The Unveiling
1187 Words
Chapter One: The Unveiling
The late afternoon sun streamed through the hospital windows, casting long, golden lines across the floor like a cage of light. But no warmth could reach the cold that clung to Catherine’s bones.
Each breath was a struggle, a rasping reminder of how much time she had left.
A soft knock stirred the silence.
Her eyes—sunken, sharp—shifted toward the door. She already knew who it was.
The handle turned.
Ronan stepped inside.
He looked older. Greyer around the temples. His tailored suit didn’t hide the wear in his eyes. But for Catherine, the ache was not in his face—it was in what it represented. A thousand broken promises. A hundred thousand moments of silence. A million shattered dreams.
“Catherine,” he said gently, the word tasting like a lie.
She looked at him long and slow. The man she once loved so completely now stood before her like a ghost. “How am I feeling?” she repeated, voice hoarse but sharp. “I was feeling peaceful… until I remembered who you really are.”
He flinched slightly. “Catherine, I came because—”
“Where’s Michelle?”
That stopped him.
His face stiffened. “Why are you asking about her?”
“Because she came,” Catherine said, sitting up slowly, breath catching on every syllable. “She came here. Dressed in her pretty little lies. And she told me everything.”
Ronan paled. “Catherine, you're not well—”
“Don’t,” she spat. “Don’t you dare blame this on my condition.”
He stayed silent.
“She said my daughter is alive.” Her voice cracked. “That the child I raised was hers. Yours and hers.”
Ronan looked away. Just for a second.
But that second was enough.
“So it’s true,” she whispered. “You knew. You knew and said nothing.”
“I didn’t know at first,” Ronan said, eyes distant.
She let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “But you found out. And you let me keep living that lie. Why? Because it was easier?”
His silence roared louder than the monitor beside her bed.
“You watched me grieve. You watched me fall apart, wondering why my baby felt like a stranger, why I couldn’t bond. You let me think I was broken.”
“I didn’t mean for it to go that far,” he said quietly. “I thought—if I just let things be, it would spare you.”
“Sparing me?” Catherine scoffed. “No. You were sparing yourself.”
He didn’t deny it.
“I need to know,” she said. “Why Michelle? What did she have that I didn’t?”
He hesitated. Then, slowly, painfully: “She didn’t make me feel small.”
Catherine blinked. “Small?”
“You… you were everything I thought I wanted,” he said. “You were brilliant. Driven. Morally unshakable. It made me feel like I was standing in your shadow. But Michelle… she didn’t expect anything of me. She let me lie. Cheat. Be weak. And still made me feel like a god.”
She stared at him, stunned. “So you preferred the woman who let you rot from the inside out.”
“She accepted me,” he said, eyes rimmed with guilt. “You held me accountable.”
“And that scared you more than anything,” Catherine whispered.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, Catherine.”
“But you did,” she said, her voice trembling. “Again and again. You let her into our home. You let her near my child. And when she took everything, you handed her the matches and watched our life burn.”
His head dropped. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this.”
“She said she killed my daughter,” Catherine said, her voice hollow now. “She looked me in the eye and said she fed her to the dogs. And I believed her.”
Ronan went pale. “Michelle says things—”
“But she meant it. I saw it in her eyes.” Her voice cracked. “I saw what you see in her. That madness. That fire. And you loved it.”
He didn’t speak. He didn’t deny it.
Tears streamed down Catherine’s cheeks. “I gave you everything. My youth. My dreams. I gave you the last name my parents cursed me for taking. And you gave me lies. You gave me a child you had with your w***e and told me she was mine.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” Ronan whispered. “Michelle said she’d run if I told you. She used the boy to trap me. I—I was afraid.”
“You chose her,” Catherine said, voice sharp again. “Not once. Not twice. Every time I begged you to come home, every time I waited up, every time I asked what I did wrong—you were with her.”
He took a step forward. “Let me fix this.”
“You can’t,” she said flatly.
“Catherine—”
“You can’t undo this,” she said, breath starting to hitch. “But you can answer me one last question.”
He nodded.
“If the baby had been a boy… and not a girl… would you have told the truth?”
He froze.
That pause—half a second—was the final betrayal.
Her chest heaved.
“That’s what I thought.”
Her heart monitor beeped rapidly now, matching the tremble in her limbs. Ronan reached forward instinctively.
She raised a trembling hand. “Don’t. Just... don’t.”
Tears slipped silently down her face. “You let my daughter vanish. You let me become a mother to your sin. You let me rot in that mansion alone while Michelle walked through my life like she owned it.”
She looked at him one last time. “You killed me long before this hospital did.”
Then she turned toward the window, the sunlight fading behind the clouds.
“I want a divorce,” she whispered. “And if I live… I will tear you both apart in court.”
Ronan’s breath hitched.
She looked at him one last time, her voice a whisper from the grave. “Tell Michelle I’ll see her in court... or in hell. Whichever comes first.”
The monitor let out a shrill, long note.
Nurses rushed in. Ronan stumbled back, helpless.
Her fingers slipped from the edge of the blanket, her lips parting with her last breath:
“If fate gives me one more chance… I won’t love a man like you again.
I will love myself.
And I will rise.”
And Catherine—broken, but not defeated—closed her eyes.
But something unseen lingered.
A vow forged in agony.
A second chance ignited in the ashes of betrayal.
And so began… the second vow.
- Writer
