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.

and began reviewing the project details on her laptop-there was still so much to finalize before

updating some of the core data, she returned to bed and picked up

carrying around a few technical volumes on aerospace engineering, extracting useful insights as she read through the intricate

The door creaked open.

entered, his gaze falling on the woman sitting in the soft, amber glow of the lamp her silhouette delicate and solitary. She looked up at the sound, surprised

He hadn't left?

the book in

read it himself. It was dense, highly technical-a modern classic in the field. He'd even recommended it to Sylvie recently, though she'd struggled through it, page by

asked, pulling a set of clothes from the closet. His tone was

overtly condescending, but the question

eyes on the page.

years ago-tonight, she was just revisiting it,

as if seeing his quiet, even-tempered wife

hard

catching the undertone. Was he

Trailing after her, desperate to catch

to explain herself. Whatever Jarrod thought was his

said nothing more, looping around the bed toward the sofa. That's when he paused, catching

second, he froze-just

out of bed, snapping the laptop shut with

so rarely showed this sharp, defensive edge,

if her computer hid some deep,

reminded him of

same secret she was

a cold, mocking

clothes and

realized she was probably

was no way he could've seen

the memory of

it off, turned off the lamp, and got into