NYE: Entry #40

A Revelation

Down the few steps and into the main room, Agnetha and Isabelle watched the children wear hats and 2019 sparkled glasses. She looked around the room and couldn't find the one she was looking for. It had been nearly twenty minutes since Björn had been missing. He was always a busy man and she expected he was perhaps on the phone. There was still perhaps forty minutes remaining until the new year and she remembered what she had been missing.

"I'll just grab my phone," she smiled to her daughter-in-law and walked up small steps and down the hall towards her room. The small light in the room to her right slowed her.

"Björn?" Agnetha opened the door of the study and walked towards the man whose face was lit by a small warm light. He sat in the leather chair, not acknowledging her presence because his eyes were stuck on the brown journal in his hand. Her eyes immediately fell onto it and she knew her life was written in his hands. "What are you doing? W-where did you get that?" Slowly his gaze followed her height from the clacking of her heeled boots to her golden hair. By the look of his face it was so clear he was far into what he read. He couldn't bring himself to speak.

"That's not for you to read."

"Frankly, I think it's quite the opposite," he mumbled. "Why didn't I know this existed? You've kept it all these years?" Her throat grew a lump and she looked away, feeling her tears were going to stream endless. She was still sensitive from the moment she had lost it. "You wrote every damn year. All of them mention us–"

"You had no right to read it!" she growled defensively.

"No, you had no right to keep this from me! To not tell me that this was how you felt. You lied to me!"

"I beg you not to do this to me tonight." Her coarse voice cracked as he watched her face and felt a large wound in his heart reopen. Björn hesitated for a long time and then opened the notebook again, reading the very first page.

"December 31, 1978," he read the very first entry out loud. "It has been one week since I left. The longest week of my life," his voice broke off as he tried to gain the courage. "The children and I haven't gone through one day without the mention of his name and at every turn I still feel him near, an endless haunting memory of what used to be... of what should be."

"Björn, stop it," she breathed as her tear fell to her cheek. She approached to stop him but he moved further back.

"I knew I had made the mistake of leaving him, because we were the couple that was meant to last. The miserable week knowing our separation is solid gave me time to think that it's all a mistake. If two people love one another–"

"I said stop!" she yelled with a shaky heart.

"If two people love one another, they'll return to each other no matter how difficult the situation is." He read louder and cried softly. He couldn't bare to meet her eyes and lock with hers.

"Björn–" Agnetha interrupted and attempted to grab the notebook but he turned and couldn't continue the next part without his vision being clouded with tears.

"I've decided to fix things when I see him tonight. It's an opportunity for a second chance. If you truly do love someone, they'll return. We'll return. I know it. I was so foolish to think I can live without him." He looked up to find Agnetha's glossy eyes and a hand over her mouth.

"New Years Eve 1978," he mumbled. "I didn't hear from you. You weren't even there– what were you talking about?" She shook her head and cried, afraid of answering. Björn turned to her broken and desperate for an answer. "Agnetha, how could you have changed anything when you weren't even there?"

"Let go of me," she broke out and slipped away from him.

"Why are you running from me?!" To his surprise she turned around and furiously snapped back.

"Because it's not true! I was there," she broke down. "I c-came to see you.. to make things work... to explain that I was sorry." She gasped for a breath before being able to continue at all. His expression, she could see, was the moment of realization, a very bitter taste of reality– of the truth she kept from him. She couldn't stop then, she knew.

"I thought you had missed me but I was wrong, because you had already moved on. I saw you kissing her and I knew it was over. I was forgotten. Everything you and I had was in the past because you were already moving on." She considered she shouldn't add on anymore, but there wasn't holding back now. It was the only moment she'd have to bring it all out.

"I was nothing. I must have been nothing to you then," she struggled on her words. He leaned over the desk and breathed out defeatedly as a hand ran over his face. "She gave you what I couldn't. So I left–"

"She gave me a kiss because it was a bet!" He spun around and met her eyes. "It wasn't anything more than a dare that night from a silly group of guys," he explained. "I waited for you to show... but you never did! You were so cold with me the days after and I thought you were still so sick of me because of all the things I had said to you before we separated! You should have told me, Agnetha. You should have fucking told me," he growled. The tone in his voice was sharp and it had cut her in ways she believed she'd never have to experience again. He had scared her, and he understood he was startling her by the way she jumped back, but it was only from an aching in his heart knowing forty cold years were spent with both mutually wishing they had a different fate that could have changed their destiny. She shook her head in shock at what she heard. Her inhales were taken rapidly as she tried to take in his words but everything he said was frightening her. In the back of her mind she was afraid of their timing, afraid of what he was saying. She turned to the door as she cried wanting to leave before anyone could find them. She knew her heart wouldn't cope any longer and it wouldn't help anyone if others were to discover what was happening. The entire family was cheering outside those doors and her world was on the verge of an ending.

"And I was the fool who was oblivious," he calmly added. "I knew you better than anyone. Don't turn from me!" He grasped her wrist, knowing damn well he could never drop what he knew now.

"Stop," she exhaled. He still went on rambling but she no longer could breathe nor understand. "Björn..." her voice was faint and light and he didn't think it was anything until she began wheezing. "Björn, stop I'm b-begging you, st–stop." For a moment he thought she was exaggerating. Her hand escaped his hold to be set on her chest and she no longer had space to breathe. It gave him a sudden flashback of her panic attacks from the last few years they had spent together, when he noted her to be overdramatic then. This was different. It was worse.

"Anna?" His wet eyes widened as he analyzed what was happening. She stopped responding all together as if she had fallen into another dimension and he had lost connection with her eyes. She sunk into the chair beside the desk and took the last significant breath she could.

"Agnetha," he called as he hunched over and put his hand to her wet, reddened cheeks. "Sweetheart, what's happening? What's wrong, baby? Look at me." Her vision doubled and she no longer knew where to focus. Björn's voice had faded as her limbs went weak. The muscles of her body went numb yet all she could feel was the pressure and the aching her chest held, unlike anything she had ever experienced.