Runaway Bride

Darío Magghio

Hours later, I am still waiting in the dining room for Tatiana’s return. I shooed her away as if she were really guilty of some atrocity. My demons of the past made my present vilely affected. Now, feeling the house empty and knowing that I was responsible for Tatiana’s departure, I begin to understand that I must get used to my new present and stop focusing on the wrong things someone else did to me in the past. And that someone is none other than Arianna. Because of her, after so many months since her death, I take responsibility for not reaching her in time when she jumped off the balcony. Just thinking about it, my body freezes, and I feel raging anger over the months I have learned to control.

What the hell was this woman thinking? What kind of depression so strong wrapped her up that suicide was the only alternative she found to her pain? Did I, unconsciously, mistreat her? Did I judge her so harshly as the days went by when she confessed her infidelity to me that she wanted to die? That she tried to escape from family life and her own newborn child?

I don’t understand how it was possible that a mother, minutes after giving birth, could have the fortitude or rather the emotional weakness so strong that, regardless of my calls, she would throw herself over the cliff without caring that she was leaving her child an orphan, without thinking about the future he would have or the circumstances he would suffer growing up without a mother.

“You’re not going to dinner.” It’s more of a comment than a question. In the meantime, she approaches.

That woman knows me better than I know myself. She was there every step of the way; it was even her idea to declare Arianna’s death a loss when giving birth to Dante. It wasn’t fair to tarnish my son’s memory, nor my family’s name, by making it public knowledge that my wife, my late wife, was so fed up with me, with the situation she had with me, with her son who had just been born, that she had been so lost as to save her and decided to kill herself at the last minute.

No, I didn’t want that in my son’s life. I don’t want it still, and I will never want it again. My son deserves all the happiness in the world... and that is what I intend to give him.

Even if I am blind now, so blind that I don’t know how I will succeed in bestowing him that happiness for which I have striven so hard, I will make him happy.

“I have said things...” I run my hand through my slowly growing beard. It itches a little, but it’s more the anxiety of not knowing if Tatiana will return.

The driver told me he took her to her parents’ house. I knew that was the house because he brought us to the castle on the wedding day.

That day I wanted so much to kiss her. Her scent intoxicated me, stunned me. I didn’t know I could feel something so strong for a woman I barely knew.

“Your mouth is your measure, Darío. So you must learn not to do or say the first thing that comes into your mind.”

“It’s just that...” I glance at my cell phone, which I still hold in my hand.

and think about the conversation with David, who called to follow up on my first hours out of the hospital and his care. One thing led to another. Finally, after several minutes of chatting, I decided to ask him the question

are moments that you can erase without realizing it. First some irrelevant details, later names, phone numbers, lunchtimes, until

my employees, or conversations with my housekeeper.

a few seconds, then gave some instructions to a nurse and continued, “although you may not understand it that way, your type of amnesia is not only because of the

understood little by little

honest, Darío, will

needed answers. I didn’t care which

to catch her and not making it in time, meant not only a blunt force trauma to you as you fell into the garden from a second

trying to tell me that I lost part of my

and apologized before continuing. “The brain is a complex thing, and it’s not an organ that can be fixed in one fell swoop. A lot of times, the glitches are mental

stay blind.”

insufficient because none of it sunk in. I believed it, let alone felt it. I was always strong and capable of fending for myself without help from others. Although given the circumstances, I had to rely on those around

it again: your vision loss is temporary. I am very positive. I know that soon you will call me and

mouth, as the oxygen did not want to enter my lungs as it should. “Is it possible to forget something that happened but believe that the event

for a second. My heart leaped happily inside my

most beautiful reality I had in months, maybe more than a year. She was real. The woman of my dreams, the

and I didn’t

David without giving him the reason

need to have a chance to apologize to Tatiana. I offended her too much! How could I have been able

her,” I say after a while.

table. She places a hand

It’s not all about economics. You’re running away from

know now.” And I also