HIS FORSAKEN WIFE HIS GREATEST REGRET

Learning She's Gone

Roberta's POV

Brett stood there. Waiting. His eyes were calm but curious. He wasn't accusing me of anything. He just wanted to know.

The question hung between us.

For one terrible second, my heart stopped.

I looked at Brett.

He was watching me carefully.

My mind scrambled.

"I—"

Think. Think. Think.

"I heard it," I blurted out.

The words came out before I knew what I was saying.

"Heard what?"

"Your name. At the hospital." I could feel my heart pounding. "When I was in a coma. I couldn't open my eyes or move. But I could hear things sometimes. Voices. Sounds."

Brett's face shifted. Interested now.

"A nurse said your name. Or a doctor. Someone said, 'Mr. Brett.' I don't remember exactly. I was confused. I didn't know who you were or why you were there. But the name stayed in my head."

He was quiet for a moment.

"You heard my name while you were unconscious?"

"I think so." I swallowed. "I'm not sure. Everything from that time is blurry. But when I saw you in the hospital room, when I woke up, the name was just... there. In my head. Like I already knew it."

It was a complete lie. But I figured people in comas sometimes heard things. It was possible.

Brett studied my face. His eyes moved across my features like he was looking for something.

I held my breath.

Then he nodded.

"That makes sense," he said. "The nurses said you might have moments of awareness even while you were under."

I almost collapsed with relief.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I should have told you. I didn't even think about it. I just... knew your name. I didn't realize you hadn't introduced yourself properly."

"It's fine." He smiled. A small one. "I was just curious."

I nodded. Then I tried to smile back.

It's fine. He believes me.

"Go get dressed," he said. "We have a long day."

I turned and walked toward the stairs.

My legs were shaking.

I walked up the stairs with my feet dragging.

Each step felt heavy. The lie I had just told sat on my chest like a stone. I could still feel Brett's eyes on me. Curious. Trusting.

He believed me.

I didn't know if that made me feel relieved or sick.

***

Brett's POV

I heard her feet on the stairs.

Then, the sound of the guest room door closing.

I stood in the kitchen for a moment with the silence settling around me and thought about what she had said.

One of the nurses said my name, and she heard it in her unconscious state.

I picked up my coffee cup. Set it back down.

It wasn't a bad lie. It was quick. It was plausible. If I had been a less observant man, I would have accepted it without a second thought and moved on.

But I had watched her face when I asked the question. I had seen the half-second before the answer came — the small recalibration behind her eyes.

She knew my name before any nurse said it.

I didn't know how. But I knew the lie for what it was, and I had let her tell it because whatever the truth was, she wasn't ready to give it yet. And pushing a woman who had been through what Roberta had been through, who had just woken up eight days after a coma and was still finding her footing in the world — pushing her before she was ready was not something I was willing to do.

So I left it alone. Let her think I believed her for now.

But I hadn't stopped thinking about it.

I walked to the window. The city was fully awake now.

I thought about last night. The hours we had sat together. Her voice was steady and wrecked at the same time, telling me things she had probably never said out loud to anyone. The marriage. The abuse. Ziva. The surgery. The cab. The hospital.

I had listened to all of it.

And underneath all of it was the thing I had not told her.

She was going to take down Jace. She was going to take down Millie. She was going to take down Irene and the hospital and everyone who had a hand in what happened to Ziva.

And then she was going to come to the VIP.

I had told her I would go all the way with her.

I had meant it.

But I had not thought it through to that particular end — to the moment when she got there, to the moment when she found out about the role I played in Ziva's death.

What I didn't know was how to carry this guilt sitting on my chest. How to sit across from Roberta and listen to her talk about the VIP with that low, controlled fury in her voice and not say: *It was me. I was in that hospital. I made that call. My name is on what happened to your daughter as much as anyone else's.*

Should I tell her now?

I pressed my hand flat against the window glass.

Now? She had been awake for less than twenty-four hours. She was still carrying the physical aftermath of eight days unconscious and a head wound that could have killed her. She was still in the first raw hours of understanding that Ziva was really gone and that it wasn't a nightmare she could wake from.

If I told her now, I would destroy the only stable thing she had.

If I didn't tell her, I was lying to her every single day.

Neither option had a clean answer.

I pushed off from the window.

Leave it, I told myself. Not permanently. Just leave it for now, because right now you don't know what to do with it, and sitting here turning it over is not going to produce an answer that doesn't exist yet.

I walked toward the hallway.

And then stopped.

Roberta needed to get dressed.

She had nothing with her — no bag, no change of clothes, nothing except what she'd been wearing when Jace carried her unconscious out of their house. She couldn't go back to Jace's house in the same things she'd worn yesterday. She would definitely like to change into something else.

I stood in the hallway.

Then I went to my room.

***

Our room.

I still thought of it that way. Probably would for a long time.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment.

Then, I stood up and walked through the connecting door.

Victoria's dressing room.

I had not been here since she died.

The room was exactly as she left it — climate controlled, softly lit.

I stood in the doorway.

It smelled like her.

Not faint. Not the ghost of a smell like in the bedroom. In here, it was full — her perfume living in the fabric of a hundred garments, undisturbed, exactly as she had left it. Like she had just stepped out and would be back in a moment to finish getting ready.

I pressed my hand against the doorframe.

Her evening gowns were on the first run — floor length, architectural things in deep jewel colours. Emerald. Burgundy. A midnight blue column dress she had worn to the Temples Foundation gala two years ago that I remembered because I had not been able to stop looking at her all night. Each one in its own dust cover, spaced evenly, treated with the kind of care that came naturally to a woman who loved beautiful things.

The whole room held her in it like cupped hands.

I stood very still.

Her shoes were on the shelving to my left. Row upon row of them.

Her bags are on the opposite wall. Her jewellery in the island drawers.

An entire room of her.

And she was not in it.

I moved to the third rail. The casual things. My hands moved along the hangers slowly, not looking for anything specific, just — touching. The way you touch things that belonged to someone when you need to remember they were real.

I stopped at a jumper.

Purple. Oversized.

She would want someone to use these.

But standing here with my hand on the jumper, the abstract had become concrete, and the concrete was harder than I had anticipated.

This was Victoria's.

Every piece of it.

To put it on another woman's body — even a woman who needed it - felt like a small erasure. Like agreeing, in some material way, that she was gone. That her things were available now. That the life we had built together was being quietly, practically distributed.

I pulled my hand back.

Sat back down on the edge of the bed.

And then I did something I hadn't done since the night she died.

I cried.

Not the controlled grief I had been managing in the weeks since. This was different.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.