Chapter 4 Divorce Papers

The morning sunlight filtered weakly through the hospital window, pale and cold against Anne's skin.

She lay motionless on the bed, the light tracing the fragile lines of her thin face, glinting in the hollow of her tired eyes. A week had passed, and everything around her remained oppressively white, the walls, the sheets, the sterile smell of disinfectant heavy in the air.

Anne had regained consciousness three days ago, yet she neither asked for anyone nor expected anyone to come. The doctor told her she was out of danger, that she simply needed rest.

Rest?

She almost laughed. What was there left to rest from?

Since that loveless marriage two years ago, time for Anne as an unseen wife had simply... stopped.

Outside this room, the world went on, people still loved, still lived, while she remained trapped inside a still frame, a fragment of a forgotten life where pain had taken the place of motion.

...

That afternoon, the door to her hospital room stood slightly ajar.

A man in a dark suit approached and paused at the threshold. He did not step inside. He stood there in silence, his shadow long across the white floor.

Through the frosted glass, Edric could see her, a small figure lying still on the bed, her fragile hand pale against the blanket, her body almost blending into the whiteness around her.

A doctor walked by and glanced at him.

"Family of the patient? She's still weak and needs a few more days of observation."

Edric nodded once, his voice low and rough.

"I understand, thank you doctor. Take good care of her. I'll cover all the expenses."

The doctor nodded again, but when he turned back, Edric was already gone.

He couldn't bring himself to enter that room.

The image of her collapsing in the kitchen haunted him, her lips colorless, her trembling fingers clutching the phone, the cruel words he had sent flashing on the screen like a blade.

Yet even after calling for help, he left before she could see him.

He couldn't face her.

Because one looked into her eyes, and he knew he wouldn't be able to stay cold enough to finish what he'd started, to wait for the day their marriage would end.

Anne never knew that Edric had come.

All she knew was that for seven days, there were no messages, no calls, no one waiting for her to return.

When the doctor finally told her she could go home, the room fell back into silence, filled only with the fading scent of medicine and the wilted flowers in a glass vase.

On the bedside table, her phone blinked. She turned it on.

No messages.

No missed calls.

An odd emptiness spread in her chest. Not because she had expected anything, she had long stopped expecting, but because even silence, when too familiar, could still hurt.

A whole week gone, and not one soul in the world seemed to notice she had disappeared.

When Anne left the hospital, a light drizzle had begun to fall.

She pulled her thin coat tighter, called a taxi, and returned to the mansion. The enormous house loomed in the misty dusk, dark and hollow as ever.

Inside, everything was spotless, unchanged and as though no one had been gone, as though no one had almost died.

The faint scent of Edric's cologne lingered in the air. It stung. She used to smell it on his shirts when she did his laundry.

Anne sat on the sofa and texted him.

'I'm home.'

A moment later, her phone buzzed.

A short, detached reply.

'I have a dinner party tonight. Don't wait up.'

She stared at the screen for a long time, then quietly set the phone aside.

On the refrigerator were the medicines the doctor had prescribed. She arranged them neatly, brewed herself a cup of ginger tea, and sipped it slowly, as if the warmth might fill the emptiness inside her chest.

The phone lit up again.

It was a news post: "Welcome Party for Bella Hadris After Two Years in Europe."

The attached photo showed Edric standing beside Bella. He wore a black suit, his familiar polite smile in place. Bella, in a scarlet dress, her golden curls shining under the light, leaned toward him with effortless charm.

Anne stared at the image, numb.

It wasn't the first time she'd seen them together. Even before their marriage, she'd heard stories about their relationship, seen their pictures on social media. But this time, something inside her shifted.

Her mind echoed with his words that morning:

'Take the pill. I don't want any more mistakes.'

Mistake.

So that's what she had always been.

Anne set the phone down. Her chest tightened, but no tears came. She had cried too much already so there was nothing left to spill.

She walked to the bedroom, to the drawer she rarely opened.

Second drawer from the bottom... she whispered.

Inside was a white folder, its corner slightly bent. She pulled it out, opened it, and read the bold heading:

Marriage Contract Duration: 24 months.

Two years.

A bitter smile curved her lips. Less than a month remained. This arrangement, this mockery of a marriage, was about to expire which just as he had planned from the beginning.

The last page bore both their signatures so neat, distant and soulless.

"Upon the end of the contract, both parties shall dissolve the marriage, with no emotional, legal, or financial obligations."

She read it slowly, each word cutting deeper, as if she were reading her own sentence.

He had prepared for her departure long before she had ever thought of staying.

Anne's fingertips brushed the paper. It was smooth, cold, and sharp.

Just like Edric.

She took out a pen. The nib touched a blank sheet.

Divorce Agreement.

Outside, the wind whispered through the trees, carrying with it the sound of dry leaves scraping the pavement, fragile, lifeless, like the love she had spent two years tending to.

She paused, staring at the page.

There was no hatred left in her, no resentment. Only an aching hollowness, a quiet space where his presence used to be.

If their marriage had been a contract, then perhaps her love for him had always been an unsigned clause, one that never truly existed.

Anne folded the paper neatly, slipped it into an envelope, and laid it on the desk.

The clock struck eleven.

Outside, headlights flickered past, slicing through the darkness for a brief moment before fading again, like fate blinking one last time.

She stood by the window, watching the garden. The rain had stopped, leaving droplets shimmering on the leaves under the dim yellow lights.

Her voice trembled, barely a whisper:

"Edric... You taught me how to love someone who would never love me back. Now, I only want to learn how to forget."

It was time to find a life of her own, one where his shadow no longer followed.

A soft breeze stirred the curtains. The envelope on the desk fluttered, catching a faint shimmer of light, fragile as her final resolve.

Anne turned away, lay down, and pulled the blanket over her chest.

She closed her eyes.

Silence filled the mansion, the quiet of a woman who had finally chosen to let go. Not because love had vanished, but because she had finally learned that love, perhaps, had never begun at all.

In the vast, empty house, only the sound of the clock remained, ticking steadily toward the end of their marriage contract.