She Died With My Name on Her Lips novel Chapter 12

When Stephen got home, the housekeeper met him at the door, hands shaking as she offered him a framed photo, a pink urn, and a stack of cemetery paperwork.

“Mr. Barker, we found these while cleaning out Mrs. Barker’s room,” she said, voice barely above a whisper.

“She... she must’ve been planning for this for a long time. Maybe she’d already given up on living.”

Stephen’s eyes stung with tears. He grabbed the items, clutching them tightly, as if they might vanish if he let go.

“Louisa, why?” he choked out, staring at the funeral portrait. “I never once thought about dying—why did you want to give up? Didn’t you ever think about what would happen to me, left behind all alone?”

His voice was rough, almost a shout, but the question hung in the still air, unanswered. Louisa’s black-and-white photo smiled back at him, the faintest curve of her lips hiding a sorrow so deep it felt like a knife to his chest.

Maybe she’d been holding on by a thread for years.

He pressed a hand to his aching heart, struggling to catch his breath. She couldn’t keep going... so how was he supposed to? Everything he’d lived for was tied up in her. He only felt alive when he saw her, when he let the twisted mess of love and hate between them boil over. It was cruel, but it was real.

For five years, he’d wondered—if only both their families had died in that car crash, maybe none of this pain would’ve happened. The dead don’t feel anything. It’s the ones left behind who spend a lifetime drowning in regret and guilt. Death had been a mercy for Dean and Gina. Now Louisa was free, too. So why was he left here to suffer, all alone?

Stephen hugged the photo to his chest, feeling like his heart was being shredded from the inside out.

Aiden, his assistant, showed up with some documents just then. When he saw what was going on, his expression softened with sympathy.

He let out a heavy sigh. “Mr. Barker, if the feud between your family and the Thompsons had ended when Dean and Gina died, maybe things would’ve turned out differently.”

“If you saw her again now, she’d only hate you. After everything she went through, she deserves better.”

Aiden was desperate—Barker Corporation needed Stephen, and so did a lot of other people.

Something flickered in Stephen’s dark eyes—a glimmer of something like hope, or maybe just the urge to do one last right thing.

He’d lost too much. The Thompsons had paid the Barkers back with their lives, but Stephen’s debt to Louisa was different. How could he ever repay her?

Without a word, he nudged Aiden out of the way, grabbed a couple bottles of whiskey, and took the urn. He slipped into the cold storage room and sat down next to Louisa’s frozen coffin, the silence wrapping around him like a shroud.