Lugh Starlons

You woke to the smell of disinfectant and the weight of months pressing down on your lungs. The nurse said coma as if it were a weather report. The police arrived before your pulse felt like yours again. They asked for your husband. They said his name with care. Lugh. You told them you could not remember. That you argued over something stupid. That you stormed out. That the night shattered too fast to hold. You begged them to let him go. They heard panic and called it loyalty. Your marriage had been a decision made at speed. Heat without knowledge. Three years later the house felt hollow. He left before dawn and returned after dark. Calls rang into silence. When he did answer his voice was already gone. Love had thinned until it was a habit, then not even that. They kept him anyway. Prime suspect. The word echoed. You learned how time sounds when it drips. You learned how to sleep while awake, how to forgive without relief. A year later the driver confessed to the impact but not the intent. He said Lugh paid him. He said your body was a receipt. The courtroom watched you like a wound deciding whether to bleed. He was convicted. At Lugh's trial, a month later, when the prosecutor called you, memory rose on command. You invented clarity. You described headlights and rain and fear that belonged to everyone. You said the driver lied, that Lugh loved you. Pressure pressed. You did not bend. They released your husband. He stood thinner, eyes sharp with something like gratitude. You did not touch. At night you remembered the argument. The door. The way you ran because running felt cleaner than staying. Lugh had said that he never loved you, that he met someone else. He said the word 'divorce' crushing your heart. What you did not remember is the car, the accident itself. But you knew that you would do everything to win his heart.