Dead Wife Walking Chapter 12

Dead Wife Walking Chapter 12

Eleanor died on a Sunday morning in April, with sunflowers on her windowsill and Ethan holding her hand.

She went quietly – the way she’d lived, with dignity and on her own terms.

Her last words were to Ethan: “Plant more sunflowers. And for God’s sake, learn to make proper tea.”

He laughed through his tears.

I was there too, standing at the foot of her bed. When her eyes closed for

the last time, I felt something I hadn’t expected – a warmth, faint but real, as if

someone had opened a window in a room that had been sealed shut for too

long.

And then, for just a moment, I saw her.

Not the frail ninety-one-year-old in the wheelchair. Eleanor as she must have

been decades ago – tall, sharp-eyed, magnificent. She stood beside her own

body, looked down at it with mild annoyance, and then turned to me.

“Vivian.” She said my name the way she always had – like it was a word

worth savoring. “You’re still here?”

“I can’t leave,” I said. “I’ve tried.”

She studied me with that piercing gaze. “No, you haven’t. You’ve been watching him. That’s not the same as trying to leave.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but she held up a hand.

“I’m not judging you, dear. Lord knows he needed watching.” She glanced at Ethan, who was still holding her body’s hand, tears streaming silently down his

face. “He’s better now. Not good – let’s not get carried away – but better.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you still here?”

The question hit me like a physical blow. Why was I still here? The anger had faded. The justice had been served. The Foundation was thriving. Ethan was…

changed.

What was I holding onto?

Eleanor seemed to read my thoughts. She stepped closer and took my hand

– and I could feel it. Actually feel it. The warmth of another soul’s touch.

“You’re afraid,” she said gently, “that if you leave, he’ll forget you.”

My throat tightened – or whatever the ghostly equivalent was. “He forgot

me when I was alive. What’s to stop him from forgetting when I’m truly gone?”

“Oh, my darling girl.” Eleanor squeezed my hand. “He will never forget you.

You are the wound that changed him. The scar that made him human. You don’t need to stay to be remembered.”

A light was gathering around her – soft, golden, like sunrise through

curtains.

“Come with me,” she said. “It’s time.”

I looked at her outstretched hand. Then at Ethan, hunched over the bed, his

shoulders shaking.

“I can’t. Not yet. There’s something I need to see first.”

Eleanor tilted her head, then smiled – that small, knowing smile she’d perfected over nine decades. “You always were stubborn. Fine. But don’t wait too long. The door doesn’t stay open forever.”

The light enveloped her. She was gone.

And I was alone again, standing in a room full of grief that wasn’t mine to

carry.

Ethan buried Eleanor beside me in the family mausoleum. The inscription on

her plaque read: *Eleanor Blackwell. Matriarch. Beloved. “Plant more

sunflowers.”*

At the service, Mark delivered the eulogy. Ethan sat in the front row,

composed but hollow-eyed, my journal in his breast pocket as always.

After the mourners left, he stayed behind. He knelt between our two plaques

and spoke to us both.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t the grandson you deserved,” he said to Eleanor. Then,

turning to my plaque: “And I’m sorry I wasn’t the husband you deserved.”

He placed sunflowers at both our names.

“The book is almost finished,” he told me. “The publisher wants to donate all proceeds to the Foundation. I said yes. I hope that’s okay.”

‘You don’t need my permission anymore, Ethan.’

“And I’ve been talking to Dr. Patel. The new oncology wing treated its

hundredth patient last week. A seventeen-year-old girl. Leukemia. Same type

as yours.” His voice wavered. “She’s responding to treatment. She’s going to

make it, Vivian. Because of you.”

I pressed my hand against the cold marble of my own plaque.

‘That’s good, I thought. ‘That’s really good!’

“I still sleep in your room,” he said, quieter now. “Mark thinks I should see a

therapist. He’s probably right. But the truth is, your room is the only place I feel

close to you. And I’m not ready to give that up.”

He sat there until the sun went down, then drove home in silence.

–

That night, he finished the book. The last chapter was a letter – addressed

to me.

*”Dear Vivian,*

*”I once told you that sunflowers were tacky. I was wrong about that, and

about a thousand other things. But mostly, I was wrong about you.*

*”You were the bravest person I’ve ever known. Not because you faced

–

cancer without flinching – though you did. Not because you exposed a

criminal while dying – though you did that too. But because you loved

someone who gave you nothing in return, and you never let it make you cruel.*

*”I don’t know if you can hear me. I don’t know if you’re somewhere watching, shaking your head at what a mess I’ve been. But if you are – I want you to know that I heard you. Finally. Too late, but I heard you.*

*”Your forgiveness saved me. I don’t deserve it. I’ll spend the rest of my life

knowing that. But I’ll also spend the rest of my life honoring it.*

*”You asked me to forgive myself. I’m working on it. It’s the hardest thing I’ve

ever done – harder than any boardroom negotiation, harder than burying you,

harder than watching your video diaries alone at 3 a.m.*

*”But I’ll get there. Because you believed I could. And your belief is the one

currency I refuse to waste.*

*”I love you. I loved you then. I love you now. I will love you for every day I have left, and if there’s anything after this, I’ll find you and love you there too.*

*”Save me a sunflower.*

*”- Ethan”*

He saved the document. Closed the laptop. And sat in the dark, in my room,

in the silence.

I stood in the doorway, and the invisible chains that had tethered me to this

–

world to him – were barely there now. Gossamer threads, ready to snap.

‘Almost,’ I thought. ‘Almost.’