No Forgiveness: The Dying Wife

For ten years I kept my fist around the better half of my husband's fortune and would not let go.

People had a word for a wife like that.

Today I signed every cent of it back to him.

Because I'm dying.

Soren and I had spent the better part of a decade tearing each other to pieces. He paraded a new woman through the city every few months. I kept my hand at his throat, money first, and he kept his at mine. Neither of us would be the one to let go.

That ended today.

Chapter 1

I called Soren with the test results still in my hand.

"Where are you?"

"And that concerns you how?" We were husband and wife, and somehow asking after each other still counted as trespassing.

I tapped the page against the desk. "Come home. We're getting divorced."

A short scoff on the other end. The line went dead.

Fair enough. I'd played this card too many times. Most of those times it was just an excuse to get him in front of me.

No reason he'd believe me now.

Two days. He didn't come.

I looked at the slip of paper with the end of my life printed on it and decided I was done wasting what little I had left. I picked up my bag and went out.

There was another way to find Soren. It had never once failed me.

Three knocks. The door opened on a soft, pretty little thing who took one look at me and lost all the color in her face, like I could reach straight through the frame and take her apart.

"Ms. Hale," she breathed.

I rolled my eyes. "Do me a favor. Tell Soren to come home. Tell him I want a divorce, and make sure it lands." I looked her over. "For what it's worth, out of all his women you're my favorite. Play your cards right and you might be the next Mrs. Vance."

Her eyes went red and glassy. "Ms. Hale, I never wanted"

"Spare me." I was already turning away. "Pass it along. Fast. If he's not home by tomorrow I'll come back, pop this door, and take the place apart. You really think a cheap little buzzer keeps me out?"

I didn't waste another breath on her. If I knew him at all, I'd see him by nightfall. Crystal was the thing he treasured most. Me showing up to rattle her cage? He'd never sit still for that.

Night had barely fallen when he came through my door like weather.

"What did I tell you about going near Crystal?"

I poured myself a glass of red, slow, and looked up at him. "And if I do? What exactly are you going to do about it?"

It ate at him that the answer was nothing. So he reached for the only thing left, the words he knew landed.

"I don't know what you get out of this. Crystal does as she's told. There's nothing left between us, but you won't sign, and you won't let me keep one person I actually want around. What is it you want? For everyone alive to be as alone as you are?"

The glass shattered against the floor.

He wasn't wrong. I was alone. That was the whole reason I'd kept my grip on him all these years, holding a marriage that had been empty longer than I could stand to count.

"That's right," I said, tipping my head at him. "I'm in hell. Why do you get to walk into heaven?"

Inside I was just tired. Every time I laid eyes on Soren we did this. Blade against blade. What was the point.

I poured a fresh glass and sat down across from him, and slid the agreement over.

"Sign it. Even if I'm headed to hell, I'd rather not run into you down there."

We couldn't stand the sight of each other alive. I didn't want him crowding me dead, either.

He kept his face flat and opened the agreement. Through the curve of the glass I watched him. Still good-looking. Heavy brows, dark eyes, that thin hard mouth. Of course. No wonder he had so little warmth in him.

Ten years running and the man hadn't lost a thing.

"What are you after now?" His eyes came up, wary.

I breathed out a cold scrap of a laugh. "I want the house. Everything else is yours. Every shared account, every asset, the whole pile. I'm walking away from all of it. Or can't you see that?"

His hand went still on the page.

Ten years I'd clawed at him for every cent. He had no idea what to make of a wife who'd just handed it all back.

Chapter 2

Maybe I'd always asked for too much. Maybe that was why this version of me set him on edge.

The house was where the marriage started. Old now. It wouldn't bring much on the market. But I couldn't stomach the thought of another woman moving into it beside him. I'm spiteful that way. I can't stand to watch him play happy with someone new.

And there was this. Even at a low price, the house could buy a decent piece of ground. A good resting place. Trade the home of my living years for the bed of my dead ones. I'd come in with empty hands. I'd leave with them empty too. Lighter, that way.

Soren turned the pages over and over before he finally spoke. "I'll have my lawyer draft a new one. The house is yours. Ten million on top of it, and we're square."

I raised a brow. Generous. Ten million to buy out ten years, clean.

"Your lawyer? You won't trust mine, but I'm supposed to trust yours?" See. I couldn't even hand the man his freedom without getting a jab in.

Then the air went out of me. "Forget it. I agree."

He was already moving for the door. "My assistant brings the papers tomorrow. Sign them right away."

He'd waited a long time for this day. I half expected him to drag his lawyers out of bed that night and hold a meeting on whether I'd sewn a trap into the fine print.

I shrugged. Fine. Whatever. The faster the better.

He still watched me from the side of his eyes, and pushed it further. "Once you have the money, I'd like you out of Chicago. We should both get on with our own lives. Don't you think?"

Something bitter climbed the back of my throat. I got both hands on him, shoved him out, and shut the door on his face. Out of sight.

Soren's assistant earned every dollar of that salary. He held out the papers and dipped his head. "Ms. Hale."

"Mm."

The whole company knew we were at war. Crystal made a production of it, hand-delivering love-note lunches to his office. Soren planted her as my assistant just to get under my skin.

She didn't last long before she ran home. Then he filed.

I hadn't set foot in the office since. Almost no one called me Ms. Hale anymore. The young man in front of me was the only one left who did.

I flipped to the last page and signed.

"Ms. Hale, you're welcome to read it over again."

"No need. Nothing left to read."

I smiled and handed it back. "Tell Mr. Vance: one month, the courthouse. He'd better not be late."

Don't waste the last of my time.

"Of course." He took his leave, polite, and we walked out one after the other.

Soren didn't want me in Chicago. I didn't want to stay either. Back to the roots, then. I wanted to go home.

The drive was clear the whole way. I stepped onto Burlington ground for the first time in almost five years.

I went to the cemetery first.

"Mom. Dad. Grandma, Grandpa. I came to see you."

Soren was right. I really was alone.

I lowered myself down against the headstone. My parents went in a car accident when I was small. My grandparents followed each other not long after I finished college. I buried them close together. Easier to visit that way, I'd thought.

"I bought myself a plot near here too." I picked at my coat. "Partly because I miss you all. And partly"

A small laugh.

"Partly because it's a good spot. It's pretty here."

Chapter 3

I didn't sit long. Early winter had already turned cold, and a thin scatter of snow had started coming down. My feet were going numb.

"All right. I'm heading back. We'll see each other soon enough, and then we'll really talk. I've got plenty to say about everything that bastard Soren's pulled over the years."

I fussed with my coat, patted it down, and turned away from the graves.

School was just letting out when I passed Lakeside High, and I stopped.

Kids with backpacks slung low, every face lit up. Back then a holiday was the best thing in the world, even a small one, even just a weekend.

I stood at the gate a while, then walked in. A guard stepped in front of me. "My kid's teacher wants to see a parent," I said, and maybe it was the red rimming my eyes, maybe I'm just a good liar. He let me through.

I let out a breath and drifted through the grounds, slow.

A couple of students were sweeping. Some boy scooped up a snowball and shoved it down the front of a girl's coat, and she came after him with her broom, chasing him in circles.

I watched them and smiled. For half a second I could almost see it. Me, young. And Soren, young.

I shook it off and walked toward the main building. Memory carried me to my old senior homeroom, still down on the first floor. Empty inside. I gave the lock a small pull and it clicked open.

I stepped in, one foot after the other, like the stale air might hand the old days back to me.

I counted under my breath, sat down in my old seat, and put my head in my arms.

One. Two. Three.

That was my trick, back then. Count to three and Soren would be standing there.

I lifted my head. A bright-faced boy stood at the edge of my desk with his hand held out.

"Sloanie. Let's go home."

The last of the day's sun poured over him and gilded him gold.

One. Two. Three.

I opened my eyes. My hand had come up on its own, reaching for a hand that wasn't there. The dream broke apart in front of me.

I breathed out and pushed the fantasy off me. I had no business with it. I stood and walked out.

At the door I looked back one last time. In all that quiet, a girl lifted her head, put her hand in a boy's, and said yes.

One blink, and it went to foam and was gone.

None of it could be reached again.

I stayed in Burlington a month. Winter comes faster there. The strange part was, when I set foot back in Chicago, for once it almost felt warm.

"What took you so long?" Soren's face had gone hard and closed.

I yawned, lazy, shot him a flat look, and walked past him.

"What's this, divorcing me with the mistress on your arm? Finalize over here, remarry over there?" Crystal hovered behind him, small and skittish, and just the sight of her grated. Everything out of my mouth came with a hook on it.

"Talk to me like a person. Crystal isn't feeling well. I'm taking her to the hospital in a bit."

I rubbed my hands together. The irritation climbed. "Oh, by all means. Take her in, get her looked at. I'm in no rush. I'll wait."

He reached out to pull me along. "Hurry up. Don't make this ugly."

My stubborn streak locked my heels to the floor. "You're going to force me? In front of everyone? That's not beneath you?"

Behind him, Crystal started crying again, soft. "Please don't fight. Please don't fight."

Chapter 4

Nausea rolled up through my chest.

"Soren. If you didn't trample me at every turn, I'd have signed the second you asked. So here's the deal. Knock me out and drag me down there to do it, or get the hell out."

His face went a blotchy, furious red. He shot me one venomous look, took Crystal by the arm, and left.

The knot in my chest wouldn't loosen. I thought it over, walked into the nearest store, and bought a baseball bat. Tested the weight in my hand. It sat right.

Then I called a cab to Crystal's place.

I called a locksmith. I called the building manager, too.

"Whose name is on this unit?"

"Mr. Vance's," the manager said, polite.

I smiled and held up my marriage certificate. "Community property. Belongs to both of us. Do me a favor and open it."

The locksmith had it open in seconds. I sent them both off and walked in.

Soren liked taking pictures with her, it turned out. Never smiling in a single one. But there were a lot of them.

After we graduated he was always busy, so the two of us had mostly stopped. First it was sleeping back to back. Then separate rooms. Then separate homes, and that was when it finally landed on me that we were broken, because he'd started bringing different women back to his place.

I made a slow circle of the room. I lifted a little porcelain piece and let it slip out of my hand. It had been my grandmother's favorite. I'd bought it to give to her. Life had other plans. She didn't make it through that winter.

So that was where it had gone. Soren had dug it out to charm his mistress with.

Huh.

I stopped going easy. I swung the bat in whistling arcs, and inside a minute I'd turned every ornament and trinket in the place to rubble.

Maybe I put too much into it.

Drip. Drip.

Something started hitting the floor.

I tipped my head back and wiped the blood away, and when I looked down I was staring straight into Crystal's shock and Soren's fury.

"Sloane. Hale."

"Ugh." I made a show of gagging. "Don't say my name. It makes me want to throw up."

I set the end of the bat against Soren's chest and said it slow, one word at a time. "Tomorrow. The courthouse."

That settled it. I'd gotten it out of my system. I didn't want this marriage one more day.

"Sloane Hale, I have put up with you for so long." The veins stood out on his forehead. He shoved me back into the corner, hard, and my nose started bleeding again. I tipped my chin up and forced it back down.

"What's wrong with you?" His grip slackened.

I stepped easily out of reach. "Nothing. Overheated, that's all. You and your little girlfriend wound me right up." I rested the bat on my shoulder and looked at him. "Soren, I've put up with you a long time too. Sign the papers. You take your road, I'll take mine, and we never lay eyes on each other again."

Not in the next life either.

It hurt. God, it hurt.

He'd learned his lesson from last time. The next day he came alone. We didn't say a word, just signed, and the moment the clerk's stamp came down it was over. Divorced.

He wouldn't spare me one extra sentence. He turned and walked off, smooth, and never looked back once.

I watched the back of him a long time.

And out of nowhere I thought of a winter night years ago, when he'd pressed a warm hand warmer into my palms and said, "Sloanie, you head on. I'll watch you go."

Those warm hands. Those burning eyes. They'd carried me through more cold winter nights than I could count.

I breathed out a small cloud of fog, wiped my eyes, and got in the car out of Chicago.

Soren. I suppose we won't be seeing each other again.

Chapter 5

I checked myself into a hospital and started going through the motions of treatment.

"Room eighteen! Did you pull your IV out again?" The one standing over me with her hands on her hips was an intern nurse, young, quick on her feet, and merciless when it came to a scolding.

I hunched my shoulders and took it like a good patient.

"Do you not want to get better? Tell me!"

I rolled my eyes and said, half lying, "It's too cold, that's all, I swear. Could you find me a little hand warmer?"

The girl studied me, not sure whether to buy it, then huffed off and came back with a neat little hand warmer anyway.

"No more pulling your IV." She bent down to my level. "Doesn't it hurt?"

Something stung at the back of my nose. It had been a long time since anyone asked me whether it hurt. The people who used to worry about me were already gone from this world.

"Doesn't hurt, doesn't hurt. Thank you, Nurse Nicole."

Saying it didn't hurt was a lie. Two weeks in and my hand had gone numb from the needles. Nights, the ache kept me up, so I'd drift the halls dragging my IV pole behind me.

The nurses' station had just one person in it. Nicole, wiping at her eyes.

I tapped her desk, soft. "What's wrong?"

"Shh!" She scanned around for anyone before she rounded on me. "Why aren't you asleep?"

I pointed at the pole. "Can't. Just wandering."

She looked at my face, reached out, pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. "Are you in pain?"

I'd meant to say no. Some impulse took me, and I nodded instead.

She waved me in. I pushed open the door, sat down beside her, ate a big sugary slab of bread, and watched five episodes of some trashy heartbreak drama with her, went through half a box of tissues, and didn't get sent back to my room until the sky was going gray.

"Wait for me to watch the rest, okay? I've got the plot memorized. Don't you dare watch ahead!"

Nicole laughed and promised. "Go. Go to sleep!"

After Nicole and I had done our late-night drama three times, the phone rang one night. Soren.

"Where are you?"

I raised a brow. "And that concerns you how?"

Things he'd had no right to ask when we were married, and now, divorced, he wanted to ask them.

I'd clearly thrown him. He hung up clean, and the good mood went out of me in an instant. I blocked his number out of spite.

Nicole was waiting beside me for the show. She lowered her voice. "Is that family?"

I waved it off. "I don't have family. Everyone in mine is dead."

She pointed at the phone. "Then who's that?"

I glanced at the screen and thought about it. "Him? He's just somebody annoying."

Very annoying.

One phone call. It didn't move the needle on anything. I went on sleeping by day, taking my treatment, wandering by night, watching the show whenever Nicole was on shift.

But a pest doesn't show up just the once. A week later a text came in from a number I didn't know.

"You blocked me?"

I made a face and blocked that one too.

Chapter 6

Soren had made some real money over the years, and somebody, somewhere, had spoiled him into a man who didn't quit until he got what he wanted. The one time I actually fell asleep, his back-to-back calls jolted me awake.

Oh. Right. He'd been a rich kid long before any of that.

"What." My voice was flat. I couldn't get my eyes open.

"Why aren't you home?" His voice came through the receiver.

"Tch." A little impatient, but I kept it civil. "What do you want?"

"Which card do I send the money to?"

"Any of them. Why are you calling me over something that small?"

"Don't hang up!"

I brought the phone closer. "Then say what you've got to say."

"Why aren't you home?" Going in circles again. Then it clicked. "Are you at my place right now?"

"I'd get out if I were you. I've got it listed. Somebody could come through to see it any day now, so move along and quit blocking my money."

"You're selling?" His voice climbed a few notches. "You're selling the house?"

I shoved down the flicker of impatience. "What, keep it to breed in? Quit running your mouth and get out."

"Where are you?" An edge to it now, serious.

"None of your business." The last of my patience went. I hung up, blocked, deleted, the whole routine, and then couldn't fall back asleep for anything.

Eyes open till morning.

Cursing Soren out a thousand times over in my head.

Angry or not, I still let Nicole walk me to treatment like a good girl. And in your hometown, you run into people from your past.

"Sloane?"

I turned toward the voice. My best friend from high school.

"Della?"

Old friends meet, you catch up. With Nicole's blessing, I got myself a rare little window of time outside. I picked hotpot.

"Are you doing okay?" Della asked it carefully.

I smiled. "Well enough. Plenty of money. Just not much time left."

Her chopsticks jerked. She stared at me.

I was busy setting a piece of meat in my mouth before I noticed the tears coming down her face in fat drops.

"Hey. Hey, what's wrong?" I yanked two napkins free and dabbed at her eyes, flustered for a second.

"What kind of sickness?"

I waved it off. "The kind they can't fix. It's fine. I'm not going anywhere for a little while yet."

I looked out the window. "I want to go on a clear day. Winter's just too cold."

"Are you and Desmond still?"

At his name her eyes dimmed a shade. She said yes, quiet.

I didn't try to talk her out of it. Not everyone has to figure it out. You're alive, you get to be happy, that's enough.

Out on the sidewalk I stamped my feet against the cold and asked her, "Can you do something for me?"

"Name it."

"Don't tell anyone you saw me. And if you've got the time, come see me more."

Maybe it was the wind. The rims of her eyes went red. "Okay."

"Soren doesn't know?"

"No. We're divorced. He doesn't need to."

Della went quiet, and the two of us stood there looking out at nothing.

Back in school, Soren and I were the couple everyone envied, and Della was the tagalong trailing after Desmond.

The north wind howled. However good those days had been, they'd already blown past like smoke and gone.

Chapter 7

Back in the ward, Nicole caught me on the food thing and tore into me. I took it and swore up and down I'd never do it again.

She didn't back off. She came at me harder, with a pair of clippers, aiming to take my hair. I guarded it with my life.

We argued about it for two days.

"It was one meal out. I won't go again, problem solved. Why does the hair have to come off?"

Nicole laid it out for me. "You're starting chemo. Chemo makes your hair fall out. Better if we cut it now."

I turned it over. "And if I skip the chemo?"

Nicole lost it. I laughed and smoothed her down. "Okay, okay. Okay, okay. I'll think about it, I'll think about it!"

She had more to say, but a tall figure came through the door and made straight for me.

"Can I help you?"

He didn't so much as look at her. Just kept that cold stare fixed on me, like he was reading my face for the con.

"He's here for me. Nicole, spare my hair and go do your rounds."

She frowned at him, glanced back at me, and dropped her voice. "Call me if you need me."

I nodded and saw her out.

Then I turned to Soren. "Shouldn't you be spending the holidays with Crystal?"

Valentine's, Christmas, New Year's. Crystal always had some reason to pull Soren away. For a while there I hated every holiday on the calendar. They only made me look more alone. Later I got used to it. One person's fine, really. And now here he was, back to being a nuisance.

"What's this, another one of your games?"

Something closed off in my chest. Turns out even when you're used to the knife, it still hurts when it opens the wound