My Surgeon Husband Rebuilt My Face To Match His First Love’s Chapter 03
His Masterpiece
I look through the narrow gap in the door.
Inside the office, Graham sits in his chair, still wearing his white coat.
His fingers press against the bridge of his nose, and the woman from the wedding stands in front of him.
The woman with my face.
Violet’s shoulders tremble as she cries.
“I only wanted to see you,” she says. “I wanted to know if you’ve been doing well all these years without me.”
She looks unsteady, like she might fall at any second.
“Your wife is beautiful,” she says, wiping her tears. “With that face beside you, it almost looked like the wedding we were supposed to have.”
My fingers tighten around the food container in my hand.
Violet’s voice shakes, but her words keep going.
“Thank you, Graham. Thank you for giving me the dream I always wanted. From now on, when I have to live without you, at least I can watch you be happy with another version of me.”
Under the bright office lights, I see Graham’s eyes slowly turn red.
“Graham,” Violet whispers, “congratulations on your marriage.”
She turns to leave, but her body hits the chair beside her. She sways, and before she can fall, Graham rushes forward and catches her in his arms.
Violet breaks down against his chest.
“Why?” she sobs. “Why can I never have what I want? We were so close. We were almost together. What did I do wrong?”
Graham holds her without pushing her away.
“Life is so cruel to me,” she cries. “It made me watch you belong to someone else.”
She grabs his arm and looks up at him through her tears.
“Graham, if I still love you, do we still have a chance?”
The office goes quiet.
Graham does not answer.
Slowly, Violet’s hand slips from his arm. She gives a small, bitter laugh.
“It’s too late, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” Graham says quietly.
Violet freezes.
“You only gave me two years,” he continues. “When you didn’t come back, I thought you were gone. Later, I met her.”
“In all those years, she was the only person I met who reminded me of you. Her voice, the way she spoke, even the way she looked from behind, all of it felt like you.”
He pauses, and every word after that cuts into me.
“So I thought I could keep you beside me in another way.”
My knees almost give out. I press one hand over my mouth before any sound can escape.
So that is what I am to him.
Not the woman he loves. Not the life he chose.
Just another way to keep Violet beside him.
I do not remember how I get home. The road blurs in front of me, and more than once, I nearly hit the car ahead.
…
When I finally sit on the living room couch, the clock moves through hour after hour, but Graham never comes home.
Another text arrives from him.
He says the hospital is too busy tonight and he will not be back.
I laugh, but there is nothing funny in it.
Graham, are you really busy?
Or are you staying with Violet?
I open my contacts and find an old classmate I still have online. I ask for help finding information about someone named Violet Ames.
Not long after, the files arrive.
Inside are pieces of Graham and Violet’s past.
Graham and Violet were high school sweethearts. Everyone in their class envied them. Later, they went to the same college, and their relationship stayed steady.
During sophomore year, Violet was diagnosed with a rare illness that was difficult to treat. Only a specialist hospital overseas had any chance of helping her. She had no choice but to leave Graham and go abroad.
Before she left, she told him she would give him two years. If she did not come back after two years, it meant she was gone.
She is gone for seven years.
Graham spends those seven years half alive.
Then he meets me, and I become the replacement he can pour all that longing into.
I open the photos in the folder.
In one of them, Graham looks young and bright, smiling with his arm around Violet. She is young too, holding an ice cream cone in one hand, a black-and-white Dalmatian hat on her head.
Behind them is an amusement park.
The moment I see it, a memory rises in my mind.
One of my anniversaries with Graham is at an amusement park just like that.
He buys me an ice cream cone and holds my hand as we walk past one little stand after another.
Back then, I think he is simply happy to be there with me.
Now I remember the way he keeps looking around, like he is searching for something.
At last, we stop in front of a stand selling animal hats.
I pick up a cat-ear hat, but Graham smiles and suggests the black-and-white Dalmatian one instead.
Then we stand at the entrance of the amusement park and take a photo that looks exactly like the one in this folder.
That photo later becomes Graham’s phone wallpaper.
I stare at the screen until my eyes burn.
The ice cream. The animal hat. The amusement park entrance. Even the picture he kept on his phone.
None of it was ours.
He had already lived it all with Violet. Then he brought me there, did the same things, and let me believe it was love.
Every sweet memory I have suddenly feels borrowed, staged, and rotten.
So what am I to him? A counterfeit he can pour seven years of longing into? Or just Violet’s replacement?