Chapter 15: (END)

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I thought of all the years behind us—every crisis weathered, every promise kept without needing to be spoken—and I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

My phone lit up with a message from Dagny.

“Iris, I’ve found out that the accident was caused by Nyx Thorn. I have proof.”

I read it twice. The second time, I felt a strange loosening in my chest, the relief of a question you didn’t realize you were still asking finally getting answered.

Of course it was Nyx. That’s why she’d kept Stellan at her side that night, why Lewin had also been summoned. She’d arranged the entire evening with care: the truck, the timing, the phone calls that ensured no one would come for me. My happiest day, turned inside out.

And Stellan, without knowing it, had been the hand that held the door shut while the house burned.

𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴.𝘤𝘰𝘮

I typed back: “Send it to the Graves and Shorn families. They need this evidence more than we do.”

Dagny sent a thumbs up.

Then, after a long pause—I could picture her staring at the ceiling, chewing her lip, building up to an idea she couldn’t take back—another message arrived.

“Darling, I think I want to leave. What about you?”

I smiled.

“If you leave, I’ll leave too.”

That had always been the deal between us. Not marriage vows, not contracts, not the elaborate promises we’d made to men who didn’t deserve them. Just this: where you go, I go. Simple enough that it had never needed saying until now.

It took less than a week for everything to collapse.

We heard, eventually, what happened to Nyx. Stellan and Lewin did what they did—I never asked for details, and none were offered—and Nyx unraveled completely. She wandered the streets, dropping to her knees in front of strangers, confessing sins in a voice that frightened passersby into crossing the road. They committed her to an institution. I didn’t ask which one.

The day Nyx was admitted, Stellan and Lewin showed up at my hospital room one last time. They brought their parents. They brought rings.

They found an empty bed, stripped sheets, and a window left open to air out the room.

I’m told they searched. I’m told Stellan called every number he had and drove to every address he could think of. But Dagny and I were already gone, thoroughly and without ceremony, two women who’d simply walked out of a story that no longer belonged to them.

Stellan’s drinking caught up with his hands eventually. A mistake during surgery, a review board, a termination letter. The hospital’s youngest medical director, locked in his apartment, going nowhere.

Lewin’s career collapsed under the weight of that parking lot video. He left the industry. Months later, he released a single called “Dagny.” It did well. Better than anything he’d ever done, because for once he wasn’t pretending.

The song played everywhere that autumn, including in the small supermarket where Dagny and I were buying groceries on a Tuesday afternoon. It came through the speakers while we were in the produce aisle, his voice filling the space between the lettuce and the bell peppers.

Dagny looked at the ceiling. I looked at Dagny.

We put the vegetables in the cart and walked a little faster toward the exit.

“What bad luck,” she said.

I agreed.

“Let’s go home. Our daughter must be hungry by now.”

Dagny took my hand, and I took hers, and we stepped out into a Tuesday that asked nothing of us except to keep going.

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The End.

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Message from Noa: Have an spectacular time dear readers. As usual today we have a new novel. God loves you and Noa wishes you all the best. (=◡=) /

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