Fading Memories, New Beginnings

Chapter 3

'The patterned curtains. The white sofa. The flowers arranged everywhere...'

Everything in the room had Willow written all over it.

Rivka stood there staring. Jayden seemed to have put even more care into Willow's wedding than he had into their own.

Her eyes dimmed, and for the first time, she felt completely shut out.

Emma and the others had already withdrawn by then. Jayden appeared in the living room without her noticing and headed straight up the stairs, clearly on his way to see the woman he now cherished most.

"Jayden..."

Rivka turned abruptly, and her voice shook with everything she was trying not to say. He stopped and looked at her. "Are you really not going to explain any of this?"

Jayden's gaze swept over her, cool and hard.

"Explain what? You know what Willow's condition is like. She's emotionally unstable, and she's talked about wanting to end her life. She says this is the one thing she wants, so I'm giving it to her."

Rivka's voice turned rough in her throat. "What about me?"

She held his gaze even as it hurt to do so. This was the man who had once promised to spend his life with her.

"Do my feelings matter to you at all? Or have you forgotten that I'm your wife?"

Jayden's brow tightened.

He looked away from her eyes and spoke with cold finality.

"There's a divorce agreement on the table. Just sign it. Once Willow gets better, we'll get remarried."

Rivka gave a hollow laugh. "God, that's pathetic."

Something inside her felt scorched clean.

"So that's the plan? She wants your name on a marriage certificate, and I'm the one you're willing to sacrifice to make it happen? Jayden, do you even hear how insane that sounds?"

Jayden's expression darkened. "This is temporary. It's a practical solution. This matters to Willow. You'll still be my wife in every way that matters. You'll still be the lady of this house. Nothing about your position will change. So what exactly are you making a scene over?"

He was the one betraying their marriage, yet somehow he was still hiding behind Willow's wishes as if that made any of it noble.

The bitterness in Rivka's chest turned sharp.

"The lady of the house? After being divorced to make room for another woman? Do you really think I want a title like that?"

"Rivka!"

Jayden's voice cracked like a whip, and when he looked at her, his eyes were full of anger.

At that exact moment, a faint noise came from upstairs.

Then Willow's weak voice drifted down. "Jayden... It hurts."

The panic on Jayden's face was immediate. He turned without hesitation and ran upstairs.

A moment later, Rivka heard his voice again, full of concern. "Willow, what happened? How could you be so careless? You're going to scare me to death."

Rivka stood alone in the enormous living room. Her eyes slowly fell to the divorce agreement on the table.

"From this day forward, Jayden Lindsey and Rivka Woodard voluntarily dissolve their marriage..."

Every word on the page dragged across what was left of her heart.

In the end, she fled back to her room.

The bedroom that had once felt like the heart of their marriage now seemed so cold and empty that even the silence echoed. She curled up on the carpet and found herself staring at the framed wedding photo on the nightstand.

In it, she and Jayden were smiling, their eyes bright with love and all the foolish hope they had once carried for the future.

She reached out and touched the image of herself without thinking. For a moment, she was back there again, in that sunlit afternoon.

"Jayden, you look ridiculously handsome."

She could still hear her own laughter from that day. She could still see the way he had looked at her then, so full of joy, so full of love, as if she were something precious.

And yet now it all felt impossibly far away.

Every beautiful memory had turned cruel. Each one returned only to reopen the wound.

She closed her eyes, but the tears still slipped free. They landed on the photograph and dripped silently onto the cold tile below...

Much later, the sudden sound of her phone ringing dragged her back to the present.

She picked it up. The message on the screen left her frozen.

The doctor: Ms. Woodard, your memory-erasure procedure is scheduled for seven days from now. Please make the necessary preparations.