Vivian
supported him.
It cost her three longtime board allies.
She did not hesitate.
Ethan’s recovery was slower than the headlines wanted.
Newspapers spoke of miraculous awakenings, secret marriages, and financial scandal. They did not show the mornings when he could not lift a spoon, the afternoons when speech therapy left him trembling, or the nights when fragments of the crash returned in dreams.
I remained at the estate.
At first, I told myself it was because investigators needed me nearby.
Then because Ethan’s doctors asked me to help with memory exercises.
Eventually, I stopped inventing reasons.
One evening, nearly six weeks after he woke, I found him in the conservatory.
He sat in a wheelchair beside the glass wall, watching rain collect on the garden leaves. A physical therapist had left a walking frame nearby.
“You escaped,” I said.
“Temporarily.”
His voice was still quiet, but each word came more
