The Breakup That Set Her Free

The divorce papers lay on our dining table, stark white against the mahogany.

My husband, Ethan, placed them there, his voice smooth, asking for three days.

Just three days, he said, for his college ex-girlfriend, Chloe.

Chloe, who he swore was a ghost from his past, was now supposedly dying of a rare, aggressive cancer.

Her last wish? To marry him.

And for those three days, he needed me to "not remember."

He pointed to a sterile vial in his hand – Compound M-7, my creation, a memory drug I' d developed.

He wanted me, his wife, Dr. Evelyn Hayes, a neuroscientist, to erase myself so he could play husband to another woman.

He called it "temporary amnesia," believing there was an antidote.