Chapter 4

~CLAIRE'S POV~

The next few days passed in a blur of nurses, medications, and discharge paperwork.

I signed forms with my maiden name, Winfred, and each time it felt like signing away another piece of the woman I used to be. Claire Blackwood was dead. She had died in that hospital room when Richard told me I disgusted him.

What was left was someone I didn't recognize yet.

The nurse who wheeled me out to the taxi was kind, talking about the weather and how I should take it easy for the next few weeks.

I nodded and smiled, but inside I felt nothing. Empty. Like someone had scooped out everything that used to matter and left behind a hollow shell.

"Where to?" the taxi driver asked.

I gave him my parents' address. It was the only place I could think of to go. Richard had made it clear I was not welcome in our house anymore.

Not that I wanted to be there anyway, not after what I had seen in our bedroom.

My childhood home looked smaller than I remembered. The white paint was peeling around the windows, and my mother's rose bushes needed trimming.

I paid the driver and stood on the sidewalk for a moment, gathering the courage to knock on the door I used to walk through without thinking.

My mother answered on the second ring. Dorothy Winfred was fifty-five years old with gray hair she kept in a neat bun and worried lines around her eyes that seemed deeper today.

"Claire." She did not sound surprised to see me. "I wondered when you'd show up."

"Hi, Mom." I shifted the small bag of belongings the hospital had given me. Everything I owned in the world fit in one plastic bag.

"Can I come in?"

She stepped aside, but her movements were stiff and uncomfortable. The living room looked exactly the same as it had when I was growing up. Same floral sofa, the same family photos on the mantle, same smell of lemon furniture polish.

"Your father's at work," Mom said, sitting down across from me. "He'll be home around six."

We sat in silence for a moment. I waited for her to ask how I was feeling and if I needed anything or any of the things a mother might say to her daughter who had just been through emergency surgery and a devastating divorce.

Instead, she folded her hands in her lap and said, "Richard called."

Of course, he had. "What did he tell you?"

"Everything." Her voice was flat, disappointed. "About the affair. About the divorce. About how you... how you drove him away."

The words hit me like a slap. "How I drove him away?"

"Claire, honey." My mother's sigh was heavy with disappointment. "What did you expect? You had no life outside that marriage. No friends except Monica, no interests, no... nothing. You turned yourself into some kind of shadow."

"I was being a good wife," I said, but the words sounded weak even to me.

"A good wife has her own identity," Mom replied, echoing Richard's cruel words. "A good wife doesn't lose herself completely in her husband."

I stared at her, this woman who had raised me, who was supposed to love and support me no matter what. "Are you taking his side?"

"I'm not taking anyone's side. I'm just saying..." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "Maybe this is for the best. Maybe now you can figure out who you are."

Figure out who I really are. Everyone kept saying that like it was some kind of gift. Like having my heart ripped out and crushed on was actually a blessing in disguise.

"Where am I supposed to go?" I asked. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Well, you can't stay here." The words were spoken gently, but they might as well have been shouted. "Your father and I... we've worked hard to build our reputation in this community. Having a divorced daughter living here, well, it wouldn't look good."

Would not look good. My marriage had fallen apart, my husband thought I was disgusting, my best friend had betrayed me, and my parents were worried about how it would look to the neighbors.

"I see," I said quietly. "And what about Monica? Is she still welcome at your dinner parties?"

My mother's face flushed. "Monica made a mistake. People make mistakes, Claire. But she and Richard... they seem happy together. And she's pregnant now, so…”

"So what? That makes it okay?" I stood up, anger flaring in my chest for the first time since I had signed those divorce papers. "She slept with my husband while pretending to be my friend, but that's just a mistake?"

"Keep your voice down," Mom hissed, glancing toward the windows like the neighbors might be listening. "And yes, it was a mistake. But Richard says you weren't... intimate... for months before it happened. Sometimes these things just…”

"Just happen?" I finished for her. "That's what Monica said too. It just happened. Like gravity or the weather. Like no one made any choices or hurt anyone on purpose."

"Claire, please." My mother stood up too, her hands twisting together. "I know you're hurt, and I'm sorry about that. But you have to understand, that we can't risk our standing in the community. Your father's business, our friends..."

Their reputation mattered more than their daughter. The message was crystal clear.

"How long do I have?" I asked.

"What?"

"How long do I have before you need me gone? A week? A few days?"

My mother's face crumpled with guilt, but she did not take back her words. "Maybe just until you can find somewhere else to go. A small apartment, perhaps. Richard said the settlement was generous."

Generous. Blood money to make himself feel better about destroying me.

"I'll be gone by tomorrow," I said, picking up my plastic bag.

"Claire, wait….”

But I was already walking toward the door. I paused with my hand on the handle.

"Tell Dad I said goodbye."

I walked out into the afternoon sun and started walking. I didn't know where I was going, but anywhere was better than staying where I was not wanted.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. For a moment, my heart jumped with the stupid hope that it might be Richard calling to say he had made a terrible mistake. That he loved me and wanted me back.

But it was Monica.

"Claire? Oh thank God, I've been trying to reach you for days. How are you feeling? Are you okay?"

I stopped walking and stared at the phone. She sounded genuinely concerned like she actually cared about my well-being. Like she had not just destroyed my entire life.

"I'm fine," I said.

"I'm so glad. Listen, we need to talk. About what happened. About everything. Can we meet somewhere?"

"Why?" The word came out harder than I intended.

"Because you're my best friend," Monica said, and she actually sounded like she meant it. "Because I love you and I'm sorry and I need you to understand that none of this was supposed to happen this way."

Love me? She loved me?

"You're pregnant," I said.

Silence on the other end of the line. Then, quietly: "Richard told you."

"Two months." I started walking again, my pace faster now. "You were pregnant when you helped me plan our anniversary dinner. You were carrying his baby when you sat in my living room and told me what a good marriage we had."

"Claire, please….”

"You were my friend." The words came out broken, raw. "You were the only person I trusted completely. You knew everything about me, about my marriage, about my fears. And you used all of it against me."

"That's not true!" Monica's voice cracked. "I never meant to hurt you. It just... it happened so fast. We didn't plan it, we didn't want it to happen, but—"

"But you did it anyway." I could feel that cold anger building again, the dangerous kind that had started in the hospital room.

"You made a choice, Monica. Every time you slept with my husband, every time you lied to my face, every time you pretended to be my friend while stabbing me in the back—those were choices."

"I know," she whispered. "I know, and I'm so sorry. But Claire, you have to understand, Richard and I... we fell in love. Real love. The kind that….”

I hung up the phone.

Love. Real love. Like what I had felt for Richard was not real because it was too devoted, too complete, too much.

My phone rang again immediately. Monica calling back. I turned it off and shoved it in my pocket.

I kept walking until I found myself at the edge of town, where the houses gave way to fields and the road stretched out toward the highway. Cars passed by, heading to places I had never been, toward lives I had never imagined.

For three years, my world had been the size of Richard's needs. His schedule, his preferences, his moods. I had made myself smaller and smaller until I had almost disappeared entirely.

Maybe that's why it had been so easy for them to betray me. Maybe I had already become so invisible that they had forgotten I was a real person with real feelings.

But I was still here. Broken, abandoned, humiliated—but still here.

I pulled out my phone and turned it back on. Seventeen missed calls from Monica, but I ignored them all. Instead, I searched for something I hadn't looked at in years: my bank account.

The settlement Richard had mentioned was there. More money than I had ever had in my life. Enough to go anywhere, do anything, become anyone.

Enough to disappear completely and start over.

Or enough to come back stronger and make them all pay for underestimating me.

I stood there on the side of the road as the sun began to set, watching cars disappear into the distance. Somewhere out there was a life I had never imagined.

A version of myself I had lost along the way.

It was time to find her again.

And when I did, Richard and Monica were going to wish they had never been born.