Dead Wife Walking Chapter 02

Dead Wife Walking Chapter 02

“Which wife?”

Those two words confirmed everything I’d ever suspected — I was so invisible to him that he genuinely needed clarification about which woman bearing his last name had just died.

Mark’s jaw tightened. I could see the veins in his neck straining. “Vivian, sir. Vivian Blackwell. Your legal wife. She passed away an hour ago at St. Catherine’s Hospital.”

Another pause. Then I heard shuffling — the clinking of a glass being set down, the murmur of a woman’s voice in the background asking, *”Ethan, what’s wrong?”*

Serena. Of course.

“How?” His voice carried no grief, only the mild inconvenience of a man whose schedule had been disrupted.

“Leukemia. Stage four. She was diagnosed eighteen months ago.”

“That’s impossible. She never mentioned being sick.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Mark said, and I could hear the restraint fracturing, “when was the last time you spoke to her long enough for her to mention anything?”

Ethan went quiet.

I remembered the last time we’d had an actual conversation. Three weeks ago. I’d worked up the courage to knock on his study door. My body had been failing — I could barely stand without the walls spinning.

“Ethan, I need to tell you something important.”

He hadn’t looked up from his laptop. “If it’s about the household budget, email my assistant.”

“It’s not about money. It’s about my health—”

“Vivian.” His voice sliced through mine like a blade. “I have a merger presentation tomorrow. Whatever it is, handle it yourself. That’s what adults do.”

I had stood in that doorway for a full ten seconds, watching the back of his head, memorizing the way his hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck. I wanted to scream. I wanted to collapse at his feet and force him to look at me.

Instead, I whispered, “Okay.”

I walked back to my room and cried until I threw up blood.

Now, hovering over Mark as he sat in the hospital corridor, I heard Ethan’s voice shift — just slightly.

“I’ll be there in an hour.”

“She’s already in the morgue, sir.”

“Then she can wait.”

Mark hung up without saying goodbye. He stared at the phone like he wanted to crush it. Then he stood, walked into my hospital room, and began carefully gathering my belongings.

A worn paperback. A half-eaten bag of crackers. A small velvet box I’d kept hidden in my pillowcase.

He opened it. Inside was a handwritten letter and a USB drive, both labeled: *For Ethan. After.*

Mark read the first line of the letter, and his face crumpled.

*”Dear Ethan, by the time you read this, I will have finally stopped bothering you.”*

He pressed the letter to his chest and sobbed — this man I barely knew, weeping for me while my own husband couldn’t be bothered to rush.

When Ethan finally arrived — one hour and forty-three minutes later — he walked in with Serena on his arm.

At my deathbed.

She was wearing the emerald necklace.

Mark saw it too. His eyes darted from the necklace to Ethan’s face, and something in his expression shifted from grief to pure, undiluted contempt.

Ethan glanced at the empty bed, stripped of its sheets. “Where is she?”

“Downstairs. In the morgue.” Mark’s voice was mechanical now. “She’s been dead for almost three hours, sir. She died alone.”

Serena tugged Ethan’s sleeve. “Babe, this place is depressing. Can we go? You can handle the paperwork tomorrow.”

I watched Ethan’s face. For one fleeting second — so brief I almost missed it — something flickered across his features.

But then Serena pressed closer, and it vanished.

“Mark, handle the arrangements,” he said. “A simple service. No media.”

He turned to leave.

Mark stepped forward. “Sir. She left something for you.”

He held out the velvet box.

Ethan frowned, taking it. He flipped it open, scanned the first line of the letter, and snapped it shut.

“I’ll read it later.”

And just like that, he walked out of the hospital with another woman, leaving me behind — again.

But this time, I wasn’t hurt.

This time, I smiled.

Because I knew what was on that USB drive. And once he saw it, “later” would haunt him for the rest of his miserable life.