PART 1
“If you cannot even look me in the face, why do you keep calling me your wife?”
Lydia Vance could barely stand when she asked standard-issue questions to Chad Montgomery inside their sunlit apartment in the quiet district of Maple Heights. She had returned home a few days earlier after a grueling reconstructive surgery that lasted more than seven hours. The left side of her face, her neck, and her arm were still wrapped tightly in thick bandages, and every small movement brought a sharp, stinging pain.
Even so, that afternoon she managed to prepare Chad’s favorite dinner using only one functional hand. She desperately wanted a normal evening, a small sign that some piece of their marriage still remained intact.
Chad arrived wearing a sharp business suit, looked at the fully set table, and said absolutely nothing. He walked straight past her and went into the master bedroom. Minutes later, Lydia heard the distinct zipping sound of a large suitcase opening on the bed.
“Where are you going?” she asked, leaning heavily against the doorframe for support.
“Phoenix,” Chad replied without looking up. “One client meeting came up, so I will be gone for one week.”
His cell phone vibrated inside his inner jacket pocket, but Chad reached in and silenced it immediately without pulling the device out into the open.
“The surgeon said I should not stay alone right now,” Lydia whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
“Call your parents,” Chad replied coldly while packing his shirts. “They have been coming around to check on you anyway.”
Lydia felt a deep coldness spreading through her body that hurt far more than her surgical wounds. Just four months earlier, she had willingly sprinted into a burning house to pull Chad out of the roaring flames.
That disastrous night, Chad had come home thoroughly drunk after a late night with his drinking buddies and fell fast asleep in the guest room. In the early hours of the morning, an electrical fault ignited a rapid fire inside the home they were renting in the suburbs of Pinecrest. Lydia managed to escape outside, dialed 911, and only realized once her feet hit the sidewalk that Chad was still trapped inside.
The horrified neighbors shouted at her not to go back into the inferno, but she ignored them and ran inside. She advanced low to the floor through dense smoke and scorching heat until she found Chad completely unconscious, then dragged his heavy body down the hallway. The direct heat scorched her face, neck, and arm, while Chad escaped with minor smoke inhalation, a few scrapes, and a small burn on his hand.
Lydia spent weeks in the intensive care unit enduring painful skin cleansings. Before the accident, Lydia worked as a successful beauty consultant and commercial model for Velvet Glow, a high-end cosmetics store in midtown Lexington. Chad, who owned a local media agency named Beacon Creative, had met her three years earlier during an advertisement shoot.
When Chad woke up in his hospital room that first night, he broke down crying in deep gratitude. “You saved my life, and I swear I am going to be with you through every single surgery.”
For the very first month, he actually kept that emotional promise. But then he stopped hugging her, moved his belongings into the guest room, and started taking sudden trips while receiving hushed phone calls behind closed doors. His parents, Brenda and Walter, also stopped visiting her entirely. Before the fire, they used to boast to everyone about having a gorgeous model daughter-in-law, but now they always found convenient excuses to stay away.
Lydia desperately wanted to believe that everyone was just overwhelmed and scared until that very evening. Chad closed his suitcase, walked past her without meeting her eyes, and snatched his car keys off the counter.
“I made your favorite dinner,” Lydia murmured softy, pointing toward the dining table.
“I do not have time for this right now,” Chad answered bluntly as he reached for the door handle.
“Chad, please tell me the truth,” Lydia said, her voice shaking. “Is there someone else?”
He stopped for barely a second before adjusting his watch. “You are just imagining things because you spend way too much time locked up in this house.”
He opened the door and walked out into the cold hallway, leaving Lydia standing alone in front of two served plates. For the first time in months, she had no desire to pick up her phone to chase after him. Instead, she called her father, Samuel.
When Samuel arrived at the apartment twenty minutes later and saw the untouched dinner, he did not ask a single question. He simply picked up an empty duffel bag and looked at his daughter with deep compassion. “Pack your medications right now because you are coming home with us.”
A week later, Chad showed up unannounced at Samuel’s house in the countryside. He did not offer a sincere apology, nor did he ask how her surgical wounds were healing. He stood straight in front of her in the living room and said something nobody expected to hear from a man whose life had been saved by his wife’s sacrifice.
“I want a divorce,” Chad declared with a cold, flat tone.
Lydia sat frozen on the sofa, completely unaware that this brutal statement was merely the smallest lie he was keeping from her.
PART 2
Chad claimed that he simply could no longer live with the overwhelming guilt that consumed him every single day.
“Every time I look at you, I am reminded of the horror you went through to pull me out,” he said while carefully avoiding any eye contact with her bandaged skin. “This whole situation is destroying both of us.”
Lydia watched him in absolute silence as his words echoed through her parents’ quiet living room. Three months earlier, she would have broken down into tears and begged him to stay, but that afternoon she only offered a faint, tired response.
“Do not pretend you are doing this for my benefit,” she said softly.
Chad quickly proposed a fast legal separation without drawn-out court battles. Since they did not have any children, he offered to sign over full ownership of the scorched plot of land where their rental house had burnt down. In exchange, he requested that they both waive any future financial claims or alimony support. This meant that all the costly reconstructive surgeries, physical therapies, and ongoing medical treatments lasting for years would fall entirely on Lydia’s shoulders.
Her parents were absolutely furious when they heard the selfish details of his proposed settlement. “He is leaving you with nothing but burnt ashes just to wash his hands of his marital responsibilities,” Samuel said in anger.
“I would rather own a piece of burnt dirt than stay tied to a man who makes me beg for his basic affection,” Lydia replied.
