Chapter 4 No.4

The first thing Erica did was build a wall. A digital one.

She went through her social media accounts, one by one. She didn't delete them. That would be too obvious, an alarm bell for Alex. Instead, she methodically unfriended and blocked every mutual connection she shared with him and Diamond. Friends, family, colleagues. A systematic pruning of her life.

It was a quiet, bloodless massacre. With each click, a piece of her old world fell away.

The second blow came two days later. A message on her phone from a number she didn't recognize. It was a picture.

Diamond, radiant in a designer dress, holding up her left hand. A massive diamond ring glittered on her finger. Alex stood beside her, his arm around her waist, a faint, unreadable expression on his face. The caption was simple: "He asked. I said yes! #FutureMrsWade"

The picture had been sent by one of Diamond's sycophants, a woman Erica had forgotten to block. A deliberate, targeted strike.

Erica stared at the image. The happy couple. The ring. The hashtag that erased her own name.

She felt a flicker of something, a dull ache in her chest. But it was distant, like a storm happening in another country.

She typed a reply. "Congratulations."

Then she blocked the number and deleted the message. Her response was a test for herself. The numbness was holding. The wall was strong.

A week later, she ran into an old acquaintance from the orchestra at the grocery store. A cellist named Maria.

"Erica! My god, I haven't seen you in ages," Maria said, her face a mixture of surprise and pity. "I heard about your sister. I am so, so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you, Maria."

"And... all the other stuff," Maria added, her voice dropping. "Alex and Diamond... I saw the engagement announcement. It's all so fast." She looked at Erica, her eyes searching. "He used to look at you like you were the only person in the universe. We all saw it."

The memory of that look was a phantom limb, an ache for something that had been amputated.

"People change," Erica said, her voice even.

She knew what Maria saw. The tragic wife, abandoned for a wealthy heiress. The story Diamond's PR team had so carefully crafted.

He never loved me, she thought, the words a silent, cold truth inside her. He loved the idea of me. And then he loved the idea of repaying his debt to her more.

The truth didn't hurt anymore. It was just a fact, like gravity.

That night, she had a dream.

She was back in their first apartment, a small, sun-filled space that always smelled faintly of rosin and Alex's cologne. He was in the kitchen, making coffee. He turned and smiled at her, that old, easy smile. "Morning, sunshine," he said. "I saved you the last of the good stuff."

The warmth of the dream was so real, so palpable, it felt like coming home.

She woke up with a gasp, her cheeks wet. The bedroom was dark and cold. The feeling of loss was a physical weight on her chest, pressing the air from her lungs.

It wasn't him she missed. It was the hope. The belief that she was safe, that she was loved.

He had given her that hope, let her build a world on it. And then he had detonated it from the inside out. The cruelty wasn't in the leaving. It was in the giving, and then the taking away.

She got out of bed and went to the garage. In a corner, covered by a dusty tarp, was a box of her old college textbooks. Music theory, composition, history. Things she hadn't looked at in years. Worthless now.

She dragged the heavy box to the curb for the next day's trash pickup.

As she turned to go back inside, Alex's car pulled into the driveway. He got out, looking tired.

He saw the box on the curb. "What's that?"

"Just some old books," she said.

He walked over and lifted a corner of the tarp, peering inside. He saw the titles. He let the tarp fall.

"Good," he said, his voice flat. "No sense keeping things you're never going to use again."

He walked past her into the house, leaving her alone in the driveway.

His words were not meant to be cruel. They were just a statement of fact. A confirmation of her new reality. Her old life, her old self, was trash. Something to be discarded without a second thought.

It was the final confirmation she needed. There was nothing left here to save. Nothing left to mourn.