Chapter 10
Mom and Ethan sat on the cold hospital chairs for a very long time.
It was deep into the night before Mom finally left with Dad.
After that, Ethan accepted the truth and handled all my funeral arrangements alone. Calmly.
Quietly. Step by step.
He had always been rational. A hardcore believer in facts and logic. But suddenly he started asking
strange questions.
After death, did souls go home? Were dead people afraid? Did cremation hurt?
No one gave him real answers.
After a long silence, Ethan finally gave up on the idea of repairing my heart before burial. Then he started asking around for people rumored to have strange powers. He wanted to know if there was any way to bring a soul back.
He said he still hadn’t said goodbye to the woman he loved. That there were too many words left
unsaid.
He offered a lot of money. Nobody took it. Most of them just thought he’d lost his mind.
When Mom and Dad found out, they tore into him.
After that, Ethan went back to acting normal.
Before the burial, Finn was sent to Alaska. My biological mother died soon after without seeing her
one last time.
It snowed on the day they buried me too.
People came quietly under black umbrellas. Then left.
Only Ethan stayed,
He sat in front of my snow-covered gravestone and traced my photo with his fingertips.
No umbrella. Snow landed on his hair and shoulders and passed straight through me,
Then he said softly, “Ellie, you can hear me, right?”
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He sounded like someone drowning in old memories.
“The truth is, once you grew up, I stopped daring to get too close to you. The way you looked at me.
The way you talked to me. Your cold, soft hands. It all felt like a drug. Like addiction. I couldn’t think
straight around you.
“And when you went to college and said you wanted to live on campus, I got furious. Mom and Dad
both agreed. I was the only one who refused. I said it was because you wouldn’t take care of yourself. That was only part of it. The real reason was that I was scared you’d fall in love with
someone there. Scared you’d get close to anyone else.
He stopped and smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.
Then he said, “So when I heard that recording, it felt like a lifeline. I told myself you were lying.
That you didn’t really love me. That falling for my own sister was just my delusion. My mistake.
Something no one would ever find out.”
Coward. I whispered it, because Ethan couldn’t hear me anyway.
Then he said he’d already returned the company to Dad and used all his personal assets to start a
foundation for children with congenital heart disease.
He said it would help kids like me. Pay for their surgeries. Their follow-up care. Their chance to
keep living.
He said he wanted to sell every property in his name and take me somewhere I’d always wanted to
He kept talking. And talking. And talking.
But no matter what else he said, he never said goodbye.
Eventually the snow stopped, though the sky stayed gray.
Then sunlight broke through the clouds in one narrow beam. Like a road. Like a path between this
world and somewhere else.
My soul suddenly felt lighter. Too light to stay close to Ethan anymore.
I drifted farther from him. Farther. Farther.
I’m leaving now.
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I smiled and waved at him.
And somehow Ethan looked up like he’d heard something.
Then he didn’t speak again.
He just sat there in front of the gravestone, smaller and smaller in the distance until he was only a
dark little dot in the snow.
I don’t want my heart to hurt anymore.
So let’s not see each other again, Ethan.
The End.
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