The Forgotten Wife Remembers

The Forgotten Wife Remembers

Gavin

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The funeral was a quiet affair, a stark contrast to the life I'd just left. My husband, David, stood solemn, but I saw the hollow impatience in his eyes, checking his watch. My death was an inconvenience. They said I was forgotten, a ghost even before I died, especially by my sister Clara, whose theatrical sobs hid dry eyes. The memory of our 30th anniversary crash ripped through me: the screech of tires, then waking to the truth of David' s affair, messages from his lover filling the phone recovered from the wreckage. This knowledge was poison. The whispers at my funeral confirmed it all: "She never got over the scandal, forced into marriage." "Clara was the one he always wanted." The shame, the loneliness, the empty decades-they were all mine. So, I decided the end would be mine too. Back in our cold house, I filled the tub, laid out the sleeping pills, and swallowed them, one by one. There was no hesitation. This was a quiet act of surrender. Then, I gasped awake. Sunlight blinded me. The air smelled of lemon polish and old books, a scent not smelled in years. I was in the bed from our first apartment, my hands smooth and unlined. The mirror showed a young woman of twenty-two. The calendar read: October 1982. Three months into my marriage. David stood in the doorway, impossibly young, impossibly remote. "My mother wants us for dinner. Be ready by seven." His voice was the same, cold and transactional. At the Vance family dinner, my parents and Clara echoed the old accusations. "Eleanor, you must be making David happy. You know how much our family owes the Vances." I finally shattered the silence. "Trying my best? Is that what you call forcing your daughter into marriage to protect your reputation?" I looked directly at my father, my voice steady. "I' m done being the family scapegoat. You wanted this marriage, not me."

Introduction

The funeral was a quiet affair, a stark contrast to the life I'd just left. My husband, David, stood solemn, but I saw the hollow impatience in his eyes, checking his watch.

My death was an inconvenience. They said I was forgotten, a ghost even before I died, especially by my sister Clara, whose theatrical sobs hid dry eyes.

The memory of our 30th anniversary crash ripped through me: the screech of tires, then waking to the truth of David' s affair, messages from his lover filling the phone recovered from the wreckage. This knowledge was poison.

The whispers at my funeral confirmed it all: "She never got over the scandal, forced into marriage." "Clara was the one he always wanted." The shame, the loneliness, the empty decades-they were all mine.

So, I decided the end would be mine too. Back in our cold house, I filled the tub, laid out the sleeping pills, and swallowed them, one by one. There was no hesitation. This was a quiet act of surrender.

Then, I gasped awake. Sunlight blinded me. The air smelled of lemon polish and old books, a scent not smelled in years. I was in the bed from our first apartment, my hands smooth and unlined. The mirror showed a young woman of twenty-two.

The calendar read: October 1982. Three months into my marriage. David stood in the doorway, impossibly young, impossibly remote. "My mother wants us for dinner. Be ready by seven." His voice was the same, cold and transactional.

At the Vance family dinner, my parents and Clara echoed the old accusations. "Eleanor, you must be making David happy. You know how much our family owes the Vances." I finally shattered the silence.

"Trying my best? Is that what you call forcing your daughter into marriage to protect your reputation?" I looked directly at my father, my voice steady. "I' m done being the family scapegoat. You wanted this marriage, not me."

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I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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