In the hospital waiting room after the funeral, I still kept checking my phone hoping Tyler would text something human for once.
Not “I’m sorry.”
Not “Are you okay?”
Just anything that sounded like the man I married before he disappeared into somebody else’s apartment and somebody else’s life.
Instead, silence.
My uncle handled most of the paperwork because I couldn’t stop shaking long enough to read anything. Insurance forms. Property documents. Bank accounts I didn’t even know my parents still had.
That’s when everybody found out about the inheritance.
Almost $1.8 million between investments, land my grandfather bought decades ago outside Knoxville, and my parents’ life insurance.
I swear Tyler called less than four hours later.
I stared at his name ringing across my screen while I sat in my childhood kitchen eating dry crackers because my stomach hurt too bad for real food.
His first words were,
“Baby, I’ve been worried sick.”
Baby.
After nine months.
I actually laughed.
He started crying almost immediately after that. Said he’d “made a mistake.” Said the other woman was “confusing him.” Said losing my parents made him realize “what really mattered.”
Then he asked if he could come home.
Not if I needed anything.
Not how the funeral went.
Home.
He showed up the next morning carrying grocery bags and flowers like he’d just come back from a business trip instead of abandoning me while my whole life collapsed.
The weirdest part was how fast he slipped back into routines.
Making coffee.
Touching my back in the kitchen.
Calling me “Gracey” again.
Like if he acted normal enough, I’d forget everything.
Three nights later I woke up around 2 a.m. because Tyler wasn’t in bed.
I found him downstairs in my father’s office with the desk lamp on and stacks of inheritance papers spread across the floor.
He didn’t hear me standing there.
He was on the phone whispering:
“No, she still thinks I came back because I love her.”