I Left Them in Grief Chapter 01

I Left Them in Grief Chapter 01

The day after my postpartum depression diagnosis, Brennon Ashford, my husband, drove me out to a house on the edge of the city and left me there to recover.

Then he moved in Selah Rowan, my younger sister.

Five years passed. Everyone in Westmont assumed they were a couple—and somewhere along the way, rumors started circulating that she was the one who’d given birth to his children.

In my last life, those rumors destroyed me.

I dragged myself back to the estate, sick as I was, and demanded answers.

Selah looked at me like I’d slapped her across the face.

“We grew up together, Maren. How could you think that of me?”

“The Rowans originally wanted me to marry Brennon,” she continued, her voice breaking just right.

“I’m the one who stepped aside because I could see how much you loved him. You’d have nothing without me.”

Before Brennon could stop her, she ran out the door—and straight into traffic.

After that, everything fell apart. Brennon looked at me like I was something he’d scraped off his shoe. My own children came to hate me.

They cut off my medication. They sent people to humiliate me, to grind me down, until I had nothing left.

Until I gave up entirely.

Then I woke up.

I was back—the exact moment Maeve Carter, my housekeeper, first heard the rumor and came to tell me.

This time, I felt nothing.

“It makes sense the kids are close to her,” I said. “She raised them. At the end of the day, they’re Ashfords. Does it really matter which one of us holds the title?”

“But—”

I cut her off gently. “I’ve let it go.”

The day after my postpartum depression diagnosis, Brennon Ashford, my husband, drove me out to a house on the edge of the city and left me there to recover.

Then he moved in Selah Rowan, my younger sister.

Five years passed. Everyone in Westmont assumed they were a couple—and somewhere along the way, rumors started circulating that she was the one who’d given birth to his children.

In my last life, those rumors destroyed me.

I dragged myself back to the estate, sick as I was, and demanded answers.

Selah looked at me like I’d slapped her across the face.

“We grew up together, Maren. How could you think that of me?”

“The Rowans originally wanted me to marry Brennon,” she continued, her voice breaking just right. “I’m the one who stepped aside because I could see how much you loved him. You’d have nothing without me.”

Before Brennon could stop her, she ran out the door—and straight into traffic.

After that, everything fell apart. Brennon looked at me like I was something he’d scraped off his shoe. My own children came to hate me.

They cut off my medication. They sent people to humiliate me, to grind me down, until I had nothing left.

Until I gave up entirely.

Then I woke up.

I was back—the exact moment Maeve Carter, my housekeeper, first heard the rumor and came to tell me.

This time, I felt nothing.

“It makes sense the kids are close to her,” I said. “She raised them. At the end of the day, they’re Ashfords. Does it really matter which one of us holds the title?”

“But—”

I cut her off gently. “I’ve let it go.”

Maeve had never seen me look like that before—calm, unbothered, almost distant. She faltered, then dipped her head.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Mr. Ashford made it very clear you weren’t to be upset over things like this.”

She thought I was just putting on a brave face. That underneath it, I was falling apart.

And honestly? She would’ve been right, once.

Brennon and I had grown up together. We’d been inseparable as kids, then something more as teenagers.

Hearing that the woman living in my house, sleeping under my roof, had been rewritten as the mother of my children… that should have wrecked me.

But she didn’t know the rest of the story.

Six years ago, it was Selah the Rowan family had chosen for the Ashford match. Not me.

Brennon and I were still in that undefined, pull-each-other-close-then-pull-away phase. When he found out about the arrangement, he refused to eat for three days in protest.

Both families eventually gave in.

When Selah learned what had happened, she cried until she couldn’t breathe. Then she looked at me, red-eyed and hollow, and forced a smile.

“If you love each other, then I’m happy for you,” she said. “Take care of him, Maren. Don’t make me regret this.”

She left for Europe and didn’t look back.

But she left that image behind—the selfless, heartbroken girl who gave up everything. And Brennon never forgot her.

Brennon and I got married. For a while, things were good.

He was attentive. Careful. He kept his distance from other women without me ever having to ask.

Then Selah came back.

Her marriage had collapsed, and she showed up at our door in tears.

Brennon let her in—said he owed her, that he felt guilty for what happened years ago. When I got sick, he was the one who suggested she step in as a maternal figure for the kids.

Westmont talked about nothing else for weeks.

The consensus was that Brennon had always loved Selah. That I’d just been a convenient arrangement—a surrogate, basically—and now that he had his son and daughter, I was disposable.

I panicked. I rushed back from the Ashford Estate to confront them.

My own children blocked the door. They looked at me like I was a stranger.

“There’s only one Mrs. Ashford in this house,” my daughter said. “She’s our mother. She’s the woman our father loves.”

“We came from you,” my son added. “Fine. We’ll make sure you’re taken care of when you’re old. But if you try to tear this family apart—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

That was the moment it clicked.

Brennon could have killed those rumors at any time. He had the power and the connections to make them disappear overnight.

But he didn’t.

He made sure I heard them.

He was telling me something. That he’d made a mistake. That the woman he really wanted was never me.