I ended the call at once, my fingers trembling so violently the phone nearly slipped from my grip. The echo of that woman’s voice stayed lodged in my head like a cruel melody. I didn’t need to see her face to recognize it.
Virelle.
While my hands were wrapped around my mother’s lifeless fingers, hers had been wrapped around my husband. While sympathy cards piled up on my table, they were buried in pleasure.
I carried my mother’s urn to the cemetery by myself. No one walked beside me. Leander wasn’t there. His parents didn’t show. Not a single member of his powerful family spared me a glance. I stood alone in the gray drizzle, lowering her ashes into the ground with shaking arms, tears blinding me until the world dissolved into mud and shadow.
It felt like I was burying my last breath.
The grief crushed me from the inside. Between heartbreak, exhaustion, and betrayal, my body finally gave in. I collapsed right there among the headstones.
When I woke, the ceiling lights of the hospital burned into my eyes once again.
Two days passed in that sterile room. Not a single call from Leander. Not even a hollow text asking whether I was still breathing.
And yet, as I stared at the blank white tiles overhead, memories attacked me mercilessly.
I first met Leander in high school, the day I fainted during class when my anemia flared. Before the teacher could react, he was already there, lifting me carefully and carrying me to the infirmary like I was made of glass.
I could still hear his voice, soft with fear as he held my hand on that narrow bed.
“You scared me, Joyce,” he whispered. “Don’t ever do that again. I’ll look after you. Always.”
That moment became the foundation of everything — our romance, the vows we made under starry skies, the futures we planned. He chased me with relentless sincerity, the school’s golden boy choosing a quiet bookworm whose entire world revolved around him and Virelle.
Virelle.
How blind I had been.
I welcomed her into our lives. I brushed aside rumors, laughed off side-glances, defended them when classmates whispered. I told myself I was lucky — my best friend and my boyfriend getting along so well.
I never imagined that behind those smiles, they were carving me open, year after year, until there was almost nothing left.
I blinked hard, forcing back the tears as something fiercer than sorrow surfaced inside me.
Enough.
I reached for my phone and dialed my attorney.
“I’m filing for divorce,” I said calmly.
There was a stunned silence. Then he replied carefully, “Joyce… you remember the prenup, don’t you? If you go through with this, Leander can sever financial ties. No support. No help for your mother’s care. Nothing.”
“She’s gone,” I interrupted, my throat tightening. “And I won’t be here much longer either. Just prepare the papers. I’ll make him sign.”
I ended the call without waiting for his response, tossing the phone aside as my heart thundered painfully in my chest.
A soft chime followed.
An email from Leander — he’d forgotten to log out of his account on my device.
With a sinking feeling, I opened it.
An ultrasound image filled the screen. A tiny life growing inside another woman.
Not mine. Never mine.
Attached were flight tickets to the Persian Sea — the very place I had begged him to visit for years. He’d always brushed me off, saying he was too busy, that it wasn’t worth the trouble.
Yet everything was booked now: luxury hotel, private excursions, two tickets.
For Virelle.
My vision swam as tears cascaded uncontrollably. How long had I been their private joke?
I didn’t notice the door opening until Leander called my name.
“Joyce!”
I looked up. He stood there breathing hard, eyes wide in a poorly rehearsed panic.
“I—I didn’t know you were back here. I was worried—”
I laughed, the sound jagged and broken. “Worried? Or did you simply forget I existed because you stopped loving me a long time ago?”
He stiffened, then forced tenderness onto his face.
“I’m sorry, okay? I love you. I’ve just been overwhelmed with work. You shouldn’t exhaust yourself. Let’s focus on your surgery — that’s all that matters right now.”
My stomach twisted. “Or is this about guilt because you’re sleeping with someone else?”
For a split second, his eyes betrayed him before he masked it with a smile.
“You’re imagining things. Let me get you discharged. We’ll go home.”
Too drained to resist, I followed him to the car, watching raindrops race down the window while my reflection stared back at me like a stranger.
Then his phone rang.
He answered instantly.
Through the speaker, a trembling female voice sobbed, “Leander… my stomach hurts. Something’s wrong. Please come. I think the baby—”
Virelle.
He braked violently and pulled over.
“Get out,” he said flatly.
I stared at him in disbelief. “What did you say?”
“I can’t take you home. I have urgent business. Call yourself a cab.”
“Are you serious? It’s pouring rain and I just left the hospital—”
“GET OUT!” he roared, shoving my arm.
I fell onto the roadside as the door slammed behind me. Rain soaked me within seconds, cold and merciless, as his car sped away.
I sat there in the mud, hugging myself, shaking uncontrollably.
The man who once swore to carry me through every hardship couldn’t even spare me a ride.
And in that storm, I finally understood — I wasn’t his wife anymore.
I was nothing at all.
