After Five Miscarriages, I Divorced Him

Chapter 3

After coming down from the mountain, I went straight to see my mother.

Looking at her lying there, lost in that vegetative state, I felt the familiar weight of guilt settle over me. She had raised me alone from the time I was small, she had never had it easy, and she had waited so long to see me married and settled. This was what she had lived to see.

I dragged my tired body out into the corridor, intending to fetch some warm water to wash her down, and it was there, at the bend in the hallway, that I came face to face with the woman Sebastian had never stopped loving.

Vivienne Hayes. Three years, and she was still as beautiful as ever.

I could not say the same for myself. Three years of miscarriage after miscarriage, three years of hormone medication taken in the hope of carrying a child to term, and my body had long since stopped resembling what it once was.

I turned to walk the other way, but she quickened her steps and planted herself in front of me.

"It's been a while, Clara."

I had nothing to say to her and moved to go around her. She caught my wrist, and her voice climbed sharply. "Clara, don't you want to know why your mother hasn't improved after all these years of treatment?"

I went still.

Why would she ask that? What did she have to do with my mother's condition?

I turned slowly and held her gaze. She broke into a wide, unbothered smile, her fingers drifting up to stroke the necklace at her collarbone, drawing my attention to it deliberately.

I recognized it. Sebastian had paid an extraordinary sum for it at the auction. Seeing it around her neck shouldn't have surprised me. She was, after all, the only person he had ever truly loved.

She circled me slowly, almost amused. "I never imagined Sebastian could love me this deeply. He actually married you just to make me happy." She let that land before continuing. "I have severe anemia, and it turns out you were the perfect solution. He kept you close as my blood reserve, and when he worried you might run, he had your mother's medication tampered with. She was never truly in a vegetative state. It was all arranged to keep you tied down."

She tilted her head. "Three years, Clara, and you still couldn't make him love you? What exactly is wrong with you?"

The pain that moved through me was like a fist closing around my heart.

I remembered the night my mother was brought in. Her condition hadn't been that severe. By the next morning, the doctors had told me she was in a vegetative state. Sebastian had stayed by my side through all of it, attentive and tender, and I had let myself believe he was holding me together. He had only been making sure I stayed within reach.

A year ago, I had fainted and been taken to the hospital, where they drew an unusual amount of blood. I had assumed it was standard procedure. It had gone to Vivienne.

I pressed my hands into fists, hot tears sliding down my face. I could not find words for the hatred I felt toward them both in that moment.

The more my expression crumbled, the more satisfied she looked.