---- Chapter 27 For three days, Ethan became a ghost. He watched me from a distance, a silent, unseen observer of the life | was building without him. He saw me and Daniel working in the garden, our hands in the dirt, our laughter echoing in the quiet afternoon air. He saw us sitting on the porch swing at night, wrapped in a blanket, our heads close together. He took pictures with a long-lens camera, not like a stalker, but like an archivist, documenting the happiness he had thrown away. Each photo was a fresh torment, a new twist of the knife in his self-inflicted wound. He remembered planting roses for me once, a grand, impatient gesture, ordering a team of gardeners to do it in an afternoon. He watched as Daniel and | carefully, lovingly, planted a single rose bush together, our fingers touching in the soil. He finally understood the difference between giving a gift and sharing a life. He realized he had never truly loved me. He had loved the way | looked at him, the adoration in my eyes. He had loved the idea of me, the perfect, beautiful wife who would complete his perfect, powerful life. He had never loved the real Sarah, the strong, stubborn, independent woman from the mountains. He had tried to kill that woman, and in doing so, he had killed any chance of happiness they might have had. ---- On the third day, he left. He went back to the city, and he did what he had promised. He got help. Four years passed. One day, a crate arrived at my door. Inside was a very old, very fluffy white cat. Snowball. With him was a note, not from Ethan, but from his estate. The next day, | saw his face in the newspaper. He had become a major philanthropist, donating billions to medical research and animal shelters. The article mentioned he was battling a serious heart condition, exacerbated by years of stress. A few months later, Daniel and | were dropping our own daughter, a little miracle named Rose, off at her first day of kindergarten. A text came from my lawyer. Olivia Hayes had taken her own life in prison. | felt a quiet sense of closure. | took my daughter to the cemetery to tell her great-grandmother and her aunt that the last ghost had finally been laid to rest. And there, next to their graves, was a new one. A simple, granite headstone. ETHAN VANCE. | stared at it, my mind unable to process the information. He was dead. The larger-than-life force that had shaped and nearly destroyed me was simply... gone. Daniel gently took my hand. "His lawyers contacted me last week," he said softly. "His heart condition... he refused ---- treatment in the end. He said he was tired. His only request was to be buried here. Near you." "Should we... light a candle for him?" Daniel asked. | looked at the grave, at the name etched in stone. | remembered the boy who had saved me from bullies, the man who had promised me the world, the monster who had tried to cage me. | thought of his last, desperate words, his possessive threats, his twisted definition of love. "No," | said, my voice clear and steady. "I only light candles for the people | care about." | took my daughter's hand and turned away from the grave. | walked away from the past, from the ghosts, from the man who had loved me and hated me and broken me and, in a strange, twisted way, had finally set me free. | walked into the sunshine of my new life, and | never looked back.