FEAR MY RETURN, RALPH

Chapter 2: Fragments Of A Dead Marriage

I slept on the couch that night.

My feet couldn’t carry me to the room.

Our matrimonial room. The room with the ivory duvet we picked out together in London. The room with the photo of us on our wedding day, smiling like people who believed in forever.

I curled up on the couch with a throw blanket that still smelled like his cologne. Except now the smell made me sick.

Ralph hardly came home anymore.

He said he was busy with work.

What work could keep a married man out all night?

What work had meetings at 2 a.m. and dinners that lasted until sunrise?

I guess I have the four-month sonogram to prove the kind of “work” he was doing all through the night.

I pressed my hand to my stomach without thinking. Old habit. There was nothing there anymore. Seven times I did that. Seven times I hoped. Seven times I bled and cried and told myself the next one would stick.

The house was too quiet. The kind of quiet that echoes.

At 5:13 a.m. I heard it.

A key sliding into the lock.

_Click._

_Click._

_Click._

He barged in like he owned the place. Which, apparently, he did.

Ralph. Hair messy. Shirt wrinkled. Smelling like expensive perfume that wasn’t mine.

The man who had forsaken me all night to spend time with his mistress.

He didn’t look at me. Didn’t say my name. He just walked up the stairs, two steps at a time, like I was furniture.

I followed him. Bare feet on cold marble. Heart hammering so loud I was sure he could hear it.

I deserved an explanation.

I was still his wife.

Legally. On paper. In the eyes of God, or whoever was still watching us.

Even though for six months he hadn’t touched me. Not since the last miscarriage.

Seven in total.

Seven tiny coffins I carried in my body.

Upstairs, the bedroom light was already on. He was throwing clothes into a suitcase like he was in a hurry. Like I was an interruption.

I went to the drawer beside the lamp stand. The one close to where our bed used to feel safe. My hands were shaking. I pulled out an old letter. The paper was soft from how many times I’d read it.

“I will…” My voice broke before I could finish.

I cleared my throat and read it anyway, because maybe if I said the words out loud he would remember who he used to be.

“I will love you forever. I promise to ride this journey of life with you. Through thin and thick. To be the shoulder you could always cry on. To support you in everything.”

“Stop.” He didn’t turn around. “Stop, Rose. Just stop.”

“Stop believing in these words, right?” I asked. My voice sounded small. Like the 12-year-old girl my parents left home to go chase deals.

He finally looked at me. His eyes were tired. Not guilty. Tired. Like I was a problem he had to solve before breakfast.

“I came back to take some of my things,” he said. “Please stay out of my way.”

“You’ve forgotten,” I whispered. “You used to get me a bouquet of roses every day. White ones. With handwritten love notes tucked between the stems. You’d leave them on the kitchen counter before you left for work. I’d find them and read them three times. Those moments were the best of my life. Can’t we just go back to that? Can’t we just go back to being a loving couple again?”

He shut the suitcase. The sound was final.

“The sooner you realize this marriage is dead, the better it’ll be for both of us,” he said. No anger. No sadness. Just fact. “Our marriage is dead and buried, Rose. We’re over. Move on.

I’m giving you three days to move out. Isabella and I will be moving in soon.”

The floor tilted.

“What house?” My mouth was dry. “My house.”

“Rose. Rose. Rose.” He said my name like it was a joke he was tired of telling. “You’re so naive.”

He walked to the closet and pulled out cufflinks. Mine used to be the ones who polished them.

“Forgot when you signed over all your properties to me? To become a stay-at-home wife? The perfect little housewife I told you I wanted?”

He clicked his tongue. “Oh right. You forgot. So let me remind you. This house. And all your companies. Everything with the Rose Group name on it. It’s in my name now.

You have three days.”

He lifted the handle of his suitcase and rolled it toward the door.

He didn’t slam it. He didn’t have to. The quiet was worse.

I stood there.

I thought about my parents. How they fought in whispers because their companies were more important than their daughter. How they missed my recitals and my graduations and my 16th birthday because a board meeting ran late.

I swore I would never be them.

So when Ralph said, “A man should provide. A woman should build the home,” I believed him. I handed him everything. The shares. The buildings. The company my grandfather started in a garage in Kumo with two employees and a broken generator.

I did it to protect our marriage. To make sure I wasn’t too busy to love him. To make sure I wasn’t too busy to keep a baby alive this time.

And now?

Now that same Ralph was taking everything.

I was leaving this marriage with a suitcase and the clothes on my back.

What was I going to tell my parents?

“Mom, Dad, remember the company you worked 20-hour days to build so I would never have to struggle? Your divorced son-in-law owns it now. Because I was trying to be a good wife.”

It still felt like a dream. The bad kind you can’t wake up from.

I had worked. God, I had worked.

When I took over at 24, the Rose Norell Group was worth 2.9 billion.

I flew to Dubai, to London, to Canada. I sat in rooms full of men who called me “dear” until the numbers made them quiet. I grew it to 6 billion.

Six. Billion.

And I signed it away with a pen Ralph bought me for our third anniversary. “For signing all the important things,” he’d said and kissed my knuckles.

All because of a man.

And Isabella.

My closest friend since university.

The one who held my hair when I miscarried in her bathroom.

The one who knew about the sonogram.

The one whose name was now on Ralph’s lips like a promise.

I sat on the edge of the bed. The bed we hadn’t shared in half a year. The sheets were still hospital corners. He must have had someone come in and make it.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

_3 days, Rose. Don’t make this ugly._

It wasn’t from Ralph. The tone was wrong. Too soft. Too familiar.

Isabella.

I laughed. It came out wrong, like a sob.

Outside, I heard his car start. The engine I picked out for him on our second anniversary.

Three days.

Three days to pack 7 years of my life into boxes.

Three days to tell my parents that their legacy was gone.

Three days to figure out how to start over at 34 with nothing but a name I no longer owned.

I picked up the letter again. The ink was smudged where my tears fell.

“I will love you forever,” it said.

Guess forever lasted seven years, four months, and seven funerals.

I was still sitting there when my phone rang.

Dad.

I almost didn’t answer. What was I supposed to say?

But I did. Because he was my dad.

“Rose?” His voice was rough. He never called this early. “Baby, are you okay? We need to talk. It’s about Ralph.”

He paused. I could hear Mom in the background asking what was wrong.

“Rose,” Dad said, and his voice dropped.

“There’s something you don’t know. Something you should have known seven years ago.

“Ralph is a serial con…. He never loved he only came to scam you of your wealth”