Chapter 4A Dead Womans Final Signature

I remember it was the last private room on the hospital floor.

My mother was asleep, sedated by the anesthetic.

My father held her hand, his eyes red-rimmed.

“Caroline, let’s stop fighting, okay?”

“We’ll go back to how we were. We’ll be a proper family again.”

My mother must have heard him, for a single tear slipped from the corner of her eye.

She said nothing.

After that day, my father was like a different person.

He never mentioned that woman, and he stopped staying out all night.

He came to the hospital every day at 8 AM sharp to accompany my mother to her checkups and would push her wheelchair around the garden in the afternoon.

He seemed to have reverted to the good husband and father he used to be.

My mother still wouldn’t speak to him, but she didn’t chase him away either.

Then one evening, she quietly asked me:

“Ellie, do you want a whole family again?”

I knew she still couldn’t let go.

In the past, I would have instantly refused, listing a dozen reasons why men never truly change.

But her car accident had been so severe; she had nearly died.

Seeing her frail, thin body, I couldn’t bring myself to hurt her again.

So I said:

“Whatever you decide, Mom.”

Things seemed to be slowly improving.

Until the day the doctor asked me to take my mother to the third floor for a CT scan.

My father was coming out of the Obstetrics and Gynecology department, supporting that woman.

My mother broke down again.

She screamed, demanding to know if he wasn't going to be a good husband, if he wasn't ashamed that that woman was pregnant!

The smile froze on my father’s face. He suddenly stepped forward and slapped my mother across the face, snarling:

“I’m shameless? You slept with me when you were eighteen! What right do you have?”

A surge of hot blood rushed to my head. I felt like a rabid animal, wanting to tear apart the bad people who were hurting my mother.

But I was too weak.

I couldn’t fight a forty-something-year-old man.

I was slapped so hard two of my teeth chipped, and my nose wouldn’t stop bleeding.

My mother panicked, desperate to protect me even though she was confined to a wheelchair.

In the end, Victor Hayes won.

He put his arm around the startled Vanessa, threw down two words—

“I want a divorce!”—and stormed off.

My face swollen and stinging, I watched the nurses rush my mother into the operating room.

Her wounds had burst open. She was hemorrhaging, and they couldn’t stop the bleeding.

...

Soon after, the divorce papers were mailed to the hospital.

Grandma rushed from her country home to help me deal with Mom’s funeral arrangements.

Mimicking my mother’s handwriting, I signed the divorce agreement in her name.

That was exactly eight years ago.

A knock on the guest room door startled me. It was Jack, asking my aunt and me to come down for dinner.

I was busy searching for a tissue to wipe away my tears when my phone rang, a frantic, urgent sound.

It was the hotel front desk number.

I thought there was another issue with the wedding venue and quickly answered.

But the voice on the other end was Victor Hayes, trembling.

“Ellie, why did the hotel staff say… that your mother is gone…”