Dead Wife Walking Chapter 05

Dead Wife Walking Chapter 05

By morning, Ethan looked like a man who had walked through his own personal hell – because he had.

I watched him stand in front of the bathroom mirror, gripping the sink so hard his knuckles turned white. His eyes were swollen. His shirt was wrinkled, still the same one from my funeral.

For the first time in three years, he walked into my bedroom.

He stopped in the doorway, stunned.

The room was spartan. A single bed with thin sheets. A small desk cluttered

with medical paperwork. No decorations, no warmth – nothing like the rest of

the Blackwell mansion.

He opened the closet. Five outfits. Five. Three of them were old enough to

have faded at the seams. The other two were the “presentable” clothes I wore

to his company events – bought secondhand, carefully altered to look

expensive.

On the nightstand, exactly where I’d said it would be, was the pill schedule for his grandmother. Meticulous. Color-coded. Each dose calculated down to

the milligram with Dr. Huang’s notes paper-clipped alongside.

He picked it up and stared at it for a long moment.

Then he opened the desk drawer and found my hospital bills. Stacks of

them. Some marked “OVERDUE” in red. Some with handwritten notes in the

margins: *”Ask about payment plan.” “Sell coat?” “Skip March treatment – save

for Grandmother’s medication refill.”*

–

I had been choosing between my own survival and his grandmother’s health

– and every single time, I chose her.

He sank onto my bed. The mattress was so thin he could feel the frame

beneath it. This was what I’d slept on for three years while he sprawled across

his king-sized bed in the master suite.

“Sir?” Mark appeared in the doorway, hesitant. “Your grandmother is asking for you. And… the board meeting has been moved to ten.”

“Cancel it.”

Mark blinked. In three years of service, Ethan had never once canceled a

board meeting.

“Sir-”

“Cancel. Everything.” His voice was raw. “Get me Dr. Patel at St. Catherine’s

on the phone. And pull every financial transaction Serena Lane has made

through any account connected to Blackwell in the last two years.”

Mark nodded slowly. “And Serena? She’s been calling all morning.”

“Block her number.”

“Yes, sir.” Mark hesitated, then added quietly, “Vivian would have appreciated

this.”

Ethan flinched as if he’d been struck.

After Mark left, Ethan pulled out his phone – his backup phone, since the other one was in pieces. He scrolled to my contact.

The last text I’d sent him, three days before I died: *”I made your favorite

pasta. It’s in the fridge. Please eat. – V”*

He had never replied.

He scrolled further. Months of messages from me. All one-sided.

*”Good luck with your presentation today!”*

*”I left an umbrella by the door. It’s supposed to rain.”*

*”Happy anniversary. I know you’re busy, but I just wanted to say it.”*

*”Ethan, I’m not feeling well. Can you come home early tonight?”*

*”Never mind. I’m fine. Sorry to bother you.”*

Every message – unanswered.

He scrolled to the very first text I’d ever sent him, the day after our wedding: *”Good morning, husband. I’ll do my best to make you happy.”*

His reply, twelve hours later: *”Don’t call me that.”*

He set the phone down and covered his face with both hands.

I stood in the corner, arms crossed. ‘Cry all you want, Ethan. You’re three

years too late.’

–

But even as I thought it, something stirred in me – not forgiveness, not pity,

but a dull, aching sadness for the girl I used to be. The girl who sent those

messages with trembling hope, who cooked meals that went uneaten, who

sold her dead mother’s ring to survive one more month in a house where she

was invisible.

That girl deserved better.

And she never got it.

Ethan’s visit to Dr. Patel was brief and devastating.

“She came to every appointment alone,” Dr. Patel told him, not bothering to

hide his judgment. “She asked me once if there was a cheaper treatment

option. I told her the current protocol was already the most affordable for her

condition. She smiled and said, ‘I’ll figure it out.”

“Did she ever mention me?” Ethan asked, his voice barely audible.

Dr. Patel studied him for a long moment. “Every single time. She’d say, ‘My husband is very busy, but he cares about me.’ I think she was trying to

convince herself more than me.”

Ethan left the hospital and sat in his car for forty-five minutes without

starting the engine.

His phone buzzed. A text from Eleanor’s nurse: *”Your grandmother has

locked herself in her room. She refuses to eat. She keeps saying, ‘Bring Vivian back.””*

He drove to Eleanor’s estate. When he arrived, she was sitting in her

wheelchair by the window, holding a framed photo I didn’t know existed — a

candid shot of me in her garden, laughing at something, sunlight caught in my

hair.

“She used to visit me every Thursday,” Eleanor said without turning around.

“Did you know that?”

“No.”

“She brought me homemade scones. Sat with me for hours. Read to me

when my eyes were too tired.” Eleanor’s voice thinned. “She was the daughter I

never had. And you threw her away.”

“Grandmother-”

“Don’t.” The word was iron. “Don’t you dare make excuses. I gave you one

instruction when I arranged this marriage: take care of her. One instruction,

Ethan. And you couldn’t even do that.”

He knelt beside her wheelchair. “I didn’t know she was sick.”

“You didn’t know because you didn’t look!” Eleanor’s composure finally cracked, and tears slid down her weathered cheeks. “That girl was dying under

your roof, and you were too busy chasing that venomous woman to notice!”

She turned the wheelchair to face him, and her eyes were blazing with a fury

I’d never seen before.

“I’m changing my will. Every cent goes to the Vivian Blackwell Foundation —

yes, I’m naming it after her. You’ll get nothing until you prove to me that you’ve

become a man worthy of the name she carried.”

His face went pale. “Grandmother, the company-”

“Should have mattered less to you than your wife’s life!” She slammed her

hand on the armrest. “Get out. Come back when you’ve found whatever’s left

of your conscience.”

He stumbled out of the room.

And I followed Eleanor’s gaze to the garden outside, where the sunflowers

she’d planted for me were still in bloom.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered. ‘For loving me when he wouldn’t.’