Remember Me- an Alias Grace Fanfiction

Part 6

Eliza walks into the room with two glasses of water, "Grace?" she repeats herself, looking concerned.
Grace looks at her, shaking the shock from her thoughts, "Yes?"
"You look startled, are you alright?"
She nods, "Quite."
She still looks uncertain but places a glass of water on a small table next to Simon and hands the other to Grace for her to drink.
"Drink it please, if you are not startled then there is still the traveling sickness to be wary of," she taps the bottom of the glass and then gestures that she take a seat.
Their eyes lock and there is that sense of familiarity she can see in his gaze but something is missing, a piece of him that she wishes she could repair. He had grown a beard now but Grace knew she would have recognized him in any face.
"I will leave you alone now," and Eliza walks away.
The pounding in Grace's chest has not subsided and she blinks rapidly to stop her stinging eyes from revealing their little secret.
"Simon," she had not meant to whisper but there was a crook in her throat that would not allow her to speak at her full volume. She prayed he might have some moment of recognition, that in seeing her now he might see her for her past self. But nothing came.
"You are Grace?" his voice sent every lost memory shooting through her mind once more. The tempting sound of his voice that she came to know so well, and yet now it was so detached.
"Yes, I am," her nose began to burn and she sniffled. His face looked just as it did before. He wore that low-set brow with kind eyes and those pretty rose petal lips that once graced her with such kind words. Eliza had said he spoke very selectively and Grace had assumed this meant at one-word intervals but hearing him talking just as usual with no unfamiliar tone in it was like torture to her ears. It was unbearable, sitting across from him and being the only one to know what she or he had meant to the other. If he did not remember, could it even have happened? Could it only have been in her mind if she had nothing to prove her right? No one to back up what she had known to be— whatever it had been. He did leave and so maybe that was not far from the truth. Maybe what she had seen as significant was only passing to him.
"How have you been, sir?" she blinks again, trying to keep herself composed.
He doesn't respond. She wants to scream at him, make him say anything but what would a stranger's pain be to him?
"Why won't you speak?" She tries to remain at ease.
"I am not a child, Grace, and you are not my teacher," he says, "I do not have to speak if I do not wish to."
The knife in her chest only twists. She did not mean to offend him, that was the least of anything she wanted to do.
"I do not mean to seem that way," she begins, "but I am wondering about something. Eliza has told me that you do not speak very often and that you are in dire health. You seem to me to be completely healthy."
He lets out a pained laugh, "completely healthy you say? I am unable to walk without assistance, Grace. And I do not speak much because if I do it is want for more and I cannot give more when doing anything is like pulling stiff springs."
She goes silent. She has only hurt him more. She had wanted their first meeting to be that of happiness and long lost memories. This was depressing and horribly upsetting.
"Do you not remember me?" She says quietly, not trying as much now to hold in her pain, "you do not know who I am?"
His eyebrows twitch and for a moment there is something like yearning in his expression. He hesitates to speak, "I know you only by the things my mother has said to me and the writings within my folders. You are a stranger to me as much as the women who protested your pardon are strangers to you."
The sting of his words cut deeply into Grace. How could he not know who she was? How could this be all they were now?
"Then why have I been brought here? You have read my papers yet I am here in flesh doing the same thing for you? What good will that do?"
"I cannot tell you the ways of my mother, it is unknown to me. She seems to have thought that yo— our sessions meant a great deal to me and might restore true memories, not the superficial kind that can be lost to me the very next day."
"What do you mean by that?"
He breathes, "there are some days where I do not recall many things," he takes a short pause, "I am— I seem to restart and forget who I am or what I have been told."
He does not continue to explain. Grace wants to ask him more, to tell her everything he might know, but it would seem strange for her to do so. She is not known to him in anything more than written text.
"Right, then I will leave you now," he grabs for the crutches on the side of his seat and pulls himself up. As he does this, the muscles of his arms flex tightly through his white shirt and Grace can see the strained and contorted shapes of his back pulling against the fabric as he brings himself away.
A swarm of emotions go through Grace's mind.
It had been a complete disaster. How on earth would her presence do anything to restore him to health? Eliza must know that this would not do what she hoped it would.
Moments later, Eliza comes into the room, "how did it go?"
Grace shook herself from her thoughts, "as well as it can have. He does not remember me," she pauses before asking her next question,"I am only wondering, ma'am, what should I be doing specifically? He seems well enough to hold conversation with me and aside from his difficulty in mobility," she recalls his toned figure as he stood from his seat, "he is utterly sound."
Eliza sighs, "he has not told you then that he is depleting in health. The truth is that, his doctor tells us his mind may be sharp but it is depleting slowly and consistently, and he knows this because of his physical state. He should be walking on his own now, his spinal injury has healed. But because he has not, it is believed that something in his brain is causing him to be unable. This symptom has been seen before but only in life threatening cases and over short periods of time. And there are also those days— days when he seems to completely reset his mind to point zero and that is when he is at his lowest ability. My belief is that if I were to restore his memories completely and fully ingrain them into his mind again, it might also restore whatever it is that is causing this depletion in his mind because up until now we have only ever reminded him of his past, never truly delved completely into his memories."
Grace listens, slowly understanding, "I see," she says, "I know I have said so already but I will truly try my very best to do this for you."
Eliza smiles kindly at her, "well then, I will be off. I will come visit you tomorrow."
Grace perks her brow, "visit? Is this not your home?"
Eliza laughs, looking slightly taken aback, then looks at her in confusion, "you are not joking? No, no, this is not my home. This is Simon's"
I'm