Chapter 10
I visited Isaac one last time before his transfer to psychiatric custody and later criminal processing.
He was in a wheelchair by then, his injuries permanent according to rumor.
The private suite he once would have demanded was gone.
He sat by a narrow window in a secure ward, thinner than I had ever seen him.
When I entered, he looked up with something like hope.
“Caroline.”
I placed the charging documents on the table beside him.
He stared at them, then at me.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Finally, he whispered, “I did love you.”
I almost pitied him for believing that.
“No,” I said. “You loved possession. You loved control. You loved winning. But love? No. People who love don’t build graves for others and call it fate.”
His face crumpled.
“I never meant for everything to go this far.”
“You meant for Nathan to die.”
He flinched as if struck.
“You meant for me to trust you because of it. You meant for me to spend years loving the man who helped destroy my family.”
Tears stood in his eyes.
“I was going to make it up to you.”
A laugh escaped me, soft and disbelieving.
“With what? A wedding execution?”
He bowed his head.
When I turned to leave, his voice followed me.
“Caroline… did you ever love me at all?”
I paused at the door.
Then I answered honestly.
“I loved the man you pretended to be.”
And then I walked out.
That night, I dreamed of Nathan.
We were children again, racing down the beach with our shoes in our hands, the tide chasing our ankles.
Then we were older, and he was ruffling my hair, laughing, calling me bug the way he always had.
In the dream, he looked exactly as he had before everything went wrong.
Warm.
Annoyed.
Protective.
Alive.
At the end of the dream, he touched my forehead and said, “Be happy for both of us.”
I woke with tears drying on my cheeks.
For the first time in years, they did not feel like chains.
Time moved differently after that.
The trials came and went.
The headlines faded.
Evelyn was sentenced to life.
Isaac’s mind deteriorated under the weight of everything he had done. A year later, I heard he had died in custody after taking his own life.
I felt nothing.
Not triumph.
Not grief.
Only distance.
My parents asked if I wanted to stay in the city.
Mia asked if I wanted to start over somewhere else.
And one quiet morning, standing in front of Nathan’s framed photograph, I realized I did.
So I packed a suitcase.
Then another.
And another.
I took Nathan’s old camera from the cedar trunk, slung it over my shoulder, and boarded a plane with no fiancé, no wedding dress, no ghosts I intended to keep feeding.
Only my own name.
Only my own life.