Chapter 2 - THE MEMORIAL I NEVER ATTENDED
“Some of us attended the service.”
The finance manager’s words hung in the silent ballroom. David’s voice hadn't just trembled; it had cracked with the weight of a grief he now realized was entirely manufactured.
I stood there, the dull, throbbing ache in my healing pelvis suddenly dwarfed by a sharper, colder pain in my chest. I looked at David, a man whose newborn daughter I had knitted a blanket for just three years ago. His eyes were wide, darting between me and the man I had married.
“A service?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, yet it echoed in the cavernous room. “What service, David?”
Owen lunged forward, his face flushed a violent, panicked crimson. “Lydia, please. This isn’t the place. Let me explain—”
“Sit down, Owen,” Mrs. Bennett commanded. Her voice possessed the iron authority of a woman who had built a multi-million-dollar company from her garage. She didn't raise her tone, but the sheer force of it made Owen freeze in his tracks.
Mrs. Bennett turned her gaze back to David. “Tell her. Tell her what we attended.”
David swallowed hard, pulling his phone from his tuxedo pocket. His hands were shaking. “It was a memorial. Late October. He held it at the botanical gardens, Lydia. By the rose pavilion. You always loved the roses.”
A sickening wave of vertigo washed over me. Late October. That was when I was in the darkest days of the ICU, hooked up to a ventilator, fighting off a secondary infection that nearly stopped my heart.
“There was no casket,” David continued, his eyes dropping to the floor out of sheer shame. “Owen told us your injuries from the accident were… too severe. He said you had requested cremation. There was an urn, Lydia. A beautiful mahogany urn surrounded by white lilies.”
I stared at my husband. “An urn?” I choked out. “Whose ashes were in it, Owen? Dirt? Fireplace soot?”
“It was symbolic!” Owen pleaded, his hands raised in surrender. “It was a place for people to grieve, to get closure!”
“Closure for a woman who was fighting for her life ten miles away?” my sister, Rachel, snapped, stepping defensively in front of me. She gripped my coat tightly against her chest. “You sick, twisted coward.”
David stepped closer, his thumb swiping across his phone screen. “I still have the digital program saved. He emailed it to the entire corporate directory.” He turned the screen toward me.
My breath caught in my throat.
There it was. A beautifully designed memorial pamphlet. The same photograph of me that had been projected on the stage just moments ago. Beneath it, a quote from a poem I had read at my own mother’s funeral. He had stolen my grief to decorate his lie.
But as I read the text beneath the poem, the blood rushed from my face.
“Lydia is survived by her devoted husband, Owen, and their beloved daughter, Maya.”
I blinked, the words blurring together. I read them again. And again.
“Their beloved daughter, Maya,” I read aloud, my voice trembling so violently I barely recognized it. I looked up at the crowd, then at Mrs. Bennett, and finally at Caroline, the woman who had been standing on stage thanking everyone for their support.
“I don't have a daughter,” I said.
The silence in the room fractured into a hundred gasps and frantic whispers.
Caroline, who had been standing frozen near the stage steps, suddenly went pale. She descended the stairs, her high heels clicking sharply against the hardwood floor. She walked straight toward Owen, ignoring me completely.
“What is she talking about, Owen?” Caroline demanded, her voice tight with panic. “What does she mean she doesn’t have a daughter?”
Owen backed away, hitting the edge of a catered table. Silverware rattled. “Caroline, let’s just go—”
“No!” Caroline shouted, turning to face me. The hostility in her eyes had vanished, replaced by a terrifying confusion. “Maya is your daughter. Owen told me he adopted her after you passed. He said it was your dying wish that he raise her!”
A new, horrifying reality began to snap into place. Owen hadn’t just used my “death” to get sympathy. He had used it to explain away a child.
Before I could speak, a side door near the coat check creaked open.
A collective gasp swept through the tables closest to the exit.
A little girl, no older than six, stepped into the ballroom. She wore a dark velvet dress, rubbing her sleepy eyes with one hand. In her other hand, she was clutching a silver object.
“Daddy?” the little girl called out, her small voice cutting through the heavy tension of the room. “Is the party over? The babysitter said I could come find you.”
She stopped walking. Her wide, innocent eyes scanned the crowd, finally landing on me. She tilted her head, her gaze shifting from my face to the massive, darkened screen where my photo had been.
The little girl took a hesitant step toward me. She held up her hand, revealing the object she was clutching.
May you like
It was a silver rosary. My grandmother’s rosary. The one I kept on my bedside table, which had vanished from my hospital room three months ago.
“You’re the lady in the picture,” the little girl whispered. “Are you an angel?”
