Chapter 1

I was dying of terminal bone cancer while my husband was traveling across the country with his depressed first love.

With only a few days left to live, I called him from my hospital bed.

He only snapped at me through the phone.

“Can’t you be a little more understanding? Macy is severely sick. What’s wrong with me keeping her company?”

I was wheeled into the operating room completely alone. The surgery failed, and I drew my last breath on that freezing operating table.

A whole month passed before my husband finally remembered me. He tore the city apart trying to find where I had gone.

He had no idea that my ghost was standing right in front of him.

I watched him go from cold arrogance to utter devastation.

But it was already far too late.

1

“Traveling with Macy, and she seems so much happier now. Turns out the best cure for mental illness is true companionship.”

I stared at my husband Garrett Thorne’s social media post.

In the photo, he stood on a sunny beach next to a radiant, smiling girl. Even Garrett, who rarely showed emotion, had a soft smile on his lips.

My heart turned to ice.

The girl was Macy Wells, his college sweetheart and the one who got away.

If she hadn't moved overseas right after graduation, Garrett never would have met me. He only settled for me to fill the void she left behind.

My trembling fingers tapped into his photo album.

The posts started a week ago, right around the time Garrett claimed he had an urgent business trip out of town.

I wasn’t even supposed to see any of this because Garrett had blocked my main account.

One of his close friends took pity on me and shared a burner account with me so I could see the truth.

I swiped through the pictures. Every single shot showed Garrett and Macy together. She looked healthy, glowing, and full of life.

In contrast, my reflection in the dark screen showed hollow cheeks and skin as pale as a corpse.

I was terminally ill.

The doctor told me I had barely two months left. An emergency surgery might buy me a little time, but the cost was astronomical, and there was a sixty percent chance I wouldn't survive the procedure.

I couldn’t afford the bill, nor could I handle the risk.

The hospital room was dead silent, save for my muffled sobs.

The only person I could think of calling was my mother-in-law, Clara.

People often say a daughter-in-law is like a second daughter, but Clara treated me like free labor from the day I got married. I did every chore in the house, and when I collapsed from exhaustion, she only sneered that I was too weak to handle real work.

She already knew about my illness.

She had run into me at the clinic while getting her blood sugar checked. The moment she spotted the diagnosis in my hands, she snatched it away.

“Stage four bone cancer? You worthless leach! I knew you were freeloading in our house for a reason! You want my son to drain his bank account on your medical bills, don’t you? You go sign the divorce papers right now!”

Clara had tried to drag me out of the clinic that day. Back then, Garrett still cared enough to soothe his mother’s tantrums, but Clara eventually convinced him to cut me off financially.

From that day forward, Garrett stopped giving me a single penny for living expenses.

I had to manage the entire household while taking odd part-time jobs just to pay for my treatments.

I was exhausted, but I never brought up divorce because I was terrified of dying alone in this world.

Yet in the end, I was still left lying alone on a freezing hospital bed.

Looking at my bank balance, there was barely anything left after these two years of scraping by. It wouldn’t even cover the next hospital bill.

I stared up at the peeling white ceiling and let out a weak, ragged breath.