“Anything but hospital food,” he replied with a smile. “How about your homemade muesli?”
She looked startled at his request. “I haven’t made that in years, but I have store-bought.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I’ll just have some toast. I can get that myself.”
Olivia gently pushed him onto a stool by the counter. “Oh no you won’t. Your first morning home, I’m making you a nice breakfast. How about scrambled eggs and smoked salmon?”
His mouth watered. “That sounds much better. Thanks.”
He watched her as she moved around the kitchen, envying how she knew where everything was. None of it was familiar to him. The kitchen was different to the poorly fitted cupboards and temperamental old stove that had been here when they’d bought the property in a deceased estate auction. The place had been like a time capsule. The same family had owned it since it had been built. The last of the family line, an elderly spinster, had lived only on the ground floor in her later years, and nothing had been done to modernize the property since the early 1960s.
The aroma of coffee began to fill the room. Feeling uncharacteristically useless, Xander rose to get a couple of mugs from the glass-fronted cupboard. At least he could see where they were kept, he thought grimly. Automatically he put a heaping spoon of sugar in each mug.
“Oh, no sugar for me,” Olivia said, whipping one of the mugs away and pouring the sugar back in the bowl before putting the mug back down again.
“Since when?”
“A couple of years ago, at least.”
Just how many of the nuances of their day-to-day life did he need to relearn, he thought as he picked up the mugs and moved toward the coffee machine. She must have seen the look that crossed his face at the news.
“It’s okay, Xander. Whether I take sugar or not isn’t the end of the world.”
“It might not be, but what about important stuff? The things we’ve done together, the plans we’ve made in the past few years? What if I never remember? Hell, I don’t even remember the accident that caused me to lose my memory, let alone what car I was driving.”
His voice had risen to a shout, and Olivia’s face, always a window to her emotions, crumpled into a worried frown—her eyes reflecting her distress.
“Xander, none of those things are important. What’s important is that you’re alive and that you’re here. With me.”
She closed the distance between them and slid her arms around his waist, laying her head on his shoulder and squeezing him tight as if she would never let him go. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, trying hard to put a lid on the anger that had boiled up within him at something so simple, so stupid, as misremembering whether or not his wife took sugar in her coffee.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pressing a kiss on the top of her head. “I just feel so bloody lost right now.”
“But you’re not lost,” Olivia affirmed with another squeeze of her arms. “You’re here with me. Right where you belong.”
The words made sense, but Xander struggled with accepting them. Right now he didn’t feel as if he belonged here at all. And the idea was beginning to scare him.
Five
Olivia could feel him mentally withdrawing from her and it made her want to hold on to him all the harder. The medical team had warned her that Xander would experience mood swings. It was all part and parcel of what he’d been through and what his brain was doing to heal itself. She gave him one more squeeze and then let him go.
“Shall we eat breakfast out on the patio?” she asked as brightly as she could. “Why don’t you pour our coffees, and then maybe you could set the table out there for me while I finish making breakfast.”
Without waiting for a response, she busied herself getting place mats and cutlery and putting them on a large wooden tray with raised edges so that if he faltered nothing would slide off. She couldn’t mollycoddle him all the time, but no one said she couldn’t try to make things easier for him, either. She went ahead and opened the doors that led onto the patio, ensuring that the way was clear for him with nothing to trip over.
“There, I’ll be out in a minute or two,” she said after he’d filled both mugs with coffee. He seemed to hesitate. “Something the matter, Xander?”
“I didn’t notice yesterday if you still take milk or not.”
His voice was flat, with an air of defeat she’d never heard from him before. Not even after Parker died.
“I do, thanks.”