cole a gentle push. The boy immediately stepped forward and threw his arms around Sean's legs.
"Daddy!"
He was just a child. A child who hated the father who had left him for another woman, but who desperately wanted him back. Cole pulled a stack of old photos from his pocket and pressed himself into Sean's embrace.
Sean flipped through them, one by one. In each photo, a stranger who looked just like him had one arm around the boy and the other around Victoria.
His expression grew more and more tormented. He instinctively pulled Cole into a tight hug.
I took my chance. I turned and walked away.
Standing on a bustling Northwood City street, surrounded by the rush of people, my heart felt emptier than it ever had facing the vast, open sea alone. I was torn, hoping he would run after me and terrified that he would.
"Ava, stop."
My heart seized. I froze.
It was Victoria.
2
She was clearly exhausted, but she held her head high, forcing an air of superiority.
"Ava, we're both women. Don't think I don't see through your little act," she said, her voice sharp. "Playing the magnanimous one, pushing Adrian back to me... you're just trying to make him feel sorry for you, to make him need you even more."
She took a step closer, her voice dropping to a hiss. "You just love being the other woman, don't you?"
3
As much as I disliked her aggressive tone, in that moment, I felt a pang of pity for her. She had spent six years searching for her husband, only to find he had built a new life, a new family, with someone else. A husband who, for the sake of that other woman, was ready to abandon her and their child all over again.
If I were in her shoes, I'm not sure I could have been as strong.
"You're mistaken, Mrs. Stephen. I intend to cut all ties with... Mr. Stephen," I said quietly. "I'm a victim in this too. If I had known he had a family, I never would have"
Victoria wasn't listening. She looked manic as she shoved me to the ground, pulling a bank card from her purse and throwing it at my face.
"Ava, if you're really going to cut ties with him, then get out of here now! Disappear!" she shrieked. "Or I swear, I will make sure every single person on your pathetic little island knows you're a homewrecker who steals other people's husbands!"
I pushed myself up and picked up the card.
She was right. If I was serious about leaving Sean, then I needed to disappear. Now. Anything else was just an act, a way to keep the connection alive.
Clutching my bruised arm, I hailed a cab.
Victoria ran after the car, her voice a mixture of sobs and curses. "Is this what you wanted, Ava? Money? I'll give you anything you want! Just give me back my Adrian!"
Officer Miller had told me about her. She was the daughter of a wealthy family, a Harvard graduate, a titan of business who had single-handedly kept the Stephen empire afloat after her husband's disappearance.
This hysterical, broken woman was not who she was supposed to be.
I had stolen her husband. I had done this to her.
Pressing a hand to my tight chest, I told the driver, "To the airport."
Victoria was generous. The card had five hundred thousand dollars on it. Enough to ensure I would be comfortable for the rest of my life.
But the price was that I could never go back to Seaside Cove. I could never see Sean again.
I fumbled my way through getting a passport and boarded a flight to Iceland.
I hadn't even known the country existed before I met Sean.
"Sweetheart, when the fishing season ends and we have some time off, I'll take you to Iceland," he used to say. "You want to see snow, right? They say Iceland has the most beautiful snow in the world, and the most beautiful auroras."
"It's like the end of the world there. Even the houses are painted in rainbows."
I had wondered how he knew so much. He would just smile and say he must have swum there in a past life, when he was a merman.
I should have known. A man like Seanhandsome, cultured, knowledgeablehow could he have been simply abandoned?
Finding a bar of gold on the street and keeping it isn't so different from stealing.
I hadn't found Sean; I had stolen him.
And now, I was giving him back.
Life in Iceland was lonely and clumsy. It wasn't the paradise Sean had described. The days were short, the nights were long, and it was bone-chillingly cold. I didn't speak the language, so I couldn't make any friends. I wanted to go home, but I couldn't break my promise to Victoria.
After some time spent in a listless haze, she called me. She wanted me to come back.
Her voice was trembling, hollowed out with exhaustion. "Ava, you win."
"Come back. I'm begging you, please come back."
"Adrian says... he says if he can't see you again, he's going to kill himself. I thought he was just bluffing, until I found him in the bathtub this morning... the whole tub was filled with blood..."
4
I rushed back immediately.
Sean was lying weakly in a hospital bed. The moment he saw me, his eyes, which had been dull and lifeless, lit up with a brilliant light.
I took the bowl of porridge Victoria handed me and began to feed him, spoonful by spoonful.
"You're a grown man. What are you doing, trying to kill yourself, going on a hunger strike?"
Sean's shoulders slumped, and he looked at me with red-rimmed eyes, his face a mask of misery. "You're the one who left me first."
"I tried to run after you that day, but you know I have no sense of direction. The only roads I know are the ones in Seaside Cove. I walked around in circles until the housekeeper told me I hadn't even made it past the front gate of the estate."
"Sweetheart, can we please go home?" he pleaded. "I can't eat this bloody rare steak, and I can't sleep on a bed that's softer than a cloud. I just want to go home, back to our boat."
As he spoke, tears started to stream down his face.
I knew I had to say no. But looking at him like this, I didn't have the heart.
Victoria tilted her head back, fighting to keep her own tears from falling. She reached out and tucked the blanket around him.
"When you're discharged from the hospital, I'll let Ava take you home," she said, her voice strained. "As long as you listen to the doctors and take your medicine, I'll agree to whatever you want."
She had given in. She wanted her husband by her side, but she never wanted to drive him to his death.
Hearing her words, Sean let out a long sigh of relief and happily ate another large bowl of porridge.
The single tear that Victoria secretly wiped away fell like a drop of lead onto my heart.
Later, as we left the room together, Victoria gave me a self-deprecating smile.
"Don't think you've won, Ava."
"If Adrian hadn't lost his memory, I know, without a doubt, he would have chosen me."
She took a locket from around her neck and opened it to show me the photo inside.
"Here. This was taken in Iceland."
"I told him I wouldn't agree to his proposal until I saw a rainbow aurora. The fool insisted we stay in Iceland for a whole year. He said if we didn't see one, we'd just live there forever."
Her voice cracked. "The plane crash... he was on his way to an auction in France. He was going to buy a sapphire to have it made into a brooch for me... Damn it. If only I didn't like sapphires."
She smiled and tilted her head up, but tears streamed down her cheeks.
"Forget it, Ava. Take Adrian Stephen with you. As far as I'm concerned, he's already dead."
For a moment, I wavered. But my conscience wouldn't let me. Victoria was his wife. They had a son. She had sacrificed so much more than I had, and she and her child needed him more.
Besides, SeanAdrianhad loved her. He had just forgotten. His dream of taking me to Iceland was born from his love for her.
Stolen things always have to be returned. Better sooner than later.
I looked at Victoria. "Do you have a brick?"
She stared at me, bewildered, but pointed to a construction site next door. "The crew should have some. What do you need a brick for?"
I hurried downstairs with Victoria close behind me. "To get Sean's... Adrian's memory back," I said. "It's how they always do it on TV. One knock causes amnesia, another brings it back."
"You're insane!" Victoria hissed, but I could see a desperate flicker of hope in her eyes.
We went back to the room. Sean was lying in bed, his eyes bright as he watched me.
"Sweetheart, you're back! Did you and that mean woman work things out? When are we going"
I didn't let him finish. I swung the brick and hit him squarely on the back of his head.
"Hiss..." He clutched his head and passed out.
When he came to, his eyes fluttered open. He looked around, and his gaze settled on someone.
"Honey," he rasped.
But this time, he was looking at Victoria.

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