Epilogue 2
The house was unnervingly quiet.
For the first time in what felt like centuries, there were no toy cars underfoot, no tiny voice calling Muuum, where’s my sock?
The silence rang with a kind of fragile freedom.
Their son had started Reception that week, and the house—though still strewn with the debris of a small boy’s chaos—felt strange.
Euan had kissed her in the doorway that morning, grinning like a man half in disbelief.“Four years, Sage,” he’d murmured. “Four years of talking about poop schedules.”
She had laughed, warm and helpless. “Has he pooped yet?” had been the most common sentence in their marriage for months.
Their son had developed a toddler’s knack for strategic constipation, and together they had survived the era of prune juice, stickers, and desperate negotiations over the toilet bowl.
They were still laughing when Euan had suddenly swept her up the stairs.The laughter turned to something breathless when he pressed her to the wall and kissed her the way he hadn’t in months—hungry, reverent, a little wild.
And when he tied her wrists in the silk scarf from her dresser and made her wait—God, the waiting—she remembered what it felt like to want and be wanted, to surrender to something that wasn’t duty or exhaustion.
He had drawn it out until she was trembling, eyes glazed, and only then given her what she’d begged for.
Afterwards, they’d showered together, the kind of slow, lazy intimacy that used to belong to their early days. His hands had lingered at her hips; her laughter had echoed against the tile. When they were finally dressed, the world felt lighter—dishevelled but safe.
They stood surveying the battlefield of domestic life—the couch that looked like a granola bar, courtesy of their son’s trail of snacks and Euan’s indulgence. “This,” she said, “is your doing.”He’d only grinned, utterly unrepentant.
Later, while she was tidying the bookshelf—rearranging a few old novels, her fingers tracing names that once meant something—the folded page slipped out. It landed face-down on the carpet with the faintest sound, a ghost returning home.
She knew that paper. Even before she picked it up, her throat went tight.It was that letter. The one she’d written the day her world had ended.
Her fingers shook as she opened it.The handwriting looked younger somehow—hurried, desperate, as though every word had been carved out of pain. She remembered that night too clearly: the tears, the suffocating weight in her chest, the thought that maybe not waking up would be easier.
Dear Future Me,
I don’t know where you are right now or if you even made it this far but I hope you’re breathing easier than I am tonight.
Because right now, I feel like the world has ended.
Ronin’s betrayal isn’t just an affair. It’s a wound I can’t stop reopening. Two years. Two years of lies woven into the fabric of my every day. Two years of pretending. While I was busy holding us together, he was already gone, loving someone else. And not just that-he got her pregnant.
The worst part? Our son knew. He knew, and he thought it wasn’t a big deal.
How did I become so small in my own life that even my child could see me as replaceable?
I can’t stop imagining it. Him moving her in, the younger, slimmer, prettier version of me.
She’ll sit at my table, laugh in my kitchen, fill the space I built with the scent of her perfume and the sound of her voice.
Maybe they’ll all look like a perfect, shining family.
Maybe that’s what I was never able to give him.
I keep wondering if I’ll ever climb out of this pit, or if this is where I finally stay buried under the rubble of what used to be us.
I’m so tired, and part of me wishes I could just fall asleep and not wake up.
Would anyone even notice? Or would they just move on, tidy up my side of the bed, and call it a day?
But if you’re reading this, maybe that means you didn’t disappear. Maybe you found a reason to live again, to eat, to smile, to live without flinching every time someone says his name.
If you did, please… remember this version of me. The one who feels worthless and hollow, who can’t see a way forward. Don’t forget her. Don’t pity her either. She was the one who stood at the edge of the abyss and somehow didn’t jump.
Maybe one day, you’ll look back and see that this was the moment everything broke so that something stronger could grow. But tonight, all I see is loss.
Love,
Sage
She sat on the edge of the bed, the scent of eucalyptus still clinging from their shower, and pressed the letter to her chest. Her tears came softly at first, then freely. They were not made of grief this time but out of thanks.
Because she had made it.
Through betrayal, through the nights she thought she’d never be loved again, through the endless ache of not being enough. She had learned to live again. To laugh. To trust. And somehow she had found the perfect person for her.
Euan’s voice drifted from the kitchen. “Sage? You seen the broom, love?”
She wiped her eyes, smiling through the tears.
“Check behind the sofa,” she called back, her voice still rough.
And as she refolded the letter, she whispered to the woman she once was—
You did it. You crawled out of the hole, love. You made it home.
She slipped the letter back between the pages of an old book and placed it high on the shelf, out of reach of small hands. Then she stood for a long time, the faint hum of their life wrapping around her like sunlight.