Laura’s POV 103
Those six months in Hallstatt were uneventful, except for the occasional agonizing over my lost memories.
Until one day, Cameron reappeared and broke my peaceful life.
It was already spring, the kindergarten organized a spring trip for the children, and I was the lead teacher, so naturally I had to be 100% energetic. The spring trip was held in the suburb of Hallstatt, where all kinds of flowers competed with each other, and the air was exceptionally fresh, which made people’s mood especially relaxed.
I did my best to keep an eye on the boys along the way, however, I was not paying attention and one of the most mischievous little boys in the class left the group and scampered monkey-like to a large tree by the side of the road.
“Grahamy, get down here!” I yelled anxiously.
Grahamy, however, did not realize his danger at all, but instead rode on the branch and made faces at me. I was afraid that he would crush the branch, it’s not a joke if you fall from such a high tree.
“Grahamy!” I can only force myself to calm down, “You listen to the teacher, you slowly put your feet to the side … right, and then we play a game, okay? Let’s see how many steps your little feet can reach the ground?”
But Grahamy did not listen to my command, staring at a pair of big eyes of the ancient spirit, the bones turn, and then laugh, “Teacher wants to trick me down!”
“No Grahamy …”
“I’m not listening no!”
Said Grahamy as he stomped on a branch to climb higher. It was in the nature of young boys to be mischievous, completely oblivious to how alarmed the people under the tree were at the moment.
My heart clenched tightly.
Nowadays, children are held in the palm of their parents’ hands, how could I afford to take the responsibility if something really went wrong?
“Grahamy, get down here!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, “Grahamy, the teacher is ordering you to come down now! It’s too dangerous there, no more climbing high!”
“I won’t!” The little boy was stubborn, “I’m going to climb as high as I can and pick apples!”
“Grahamy!”
I watched as he stepped on a foot and his whole body lost its balance, and with a shriek, he tumbled down from the big tree.
In that instant my mind was in a daze, so nervous that I even stopped breathing, instinctively running over to him with open arms to catch him, however, in that nick of time, a pair of big hands rushed in front of me and steadily caught Grahamy, turning around to hold him in my arms.
The frightened little boy burst into tears. I was stunned, and then it occurred to me that I had to hurry up and thank someone.
“This gentleman …”
As soon as he looked back, however, I froze. In a flash my brain seemed to collide violently like lightning and flint, and that blank space in my heart was suddenly filled with something.
The feeling left me shocked and confused.
That man also quietly looked at me, a pair of deep as ink eyes with a slight coldness, while the corners of the lips are upturned, angular face is very masculine.
He handed Grahamy in my hand and smiled gently, his voice was low and mellow, “Can’t even watch a kid, how did you become a teacher?”
Suddenly an image flashed through my mind: I was holding a little girl in my arms, she kept crying, a man snatched her over and patted and coaxed her slowly, then looked at me with a look of disgust and said, “You can’t even coax a child well, how do you become a mother?”
I couldn’t breathe for a second, and my head hurt. The man looked at me with concern and asked softly, “Are you okay?”
I fixed my mind and barely smiled at him, “It’s fine … Thanks to you just now, or Grahamy would have fallen and hurt himself. Thank you!”
“You’re welcome.”
“Sir!” He was just about to turn to leave when I called out to him.
He turned back, “Anything else?”
From the faint look in his eyes, I had a strong feeling … that he knew me, that this man must be inextricably linked to my blank past!
“I …” I bit my lip, suddenly hesitating. Although it is very tempting to figure it all out, but in case this person has nothing to do with me, such a sudden question, is not it an offense to others?
“If you have something to say, just say it.”
I took a deep breath, “Sir, have we … met before?”
He looked frozen for a long time, and hooked the corner of his mouth, revealing a meaningful smile.
He didn’t answer, didn’t deny, just gently turned away. Soon his back disappeared in my line of sight, the corner of the black trench coat lifted and fell, like a black wind.
That whole day I was distracted. It was hard to get home from work, and I curled myself up in the couch, not even having the strength to cook.
Someone knocked on the door for half a day, and when I slowly went to open it, there stood Patrick outside.
“Why do you look so bad?” Patrick was startled, “What’s wrong?”
“Just a little headache.” I let him in.
“A headache? You haven’t had that for a long time, why do you have a headache again?”
“I’m not sure.” I was tired and rubbed my temples, “By the way Brother Patrick, I saw someone today …”
He blushed, “Who?”
“I don’t know.” I said, “But I have a very familiar feeling about him, quite inexplicable … Today’s fall excursion, a little boy in our class climbed up a tree and almost fell, and it was that person who caught him. From then on I felt something was wrong … I seemed to have known him for a long time, and his every move felt familiar to me, especially since he was wearing a black trench coat …”
With that said, I felt another headache.
Patrick sat there, motionless. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly, and his face wasn’t too pretty as he frowned lightly between his eyebrows. I went to shake his hand and realized that his palm, which was always warm, was as cold as a block of ice at the moment.
“Brother Patrick, what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” He whispered, “Laura, it might be him.”
“Who?”
He tugged at the corners of his mouth, “You’ll find out later.”
With that he got up and left.
I couldn’t even call out to him.
But this incident, this person, has become a knot in my heart. The more I tried to untie it, the more my hands were tied. I didn’t know what to do, but only vaguely felt that there was a truth approaching me.
In the following days, I went to work as usual, but I obviously felt different from before.
I always felt a pair of eyes staring at me from behind, on the way to work, on the way home from work, and even when I was in the classroom teaching children how to sing, dance, and play games, I could feel those eyes locking onto me. But when I turned around, there was nothing behind me.
I became very nervous, especially sensitive, and the slightest breeze could make me panic for half a day. My subconscious told me that this feeling was unusually closely related to the man who appeared that day. I also thought of ways to find that man, but all to no avail. The man only appeared on that side and then disappeared, and I sometimes even thought that everything on that day could have just been a hallucination on my part.
However, those eyes behind me were by no means an illusion.
This strange feeling lasted for about a week or so, and suddenly one day, I realized that there was really a person in a black trench coat behind me following me!
When I passed by the convenience store that day, I thought that I didn’t have any seasoning packets for soup at home, so I temporarily decided to turn around and go back to buy them. Just as I turned around, I noticed a black figure quickly ducking into the alley behind me.
My hairs stood on end and a cold sweat broke out on my spine. I slowed my pace and slowly approached the alley, I could clearly see a shadow reflected on the stone wall of the alley, the figure was swaying slightly, I froze in place, not daring to move.
It was as if I was in a standoff with him, to see who would take the first step. But the next second I jerked around and quickly fled, running for my life. From there to my house is a distance of three stops, I even forgot to take the bus, so I ran all the way back.
However, when I got home, I realized that the man was standing downstairs in my house!
I saw from afar, he was still wearing a black trench coat, look cold and indifferent, casually pull out a cigarette to smoke. He was leaning against the wall, and there was a car parked in front of him, the same black color as his trench coat, shiny black.
I panicked, busy hiding behind a tree, took out the phone to call Patrick. “Patrick big brother … quickly come! Someone followed me … that day that person wearing black clothes, followed to my house downstairs!”
Patrick comforted me a few words, not long before he rushed to. I hid behind him, he took me to the apartment downstairs, when with the man four eyes relative, I have a kind of heart-thumping feeling.
It felt like it came from a long ago blank memory.
“It’s really you.” Patrick said softly when she saw him.
The tone was commonplace, as if he was seeing an old acquaintance.
I asked him, “You know each other?”
The man raised his eyes, a pair of hawk-like gazes locked onto me, and laughed softly, “More than knowing … I’ve been looking for you guys for half a year, and I didn’t think that you’d really bring her to hide here!”
Said he wanted to go forward, was Patrick a hand to stop. “Cameron! What do you want to do? Laura her body is not too good now, you do not stimulate her!”
Cameron?
I heard that name, Cameron.
The closed door in my memory seemed to be slowly opening. “Cameron… “I stared at him in a daze, muttering and repeating those two words, the name seemed to be a spell from a previous life that had followed me until now.
“Get out of my way!” The man named Cameron looked menacing, “I’m taking her away!”
“You can take her away, but not now!”
“Patrick!” yelled Cameron, glaring at him angrily, “I always thought of you as a brother, as a best friend! But what have you done behind my back? You knew about my relationship with Laura!”
“I didn’t do anything to wrong you!” Patrick put his hands against him, “Cameron, don’t you know what kind of person I am? Six months ago I didn’t know why you and Laura got into such a fight, I was called to the police when she fell into the sea and hit her head! After sending her to the hospital she had a high fever and also got pulmonary fluid … Later she lost her memory and I had to come here on a mission … I had no choice but to bring her along!”
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“That should be asked of yourself! Why didn’t you know?” Patrick yelled, “Cameron, you were there when she fell into the ocean! Why didn’t you save her?”
Cameron was stunned, but his gaze grew fierce. In the middle of the morning, he swung his fist at Patrick, and with a muffled thud, Patrick fell to the ground, blood seeping out of his nose.
I screamed and ran over to him, but before I could help him, Patrick quickly got up from the floor and hit Cameron back in the same way.
The two of them were instantly wrestling, you punching and I kicking, the fight getting more and more intense. Many of the neighbors came out to watch, some said they were going to call the police, but when they saw that Patrick was wearing a police uniform they didn’t do much.
I yelled, “Stop fighting, stop fighting!”
But they didn’t listen to me.
In a hurry, I violently crossed in the middle of the two of them, blocking in front of Patrick, with the body between the two. Cameron a fist smashed over, when he saw it was me when it was too late, the punch confiscated, hard hit my temple.
Suddenly I felt the sky spin, my eyes went black and my legs went weak.
I fell heavily to the ground, no consciousness, only heard faint shouts in my ears, “Laura, Laura!” I tried to grab Patrick, but I didn’t know whose hand I was touching, the palm was broad and warm, and when I touched it, it made me feel relieved.
The last thing I remember was the ambulance siren.
When I woke up again, I was in a hospital, surrounded by white, blending in with the white of my mind. I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling, and slowly, pieces of memories broke into my mind.
Cameron, Patrick, the fights …
And the pier.
It was as if a child was crying in my ears, and that child was Sunny, my daughter!
I sat up violently, my head aching.This belongs © NôvelDra/ma.Org.
The feeling of wanting to cry choked in my throat, tears welling up in my eyes. I clenched my fingers in a death grip as the outlines of my memories became clearer and the gap was filled with the name Cameron.
I remembered everything, everything with Cameron.
From the moment Anne had her tongue cut out, from the day I entered The Lynch Family, from the first time Cameron and I met … I was destined to be entangled with this man for the rest of my life. He was my lover, he was my destiny, he was my enemy, he was my daughter’s father.
He is also my brother …
I lay prone, my face buried in the pillow, tears flowing unchecked. I thought that the calmness of the last six months of my life at Hallstatt had turned me into a man of peace, yet the moment Cameron showed up, that peace was shattered completely.
The door to the hospital room slammed, the nurse came in to change my medication, and the doctor gave me a thorough examination, smiling and congratulating me on regaining my full memory.
He said maybe it was because of that punch. Anyway, this kind of thing like memory is not supposed to be easy to say, whether it’s an external or internal force, just a little stimulation can open the floodgates of memory.
But I couldn’t laugh, I’d rather none of this had happened, I’d rather live the rest of my life with a blank memory, I’d rather remember that there was never a Cameron.
Cameron walked into the hospital room, briefly asked the doctor about my condition, and sat down next to my bed, quietly watching me.
The doctors and nurses exited, leaving us alone.
I turned my face away from him, and for a long time I heard a soft sigh, “I … I didn’t know you were hurt that badly at the time.”
“You watched me fall into the sea, why didn’t you save me?” I closed my eyes, a tear slipping past the corner of my eye.
Cameron paused for a moment and said, “It’s not that I didn’t save you, the situation was a bit confusing at the time … I saw you fall into the sea, and I told my men to go and save you up, but I didn’t realize that the place where you fell was an undercurrent… . and you sank quickly.”
“A couple of my men couldn’t find you, so they called the police. And I had to take care of Sunny and calm her down at the time, by the time I got her settled, I hadn’t heard from you … Later I found out that you came to Hallstatt with Patrick.”