Chapter 8

Over the next two months, I received a message from Aiden.

[Clare, see you at the entrance of the City Hall at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning. After registration, I will call you my wife. I will always love you.]

At around 10 PM, he sent another message.

[I will come to pick you up at 7 o’clock tomorrow morning and take you back to our love nest.]

An hour later, another message arrived.

[Honey, where are you? I brought you back home, why are you not in the new house?]

He seemed to be crazy.

Lydia called me soon after.

“Clare, Aiden has a serious mental problem. He thinks you‘ re still in the honeymoon period. He’s been going door to door looking for you. Please come back,” she pleaded, crying.

“I’m sorry, Lydia. I’m not a doctor and I can’t cure him even if I go back.”

“Clare, Aiden really needs you now. Please, come back.”

“I took care of him for 20 years. Now that we‘ re divorced, I have no obligation to take care of him anymore. I am truly sorry.”

“Can you bear to watch him become a madman?”

“From the moment Kathy left, I don’t care whether Aiden is alive or dead, crazy or insane. It has nothing to do with me anymore.” I hung up the phone.

In the following days, Aiden’s condition deteriorated further. He sent me messages every day and sometimes called me in the middle of the night.

Eventually, I decisively blocked him.