“That cripple never would have imagined, even in death, that you and I have a son. That Mom and Dad were in on it all along, wiping away the evidence, switching out her medication for worthless vitamins.”
“Don’t say that,” he murmured. “Marrying her was the only way I could keep issuing those forgiveness letters. It was the only way to keep you safe.”
“As long as you and our son are happy, none matters.”
So that was the truth.
The marriage I had once clung to as my salvation had been nothing more than a cruel illusion. My parents had betrayed me and discarded me, all for the sake of fraud.
Fine.
If I was nothing to them, then I would walk away.
——
I stood in silence in the hospital lobby, watching as Scarlett held her son. Elijah stood beside her, his family beaming with joy.
It felt as if someone had hollowed out my chest, leaving behind nothing but a raw, gaping wound. The pain was suffocating; I could barely breathe.
The husband who once vowed to stand by me, to cherish me, had loved the very woman who nearly ended my life.