The Wife He Left to Die

Chapter 6

After retrieving Nina's ashes from the cemetery, Violet placed the urn in the Stone family's private memorial room before heading out to complete the grave relocation paperwork.

Her eyes burned with fresh tears as she gazed at the small vessel one last time. Grief twisted her insides into knots she feared would never come undone.

But when she returned to move the ashes, the sight before her turned her blood to ice.

The urn sat in a different spot. Open. Empty.

'Where is my child?'

She frantically searched every corner of the room. She checked the shelves, the alcoves, the spaces behind furniture. Nina's ashes had simply vanished into thin air.

"Ms. Shaw, what are you looking for?"

Violet spun around. Her entire body flooded with rage so intense she could barely see straight.

"Clara. What in God's name are you doing here? What have you done?"

There stood Clara in the doorway, playing the wide-eyed innocent. She cradled the urn in her arms, the same urn that should have held Nina's remains. But it was lighter now. Empty.

"Ms. Shaw, do you not just love this jar?" Clara gushed, fluttering her lashes like a clueless child. She turned the urn around to show off the floral designs painted on its surface. "It is so pretty. I found it sitting here and I thought, this would be perfect for the little plant I bought."

She held it up like a trophy.

"Where is what was inside?" Violet's voice came out low and dangerous. Her nails dug into Clara's shoulders before she even realized she had moved.

Clara yelped and tried to pull away. "You are hurting me. Stop. I did not know. I just thought it was a nice container. How was I supposed to know?"

The world tunneled into red-hot fury.

She had already lost her baby. She had held that tiny, still body in the morgue. She had buried her daughter in the cold ground. Must they steal this last remnant too? Must they grind her grief into dust?

Through gritted teeth, Violet growled each word separately.

"Last. Chance. Where. Are. They."

Clara trembled under Violet's death glare. Her lower lip quivered with manufactured fear.

"Down. Down the drain. I emptied it out. I did not know it was important."

The sound that came out of Violet was not human.

Her hand connected with Clara's cheek in a c***k that ricocheted off the ancient walls. Clara stumbled backward and crumpled to the floor in a heap, her hands flying to her face as she began to wail.

By the time Cedric arrived, drawn by the commotion, his pregnant mistress was curled on the ground sobbing like her heart would break.

"Clara." He rushed to her side, dropping to his knees. "Clara, what happened? Are you alright? Is the baby alright?"

Then he looked up at Violet, and his eyes went glacial.

"Have you completely lost your mind?" His voice dripped with venom. "Since when do we hit pregnant women? Since when do we put an innocent child at risk?"

"She dumped Nina's ashes." Violet's entire body shook violently. Every muscle trembled with the effort of holding herself together. "That is all I had left of my daughter. That was everything. And she poured it down the drain like garbage."

Clara sobbed like a bad actress in a community theater production. Her sniffles came in practiced intervals.

"I did not know. Who keeps ashes in something so cute? It looks like a cookie jar. I figured it was junk. I figured nobody wanted old ashes in a pretty container."

Violet raised her hand again, driven by pure instinct. But Cedric caught her wrist in midair and held it fast.

"Enough." His voice rang out like a gunshot. "It was an accident. A mistake. Why do you have to torment her over an accident?"

His next words sliced deeper than any knife ever could.

"Your child is dead. That does not entitle you to destroy hers."

Violet reeled backward like he had gutted her with his bare hands.

She stared at his face, at this man she had known for half her life, and searched for any trace of the person she had married. Was this truly the man who had once rocked their daughter to sleep in the middle of the night? Who had whispered promises over her swollen belly?

"Cedric." Her voice shredded on his name, raw and broken. "Nina was your daughter too. She was your little girl."

Her sobs tore through the quiet room, ugly and unfiltered and completely real.

For one endless moment, he said nothing.

His silence was louder than any apology he would never give.

"Enough of this." His voice came out cold and flat. "I will discipline her later for being careless. But we are done here."

He straightened up, pulling Clara gently to her feet.

"Regardless of what happened, Clara did not mean any harm. She would never intentionally hurt anyone. You are the one to blame for not keeping something so important secure. You should have locked it away. You should have protected it better."

Violet opened her mouth to protest, to remind him that this was sacred ground, that the memorial room should have been safe, that she never should have had to lock up her own daughter's remains in her own home.

But the words died in her throat.

The man she loved gathered the weeping girl in his arms and carried her out of the room without a single backward glance. His footsteps faded down the hallway and then disappeared entirely.

Left alone with the empty urn, Violet's eyes stung with unshed tears. But they would not come. Her body had nothing left to give.

She sank to her knees on the cold floor and pressed her forehead against the marble.

'Nina, I am so sorry.'

'I could not even protect the last piece of you I had left.'

'I failed you. I failed you in every way a mother can fail.'

That night, sleep refused to come.

Violet lay in the darkness staring at the ceiling, her mind replaying the same images over and over. The empty urn. Clara's fake tears. Cedric's cold eyes.

Then her phone buzzed on the nightstand.

She reached for it automatically, her fingers closing around the device. The screen glowed in the dark.

Photos from Clara filled her feed.

Mirror selfies showed rumpled sheets and fresh love bites. The smirking girl pressed against Cedric's bare chest, her face arranged in an expression of smug triumph. His arm draped around her, his eyes closed in sleep.

The taunting captions stabbed at Violet one by one.

'See? Even pregnant, your husband cannot keep his hands off me.'

'You pathetic thing. Losing your own baby was not enough? Now you want mine dead too? Get a life.'

'Nina? You mean the dust? More like burnt garbage. Get help, crazy mommy.'

Each word carved into her like a blade. Each image twisted deeper.

With shaking fingers, she gripped her phone and dialed the one number that still mattered.

The line rang once. Twice.

"Violet?" Celia's voice came through, thick with sleep but sharpening with concern. "Are you okay? Do you know what time it is?"

Violet's voice came out raw and scraped clean.

"Are you awake?" She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. "I... I need to talk. I need you."

She didn't cry.

Violet realized she couldn't cry anymore.

Her fingertips were ice-cold as she slowly picked up her phone and scrolled to a number she hadn't called in a long time.

"It's me..."

There was a brief silence on the other end, followed by a low, surprised voice. "What, finally made up your mind?"

Violet gazed out at the night, her eyes shifting from numbness to clarity.

"Do you still mean what you said?"