Terminal Regrets

POV: SIENNA

The cold marble of the foyer seeped into my bones, a physical ache that rivaled the stabbing pain radiating through my stomach. I dragged myself up from the floor, my shaking hands gathering the scattered medical papers Miriam had stepped on. I refused to stay in that grand, empty entryway. I carried the glossy pamphlets and stark diagnosis reports up the stairs, my legs heavy, until I collapsed onto the rug in the master bedroom.

I shared this sprawling room with Tristan for three years. What a pathetic joke that word was. We shared nothing. He had not slept in this bed for months. He always found a convenient excuse to work late in his downstairs study or stay overnight at the office.

Now I knew the exact reason why.

I spread the crinkled documents out across the rug. The stark black ink blurred as I forced myself to read the words again. Stage three gastric cancer. Three months to live without aggressive treatment. Maybe a year if I subjected my body to chemical warfare.

Dr. Gallagher had handed me a glossy brochure titled "Living with Cancer: A Guide for Patients and Families." The cover featured a radiant woman surrounded by a doting husband and smiling children. I stared at those stock-photo faces, feeling a bitter laugh build in my throat.

What family did I have left to lean on?

My husband was actively sleeping with his first love, feeling zero guilt as he wished I were someone else. My son viewed me as an annoying nuisance and did not miss me at all. My mother-in-law had just spelled it out in plain English. I was a walking incubator, a cheap placeholder whose sole purpose was birthing a Thornton heir.

I had thrown away my real family for this sick illusion. I pictured my older brother, Donovan, in Seattle, who had likely spent the last three years despising me for running away. I thought of my parents, whose hearts I broke. And Marco. Marco, the good, decent man I was supposed to marry. I had left him standing at the altar with no explanation. I was so blindly self-righteous back then. I thought I was choosing grand, sweeping love over boring obligation. I wanted to prove everyone wrong.

Instead, I proved them right. I was a fool.

A vicious wave of nausea ripped through my stomach. I scrambled off the rug, dropping the cancer brochure, and sprinted to the attached bathroom. I fell to my knees in front of the toilet and dry-heaved until my ribs ached. When the spasms finally subsided, I braced my hands on the edge of the porcelain sink and dragged myself upward.

The woman in the mirror was a stranger. My skin was a ghastly gray. The cheekbones jutted out sharply. The oversized sweater hung off my frail shoulders, swallowing my shrinking frame. How had I ignored this severe weight loss? How had I brushed off the chronic exhaustion and stomach pains as mere stress?

The harsh truth echoed in my mind. I ignored it because I was too busy trying to resuscitate a dead marriage.

I turned the faucet on and splashed freezing water over my face. As I reached for a towel, a harsh, rattling cough tore from my chest. I doubled over, pressing my palm tightly against my lips. The metallic, unmistakable taste of copper flooded my mouth.

I pulled my hand away. A bright, terrifying smear of blood coated my palm.

Before the panic could fully set in, my phone buzzed from the bedroom. I wiped my mouth with the back of my wrist, leaving the blood smeared across my hand, and stumbled back into the room.

Tristan’s name flashed across the screen.

A foolish, stubborn spark of hope flared in my chest. Did he realize he needed to come home? Did Leo ask for me? Maybe he realized Audrey was just a ghost from his past and he wanted to choose his wife.

I snatched the phone from the nightstand and answered. "Tristan?"

"Mom?"

My breath hitched. It was Leo. His voice was small, tentative, and uncertain. For a split second, he sounded exactly like my sweet little boy again. I pictured the fragile premature baby I held in the NICU, the toddler who used to cry out for me when he had a nightmare.

Another brutal cough seized my lungs. I yanked the phone away, hacking into my bloody palm, fighting to force air back into my body. Once I swallowed down the metallic taste, I brought the receiver back to my ear.

"Mom? Are you sick?"

I closed my eyes. The tight knot in my chest loosened a fraction. At least he asked. At least a tiny piece of my son still cared about me.

I forced the words past my raw throat, my voice hoarse and trembling. "I am okay, baby. I just miss you so much. When are you coming home?"

Silence stretched over the line. Then, I heard it. A woman’s muffled voice murmuring in the background. Audrey. I could not make out her exact words, but the soft, conspiring tone was unmistakable.

When Leo spoke again, the tentative little boy was gone. His tone snapped into cold, vicious disdain.

"You are lying. You are just faking being sick so I will come home. I am not stupid, Mom. I know exactly what you are doing."

"Leo, I am not pretending—"

"Aunt Audrey says you always manipulate people to get what you want! I am not falling for it. I do not want to come home. I want to stay right here with Dad and Aunt Audrey. Stop pretending to be sick to get me to come back. It is pathetic."

The line clicked dead.

I stood frozen in the middle of the bedroom. The silence was deafening. My son had just called me pathetic. He believed I was staging an illness to ruin his fun. He was choosing his father's mistress over his own mother.

If he only knew the truth.

Something fragile and desperate inside me permanently shattered. The final thread holding my sanity together snapped. I lowered the phone, my eyes dropping to the wet, red blood still staining my palm. I did not cry. I did not scream. A cold, absolute resolve washed over me, freezing the heartbreak into solid ice.

I walked over to the dresser. A massive golden frame rested in the center, a wedding gift from Miriam. Inside was our official wedding portrait.

I picked it up and stared at Tristan’s face. I had always noticed his rigid posture in this photo, but I used to convince myself he was just nervous about the ceremony. Looking at it now, with the veil of denial ripped away, the truth was glaring. He was not nervous. His jaw was clenched, his eyes dead. He looked like a man marching toward a firing squad.

And I was standing next to him, grinning like a beaming, oblivious fool. A poor man's version of Audrey Belmont.

I set the frame face-down on the wood. I walked over to the armchair, grabbed my laptop, and opened it. For the first time in three years, I typed her name into the search bar.

Audrey Belmont.

The search engine exploded with results. She was a tennis prodigy, a Grand Slam winner, a media darling. The screen filled with images of a stunning, accomplished woman. She possessed a radiant, effortless grace I could never replicate. The sports articles tracked her meteoric rise to the top of the women's tennis world.

Then, I found the timeline. A severe injury had sidelined her career exactly eight weeks ago.

Eight weeks.

The exact timeframe when Tristan suddenly became swamped with late-night meetings. The exact moment he started taking Leo on mysterious weekend outings. The exact point he stopped looking me in the eye.

I dug deeper, finding archival photos of Tristan and Audrey from five years ago, long before I ever entered the picture. I clicked on an image of them at a charity gala. Tristan was laughing. It was a genuine, eye-crinkling, joyful smile.

He had never smiled at me like that. Not once in our entire marriage.

I scrolled to the recent news. Audrey returning to Chicago. Audrey attending a local fundraiser, with Tristan's broad shoulders visible in the background. Audrey reading to sick children at a hospital, with my son, Leo, sitting adoringly at her feet, gazing up at her like she hung the moon.

I slammed the laptop shut. I looked around the sprawling master bedroom. My entire life here was confined to a single wardrobe, while Tristan's expensive suits and watches dominated the space. A lone book with my bookmark sat on the nightstand. I was barely a ghost in my own home. I had assumed this space was mine, just as I had assumed Tristan and Leo were mine.

Until Audrey came back and showed him what a proper mother looked like.

A bright ping broke the silence. My phone lit up with an Instagram notification.

It was Audrey’s public account. She had just posted a new photo for her hundreds of thousands of followers.

I tapped the alert. The image loaded, displaying Leo fast asleep in a lavish hotel bed. His small fingers were tightly clutching a Mickey Mouse plush toy. The California sunlight streamed through the window behind him.

The caption sat right beneath his sleeping face.

Best day ever with this little sweetheart. Some people are just meant to be in your life. ❤️ #family #blessed #disneyland

The comments section was already a flood of adoration.

Such a cute kid!

You will make an amazing mom someday!

Beautiful family!

I stared at the hashtag. #family.

She was publicly claiming my child. She was parading him in front of the world as her own. And Tristan was standing right there, allowing another woman to steal his son from his wife.

I lowered the phone and looked at my left hand. The large diamond engagement ring caught the soft glow of the bedside lamp. I had worn this heavy stone for seven years. I had guarded it, polished it, and clung to the empty promises it represented.

It was nothing but a shackle holding me to a lie.

I pinched the platinum band and twisted it off my finger. It slid over my knuckle with ease, thanks to my recent weight loss. I dropped my hand to my side. The sudden lightness in my fingers felt strange, yet intoxicatingly freeing.

I picked up my phone with my right hand and opened my messages with Tristan. The chat history was a pathetic graveyard of my unanswered texts asking when he would be home for dinner.

I tapped the keyboard.

"Let's get divorced."

I did not hesitate. I did not second-guess the wording. I hit send.

I set the phone down and placed the diamond ring on the nightstand, right next to the discarded wedding photo. I had three months left in this world. I was done spending my precious, fading time begging for scraps of affection from a man who never wanted me. I was done raising a son who despised me. I was done being a placeholder.

I was done being Audrey Belmont's substitute.