Chapter 4

Amelie POV:

The heavy oak door slammed shut, the sound echoing the finality of it all. Silence descended, thick and suffocating.

I stood alone in the living room, a ghost in my own home. The garish "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banner drooped over the fireplace. A half-eaten cake, not the one I had baked, sat on the coffee table, its pink frosting grotesquely cheerful.

My fingers, moving of their own accord, dipped into the frosting and brought a small smear to my lips. It was sickeningly sweet, a cloying taste that coated my tongue. It tasted like a lie.

I sank onto the sofa, the silence pressing in on me. My gaze drifted to a small, carved wooden bird on the mantelpiece. My father had given it to me on my tenth birthday, the last birthday we' d spent together before the divorce. It was one of the only purely good memories I had of him, a small moment of warmth in a childhood of cold shoulders and bitter arguments.

"He loved you, you know," my father' s second wife, Kalie' s mother, had told me once, years later, her eyes sad. "He just didn' t know how to show it."

Now, the only person who had ever loved me without condition, without wanting something in return, was a faded photograph and a small wooden bird.

The thought didn't bring tears. It brought a strange, cold clarity.

I had tried to be a good sister, a good fiancée, a good friend. I had tried to be the anchor in everyone' s storm. But in the end, I was just the harbor they abandoned when the weather cleared.

I was done playing that role.

I was done being the shadow.

I wanted to be the sun. Or, if not the sun, then at least a planet with my own orbit, not a moon reflecting someone else' s light.

My phone buzzed on the table. Two new messages.

One was from Alex. "We need to talk. This has gone too far. I' m at the hospital with Kalie. Her ankle is sprained. Come here so we can sort this out."

Sort this out. Like a business negotiation. No apology. No remorse. Just a command.

The other was from the clinic. "Amelie, this is Nurse Evans. Just a reminder your final ECT session is scheduled for tomorrow at 9 AM. Please confirm."

The final session. The one that would sever the last tethers of pain. The one that would set me free.

I looked at Alex' s message, at his name on my screen. The name of a man I had promised to love forever. Now, it was just a collection of letters.

My fingers moved, typing a reply. Not to him.

To Nurse Evans. "Confirmed. See you tomorrow."

I picked up a stray piece of party confetti from the rug, a small, shiny square of blue. I rolled it between my fingers, then let it fall. Let it all fall.

There was no future with Alex. Not anymore. I had seen it in the way he' d looked at me, the way he' d held her. The foundation was rotten. The structure had collapsed.

I stood up and systematically began to clean. I threw the half-eaten cake in the trash. I took down the banner. I called a 24-hour cleaning service to erase any trace of the party.

Then I called the real estate agent whose card was tucked in my wallet.

"Amelie! I was just about to call you about the party tomorrow!" his cheerful voice boomed.

"Cancel the party, Mark," I said, my voice even. "I want to sell the house."

There was a stunned silence on the other end. "Sell? But... you and Alex just finished the renovations. The press is calling it the house of the year."

"I don' t care," I said. "I want it sold. Fast."

"Amelie, is everything okay? Maybe you should sleep on it..."

"List it tomorrow morning, Mark. Price it to sell. I don' t care about the profit."

I hung up before he could argue further.

I spent the rest of the night packing a single suitcase. I left the designer clothes, the expensive jewelry, the life I had built with him. I took only the essentials, my father' s wooden bird, and the notepad with my escape plan.

As I sat on the floor of my now-empty closet, my gaze fell upon a small, locked box on the top shelf. My mother' s jewelry box. She' d left it to me when she died, a collection of gaudy pieces I never wore. She had been a beautiful woman, but a deeply unhappy one. After the divorce, she' d poured all her energy into hating my father, and by extension, me.

"You have his eyes," she' d slur, her words thick with gin. "Cold. Judgmental."

But there were moments, rare and fleeting, when she would look at me with a flicker of something else. Regret, maybe. Love, even. After one particularly vicious fight, she found me crying in my room and silently placed a small, simple silver locket in my hand. It was the only thing of value she owned that wasn' t a reminder of my father.

"Don' t be like me, Amelie," she had whispered, her voice raw. "Don' t let them break you."

She died a few years later, her liver finally giving out. The locket was all I had left of that flicker of maternal love. It was a painful reminder, but a reminder nonetheless. I' d sold it last week to help pay for the E.C.T. treatments. The irony was not lost on me. Selling the symbol of a painful love to erase another.

A final buzz from my phone. A text from Alex.

Another one.

"Amelie, I know you' re angry, but you' re not thinking clearly. Where are you?"

"You left your mother' s locket at my parents' house. The one you never take off. I' ll bring it over tomorrow. We need to talk."

A photo was attached. It was the locket. Lying on a velvet cloth. My heart gave a painful, phantom twinge.

He was trying to lure me back. Using the ghost of one broken love to mend another.

Too late.

I set my alarm for 7 AM, lay down on the bare mattress in the guest room, and closed my eyes, waiting for the dawn of my new, memory-free life.