The Wife He Forgot, the Family He Lost

After my husband was in a car accident, I was in the late stages of pregnancy, yet I still took care of him. After three sleepless days and nights, he finally woke up. The first person he saw was my best friend, Sophie. He called her “Honey.” Sophie covered her mouth and cried, hurriedly denying it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why this is happening…” Ethan’s mother waved me away. “He thinks Sophie is his wife. Don’t upset him.” I told him I was his wife and that I was carrying his child. Ethan frowned. “I don’t know you. Don’t try to scam me with some kid.” Sophie held his hand. He naturally intertwined his fingers with hers. They looked so perfect together. So natural. I didn’t make a scene. I simply drafted a divorce agreement. Before I left, I sent Ethan one final message: “Amnesia is a good thing. The baby will take my last name. You don’t need to remember anymore.” Then I turned off my phone. From that moment on, I vanished. “Ms. Bennett, your placenta is positioned too low. This is a high-risk pregnancy. You must come in for regular checkups. If your emotions fluctuate too much, you could suffer a major hemorrhage at any time.” The doctor removed his glasses and glanced at the empty chair beside me. “Where’s your family?” “I don’t have any family.” I took the examination report, folded it neatly, and tucked it into my bag. I stopped in front of an ATM, inserted my card, and entered my PIN. Four words appeared on the screen: **Account frozen.** I tried another card. The result was the same. My phone vibrated. A message came from an unfamiliar number. There was no name attached, but I knew the way it spoke far too well. “Claire, where did you run off to? Ethan couldn’t find your card, so he had it canceled for now. Don’t be mad, okay?” Sophie. I didn’t reply. She called me directly. I hesitated for three seconds before answering. “Claire! Why did you leave without telling anyone? Ethan may not remember you, but we’ve all been worried about you—” “Get to the point.” There was silence on the other end for two seconds. Then Sophie laughed. “The point is that Ethan transferred the house into my name.” My hand didn’t shake. The baby kicked me once. I leaned against the metal partition beside the ATM, my back pressed against the cold surface. “Claire, let me be honest with you.” Sophie’s tone suddenly changed. “It’s better that you left. Ethan was always supposed to be mine. He should have been mine since college. You were the one who got in the middle and delayed us for all these years.” “Now fate has finally opened Ethan’s eyes and made him forget you.” “What else could it be if not destiny?” I listened until she finished. I waited another two seconds to make sure she had nothing else to say. “Sophie.” “Yeah?” “You’re right. It is destiny.” I hung up. Standing in the November wind, I touched the pocket of my coat. My divorce certificate. My ID. A bus card. Thirty-seven dollars left. I crossed the street to a convenience store and bought a bottle of water and a rice ball. The girl at the register glanced at my stomach and slipped an extra pack of tissues into my bag. “Are you alone, miss? Do you need me to call you a ride?” “No, thank you.” I sat on the steps outside the store and ate the rice ball one bite at a time. My phone rang again. This time it was Ethan’s mother, Margaret. “Claire, where are you?” “That has nothing to do with you anymore.” “Listen to me.” Margaret lowered her voice. “I’ll have Ethan transfer you fifty thousand dollars as compensation. Take the money, terminate the pregnancy, and start over clean. ” I bit into the last piece of rice ball and nearly choked. “I’m eight months pregnant, and you want me to terminate?” “It’s an induced delivery. It’s not unheard of. You’re still young. You can have another child later. Keeping this baby will only burden you, and Ethan doesn’t even acknowledge—” “Mrs. Carter.” I cut her off. “I’m already divorced. The baby is mine. This child has nothing to do with your family. If you call me about this again, I’ll contact the police.” “You—” I hung up and blocked the number. The wind slipped inside my collar. I hunched my shoulders. When I stood up, my vision went black for a moment. I grabbed the convenience store’s glass door and slowly crouched down. The girl from the register rushed outside. “Miss! What’s wrong? Should I call 911? You’re so pale—” “I’m fine.” I waved her off and took a deep breath, waiting for the contraction to pass. “Low blood sugar. I just need a minute.” She clearly didn’t believe me. She pulled me inside, unfolded a chair in the break room, and made me sit down. When she handed me a cup of hot water, I suddenly felt like crying. I forced the tears back. My phone lit up again. It wasn’t a call. It was a message from Ethan. I hadn’t deleted his number. There was only one message—a photo. Sophie was leaning against the hospital bed, her head resting on Ethan’s shoulder. His hand was placed on the back of her head. His expression was gentle, as if he were looking at a precious treasure he had finally recovered. I knew that look. On the night we got married, he had looked at me the same way. Below the photo was a message typed by Sophie from Ethan’s phone: “Claire, he asked me to tell you this: I don’t care who the baby belongs to. Stop pestering him. He only recognizes one wife.” I turned my phone face down and placed it on my knees. The baby kicked again. Not hard. Just enough to make sure I was still there. “I’m here.” I lowered my head and touched my stomach. My voice was so soft that only I could hear it. “Mommy’s here.” The fluorescent lights in the store hummed overhead. I sat in that folding chair for a long time—so long that the girl’s shift ended. The wind picked up outside. I still had to leave. The moment I stood up, I understood one thing clearly. From now on, I was on my own.“Bed seven. We need a family member’s signature.” When the nurse opened the hospital-room door, I was counting the cracks in the ceiling. I hadn’t chosen to be admitted. The girl from the convenience store had called the police. The police called an ambulance, and I was brought to the hospital where I’d had my prenatal checkups before the divorce. I had signs of placental abruption. The doctor’s face had turned pale with anger. He said that if I had arrived half an hour later, the baby might not have survived. But I had no family. The girl from the convenience store had paid my hospital deposit—twelve hundred dollars. Her name was Mia. She was a college sophomore who worked part-time at the store. “Don’t worry about anything, miss. The money can wait. Just take care of yourself first.” She shoved a pen into my hand, then hurriedly signed her own name in the family-member section. The nurse frowned. “What are you to her?” “My younger sister.” Mia didn’t even blink. The nurse looked at her, then at me, but didn’t question it further. The hospital room was small, with four beds. The other three pregnant women all had their husbands with them. The man beside the window went downstairs every morning to buy breakfast. The man in the middle slept on the floor beside his wife every night. No one asked where my family was. But they watched me. It wasn’t malicious. It was curiosity, mixed with a little unspoken relief. At least they weren’t the most miserable person in the room. On the third day, Sophie came. She was wearing the camel-colored coat Ethan had bought for me. “Claire!” The moment she walked in, her eyes turned red. She carried a thermos and a basket of fruit. The heavy scent of perfume filled the room. The other three women immediately looked over. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Your phone was off, and no one could reach you—” “How did you find me?” Sophie froze for a moment. Her eyes shifted. “I called several hospitals.” She sat down beside my bed and opened the thermos. The smell of chicken soup drifted out. “Whatever happened, you’re my best friend. I could never abandon you.” I stared at the ring on her finger. A simple platinum band with a date engraved inside. My wedding ring. Sophie followed my gaze. She quickly pulled her hand back and hid it inside her sleeve. “This… Ethan insisted I wear it. I couldn’t exactly refuse—” “Why are you really here?” She bit her lip and put on a troubled expression. I had seen that expression for ten years, from our college dorm room to my wedding day. “Claire, actually, Margaret sent me. She said… you still have the key to the house Ethan bought before the wedding.” I laughed. “So you came for the key.” “No, no! I just thought I’d come see you while I was here—” “The key is in my bag. Take it yourself.” Sophie visibly relaxed. She searched my bag with practiced ease. After finding the key, she casually rummaged through my wallet. I saw it clearly. “Claire, you’re almost out of money, aren’t you?” She put the wallet back. A subtle satisfaction rose in her expression. “If things are really difficult, I can talk to Ethan—” “Sophie.” “Yeah?” “Take the soup. You got the key. The door’s over there.” She froze for two seconds, then smiled. She stood, picked up the thermos, and glanced back at me from the doorway. There was no guilt in her eyes. No shame. Only a faint, condescending pity. The look someone gave a person who had lost everything. “Claire, stop pretending you’re fine. You know how much this room costs per day, don’t you?” The door closed behind her. The woman by the window quietly offered me a tissue. I didn’t take it. When I lowered my head, I saw that my hands were shaking. It wasn’t fear or humiliation. It was a deep, nauseating disgust rising from my stomach. She wore my coat, my ring, and drank soup from the thermos I had used countless times. Then she came to my hospital bed to confirm that I had nothing left. That evening, when Mia brought me dinner, I asked to borrow two hundred dollars. “Don’t be like that, miss. You don’t have to pay me back right away.” “It’s not that. I’m being discharged.” “But the doctor said you should stay until the baby is full-term—” “I can’t afford it anymore.”“Ms. Bennett, there are no social-security contributions under your name. We can’t enroll you in maternity insurance.” At the community services office, the employee pushed my paperwork back toward me. I supported my lower back with one hand and took the stack of papers with the other. “So I have to pay the entire cost of giving birth myself?” “Yes. A standard vaginal delivery usually costs between twelve and fifteen thousand dollars. If complications require a C-section, it starts at thirty thousand.” I walked down the steps with the documents in my hand and calculated everything. Including the money I had borrowed, I had less than three thousand dollars. Ethan had frozen every joint account. The savings I had before the marriage had been spent renovating the house. And after I got pregnant, I had quit my job. Ethan had told me to. “You don’t need to work. I’ll take care of you. Just focus on the baby.” Back then, Sophie had been sitting beside him, cracking sunflower seeds and smiling. “Claire, you’re so lucky. Ethan treats you so well.” Apparently, she had already been measuring my neck for a noose. I went to three places looking for work. At the first, the receptionist saw my stomach and immediately shook her head. The second place at least let me sit down. The HR manager looked over my résumé and asked, “When’s your due date?” “Next month.” “I’m sorry, but we can’t hire someone who will need maternity leave in a few weeks.” The third place was a small translation agency. The owner was a woman in her fifties with graying hair and reading glasses. After looking over my résumé, she studied me for a long time. “Advanced English certification, advanced Japanese, and you speak French too?” “I minored in French in college.” “Where did you work before?” “Clearwater International. I handled business translation.” The owner, Grace Harper, removed her glasses and set them on the desk. “To be honest, someone with your qualifications shouldn’t be applying to a tiny agency like mine.” “The big companies don’t want me.” “Because of the pregnancy?” I said nothing. Grace leaned back in her chair after several seconds of silence. “I can give you assignments and pay you per project. You won’t need to work regular hours. Six hundred dollars for a standard contract, double for rush jobs. If your health allows it, ten or so assignments a month should be enough to survive.” “Thank you.” “Don’t thank me yet.” Grace put her glasses back on. “If your work is bad, I’ll reject it just the same.” By the time I left the agency, it was almost dark. I took the bus back to my rented room—a tiny place in an old neighborhood. The rent was five hundred dollars a month, and there was no private bathroom. The elderly landlady had seen my stomach and charged me an extra two hundred dollars as a deposit. She said she was afraid I might give birth in the room and ruin the mattress. My phone vibrated in my pocket again. This time, it wasn’t Sophie or Margaret. It was Ethan. His number. I stared at the screen for five seconds before answering. “Claire?” It was Ethan’s voice. He used to call me by my nickname. “What is it?” “Why are you harassing Sophie?” My hand stopped moving. “What are you talking about?” “She said you stopped her at the hospital and wouldn’t let her leave. You even tried to take her things. She came home crying all night.” The camel-colored coat. My wedding ring. The key she had taken from my hospital room. In his version, I had tried to steal from her. “Ethan, you believe every word she says?” “She’s my wife. Why wouldn’t I believe her?” I closed my eyes and leaned against the bus window. Outside, the streetlights moved past one after another. “Claire, I’m warning you. Don’t bother Sophie again. If you harass her, I won’t hesitate to call the police.” After a pause, he added, “And return the house key. Sophie says you still have one.” “She already took it.” “She says you didn’t give it to her.” I suddenly laughed. Several people on the bus turned to look at me. An eight-months-pregnant woman was leaning against the back seat, laughing until tears began sliding down her cheeks. “Ethan, live well.” “What does that mean?” “Nothing. I hope you and your wife stay happy forever.” I hung up and pressed my finger against the delete-contact button. But I didn’t press it. It wasn’t because I couldn’t let him go. I suddenly realized that I needed to keep his number. Not for him. For the baby. One day, my child would ask me who his father was. I needed something to prove that this man had existed—before I destroyed everything he had once meant to us. The bus reached my stop. I held onto the rail and slowly made my way to the door. The driver glanced at me through the rearview mirror and waited an extra ten seconds before closing the doors.“Ms. Bennett, are you sure you want to sign the consent form refusing an epidural?” “Yes. How much does it cost?” “Between fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars.” “I’m not getting one. Give me the form.” The lights in the delivery room were painfully bright. The contractions came one after another, like someone twisting a dull knife inside my body. I bit down on a towel until my fingernails dug holes into the bedsheets. Mia stood outside the delivery room and shouted through the door. “You can do it!” She had skipped her afternoon classes to come. Fourteen hours. By the time the baby was born, I no longer had the strength to cry. The nurse placed the tiny, wrinkled, red baby on my chest. He opened his mouth and wailed so loudly that the entire floor could hear him. “Boy. Six pounds, four ounces. Mother and baby are both safe.” I lowered my head and looked at him. His eyes were closed, and his tiny fists were clenched tight, as if he were already fighting the world. “You’re just as stubborn as your father.” The nurse filled out the birth certificate and asked me what to name him. “Noah.” “What should I put for the father?” “Leave it blank.” The nurse looked up at me but asked no questions. She drew a line through the father’s section. On the day I was discharged, Mia borrowed her roommate’s car to pick us up. I held Noah in the back seat. He was wrapped in a discounted blanket from the mall and slept peacefully. My phone lit up. A message from an unfamiliar number. There was no greeting, only a long paragraph. “Ms. Bennett, I’m Ethan’s attending physician, Dr. Lucas Reed. I’ve debated for a long time whether to tell you this, but I’ve decided you deserve to know. Ethan’s amnesia is questionable. His brain CT showed only very minor frontal-lobe damage, not enough to cause selective amnesia. With an injury of this degree, most patients gradually recover their memories within three to six months. However, his family explicitly instructed me not to mention any information about you in front of him. I can’t determine whether he truly forgot you or whether he was guided into forgetting you. This is my personal number. I’ll delete this message after sending it. I just thought you should know.” I read it three times. Then I locked my phone. Mia glanced at me through the rearview mirror. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing.” It wasn’t nothing. I just didn’t know whether this was good news or bad. If Ethan had truly lost his memory, then everything was fate. Fate had made him forget me. Fate had allowed Sophie to take my place. I could accept that. But if his amnesia had been manipulated, reinforced, and carefully maintained— Then Sophie hadn’t simply taken advantage of an opportunity. She had planned everything. Noah stirred in my arms and smacked his little lips twice. I lowered my head and kissed his forehead. When we returned to the rented room, the landlady was waiting in the hallway. “Claire, someone came looking for you.” “Who?” “A man and a woman. The woman was dressed very nicely and said she used to work with you. The man stayed in the car.” “What did they look like?” “The woman had a round face and spoke very softly.” Sophie. “Did she leave a message?” The old woman thought for a moment. “She said you should send the baby’s birth certificate to her. The Carter family wanted to see if the baby really belonged to Ethan. If it was confirmed, they would give you some money.” “Those were her exact words?” “More or less. She also said, ‘If the baby really is Ethan’s, Margaret won’t mistreat him. At least he’ll be a child with a father.’” Mia’s eyes turned red as she listened. “What kind of person says something like that? What does ‘a child with a father’ even mean? His father doesn’t even acknowledge him, and they still have the nerve to—” “Mia.” I interrupted her, my voice calm. “Help me change the locks.” That night, Noah cried for most of the night. He wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t wet himself. He had colic. A mother still recovering from childbirth carried her three-day-old baby around an eight-square-meter room. Outside the window, I could hear people playing cards in the neighboring apartment. A stray cat yowled somewhere downstairs. When my legs became too weak to stand, I sat on the edge of the bed and held Noah upright, gently patting his back. He finally stopped crying and gave a tiny burp against my shoulder. My phone lit up again. A message from Sophie. This time, she didn’t use another number. She posted it directly on her social media account and didn’t block me. The photo showed Ethan holding her hand as they looked at baby supplies in a department store. The caption had only four words: **Getting ready for our baby.** Margaret had liked the post and commented: “Sophie, thank you for all your hard work. I’ve been waiting for a grandchild for so long.” I stared at the post for a long time. Then I set my phone down and hugged the little body sleeping against my shoulder. “Noah, Mommy promises you…” My voice was quiet, as if I was afraid of waking him. “One day, I’ll let you stand in the sunlight and tell everyone exactly who you are.” “But not now.”“Grace, I proofread the contract again. Three clauses weren’t translated accurately, so I highlighted them.” I placed the file on Grace’s desk. She flipped through it, her eyebrows rising higher and higher. “You understand contract law too?” “I used to do business translation. I’ve seen quite a few contracts.” “No wonder none of your clients ever send your work back.” Grace closed the file, removed her glasses, and looked me up and down. Noah was a year and three months old. I had carried him on my back to the agency to deliver the work. He was chewing on a teething biscuit, drooling down my entire back. “You should become my partner,” Grace said suddenly. “What?” “Don’t pretend you don’t understand. I ran the numbers. Since you joined us last year, the agency’s clients have increased by two and a half times. That Japanese company specifically asks for you. They refuse to work with anyone else.” I was silent for several seconds. “I don’t have any capital.” “You contribute your skills, and I’ll contribute the money. The shares will be split thirty-seventy. You get thirty, I get seventy. After two years, we’ll change it to forty-sixty.” “Aren’t you afraid I’m a fraud?” Grace snorted. “What could a single mother who clawed her way out of a tiny rented room possibly scam me out of? This broken little agency?” Noah babbled twice on my back. Grace handed him a new biscuit. “It’s settled. Come sign the contract next Monday.” That was when everything began to change. The agency expanded quickly. Grace handled our old clients while I developed new business. Contracts from Japanese, Korean, and French companies came in one after another. During our busiest month, we completed forty contracts. Our team grew from two people to eight. When Noah turned two, we moved into a real apartment. Two bedrooms, one living room, southern exposure, plenty of sunlight, and a kindergarten downstairs. After Mia graduated, she didn’t look for another job. She came straight to the agency to handle administrative work. Whenever she carried Noah around the office, he called her “Auntie Mia.” I thought our lives would continue like that. They didn’t. When Noah was two years and four months old, I took him to the mall to buy winter clothes. A woman suddenly blocked my path outside the children’s fitting rooms. Margaret. She looked older. Her hair had turned much whiter, but her eyes were still the same—sharp, cold, and assessing. Sophie stood behind her. She had changed too. She was wearing a slightly worn sweater. Her makeup was much lighter, and the sweetness that had once clung to her seemed to have faded. In its place was a tiredness I couldn’t quite describe. “Claire?” Sophie spoke first, her tone almost ingratiating. “Is that really you? Do you live around here now?” Margaret’s gaze fell directly on Noah. I held him in my arms. He stared back at her with bright, dark eyes, completely unafraid of strangers. “Is this the baby?” Margaret reached toward his face. I moved aside. “Mrs. Carter, what do you want?” “Claire, Ethan is in the hospital.” My hand paused. Sophie spoke up beside her. “It’s something wrong with his brain. He started having terrible headaches last month. The tests found a hematoma inside his skull. It was left over from the car accident and had been pressing against his brain all this time. The doctors say he needs surgery, but the risks are very high—” “Why are you telling me this?” Margaret took a deep breath. Her lips visibly trembled. “He remembered.”