I Spent Ten Days In The ICU And My Fiancé Didn't Visit Once — When I Was Finally Discharged And Stepped Into Our Apartment, I Froze In The Doorway

The message was three paragraphs long.

I read it standing at the kitchen counter, my back to my mother and Lily.

The first paragraph said he was sorry for how I found out.

Not sorry for what he had done — sorry for how I found out.

He wanted me to know that he had been unhappy for a long time and that he had tried to tell me but I was always focused on work or Lily or the wedding planning and he had felt invisible.

The second paragraph said that he and Kayla had developed feelings that neither of them planned or wanted, and that he hoped someday I would understand that people can't control who they fall in love with.

The third paragraph said that he would need to collect the rest of his belongings from the apartment and that he expected to be reimbursed for his contributions to the wedding account since the wedding was clearly not happening.

I read that last part twice.

He wanted reimbursement.

For the money he had already taken.

I put the phone down on the counter.

I stood there for a moment with both hands flat on the surface.

"Nicole." My mother's voice, behind me.

Careful.

"He wants money," I said.

"From the wedding account.

He says he contributed to it and he wants his share back."

The kitchen was quiet.

"How much did he contribute?" Lily asked.

"Four hundred dollars.

In the first two months." I turned around.

"He withdrew over four thousand."

My mother set down her spoon very deliberately.

"He withdrew four thousand dollars from a wedding account," she said, "while he was seeing your sister.

And now he's asking you to pay him back."

"That's what the message says."

She looked at me for a long moment.

"Do you have a lawyer?"

"No."

"You need one."

"Mom, I just got out of the hospital this morning —"

"I know when you got out of the hospital." Her voice was steady and quiet.

"I was there.

And I'm telling you that what he just sent you is not a personal message.

It's an opening position.

He's already thinking about what he can get.

You need to start thinking the same way."

I hadn't thought about any of it that way.

I had been thinking about the ring, about Kayla's face, about Lily in the entryway.

I hadn't yet shifted into the part of my brain that thought about accounts and leases and legal exposure.

My mother had.

"I have a friend," she said.

"Ruth.

Her daughter is a family law attorney.

I'm going to call her tonight."

"Mom, it's Sunday —"

"I'll call Ruth tonight.

She'll call her daughter.

You'll have a name and a number by tomorrow morning." She picked her spoon back up.

"Finish your soup."

I sat back down.

Lily was watching me.

She had that expression again — the one I'd seen in the doorway upstairs, the one that was older than seventeen.

"Mom," she said.

"There's one more thing."

I looked at her.

"The night before your accident," she said slowly.

"Brandon and I had an argument.

You were already asleep.

He came downstairs for water and I was still up, and I said something to him.

I told him I knew something was going on and that if he didn't tell you the truth I would."

I stared at her.

"He told me I was imagining things," she said.

"He told me I was a kid and I didn't understand adult relationships." She paused.

"And then the next morning you left for work and you never came home."

The kitchen was absolutely silent.

I thought about the car that had run the red light.

The driver had been charged — it was a clear traffic violation, caught on a camera at the intersection.

There had never been any question about what happened.

But I looked at my daughter's face across the table, and I saw what she had been carrying for ten days in that hospital room, and I understood why she had been the one waiting in the entryway when I came home.

She had needed to see me walk through that door.

My mother reached across and put her hand over Lily's.

"That was not your fault," she said firmly.

"Do you hear me?

Not one part of that was your fault."

Lily nodded.

Her eyes were bright.

"Okay," she said.

But her voice was very small.

My phone lit up on the counter.

Not a text this time.

A call.