The Fiancée He Forgot Chapter 06
And he finally understood why my face had shown no trace of happiness the day Claire had made her surprise phone call summoning my parents.
He stood in front of our old wooden house, staring at the certificates covering the living room wall, at the decade-old TV, at the wood stove in the kitchen.
For the first time, he tried to imagine the life I’d once lived. For the first time, he saw his own arrogance clearly.
“Mr. Miller, Mrs. Miller, I’m sorry—I didn’t treat you the way I should have that day… I let you and Grace be humiliated.”
“I promise you, I love Grace. We were going to be married. But because I messed up, she got angry and asked to break up, and now I can’t find her anywhere. Please—please tell me where she went.”
My parents exchanged a look and sighed.
“Ethan,” my father said slowly, in his heavy accent, “Grace told us you weren’t the right man for her, and she never agreed to marry you. She’s made up her mind. Respect her choice.”
Ethan had always said my parents’ accent was so heavy he couldn’t quite catch what they said.
But this time, he heard every word.
He sank onto the old porch, hung his head, and his shoulders trembled.
Seeing how stubbornly he wouldn’t leave, my mother sighed and carried out the cardboard box I’d left behind.
Inside were all the gifts he’d given me over the years. Including the limited-edition earrings Claire had snatched, and the expensive, careless things he’d bought me afterward to make up for it.
Looking at those memories, Ethan’s eyes reddened. His throat worked, and his voice came out barely audible. “You… you two don’t know where she’s gone either?”
My mother shook her head.
“She only said she was going to the West Coast for work. Where exactly, doing what—she didn’t tell us.”
Ethan sat on the porch, holding that box, and for a long time couldn’t stand up.
Then he went to the Broad Institute.
Seeing his hollow, ravaged look, Dr. Harrison sighed.
“Ethan, Grace left decisively. Not a shred of hesitation. That tells you she’d made up her mind.”
Ethan refused to accept it. “It can’t be… She loved me so much. How could she leave?”
“She’s never lived on the West Coast. She doesn’t know a single person out there. How is she going to manage?”
Dr. Harrison was quiet for a long moment. Then he asked, “Ethan—in your mind, is Grace really that helpless?”
Ethan froze.
“Grace has been at this institute less than three years, and she’s already published five first-author papers in top journals and secured a major grant from the National Institutes of Health. She’s the youngest independent researcher we have.”
Dr. Harrison paused.
“Instead of agonizing over why Grace left you, maybe you should think about why you fell for her in the first place.”
Ethan fell into a long silence.
Why?
Maybe, in those quiet moments when he finally sat still, he remembered.
Back then, he and Claire had ended up at the same college.
On the surface, Claire was easygoing—thick as thieves with everyone. In reality, she was demanding and hard to please.
She didn’t have a boyfriend, so she treated Ethan like her personal errand-runner—fetching hot water, buying coffee, saving her seats, everything.
That was when he met me.