How a Dying Woman Rewrote Her Epilogue

He kept his gaze fixed on her. “But cheating? I never have, and I never will."

Elodie stayed silent, just waiting to see what he'd say next.

Despite the headache still throbbing behind his eyes, Jarrod took her hand and placed it over his heart. "I've never let anyone else in here. Not before, not now. Elodie, I've spent nearly a decade—eight, nine years—on you alone.”

He sounded like a man with nothing left to lose, as if illness had stripped away all hesitation and left only the raw, honest truth.

"That 'couple's profile picture' you were upset about-do you really not remember it at all?" His voice carried a note of helplessness. "You drew it yourself. Don't you recognize your own work?"

Elodie's brow unfurrowed, but the memory just wouldn't come.

Jarrod pulled open the drawer by his bedside and took out a hand-drawn picture, neatly framed.

On the letter-sized paper was the full sketch of Jarrod's profile image, and in the bottom right corner, in delicate handwriting, was her signature: Elodie.

It was unmistakably her handwriting.

Looking at it now, memories began to stir, distant and blurred but undeniable.

Back then, she loved stargazing with her telescope, and sometimes she'd sketch whatever inspired her-astronomy, the night sky, little fragments of her imagination. Most of the time, she forgot about them afterward; she'd drawn so many.

You were seventeen, shy, avoiding the crowds, tucked away in the garden with your sketchbook. I could tell you had no

wryly at the

their

hadn't thought much

with a friend, completely unaware that he was watching. She looked so sweet and

That one stung.

just over twenty

chaotic after that. Elodie was whisked away by

half a mind to just rip out the page-serves her right for

end the staff tidied it away in the sitting room,

him of

careless words: too old.

things happened between them

Elodie didn't remember-or maybe she'd forgotten-that she'd helped him

in her

he mentioned that birthday party, she started piecing it together. That night, she'd

e'

was a tangled web, nor with the Thornes, whose glory was fading. The Harcourts had taught her early on that some families were far beyond

close to them was dangerous, and

grandfather's "matchmaking" comment