Until The Last Day (Claire and Lorenzo) novel Chapter 10

<p>&nbsp;</p><Lorenzo’s POV 

The last four days of December felt both long and short, like rubber stretched to its limit. 

I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat much. I just moved. 

I went everywhere I could think of, alone, following a path that only Claire would have taken. 

First, the hospital. 

The automatic doors opened with a sigh. 

“Mrs. Claire?” the receptionist repeated, checking her screen. “She came in… almost a month ago. Alone. A follow-up.” 

They sent me to a doctor who remembered her. He looked tired, kind. 

“She was very calm,” he said. “We discussed the scans. Her legs-” He stopped, choosing a gentler word. “No improvement. She asked a few practical questions. Then she thanked me.” 

“She was alone,” I said. 

“Yes.” 

I nodded and left. My hands were shaking. 

Next, the alley near our old apartment, where the bricks always smelled of rain.  

A bell rang when I pushed open the shop door. The owner, a woman with short hair and sharp eyes, looked up and broke into a sad smile. 

“Lorenzo,” she said. “You’re late.” 

I didn’t understand. “Late?” 

“She was here. Recently,” the owner said. “Alone. She bought those sesame sweets she always liked.” She watched my face. “I asked why you weren’t with her.” 

“What did she say?” 

The owner held my gaze. “She smiled and said you two were getting divorced.” 

Something inside me tilted. The word echoed. Divorce. 

“She looked lighter,” the owner added softly. “Empty, but light. Like a person who had learned to live even after being through a lot.” 

I thanked her and left, the bell ringing again like a small, cruel joke. 

I went to our old school. 

The gate guard squinted at me in the winter light. “Captain Vale, right?” he said, mixing me up with the old debate captain, then waving it off. “Yes, yes. The girl in the wheelchair came. Spent a long time wheeling around. Sat by the track. Went to the library.” 

“Alone?” I asked. 

He stared, as if it were obvious. “Alone.” 

On the track, the lines were faint, like bones under skin. I could see us,  years ago, running side by side, laughing. I could hear her shoes hitting the ground in a rhythm that matched my own.

I went to the library next. The air was warm and dusty. A student group whispered over a shared laptop, heads pressed together. I stood in the aisle where Claire used to sit, the one near the windows with the good light. 

Outside, I found the tree at the campus edge. It had grown tall. Thicker. Stronger. The bark was rough beneath my fingers. 

I searched for the crooked line we’d carved as teenagers. 

Lorenzo will always love Claire. 

Gone. 

Not faded. Not hidden. Gone. Scraped away. A pale scar in its place, healing over. 

I closed my eyes. In the dark behind my lids, I saw her hand. I saw the knife. I saw the clean, patient motion. 

She had cut me out of her story even here. 

I called every friend of hers I still had a number for. Most hadn’t seen her in years. A few had. 

“She invited us to dinner,” one said. “Out of nowhere.” 

“She got drunk,” another said. “Claire never drinks this much. But that night, she laughed and cried and told us to take care of ourselves. She said… not to miss her. We didn’t understand.” 

My voice came out low, hoarse. “Claire. It’s me.” 

I swallowed. The snow kept falling, softening the world. 

“I’m going to say what I should have said,” I forced out. “I betrayed our marriage. I hid behind silence because it made me feel like I wasn’t lying. That’s not true. I lied by leaving entire sentences unsaid. I lied by keeping my hands near you but my heart somewhere else. I lied by calling guilt love.” 

My breath fogged the air. I kept talking. 

“I was afraid of being the villain in our story. So I decided to be nobody at all. I hovered. I avoided. I pretended. And you paid. You paid every day. You paid every time I walked a step ahead of you and didn’t look back.”  

A sharp breath. A tremor in my throat. 

“I loved you,” I said. The words were small and huge. “I loved you at eighteen. I loved you when you bled on my shirt and told me you’d save me 10,000 times. I loved you when I was too weak to say it in a way that mattered. And I failed you. I failed us.” 

The recording cut off at one minute. It was sent automatically. 

A mountain that had been sitting on my chest for months cracked. Not enough to breathe easily, but enough to breathe at all. 

I stared at the screen. Nothing. 

So I sent a second recording. 

“If you hate me, I’ll accept it,” I said. “If you never want to see me again, I’ll accept that too. But if you’re still somewhere I can reach, if you’re still on this side of the world where my voice can get to you… let me at least bring you home. Please.” 

Send. 

I lowered the phone and watched the white gather on the pavement. For a second, an old thought brushed past me. 

So this is what courage feels like. Too late, but real. 

I sat there until my fingers went numb. Then I stood and began to walk, not sure where I was going anymore. The city blurred into gray and white. Streetlights flickered on. My breath came out in the clouds. 

Why had I waited until now? Why did I only confess after everything was already ash? Why did honest words feel so easy now, when they had felt impossible before?  

I didn’t have answers. 

Because the only person who could answer me had been gone from my world for eight days.