Chapter Three: Memories Of Another Life
same night, about 2 hours later
Blair sat up in her dark bedroom and reached over to the bedside table, switching on the lamp with frustration. "Damn you, Todd Manning!" she muttered, reaching over to pick up her watch, "I have to be at work in four hours--make that three hours and fifty-nine minutes," she amended as the time changed from 3:00am to 3:01am. She snapped off the light, and flopped back against the pillows, closing her eyes determinedly.
About ten minutes later, Blair opened her eyes, sat up and let out a sigh. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, grabbing for her robe, and stood up. "I'm just going to get a glass of water," she told herself. "Maybe that'll help me sleep." She belted the robe tightly and headed for the stairs outside her bedroom suite. As she rounded the corner to the top of the stairs and saw Todd sleeping on the couch, her breath caught in her throat painfully. Suddenly, she was catapulted back in time four years earlier, to when Todd had first come home from Ireland, and she shook her head as the memories of all the times she had stood just like this watching her then husband sleep poured over her.
1996
Blair Manning sat on the bottom rung of the staircase in the dark, tears pooling in her eyes. Her husband, Todd Manning lay sleeping not ten feet away from her, and all she wanted in the world was to go to him and hold him and chase away whatever demons he had brought back with him from Ireland. But she knew that even in his sleep, he would reject any move she made towards him. If you could call what he was doing sleep, she thought, her hand covering her mouth to hold in the pain, as she watched her husband tossing and turning, fighting --something.
Blair rose quietly and moved as close to him as she dared, watching Todd's furrowed brow. Slowly, tentatively she began to reach out when he turned, mumbling a word, a word that sounded like a name--like her name. "Todd," she whispered, her voice breaking, "oh, love." She slowly sank to her knees on the floor beside him, looking into his face, the face that was both a stranger's face and one she knew like she knew her own. It was said that when you looked at someone sleeping, you could see what they looked like as a child. Not so with Todd; his face, even in sleep, was very much that of an tortured, haunted adult.
What had happened to them to bring them here? A few months ago, God, just a few short months ago, they had been newly married, more in love than either of them had ever thought possible, a child on the way, ready to take over the world and claim it as their own. Then, she had only had to say his name or he had only had to look at her a certain way, and they would be in each other's arms before the word left their mouths. And now, now here they were, only inches apart and yet, there were mountains separating them. Mountains which she couldn't move, and he wouldn't move. She loved him so, so much, and she knew beneath everything, beneath the anger and the secrets and the pain he couldn't share, that he loved her too. Blair let her head fall against the arm of the couch knowing she would have to move before Todd woke up but wanting to breathe the same air as him, stay close to him as long as possible. She closed her eyes as a single tear fell down her cheek. "I love you, Todd," she whispered, needing to say the words out loud. "I love you, and you're gonna come back to me someday, I know it. I just know it."
The tears spilled from under her eyelids, as Blair remembered all the hope she had had then. Even during that time when everything had been upside-down, she had known with everything that was in her that somehow things would turn out right for her and Todd. How wrong she had been, she thought, how very, very wrong.
She walked quietly over to the couch, and stood over Todd watching him sleep. Why was it that she and Todd always came back here, to this place, her standing over him, tears on her cheeks, him fighting with demons created by him and him alone? Looking back, Blair couldn't quite find the place where they had gone wrong. She could list in her head the things that had happened to drive them apart: his 'death' in Ireland, her sleeping with Patrick, his kidnapping of Starr, her trusting Dorian and Patrick over him, his marrying Téa. . . But which of those things had it been that had finally been the end of them? When had the love, the one great love of her life, died?
Suddenly it hit her with a force so strong it almost brought her to her knees. It hadn't died; those feelings were still there buried deep beneath everything. Blair looked down at a sleeping Todd, and slowly, her hand shaking, she reached out to gently touch his cheek. The second her hand made contact, she could feel it--the connection between them. And Blair knew, had always known if she was completely honest with herself, that she had never stopped loving Todd Manning. She was furious with him, she had, yes, despised him, she had even hated him, but through all that she had loved him. She moved her hand along his cheek, brushing a strand of his hand lightly back into place, then brought her hand up to her lips. She looked at him a moment more, knowing that this self-awareness could change everything and not knowing how, then slipped quickly away and up the stairs.
Todd turned over once more, and opened his eyes tentatively just as Blair rounded the top step. His hand drifted up until it was covering his cheek where Blair's fingers had just been. A rare, soft smile spread across his face, transforming him for a milli-second into the child's visage Blair had looked for as he slept. He lay back into the pillows as he closed his eyes, finally falling asleep.
