Dead Wife Walking Chapter 06

Dead Wife Walking Chapter 06

Ethan spiraled.

In the days following Eleanor’s ultimatum, he became a man unmoored. He

stopped going to the office. He stopped eating. He wandered through the

mansion like a ghost – which was ironic, considering I was the actual ghost.

He kept returning to my bedroom. Sitting on that thin mattress. Reading my

medical paperwork over and over as though repetition might change the

outcome.

–

One evening, he found something he’d missed before — a small notebook

tucked behind the desk, wedged between the wall and the furniture. It was my

private journal.

He shouldn’t have read it. But the dead have no privacy, and the guilty have

no restraint.

He opened it to a random page.

*”October 14th. Ethan smiled at me today. Not on purpose – he was on the

phone and I walked past, and I think he mistook me for the housekeeper. But

still. He smiled in my direction, and I felt it in my chest for hours. God, I’m

pathetic.”*

He flipped forward.

*”November 30th. Found Serena’s earring in the master bedroom. It was on

his pillow. I put it in an envelope and left it on his desk. He never mentioned it. I wonder if he even noticed.”*

*” “January 8th. I passed out in the shower. Hit my head on the tile. There’s blood but I cleaned it up before the housekeeper came. I can’t let anyone find out. Ethan would say I’m being dramatic.”*

*”March 15th. Dr. Patel says I have six months. Maybe less. I asked him if there’s a way to know the exact day. He looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe I am. I just want to plan accordingly. There are things I need to finish before I

go.”*

*”March 16th. Made a list:

Finish Grandmother’s pill schedule for the next year.
Organize Ethan’s home office (he’ll never do it himself).
Compile evidence on Serena’s embezzlement.
Record video diaries (so someone knows the truth).
Write the letter.
Try one more time to tell Ethan.”*
*”March 17th. I tried. Attempt number eleven. He said: ‘Not now, Vivian.’ I said okay. I think I’m done trying.”*

Ethan’s hands were shaking so badly the notebook rattled.

He turned to the last entry, dated five days before my death.

*”I can feel it coming. My body knows. Everything is heavy – my arms, my

legs, my eyelids. Even breathing takes effort now.*

*”I’m not scared of dying. I’m scared of dying and him not noticing for days.*

*”Actually, that’s not true either. I’m scared of dying and him noticing

immediately – and feeling nothing.*

*”The sunflowers in Grandmother’s garden should be blooming soon. I wish

I could see them one more time.*

*”Ethan, if you ever read this – and I know you probably won’t – I want you

to know: I loved you. Not the idea of you, not the Blackwell name, not the money. You. The man who once carried a stray kitten out of the rain when he

thought no one was watching. The man who reads poetry at 3 a.m. when he

can’t sleep. The man buried so deep under all that armor that even he’s forgotten he exists.*

*”I saw that man once. Just once. And I spent three years waiting for him to

come back.*

*”He never did.*

*”Goodbye. – V”*

Ethan closed the notebook. Pressed it to his forehead. And broke.

Not the controlled, dignified grief of a man who knows he’s being watched. This was something raw and animal – a howl that started in his gut and tore through him until he was on his knees, forehead pressed to the cold floor of

my empty room, sobbing so hard he couldn’t breathe.

I watched from the doorway.

Part of me wanted to kneel beside him, to press my hand against his back the way I used to when he had nightmares – the ones he thought I didn’t know

about.

—

But I couldn’t touch him. And even if I could, I wasn’t sure I would.

‘You’re mourning the version of me you never knew, I thought. ‘But she was there the whole time, Ethan. Right in front of you. You just never opened your

eyes.’

His phone rang. Mark.

“Sir.” Mark’s voice was tight. “The forensic audit on Serena Lane is complete.

You need to see this.”

Ethan wiped his face with his sleeve – an oddly human gesture for a man who usually had a monogrammed handkerchief for everything.

“Send it to my office. I’m on my way.”

He stood. Straightened his shirt. Looked at my bedroom one last time.

Then he picked up my journal, slid it into his breast pocket, and walked out.

But not before pausing at the doorway, exactly where I stood, close enough that I could have counted his eyelashes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the empty room.

And for the first time since I died, his voice didn’t sound like a stranger’s.