Chapter 3

David and I were an institution. We grew up in houses that shared a backyard fence. My house was a chaotic symphony of paint-splattered canvases and half-finished sculptures. My parents were artists, loving but perpetually distracted. His house was quiet, meticulously clean, run by a single mother, Mrs. Thompson, who worked two jobs to give him the world. She was the one who taught me how to properly set a table, who bandaged my scraped knees when my own mother was lost in a new project.

Mrs. Thompson adored me. She saw in me the daughter she never had, a splash of vibrant, messy color in her orderly life. And David, he was my anchor. He was the calm in my family's storm. He would climb the fence to do homework with me, to escape his mother's well-meaning but suffocating attention. We were two halves of a whole, fitting together perfectly.

Our transition from best friends to a couple was so natural it felt inevitable. There was no grand declaration, just a moment during our senior year of high school, sitting on his porch swing, when he took my hand and it just felt right. We were married at twenty-two, under that old oak tree in his mother's backyard, surrounded by people who had watched us grow up together. Our ten years of marriage were an extension of that easy, comfortable love. We were David and Sarah, a single entity.

The first time I heard the name Chloe Davis, it was in a complaint.

"This new assistant is driving me nuts," David had said over dinner one night, about six months ago. "She's ambitious, which is good, but she can't even get my coffee order right."

I laughed. "Give her a break. She's new."

A few weeks later, his tune changed. "You know, Chloe's had a really rough life," he told me. "Grew up in foster care, put herself through college. She's got a lot of fight in her." He sounded impressed, a little... paternal. I felt a tiny, uncomfortable prickle, but I dismissed it. David had always been a champion for the underdog.

Soon, the praise became a constant refrain. "Chloe closed that deal." "Chloe found the flaw in the quarterly report." "I don't know what I'd do without Chloe." He started staying later at the office, having "working dinners" with her. He said she just got his vision for the company in a way no one else did. The uncomfortable prickle grew into a persistent unease.

The breaking point was the company's annual awards gala. I was standing with a group of his colleagues when Chloe walked up to David, straightened his tie, and handed him a glass of whiskey, neat, just the way he liked it. "You looked like you needed this," she said, her voice low and intimate. She was acting like his wife, right in front of me.

I pulled him aside later. "What was that with Chloe?"

"What?" He looked genuinely confused. "She was just being helpful. You're overthinking it, Sarah."

But I wasn't. The final, explosive fight happened the night before the accident. It was his mother's 65th birthday. We were supposed to take her to her favorite Italian restaurant. David never showed up.

I called his phone a dozen times. No answer. Finally, on the thirteenth try, a breathless female voice answered. It was Chloe.

"He can't talk right now," she said, her voice smooth as silk. "We're in a very important meeting with investors."

I didn't believe her. Over the line, I could hear the distinct sound of clinking glasses and soft jazz music. "Put him on the phone, Chloe."

"I'm sorry, he's unavailable," she said, and the line went dead.

When David finally came home after midnight, smelling of expensive perfume that wasn't mine, I was waiting for him. We had the worst fight of our marriage. I screamed, I cried, I accused him of having an affair. He denied everything, calling me jealous and insecure.

"It was a business meeting, Sarah! You're strangling me!" he yelled. "Maybe I need some space!"

The next afternoon, while I was still reeling from that fight, I got the call from the hospital. Now, sitting alone in my car outside that same hospital, the memory of that fight felt like a prophecy. He wanted space. And now, he had it. He had erased me completely.