How a Dying Woman Rewrote Her Epilogue

Elodie stood rooted to the spot, her feet as heavy as stone. The absurdity of it all left her breathless.

Those casual, dismissive remarks-

They were nothing short of arrogance, treating her like a commodity on display.

Even the most basic act of having a child had become a matter of whether she was "qualified" enough.

In everyone's eyes, compared to someone like Sylvie a doctorate freshly returned from one of the world's top universities-Elodie simply didn't matter.

No one realized that these words were just another wound, piling atop her old

ones.

The truth was, once her treatment and surgery began, she'd lose the right to ever be a mother...

No wonder, she thought bitterly, even before the divorce, Jarrod had always been so indifferent when they shared a bed. Perhaps, even back then, he'd already decided-

She wasn't worthy of bearing his child.

Elodie didn't want to know how Jarrod had answered Lucinda's question.

His half-hearted replies to his grandmother over dinner told her everything: he had

no interest in having a child with her, and he must have agreed with Lucinda's opinion.

Clutching her bottle of pills, Elodie turned and made her way back to the bedroom.

Her breaths came shallow and shaky, her lips losing their color.

She unscrewed the pill bottle with numb, mechanical motions and swallowed a tablet dry. The bitterness spread, sharp and unforgiving, across her tongue.

She couldn't tell which was worse: the bitterness in her mouth, or the ache in her heart.

Closing her eyes for a moment, Elodie forced herself to regain composure.

She sat at her desk and began reviewing the project details on her laptop-there was still so much to finalize before year's end, so many

the core data, she returned to bed and picked up

carrying around a few technical volumes on aerospace engineering, extracting useful insights as

The door creaked open.

woman sitting in the soft, amber glow of the lamp her silhouette delicate and solitary. She looked up at the sound,

He hadn't left?

at the book in her

He'd even recommended it to Sylvie recently, though she'd struggled

actually understand that?" he asked, pulling a set of clothes from the closet.

the question itself made

her eyes on the page.

she

watched her, narrowing his eyes as if seeing his quiet, even-tempered wife for the

hard

met his gaze, catching the undertone.

Trailing after her, desperate

to explain herself. Whatever Jarrod thought was his

bed toward the sofa. That's when he paused, catching sight of her

split second, he

out of bed, snapping the laptop

this sharp, defensive edge, and now

her computer hid some deep, unspoken

was on the screen. But Elodie's reaction reminded him of the time he'd

same secret she was so

curling with a cold,

gathered his clothes

she was probably overreacting-she'd already closed the

way he could've seen

the memory of that strange look

turned off the lamp, and got