Dead Wife Walking Chapter 10

Dead Wife Walking Chapter 10

After the trial, the world moved on. That’s what the world does – it devours

a tragedy, picks its teeth, and looks for the next meal.

But Ethan didn’t move on.

He resigned as CEO of Blackwell Industries. The board was stunned. The

media speculated about everything from a nervous breakdown to a secret

deal. The truth was simpler and sadder: he couldn’t sit in that office anymore without seeing the ghost of every decision he’d made wrong.

He appointed Mark as interim CEO – a move that shocked everyone except

Mark had been running that company from the shadows for years. He
deserved it.

“Are you sure about this, sir?” Mark asked, standing in the office that was no

longer Ethan’s.

“Don’t call me sir. You’re my boss now.”

Mark almost smiled. Almost. “What will you do?”

Ethan looked out the window. “Something she would have wanted.”

He threw himself into the Vivian Blackwell Foundation with the intensity of a

man trying to outrun his own guilt.

Eleanor had established it with the redirected inheritance, but Ethan poured his personal fortune into it – liquidating assets, selling properties, stripping away the layers of excess that had insulated him from the world his wife had

actually lived in.

The Foundation funded cancer treatment for uninsured patients. It built shelters. It created a grant program for independent journalists and whistleblowers – “The Vivian Fellowship,” he called it, and the irony of a man

who’d silenced his wife’s voice now funding other women’s voices was not lost

on me.

He worked eighteen-hour days. He personally reviewed every grant

application. He visited the hospitals his Foundation supported, sitting with

patients, listening to their stories – doing, belatedly, what he should have done

for me.

I followed him through it all, tethered to him by whatever cosmic cruelty kept

me here.

One afternoon, he was at St. Catherine’s – my hospital – reviewing the new oncology wing the Foundation had funded. A plaque by the entrance read: *The Vivian Blackwell Wing. Because no one should die alone.*

A young nurse approached him. “Mr. Blackwell? There’s a patient who asked to meet you. She says she knew your wife.”

He followed her to a room at the end of the hall. Inside, propped up on pillows, was Mrs. Chen. My neighbor. She was thinner than I remembered, her face gaunt beneath a colorful headscarf.

“Pancreatic,” she said before he could ask. “Stage three. But your Foundation

is covering my treatment, so I’m fighting.”

He sat beside her bed. “You knew Vivian.”

“Knew her? She was the reason I survived my husband’s death.” Mrs. Chen’s

eyes softened. “After he passed, I couldn’t get out of bed for months. Vivian

knocked on my door every single day. Brought me soup. Did my laundry. Drove

me to my appointments.” She chuckled weakly. “She was sick herself and she

never said a word. Just kept showing up.”

“That sounds like her,” he murmured.

“She talked about you, you know.”

He stiffened.

“Not complaints. Never complaints. She’d say things like, ‘Ethan works so

hard. I wish I could help him relax. Or, ‘Ethan has such a big heart – he just doesn’t know how to show it.” Mrs. Chen studied him with clear, knowing eyes.

“She believed in you right until the end. I don’t know if you deserved it, but she

believed.”

He couldn’t speak. His throat was locked shut.

Mrs. Chen reached over and patted his hand. “Don’t waste it, dear. Her belief

in you was the most expensive gift anyone ever gave you. Don’t waste it.”

He nodded. Stood. Made it to the hallway before pressing his back against

the wall and sliding to the floor.

I crouched beside him. ‘She’s right, you know.’

Months passed. The Foundation grew. Ethan became someone I didn’t fully

–

recognize quieter, gentler, stripped of the arrogance that had once been his

armor.

He visited Eleanor every Thursday – my day – bringing homemade scones

he’d learned to bake from a YouTube tutorial. They were terrible. Eleanor ate

them without complaint.

He maintained my pill schedule for her with religious precision, checking and double-checking every dose, calling Dr. Huang at the slightest concern.

He read to her when her eyes were tired. The same books I used to read – he’d found my reading list in the nightstand drawer.

One evening, Eleanor reached up and touched his cheek. “You’re starting to

look like the man she described in her journal.”

His eyes reddened. “I’m trying.”

“Try harder.” But her voice was gentle, and her hand lingered on his face. “She forgave you, you know. Long before she died. It’s in the journal. The last

page.”

He shook his head. “I’ve read every page. There’s nothing about forgiveness

on the last page.”

Eleanor smiled – a small, secret smile. “You read the words. You didn’t read

between them.”

That night, he opened the journal to the final entry – the one he’d read a

hundred times.

–

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

to know: I loved you.”*

He stared at the words. Then, slowly, he held the page up to the light.

And there, pressed into the paper so faintly it was nearly invisible – written not with ink but with the impression of a pen that had run dry – were two

more lines:

*”I forgive you. Now please forgive yourself.”*

He traced the invisible words with his fingertip, over and over, as if he could

feel my hand through the paper.

‘You found it, I thought. And something inside me – something heavy,

something I’d been carrying since the moment I died – began to loosen.