HIS FORSAKEN WIFE HIS GREATEST REGRET

The Guilt Came Too Late

Millie's POV

The sound of her head hitting the bedside table was louder than I expected.

A solid crack that means something inside has broken.

She just crumpled. A pool of dark red started spreading fast beneath her.

Jace screamed.

"No. No, no, no—" He dropped to his knees beside her. His hands hovered over her face. "Oh God... what have I done? I shouldn't have pushed her." He didn't know where to touch first. "Roberta. Roberta, can you hear me?"

She didn't move. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth was open just a little.

Jace looked up at me. His face was white. His eyes were wide. "Millie. Get dressed. We have to take her to the hospital now."

I stood there.

"Millie!"

I looked at Roberta on the floor. The blood was still spreading.

"What are we going to tell them?"

Jace was already pulling on his pants. His hands were shaking. "What?"

"At the hospital. What are we going to tell them? She has a head injury. They're going to ask questions."

"I don't care what they ask. She needs a doctor right now. Before it becomes too late."

He grabbed a shirt from the closet. He almost fell over while putting it on.

I walked to the vanity. Picked up my dress from the chair. I held it in my hands. I didn't put it on.

"Jace. Stop."

He turned to me. His face was desperate. "There's no time for this."

"You've never taken her anywhere. You've never shown her to the world. And you have never — not once — put that woman's face next to yours in public. That was how your mother wanted it." I stepped closer to him. "If you walk into that hospital with her in your arms, everyone will see. The media will find out. They'll take pictures. They'll ask who she is. The daughter who just died tonight. Jace, if this goes public the wrong way, and then—"

"Then what?" His voice was rising. "Then my wife gets medical care?"

"She's not your wife!" The words came out sharper than I meant. I lowered my voice. "She's not your wife, Jace. She's a woman you stayed with out of revenge. A woman you used. A woman you don't even love."

Jace looked at Roberta. At the blood. At her still face.

"She could die on this floor, Millie."

"She's breathing." I checked. She was. "She's not going to die in the next five minutes. We have time to be smart about this."

"Smart about what?" he said. "She needs help, Millie."

"She fell. She hit her head. It looks bad, but."

"It is bad, Millie. Look at her."

I looked.

The blood had stopped spreading. Or maybe it had pooled as much as it could. Her face was grey. She looked like someone who was already gone.

Something cold moved through my chest. Not guilt. Not pity. Something else. Something careful.

"Let me think," I said.

"There's nothing to think about!"

His chest was heaving. His eyes kept going to Roberta. To the blood. To the door. Back to Roberta.

I watched him. Watched the war inside him.

I walked to him slowly, and I put my hand on his face. Made him look at me.

"Listen to me," I said. "You love me. Not her. You've hated her for years. For what she did to you. For the lie she made you live."

"That doesn't mean I want her dead."

"She's not going to die." I didn't know if that was true. I didn't care. "She's going to wake up with a headache. That's all."

Jace shook his head. "The blood."

"Head wounds bleed a lot. You know that. It looks worse than it is."

He looked at me. His eyes were searching. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

He was quiet for a long time.

Then he walked to the bed and sat down. He put his head in his hands.

"I can't believe Ziva is dead." His voice was broken. "She was just a little girl. She used to—she used to look at me like—" He stopped. "Oh God..."

"Jace."

"I should have treated her better."

"Jace, stop."

"She just wanted me to see her. That's all. She just wanted me to look at her. Ziva was innocent, and I took my anger out on her. On a little girl."

I felt the anger rising in my chest. The guilt I saw dragging him under made me sick. I walked to him. Grabbed his wrists. Pulled his hands away from his face.

"Get a grip on yourself." My voice was hard. "It's too late for regret. Ziva was not your child. She was not your responsibility. Her mother lied to you. Used you. Made you raise another man's daughter. Do you understand?"

He looked at me. His eyes were red.

"Roberta did this. Not you. She kept the truth from you. She let you believe. And now—" I stopped. Took a breath. "Now we have a chance to start over. You and me and Nolan. No more secrets. No more lies. Just us."

"Millie—"

"I love you, Jace. I've always loved you. From the moment I saw you. And I'm not going to let you throw everything away because you feel guilty about a child who wasn't even yours."

He was quiet.

I kept going.

"Roberta made her choices. She slept with someone else. She got pregnant. She lied to you for eight years. She doesn't deserve your guilt. She doesn't deserve your pity. She doesn't deserve you."

We went back and forth. He kept looking at her on the floor. I kept redirecting him. The minutes moved.

Finally, he stood up.

"Look, Millie, I love you," he said. "You know I do. But I'm not going to sit here and argue with you while she's lying there. Not tonight." He grabbed his keys.

He lifted Roberta from the floor. "I'm taking her to the hospital right now, whether you're coming or not." He moved to the door.

"Give me five minutes to get dressed."

He stopped at the doorway. "We take her. But you let me do the talking. You let me handle it."

He nodded. Slowly. Like he was coming out of a dream.

"Okay," he said. "Just hurry up." He carried her out.

I clenched my fists. Then I walked to the bathroom to change.

I took my time.

***

The Hospital

Jace carried Roberta through the doors. The blood had soaked through. The red was almost black in the fluorescent light.

A nurse ran to them. Then another. They put her on a gurney. They asked questions.

"Who is she to you?"

I stepped forward. Locked my arm through Jace's. Made sure the nurse saw us together.

"I'm his wife, and she's our housekeeper," I said. "She fell at home while doing some house chores. Hit her head."

The nurse looked at me. At Jace. At the way, I held his arm.

"Your housekeeper?"

"Yes. We brought her as fast as we could."

Jace looked at me.

I gave him the look that said: cooperate, or I walk out of this hospital, and I don't come back.

"Yes," he said. His voice was flat. "That's right."

The nurse didn't ask more questions. She just pushed the gurney through the double doors.

We waited.

Jace paced back and forth. His shoes made soft sounds on the tile floor.

I sat and watched him.

"She's going to be fine," I said. "Worrying won't help."

He looked at me.

"I can't believe she's gone." His voice was low. Almost to himself. "Ziva. I can't—" He pressed his hand against the wall. "I can't believe I let her go home all by herself after she—"

He didn't finish.

I stood up and walked to him.

"You didn't do anything wrong."

"I put her in a cab."

"She was fine in the cab."

"She was in pain. She could barely walk."

"She made it home. That's what matters."

Jace shook his head. "Millie—"

"Stop punishing yourself." My voice was sharp. "You didn't want her to die. It happened. It's sad. But it happened. Now we move on."

He looked at me. His eyes were wet.

"Move on?"

"We have Nolan. He's healthy now. We have each other. That's enough."

Jace didn't answer.

I said nothing. Because there was nothing more to say. And I'd learned a long time ago that when Jace was in this place — this soft, gutted, guilty place — silence was safer than comfort. Comfort gave him permission to stay there.

He needed to come back.

He always came back.

So we waited in silence.

The nurse came out after forty minutes.

"You can see her now."

Jace moved fast. I followed, less fast, watching the set of his shoulders, the urgency in his stride.

Don't soften, I thought. Not now. Not because of her.

The room was dim and full of the sounds of machinery. Roberta was on the bed, eyes closed, a bandage around her head, tubes and monitor, and the tidiness of a body that had been stabilised and handed back to time.

The senior doctor in charge was a woman.

"The CT shows a subdural haematoma," she said. "Blood collecting between the skull and the brain surface. The impact caused a significant bleed." She looked between us. "We've done what we can to manage the swelling and stabilise her pressure. But the delay in bringing her in—" She paused. "If she had arrived maybe ten minutes earlier, we would have had more options."

Jace said nothing.

"She's in a coma," the doctor continued. "Her brain is under pressure. The coma is partly the injury and partly the body protecting itself. How long it lasts—" She opened her hands. "We can't tell you. It could be days. Could be longer."

"Will she wake up?" Jace asked.

"We don't know."