He Left Me Waiting for Three Years. So I Left Him Forever Chapter 01

He Left Me Waiting for Three Years. So I Left Him Forever Chapter 01

At the final divorce hearing, the judge asked the usual questions.

“You’ve only been married for three years. Are you certain the marriage is beyond repair?”

I pressed my lips together, slipped off my wedding ring, and placed it on the table.

“We’ve been married for three years, Your Honor, and we’ve spent all three of them living apart. What feelings could possibly be left between us?”

During the two years Ethan Carter and I dated, my chat was pinned at the top of his WhatsApp, I was listed as his emergency contact, and I was even the beneficiary of his life insurance policy.

I’d truly believed I’d chosen the right man.

Then, on our wedding day, he answered a call and went deathly pale.

When I asked what was wrong, he told me his mother was sick. He left everything behind, booked the first flight back to his hometown, and disappeared from my life that same day.

For the next three years, he sent me photos of all three of his daily meals, yet his sick mother never appeared in a single picture.

I felt so sorry for him that I offered to quit my job and move there to help care for his mother.

He’d gently refused. “I couldn’t bear to let you give up your career for this.”

A month ago, I came across the account of a popular content creator documenting her cancer treatment.

Ethan appeared in one of Serena Collins’s vlogs beneath a tender caption.

[He’s there when I wake up. He’s there at every meal. And whenever I need a hand to hold, it’s always his.]

What about me?

For 1,095 days and nights, I’d had no one but myself.

He’d lied to me.

After a brief pause, the judge asked one final question.

“Have you thought this through?”

I gave a firm nod.

When the judge declared our marriage dissolved, I stared down at the divorce decree and finally broke down.

Ethan, I was setting you free, and I was finally setting myself free too.

***

“It’s over?”

Mom hurried over the moment I stepped out of the courthouse.

“It’s over.”

“He still didn’t show up?”

“No.”

“Does he even know?”

I shook my head.

“The court authorized service by publication, and the notice ran for sixty days because no one could reach him. I doubt he ever saw it.”

Mom’s voice caught in her throat.

“Because of Serena?”

“Yeah. She was in surgery. It was touch and go.”

Mom wiped at her damp eyes.

“Does that mean she’s getting better?”

“Maybe.”

“Claire, don’t you still love him?”

“For three years, he took care of every meal she ate, day after day, without fail. Mom, maybe there was still a place for me in his heart, but there was one for her, too.”

Mom looked even more heartbroken, but she said nothing more.

Ethan and I had met at a hospital five years earlier.

Even then, he was already one of the best-known thoracic surgeons in the state.

I was his patient.

Every morning at eight, he led the medical team through rounds. His gaze never lingered on me, but he always left a piece of candy beside my bed.

“The medicine’s bitter,” he’d said. “This should make it a little easier.”

On the day I was discharged, Ethan came by alone for one final round.

“You’ve recovered well, so you shouldn’t need any more follow-up visits with me.”

I couldn’t hide my disappointment, but his next question stopped me cold.

“Your treatment with me officially ends today. Now that you’re no longer under my care, may I ask you out?”

Back then, everyone at the hospital knew Dr. Carter had feelings for me.

During my month in the hospital, he swapped call shifts and covered extra rounds whenever it gave him another chance to see me.

Sometimes he stayed through an overnight call and still came by during morning rounds just to ask how I was feeling.

The elevator chimed, pulling me out of the memory.

When I got home, my phone lit up with a message from Ethan.

He’d sent me a picture of a plane ticket from Southport to Northbridge. The flight was scheduled for the following day.

Another message appeared almost immediately.

[Honey, I’m finally coming home!]

I stood frozen in the doorway, staring at those words long after the screen dimmed.

The previous year, I’d been rushed to the hospital with acute appendicitis. I’d sent him a similar message then.

The difference was that mine had been a question.

[Honey, can you come home?]

My phone had remained silent all day.

Later, I saw him in one of Serena’s vlogs.

He looked nervous, his attention fixed entirely on what he was doing. As the camera pulled back, I saw him carefully piping frosting onto a cake.

The words written in icing read: [Serena, wishing you health and happiness always.]

After three years, on the very day I finally decided to give up on him, he told me he was coming home.

I stepped inside, changed into my slippers, and looked around the apartment.

Everywhere I looked, I saw evidence of only one person living there.

The unused pair of men’s slippers in the entryway closet had sat untouched for three years. The only clothes hanging on the drying rack by the balcony were mine.

There were a few things that belonged to Ethan, but there was nothing in that home that truly belonged to us.

I opened the video pinned at the top of Serena’s account, the one with the most likes.

It showed the home she and Ethan had shared in Southport.

Two pairs of house slippers sat neatly beneath the entryway bench, one pink and one blue. The soles of the blue pair had nearly worn smooth.

Their clothes hung side by side on a drying rack near the balcony, like those of a married couple.

When the camera panned downward, the frame filled with flowers in every imaginable color.

Serena appeared on-screen with a bright smile and introduced them one by one.

Roses, daisies, moss roses, and bougainvillea.

Ethan had grown all of them for her.

He had grown them for no reason other than wanting to make her happy.

During our second year living together, before we married, I had tried growing flowers on our balcony too.

“Ethan, could you at least remember to water them?” I had asked.

His answer had been simple.

“They’re just flowers.”

Just. That one word explained everything.

Anything that mattered to me was always “just” something to him.

He hadn’t been incapable of caring.

He simply hadn’t cared enough about me.