Category: English

I was sixteen when my father fell from a scaffolding on a construction site, shattering his spine. The hospital demanded fifty thousand dollars upfront for the surgery. After scraping the bottom of every drawer we owned, my family managed to gather exactly three hundred and eighty. I was standing near the high school gates, clutching my withdrawal slip, when Wright intercepted me. He was the quietest, most brilliant kid in our class, and he sat right behind me. That day, he pressed a faded savings passbook into my palm. “Get your dad the surgery,” he said. “I’ll cover it. Don’t you dare drop out.” I told him I could never pay it back. He only said, “I’m not asking you to. Just get into college.” After that, he sent me allowance money every single month. Each check came with a slip of paper containing just three words: “Don’t give up.” My father survived, and I made it to an Ivy League university. Wright never once mentioned the money. Ten years later, I owned three manufacturing firms, my net worth sitting comfortably in the nine figures. And Wright’s name popped up on a court-ordered public default registry. “Former tech startup founder, held liable for a joint-guarantee debt of $4.2 million, blacklisted as a delinquent debtor.” I put down my phone, opened my desk drawer, and pulled out the old savings passbook—the one I’d filled with millions long ago. This time, it was my turn to knock on his door. … 1 “Who the hell is knocking? Stop pounding!” The rusted screen door creaked open with a harsh, grating shriek. It wasn’t Wright. It was a woman in a faded tank top, a thin gold chain dipping into her collarbone, smelling heavily of cheap tobacco. I looked past her shoulder. The apartment was a disaster. Empty beer bottles littered the floor, the sofa cushions were ripped open, and the word “PAYUP” was spray-painted in angry red letters across the drywall. “What are you staring at? Who do you want?” She flicked ash onto the floor, her expression impatient. “Wright,” I said. “Who are you?” She sized me up, her eyes lingering on the Patek Philippe on my wrist. Her gaze sharpened. “A relative? Good. He owes our boss 1.2 million. You here to write the check?” I ignored her and glanced back at Diana. Diana had been my assistant for five years. She didn’t talk much, but she got things done. She stepped forward, shoved the woman aside, and walked right in. “Hey, what the f—” Before the woman could finish her curse, Diana grabbed her wrist, twisting it downward with a firm, practiced grip. The woman dropped to her knees on the scattered glass, hissing in pain. I stepped over the trash and pushed open the bedroom door. Empty. The closet doors hung open, bare of hangers. The mattress-less bedframe was coated in a thin layer of dust. He’d been gone for at least a week. “Where is he?” I turned back to the woman. “How should I know!” she spat, grimacing. “The bank foreclosed on this place. My boss broke the lock last week to use it as a temporary crew house. That kid ran off before we even got here.” I didn’t answer. A heavy, suffocating weight settled in my chest, like wet cotton. Four point two million. To me now, that was just two weeks of profit from a couple of assembly lines. But to an ordinary man, it was a mountain designed to crush a spine. A memory flashed in my mind. Winter of sophomore year. The city got hit by a massive blizzard. I couldn’t afford the dorm heating fee and had been locked out, hiding in a tiny maintenance shed under the bleachers of the school track. I had a raging fever that night. I was shivering so violently I couldn’t even stand. Then, the metal door creaked open. Wind and snow swirled in, framing Wright. He was wearing his oversized school jacket, his nose bright red from the cold, clutching a glass jar wrapped in a thick towel. He didn’t ask why I was sleeping there. He didn’t offer pity. He just walked over, pressed the piping-hot jar into my arms, and left two boxes of fever reducers and two warm ham-and-cheese biscuits beside me. “Eat,” he said, and turned back into the storm. I held that jar all night. It burned my chest red, but it kept me alive. I never forgot that heat. “Sir,” Diana said, releasing the woman and stepping closer. “Just checked the street cameras. Mr. Chester… went to the South Flats.” The South Flats. The city’s notorious underbelly. A maze of sweatshops, scrap yards, and homeless encampments. I slipped my hand into my coat pocket, my fingers brushing against the frayed edges of the old passbook. “Let’s go.” “Where?” Diana asked. I cast a cold glance at the shivering woman on the floor. “The South Flats. Tear the place apart if you have to, but find him.” 2 By the time we drove into the South Flats, night had fallen. The streetlights were mostly broken, and the air carried a heavy mix of grease from cheap diners and the damp stench of old storm drains. My Maybach felt ridiculously out of place parked here—like a tuxedo in a pigsty. But I didn’t care. Diana pointed toward a greasy-spoon diner with a flickering, grease-filmed neon sign. “Our contact says Mr. Chester has been washing dishes here for the past few days. Sixty dollars a day, meals included.” Sixty dollars a day. I closed my eyes, my jaw clenching. I pushed the door open and walked in. Before I could even take in the room, a sharp voice shrieked from the back. “Are you blind? This is a limited-edition dress!” The voice was painfully familiar, carrying that cloying, practiced sweetness I had always despised. Through the grime-smeared glass of the kitchen partition, I saw Wright. He was wearing a stiff, oversized gray waterproof apron. His hair was cropped short, his face pale and hollow, his collarbones sharp against his thin frame. He was kneeling on the sticky linoleum, clutching a rag. On the floor lay a spilled bowl of greasy chicken soup. Standing over him was a man in an expensive, tailored suit: Brody, Wright’s old college roommate and former employee. And sitting next to him was Margo, Wright’s ex-fiancée, wearing a faux-designer suit, her legs crossed. “Oh, Brody, babe, don’t be mad. I’m sure he didn’t mean to,” Margo said, her voice dripping with artificial sympathy. “I can’t help it, Margo,” Brody sneered, leaning into her. “It’s our company’s pre-IPO celebration dinner, and a dishwasher spills soup all over my pants? It’s bad luck.” He spat out the word ‘dishwasher’ like a curse. Margo patted his hand, looking down at Wright. “Wright, I don’t know what to say to you.” She sighed, her tone heavy with a nauseating sense of charity. “You insisted on taking on all that debt yourself. Look where it got you. You don’t even look like a college graduate anymore.” Wright didn’t look up. He just kept wiping the floor with mechanical, numbed movements, as if they were speaking to a ghost. Looking at his hunched shoulders, my mind dragged me back to high school. Senior year. Someone had stolen five hundred dollars from the class fund. Because I was the poorest, everyone pointed fingers at me. The principal called me in, demanding I empty my pockets. I refused, squeezing my hands into fists until my nails drew blood. Just when everyone was ready to brand me a thief, Wright walked in. He slammed a physics competition registration form on the desk. “He didn’t do it,” he said, pointing to the schedule. “From noon to one, he was helping the physics teacher calibrate lab equipment. Check the cameras.” Then he turned to the whispering crowd, his voice quiet but razor-sharp: “Being poor doesn’t make you a thief. Shut up if you don’t have proof.” After school, he stopped me by the track. No comfort, no pity. Just a look straight into my eyes: “Larry, never bow your head.” But now, the boy who told me never to bow his head was kneeling on a greasy floor, bowing his head to these parasites. “Where’s the manager? Get the manager out here!” Brody was still shouting. The sweating owner ran out, apologizing profusely. “If you employ people this clumsy, I’ll report you to the health department!” Brody threatened. The owner looked at Wright, embarrassed. “Wright, look… maybe you should just take your pay for today and head out.” 3 Wright finally stood up. He untied the apron, placing it on the table without a word of protest or plea. “Okay,” his voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. Diana whispered behind me, “Do you want me to clear them out, sir?” “Dig,” I said, my gaze locked on the couple inside. “Find out exactly how Margo saddled him with 4.2 million in debt.” Wright left through the back. I didn’t follow him immediately. I needed to know who drove him to the edge first. Diana worked fast. By the next morning, a thick folder sat on my desk. I flipped to the first page, my knuckles turning white. Three years ago, Wright and Margo co-founded a tech startup. Wright handled the core R&D; Margo handled public relations and finance. A year ago, Margo claimed they landed a massive project and needed a loan to expand. She brought him a personal guarantee document to sign. “What did she tell him?” I asked, staring at the photocopied signature. “According to the audio transcripts we recovered from their old office,” Diana replied, “she said, ‘Wright, I’m your fiancée. Would I ever hurt you? This project is a goldmine. Once we get through this, we’ll get married.’” I let out a harsh laugh. “And then?” “The moment the funds cleared, Margo transferred the money through various shell companies to a primary account.” Diana flipped the page. “The owner of that shell company was Brody.” I closed my eyes, taking a deep, shaky breath. No wonder Brody was so arrogant at the diner. He was living off Wright’s sweat and blood, mocking him with his own money. “Once the funds were drained, Margo filed for bankruptcy liquidation,” Diana continued. “Because Wright had signed an unlimited personal guarantee, the entire $4.2 million debt crashed down on him alone.” Margo walked away clean, rebranding herself as a ‘senior partner’ in Brody’s new firm, while Wright was blacklisted, unable to even buy a train ticket, forced to work under the table in the shadows. “There’s one more thing,” Diana hesitated. “Speak.” “Mr. Chester’s mother. She’s in the late stages of renal failure. She’s at St. Jude’s Hospital.” Diana placed a hospital invoice on the desk. “If they don’t pay the twenty thousand dollars for dialysis by this afternoon, they’ll stop her treatments.” Twenty thousand. Again, twenty thousand. It felt like a sick, cruel loop. My freshman year of college, my father’s rehab bills were overdue. The hospital gave me a final notice: I was short eighteen hundred dollars. I was ready to sell my own blood. Then, a wire transfer of two thousand dollars hit my account. No name, just a memo: “Don’t give up.” I knew who it was. That month, I sneaked back to our hometown and saw Wright in the cafeteria. He ate nothing but plain instant ramen for thirty days. I leaned back in my leather chair, my heart aching as if pierced by a blade. Ten years ago, he went hungry so I wouldn’t have to. Ten years later, he was washing dishes in filth just to pay for his mother’s dialysis, letting himself be trampled. “Larry Michell,” I whispered to myself, “you’re a pathetic excuse of a man.” 4 Ten years. I had so many chances to come back and find him. But I was afraid of not being successful enough, of not being worthy to stand before him. I waited for success, and meanwhile, he fell into hell. “Get the car,” I stood up, grabbing my keys and the old passbook. “St. Jude’s Hospital.” In the hospital hallway, the sharp smell of antiseptic hung thick in the air. As soon as I stepped out of the elevator, I heard a mocking laugh. Near the billing window, Wright was leaning against the wall, clutching a payment slip. Margo and Brody stood opposite him. “Oh, Wright, why do you have to be so stubborn?” Margo sighed, her hands in her pockets, putting on a show of pity. “Your mother can’t wait. Just sign this waiver relinquishing all rights to the patents, admitting I was the sole developer.” She pulled out a stack of cash—about ten thousand dollars. “Think of this as a loan. You don’t have to pay it back. Call it a favor for old times’ sake.” Wright stared at the cash, his fingers trembling. “Margo,” his voice was barely a whisper, but it carried a deadly weight. “Those patents… you stole them from my computer while my mother was in the ICU. You drained the company, set me up to take the fall, and now you want to cut off my mother’s life support.” He looked up, his once-bright eyes bloodshot. “Aren’t you afraid of karma?” Margo flinched slightly, embarrassed by the public accusation, but quickly recovered her cold sneer. “Wright, watch your mouth. You signed the papers. You’re a blacklisted debtor now. Who’s going to believe you? If you don’t sign this waiver today, your mother gets evicted from her room tomorrow.” “Come on, Margo, why waste your breath?” Brody smirked, grabbing her arm. “I told you, Wright’s always been too proud for his own good.” He turned to Wright, mock-sympathetic. “Wright, don’t look at me like that. We’re doing you a favor. Margo pulled some strings to get this cash from the company account. Just take it and pay the bill before your mom runs out of time.” Wright didn’t look at him. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and when he opened them, they were dead. Empty. He slowly reached out his hand toward the cash. For his mother, he was going to bend the spine he had kept straight his entire life. Just as his fingers were about to touch the bills, a hand shot out from the side, grabbing his wrist. Wright froze, turning his head in shock. I looked at him—at his hollow cheeks, at the lingering despair in his eyes. The rage inside me exploded like a volcano. I pulled him firmly behind me, turning to face Margo. “The money,” I said, my voice low, carrying a dangerous, quiet malice. “I’m paying it.”

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I clutched the envelope containing my positive pregnancy test, practically floating as I walked into my mother’s house. I wanted to surprise her. We were sitting down for dinner when she looked up, her expression suddenly turning nostalgic. “Do you remember when you were little and you’d come to my office?” she asked, setting her fork down. “One of my coworkers, Mrs. Gallagher—her son used to run over just to play with you. Jack.” I smiled, a warm flush rising to my cheeks. “Of course I do.” Mom smiled too, but there was a quiet, heavy look in her eyes. “And do you remember Darcy? Mrs. Michell’s girl from next door. She was such a tomboy, always wiping mud on your face just to get a reaction out of you, and Jack would always chase her down to get back at her for you.” My ears burned at the mention of his name. My fingers slipped into my bag, ready to pull out the lab results and slide them across the table. Then, Mom spoke, her voice dropping to a soft, cautious whisper. “Jack is marrying her this Wednesday.” My hand froze inside my bag. Before the words could fully process in my brain, the front door clicked open behind me. Mrs. Michell walked right in, Darcy and Jack trailing closely behind her. It was Mrs. Michell’s first time marrying off a daughter, and she had come to consult my mother about the final wedding details. Beneath the table, I slipped my phone out. My last text exchange with Jack was from yesterday. His message read: “Wait for me. I’m going to marry you, I promise.” When I looked up, Jack and Darcy were standing side by side, her hand tucked comfortably into the crook of his elbow. The sight of them blurred into a smear of agonizing color. “Jack, you lied to me.” … “What’s wrong, Iris? Are you not feeling well?” Mrs. Michell glanced at me, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Is it because our Darcy is getting married and you’re sad to see her go? It makes sense. You two have always been best friends.” The corners of my mouth twitched into a hollow mimicry of a smile. I kept my head down, watching a single, heavy tear escape my eye and splatter onto the pregnancy report tucked under my thigh. “Yeah,” I whispered. I forced myself to look up, holding Jack’s gaze. “I’m really going to miss her.” I saw his hand clench into a tight fist at his side. He looked at me, his eyes swimming with a dark, indecipherable complexity. Darcy tightened her grip on his arm, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Iris. The three of us grew up together. Even after Jack and I are married, we’re never going to leave you behind.” My fingers crumpled the paper in my lap, a sharp, physical ache slicing through my chest. I couldn’t sit there for another second. I stood up abruptly and bolted upstairs to my bedroom, slamming the door behind me. The tears came in violent, suffocating waves, but I stuffed a fist into my mouth to choke back the sobs. How could I even begin to explain this? How could I tell my mother that Jack had been my secret lover for five years? That I was carrying his baby? That he had promised, just yesterday, to spend the rest of his life with me? I slid down the back of the door, pulling my knees to my chest, weeping in the dark. Suddenly, my phone buzzed. A message from Jack. “I can explain everything. Please don’t make a scene here. It’s not good for Darcy.” The phone slipped from my fingers, clattering onto the hardwood floor. The tears on my lips tasted bitter and cold. I stood up, walked over to the trash can, and threw the pregnancy report inside. The baby was only eight weeks old. I had spent the morning dreaming of the moment I would tell Jack he was going to be a father. Now, there was no point. I opened my desk drawer. Resting inside was a relocation contract for a multinational firm’s overseas office. The signature line at the bottom was still blank, waiting for my name. I had received it a week ago, but I had put it aside because Jack had promised he was ready to marry me. Now, all I wanted was to run. To be as far away from them as humanly possible. Without another second of hesitation, I unscrewed my pen and signed my name. Just as I set the pen down, the door clicked open behind me. “Iris.” It was Darcy. She walked over and took my hands in hers. “I know you and Jack have been together.” My head snapped up. I stared at her, my heart hammering against my ribs. “You… you knew?” Growing up, Darcy had always been the mischievous one. She loved to tease me, often driving me to tears, but she was also fiercely protective. She was my only real friend. In middle school, when a boy stuck chewing gum in my hair, Darcy had lunged at him, punching him until his nose bled. Her mother had beaten her ragged for it when they got home, but Darcy had just leaned against the wall, flashing me a crooked, gap-toothed grin. The next day, Jack had waited until that same boy fell asleep in class and smeared a handful of gum all over his head. On our walks home from school, Darcy and Jack would bicker and tease each other, refusing to back down until they dragged me into it, demanding I choose which of them I loved more. Those golden sunsets had witnessed the slow, beautiful unfolding of our lives. But I never could have imagined a day where they would stand before me as husband and wife—let alone a day where Darcy would look me in the eye and tell me she had known about my secret relationship all along. My fingers went icy. I shook so hard I could barely form words. “Then… then why? How could you…” Darcy’s lips curved into a sweet, flawless smile. “Iris, think about it. Since we were kids, I’ve always let you have everything. I’ve always protected you.” She squeezed my hands. “Just this once, let me have Jack. Okay?” “What—” Before I could even process her words, she threw herself backward, her shoulder slamming into my trash can and knocking it over. I instinctively lunged forward to catch her, but the door burst open. Jack rushed in and shoved me hard. I flew backward, my head cracking against the sharp corner of the bookshelf. A blinding white pain flared behind my eyes, and I gasped, clutching the back of my skull. Jack was already on his knees, holding Darcy, his face pale with panic. “Darcy, are you okay?” Then he looked up at me, his eyes stripped of all tenderness, leaving only cold, furious accusation. “Why the hell did you push her?!” I pulled my hand back from my head. My fingers were slick with bright, warm blood. Jack froze. A flicker of deep guilt washed over his features. “I… Iris, I’m sorry. I just panicked. Are you okay?” Darcy let Jack help her to her feet, shaking her head weakly. “It’s fine, Jack. I just lost my footing. It wasn’t Iris’s fault.” Downstairs, Mrs. Michell called up, asking them to come down and decide on the catering menu. I didn’t say a word. I pulled myself up using the edge of the desk, keeping my back to them. Darcy led Jack out of the room. Just before he crossed the threshold, he paused, throwing a complicated, lingering look back at me. That night, a text message lighted up my screen. “Iris, I’m so sorry about earlier. Does your head hurt?” I didn’t reply. The next morning, I went to the clinic. I never expected to run into him there. He intercepted me in the lobby, his face etched with genuine concern. “What are you doing at the hospital? Are you sick?” I ignored him, trying to step around him toward the elevators. Jack blocked my path, his expression desperate. “Iris, please. Just let me explain. I—” “Jack?” Darcy’s voice cut through the sterile air of the lobby. “What are you two doing?” She marched over, her eyes already brimming with tears. “Iris, I know you’ve always loved Jack. But our wedding is in three days. Do you really have to do this now? Do you really have to chase him here?” She looked at me, her voice trembling with theatrical betrayal. “We are supposed to be best friends. How can you be so cruel to me?” The people waiting in the lobby began to turn, whispers rising like a slow tide. “What’s going on? Is she trying to steal her best friend’s fiancé?” “Right before the wedding? How shameless.” “People have no morals these days.” The murmurs were low, but each one felt like a physical blow against my chest. “That’s not what this is!” I gasped, my eyes darting to Jack, pleading with him to say something. Anything. Just one word of truth. But Jack took a step back, positioning himself firmly at Darcy’s side, directly opposite me. He looked at me as if I were a stranger. Five years ago, on the night he confessed his love to me under the city lights, he had sworn he would never let me suffer. He had promised to protect me from the world. I bit my lower lip so hard I tasted copper, forcing the tears back. I turned to leave, but Darcy lunged forward and snatched the medical folder from my hands. “You’re pregnant!” she shrieked, her voice echoing off the high ceilings of the lobby, ensuring everyone heard. “Whose baby is it? Is it… is it Jack’s?” Her voice cracked, tears streaming down her face. Jack’s head snapped toward me, his eyes wide with utter shock. But a second later, Darcy let out a choked sob, collapsing against his chest. He instinctively wrapped his arms around her, shielding her like a precious treasure. “That’s impossible,” Jack said, his voice flat, looking at me with cold detestation. “I’ve never even touched her. I have no idea whose baby that is.” I stood frozen, a chill spreading through my veins until I couldn’t feel my fingers. My mind flashed back to two months ago. The way he had held me in the dark, tracing my jawline with his thumb. “Iris, I want to build a home with you. I want a family.” Now, he was holding another woman, telling the world he had never touched me. A sudden, volatile wave of fury erupted from the hollow ache in my chest. Why should I protect him? Why should my five years of devotion be dragged through the mud while they played the victims? I let out a cold, sharp laugh, looking them both dead in the eye. “Yes,” I said, my voice carrying clearly through the silent lobby. “The baby is Jack’s.” “We’ve been together for five years. Three days ago, he promised he was going to marry me. Darcy, if anyone is the homewrecker here, it’s you.” The whispers in the lobby died instantly. Darcy stared at me, her mouth hanging open, utterly blindsided by my willingness to tear down the facade in public. Jack looked paralyzed. He had kept our relationship hidden for years, always pleading that the timing wasn’t right, that we had to wait. And because I loved him, because he was so sweet to me and always made me feel like his priority in private, I had agreed. I had waited five years. I had thought this pregnancy would finally bring us into the light. Instead, it brought me his wedding announcement to someone else. It was a sickening joke. I looked at Darcy one last time. “But don’t worry. You can keep him. I don’t want Jack, and I don’t want this baby.” Without waiting for a response, I pushed through the crowd and walked out. I thought I heard Jack call my name from somewhere behind me, but I didn’t care anymore. The operating room was freezing. The anesthetic needle stung like ice, and the overhead surgical lamps were so bright they made my head spin. I closed my eyes, letting a final tear slip into my hair, whispering a quiet, private goodbye to the tiny life that would never be. An hour and a half later, I walked out of the clinic, keeping one hand pressed against the wall to steady myself. The dull, throbbing ache in my lower abdomen was excruciating, but I forced myself to keep moving. My phone buzzed. A text from Jack. “Iris, don’t you dare get rid of the baby. Just wait until after the wedding. I will explain everything to you!” I didn’t reply. I turned the phone off. By the time I reached our neighborhood, dusk had fallen, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple. As I approached our building, the neighbors—people who had known me since I was a child—stared at me with cold, disgusted eyes. Mrs. Michell was standing by the mailboxes. As I walked past, she spat on the ground. “Shameless,” she muttered. I stopped, my hand clamping tightly around her wrist. “What is your problem, Mrs. Michell?” She shoved my hand off with sneering disdain. “Why don’t you go inside and look at your mother? You’re practically killing her.” My heart dropped. I didn’t waste another second arguing. I bolted up the stairs and threw open our front door. My mother was lying on her bed, her face paper-white, gasping for air. I fell to my knees beside her, grabbing her hand. “Mom! What’s wrong? Is it your heart? Did you take your medicine?” I reached frantically toward her nightstand to find her inhaler and pills, but she clutched my sleeve, her grip weak but desperate. Her eyes were red, filled with a devastating mix of pain and love. “They’re saying… they’re saying you’re pregnant with Jack’s baby. Iris, is it true?” I froze, the silence stretching between us like a physical weight. I lowered my head, and the tears fell silently onto her bedsheets. Suddenly, Mom let out a violent, hacking cough. A thick splatter of dark red blood spilled from her lips. “Mom!” I panicked, trying to catch the blood with my bare hands, watching in horror as it stained the floorboards. She squeezed my hand with a sudden, terrifying burst of strength. “Iris… tell me. Did Jack… did he lie to you?” I nodded, choking on my own tears. Mom’s expression hardened, a fierce, protective fire flaring in her pale eyes. “I’m going to kill that bastard.” Summoning some impossible reservoir of maternal rage, she pushed me aside and stumbled out of the room. I tried to follow, but my foot slipped on the slick floor. By the time I scrambled up and ran outside, Mom was already crossing the street. Across the road, Jack and Darcy were walking hand-in-hand, laughing as they shared an iced coffee. Mom was yelling, blind to everything but them. She didn’t see the heavy delivery truck barreling down the avenue. “Mom!!!” In that split second, the world lost all sound. The only thing I could see was my mother’s body hitting the pavement, the violent spray of red against the asphalt. I fell to my knees beside her, cradling her head in my lap, my chest tearing open with a pain so vast and sharp I couldn’t breathe. “Mom… please… wake up… please…” The tears blinded me, but through the haze, I saw Darcy grab Jack’s arm on the other side of the street. He made a move to run toward us, but Darcy shook her head, holding him back. And he stayed. He just stood there on the pavement, his hands clenched into tight fists, staring at us as my mother died in my arms. At the funeral, Jack and Darcy showed up. The moment I saw them, a wild, primal rage took over. I lunged forward, shoving them toward the exit. “Get out! Get the hell out of here!” Darcy looked at me with wide, sorrowful eyes. “Iris, please. We just wanted to pay our respects.” “Shut up!” I grabbed the collar of her coat and delivered a stinging slap across her face. “Don’t play innocent with me, Darcy! I know who spread those rumors! Why did you do it? My mother loved you! She treated you like her own daughter for years!” I raised my hand to strike her again, but Jack lunged forward, grabbing my wrist. With a harsh shove, he threw me backward. I collided with the memorial table, and my mother’s framed portrait slid off, crashing onto the floor. The glass shattered into a million pieces. “Enough!” Jack yelled, stepping in front of Darcy to shield her. “Darcy has been worried sick about you, and you’re acting like a lunatic!” “Do you even know what you’ve—” “Jack!” Darcy interrupted quickly, pulling at his arm. “Don’t. Her mom just passed away. She’s grieving. I understand why she’s angry.” She looked past Jack’s shoulder, meeting my gaze with a chillingly sweet expression. “We’ll leave. We can come back another day.” Darcy wrapped her arm tightly around Jack’s. “Iris, you’re my best friend. Our wedding is tomorrow. Please… you have to be there.” They walked out. I collapsed onto the floor, clutching my mother’s ruined portrait to my chest, screaming until my throat was raw. In less than forty-eight hours, I had lost my baby, my mother, and the man I thought I would spend forever with. I stared at the empty doorway where they had just walked out, a cold, dark resolve settling over my grief. “You want me at your wedding?” “Fine. I’ll be there. And I’m bringing a gift.” The next day, I wore a sleek, elegant dress and high heels. I pushed open the heavy double doors of the chapel. Jack and Darcy were standing at the altar, preparing to exchange rings. As soon as I entered, the entire room fell dead silent. Mrs. Michell immediately marched down the aisle to intercept me. “What are you doing here? Today is my daughter’s wedding! Don’t you dare ruin this. Get out!” She reached out to grab my shoulder, but I stepped aside, letting her stumble past. Jack’s mother, Mrs. Gallagher, stood up next. She didn’t look as angry as Mrs. Michell, but she walked over and took my hand with a look of patronizing pity. “Iris, sweetheart. I know you and Jack grew up together, and it’s natural to have feelings. But he’s marrying Darcy today. If you have any respect for our families, please don’t do this.” Every eye in the room was pinned on me, heavy with judgment. I let out a soft, humorless laugh, pulling my hand away and flashing the gold-embossed invitation. “They invited me. Is there something wrong with a best friend showing up?” Darcy, holding up the hem of her white gown, hurried down the altar steps toward us. “It’s fine, Mrs. Gallagher. I invited Iris. We’re best friends, after all.” Mrs. Michell glared at me, her voice dripping with venom. “Her house is still practically warm with death. It’s bad luck to have her here.” I looked at her, my face completely expressionless. “Mrs. Michell, when you needed a down payment for your house last year, my mother handed you fifteen thousand dollars from her savings without a second thought. And now you’re talking about bad luck?” I held out my hand. “Pay it back, then. Fifteen thousand, six hundred. Since we were neighbors, I won’t even charge you interest.” Mrs. Michell’s face turned an ugly shade of purple. Jack stepped down from the altar, his brow furrowed in irritation. “Iris, do you really have to make a scene like this?” Mrs. Michell sneered, her voice rising so the entire room could hear. “Everyone knows why she’s here! My poor daughter was blind to think this girl was her friend. She’s been trying to seduce Jack for years, and now she’s trying to ruin her wedding!” Gasps rippled through the pews. “I heard she tried to claim she was pregnant with his baby.” “To do that to her own best friend? How awful.” “Her mother literally died of shame because of her. Unbelievable.” I clenched my fists so hard my nails bit into my palms, the physical pain grounding me. I looked at Jack, then at Darcy. “Don’t worry,” I said, my voice smooth and steady. “I’m only here to give you your wedding gift.” Darcy’s shoulders relaxed slightly, a look of smug relief washing over her face. Only Jack remained guarded, his eyes scanning me suspiciously. I walked right past them, stepping up to the altar, and took the microphone from the stunned officiant’s hand. Turning to face the crowd, I spoke clearly into the mic, my voice echoing off the stained glass windows. “Everyone, I am here today to offer my deepest blessings to the bride and groom. To celebrate their love, please turn your attention to the projector screen.”

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I can see how much people love me. Literally. When my lab partner asked to copy my homework and I refused, his number plummeted to zero in a blink. The day I caught my boyfriend cheating, his stat took a nose-dive off a cliff. The only number that ever truly terrified me was my mother’s. I lived in constant dread of watching her percentage drop. Fortunately, for eighteen years, the flashing neon digits above her head remained a steady, unwavering 100. She was the kind of mother who would sever ties with judgmental relatives just to shield me, who would bring home the absolute best of everything and lay it at my feet. Countless times, I whispered a silent prayer of gratitude for having the best mother in the world. Until two weeks ago. She came to visit me at school. I looked up, and a sharp, blinding glare pierced my eyes: [85]. My chest tightened as if squeezed by an invisible fist. Panic set in. I spent the next fortnight in a manic spiral, picking apart every conversation, every grade, desperately searching for what I had done to disappoint her. Until today. Today, she brought home a girl. A girl in faded, oversized clothes, with large, trembling eyes. The biological daughter. Switched at birth eighteen years ago in a chaotic county hospital. My mother held my hand so tightly my knuckles turned white. Tears streamed down her face as she swore to me, “Diana, don’t be afraid. Even though she’s back, you will always, always be my favorite girl.” But the exact millisecond the word “favorite” left her lips, the digits above her head flickered violently, tumbling downward like a malfunctioning stock ticker: [20]. Looking up at that bleeding, crimson number, a strange, quiet relief washed over me. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been good enough. It was simply that I didn’t belong here anymore. … I gently pulled my hand from my mother’s grip. “Mom, I’m fine.” The girl stood in the marble entryway, looking so fragile and raw it made my heart ache. Her name was Bella. Eighteen years ago, in a busy hospital ward, a tired nurse on shift-change mixed up our ankle bands. Bella and I were sent home with the wrong families. My adoptive parents eventually struck gold in real estate, moving us into a sprawling estate in Westchester, while Bella stayed with my biological parents in a rundown Appalachian town, scraping by through eighteen years of poverty. “Come in, Bella. Come,” my mother said, her voice dropping to a soft, reverent whisper, as if she were handling blown glass. “This is your home now.” Bella stepped over the threshold. Her eyes darted from the ten-foot oil painting in the foyer to the dripping crystal chandelier, then down to the polished marble floors. Her fingers instinctively clawed at the frayed cuffs of her sweater. My mother noticed. She leaned down, closing her manicured hands over Bella’s rough ones. “Don’t be afraid, sweetheart. All of this… it’s yours now.” It was an exquisitely tender gesture. I stood frozen in the hallway, trying to remember the last time she had held my hand with that kind of desperate, protective warmth. I couldn’t. After dinner, my mother led Bella upstairs. “Bella, I’ve put together a room for you. Let me know if there’s anything else you need.” She threw open the double doors of the south-facing guest suite. Floor-to-ceiling windows, a walk-in closet, a soaking tub. It was the crown jewel of our guest wing. Bella hovered at the threshold, shifting her weight. “This… this is too big. I don’t think I can sleep here. Just give me a small closet or something.” Her voice was thick with genuine, overwhelming humility. My mother pulled her into a tight embrace. “You’ve suffered for eighteen years, my sweet girl. I want to give you the world to make up for it.” She guided Bella through the room, sweeping open the double doors of the closet. “Tomorrow, we’re going to Fifth Avenue. We’ll get your measurements taken, and we’ll have your wardrobe custom-tailored every season.” Bella didn’t say a word. She bit her lower lip, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. That was all it took to break my mother. She pulled Bella to her chest, her own voice cracking with a maternal agony. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry I let you suffer out there for so long.” Bella buried her face in my mother’s shoulder, her frame trembling with quiet sobs. I leaned against the doorframe, watching the tableau play out. Above my mother’s head, the red numbers flickered again. From [20], they ticked down to [17]. I turned on my heel and walked back to my own room. Before bed, there was a soft knock on my door. “Diana,” my mother murmured. She sat on the edge of my mattress, taking my hand in hers. “I know this is incredibly hard on you. But Bella… she’s had such a brutal life. I have to make it right.” She looked at me, her eyes still red and swollen. “You’re the older sister here. Can you help me look after her? Please?” “Of course, Mom.” When I said yes, the number above her head didn’t budge. A cold, static [17]. She let out a long sigh of relief, leaning down to press a soft kiss to my forehead. “My good, sensible Diana. I knew I could count on you.” She stood up and left. Her soft footsteps padded down the hallway, but instead of turning toward the master wing, they veered off, slipping into Bella’s room. Through the thin drywall, her muffled voice carried over to me. “Bella, sweetheart? Are the blankets warm enough? Do you want me to stay with you tonight?” I stared blankly at the ceiling. Quietly, without my permission, tears began to track down my temples. A week after Bella arrived, my mother enrolled her in my school. Oakridge Prep was the most prestigious private academy in the state, boasting a tuition of forty thousand dollars a year, populated entirely by the heirs of old money and political dynasties. The rumors had spread faster than wildfire. When I walked into homeroom on Monday morning, every eye in the room locked onto me like heat-seeking missiles. The first one to say something to my face was Brittany. She sat directly behind me; her father was a ruthless real estate mogul, and she had inherited his sharp, cutting tongue. “Well, well. If it isn’t Diana Westbrook,” Brittany drawled, propping her designer boots onto her desk. “So, word on the street is you’re a counterfeit. I heard the real Westbrook daughter actually has some decent genes.” I ignored her, unpacking my binder. “Oh, come on, don’t be like that,” she whispered, leaning over my shoulder, her perfume cloying and suffocating. “What does that make you now? A squatter? You’ve been sitting in her throne for eighteen years. Don’t you think it’s time to pay rent?” “Mind your own business, Brittany.” “Just making conversation.” She smirked, leaning back in her chair. “It’s just that your social stock just took a major hit. We all need to know where we stand with you now, right?” I gripped my pen so hard the plastic groaned under my knuckles. Between periods, the whispers in the hallway were intentionally, performatively loud. “Did you hear? Her biological parents are literally blue-collar townies in West Virginia.” “So those Chanel bags and Saint Laurent boots she wore last semester… she bought all of that with someone else’s trust fund?” “Ugh. If I were her, I’d have crawled into a hole and died of embarrassment by now.” I quickened my pace, keeping my gaze fixed on the floor, pretending the words weren’t tearing through me. But the real blow didn’t come from the bullies. It came when I realized my best friend had already jumped ship. Her name was Lauren. We had been inseparable since sixth grade. Seven years of sleepovers, shared secrets, and late-night panic attacks. On Wednesday, I went to find her at lunch. From across the cafeteria, I spotted her sitting at our usual table by the window. Sitting across from her was Bella. They were laughing. Lauren’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second when she saw me approaching. “Diana! Hey! Come sit down.” I slipped into the booth beside her. Bella offered me a soft, timid smile. “Hi, Diana.” Lauren pushed her plate of chicken tenders toward Bella. “Eat up, Bella. You’re practically skeletal. We need to fatten you up.” She turned to me, her expression a mix of guilt and forced cheerfulness. “Bella doesn’t really know anyone yet. I figured I’d show her around, help her get adjusted.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Sure.” Throughout lunch, Lauren kept her focus entirely on Bella, asking about her life in West Virginia, her favorite music, whether she wanted to go to the mall this weekend. Bella answered every question with a quiet, fragile gratitude. “You’re so nice to me, Lauren. I’ve never been to a place like this. I feel so out of my depth…” Lauren beamed, practically glowing with the satisfaction of being a savior. She threw an arm around Bella’s shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry about it. If anyone gives you trouble, you come straight to me. I’ve got your back.” I sat beside them, chewing on dry food that tasted like cardboard. By the time the bell rang, Lauren hadn’t directed more than three sentences to me. That afternoon, I texted her: “Hey, still down for the gallery opening this Saturday?” Her reply came back almost instantly: “Actually, I promised Bella I’d take her shopping this weekend. Next time!” She had never canceled on me before. Never. On Friday, I stood by the school gates, waiting for our family driver. Bella came jogging up behind me, breathless, her cheeks flushed pink. She reached out and lightly caught my sleeve. “Diana, wait. Lauren is taking me to get a new phone tomorrow. Can you please come with us?” Her face was a mask of sweet, earnest pleading. But as she let go of my arm, I caught the tiniest, almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of her lips. A flicker of triumph. I kept my voice flat. “I have plans.” “Oh. Okay,” she said softly. She didn’t press. Instead, she spun around and skipped back toward Lauren, who was waiting near the parking lot. They linked arms and walked away. I climbed into the back of the town car and closed my eyes. I could feel my life, my relationships, slipping through my fingers like dry sand. No matter how hard I clenched my fists, I couldn’t hold onto any of it. On Monday, I finally received the recommendation letter I had been dreaming of. My gut instinct, a relic of eighteen years of habit, was to share the joy with my mother. I had been preparing my application for Oxford University since my sophomore year. I had taken the SATs twice, completed two research programs with Columbia professors, and won awards in four national academic competitions. And now, I had the golden ticket: a personal recommendation letter written by the headmaster himself. Only one student per graduating class received it. When I got home that evening, the excitement was practically vibrating under my skin. But when I walked into the living room, my mother was already waiting for me. The sealed envelope containing my letter was resting on the marble coffee table. “Diana, sit down. I need to talk to you about something,” she said, her expression tight and conflicted. “Bella’s education in West Virginia was… lacking, to say the least. She doesn’t have the grades to get into a top-tier state school here. I want to send her abroad, but she has no extracurriculars, no research papers, nothing.” She looked up at me, her eyes pleading. “Diana… can you let Bella have this recommendation letter?” I stared at her, convinced I had misheard. “Mom, I’ve spent two years building my portfolio for this.” “I know, I know,” she said, catching my hands. “But you’re brilliant, Diana. Your SAT scores are perfect. You could get into any Ivy League school on your own merit. Bella isn’t like you. Without this letter, she has no shot at a future.” “This is my dream, Mom. I earned this.” “Diana, please. It’s not that I don’t care about your hard work—” “Then don’t ask me to give it away,” I snapped. It was the first time in my life I had ever spoken back to her. My mother’s expression instantly hardened. The warmth vanished from her eyes, replaced by a cold, sharp distance. “Diana Westbrook,” she said, her voice dropping an octave. “Even if you keep that letter, who do you think is paying your tuition? Fifty thousand dollars a year. Do you have that kind of cash lying around?” I froze. My throat closed up. “Every single thing you’ve eaten, worn, and used for eighteen years was paid for by our money. Bella is my biological child. She suffered in poverty while you lived in luxury. If I want to give her a chance at a real education, is that really so terrible of me?” The look she gave me was stripped of all maternal warmth. It was the gaze of a creditor collecting a debt. “If you feel so hard done by, then fund your own life.” I stood there, the blood draining from my face. My whole body went numb. “Fine,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “If you think you’re so independent, then don’t touch a single dime of our money,” she said, standing up and pointing a perfectly manicured finger toward the foyer. “Get out. Don’t come back until you’re ready to apologize.” I looked up. The number above her head had dropped to a sickening, bleeding [6]. I swallowed the tears threatening to spill, grabbed my backpack, and walked out into the cold night. I spent that night huddled on a bench in a public park, shivering. The next afternoon, a text came through from my mother. “Diana, I was too harsh yesterday. Come home. Bella’s welcome-home party is tonight, and I want you there. We’re a family, we can work this out.” My resolve crumbled. I told myself she was still my mother, that eighteen years of love couldn’t just vanish. I went back. The party was an extravagant affair at a luxury hotel, with over two hundred guests from Westchester’s elite. Bella stood on the elevated stage, draped in a custom-designed silk gown, bathed in a warm spotlight. My mother held her hand, raising it slightly as she addressed the crowd. “This is my biological daughter, Bella. Today, she is finally home.” The room erupted into thunderous applause. I stood in the dim shadow of the back corner, wearing a simple black dress I’d hastily pulled from my closet. Up on stage, my mother was practically glowing with pride, her arm wrapped tightly around Bella’s shoulders. The number floating above her head was [5]. Halfway through the evening, I went to the restroom to escape the noise. But as I pushed the heavy door open, I froze. Resting on the marble vanity was a delicate diamond necklace. It was a Tiffany pendant—the very one my mother had given me for my seventeenth birthday. I knew I had left it in my jewelry box at home this morning. How was it here? Suddenly, a sharp gasp sounded behind me. “Oh my god!” Bella stood in the doorway, flanked by three of our mother’s wealthy friends. Her eyes were wide, staring at the vanity. “Diana… that’s the necklace Mom gave me as a welcome gift. Why do you have it?” “What?” “I left it in the powder room earlier, and when I went back, it was gone. I’ve been looking everywhere for it…” Bella’s eyes welled with tears, her voice trembling. “Diana… did you… did you take it by mistake?” She didn’t use the word “stole.” But she didn’t have to. The silent accusations from the women standing behind her were loud enough. “I didn’t touch your necklace,” I said, my voice hardening. “This is my—” “What’s going on in here?” my mother’s voice cut through the tension. She walked in, her gaze darting from the diamond pendant to Bella’s tear-stained face. “Diana, why do you have Bella’s necklace?” “This isn’t her necklace, Mom. This is the one you gave me last year—” “Don’t lie to me!” my mother snapped, her brow furrowing deep. “I bought this piece last week specifically for Bella.” She snatched the necklace off the counter and flipped the pendant. Engraved on the back was a small, delicate letter “B”. Not my initials. Bella’s. It wasn’t mine. My mouth opened, but no sound came out. Bella whispered, “Maybe Diana just got confused… it’s okay. Please don’t be mad at her.” The more gracious Bella tried to appear, the sharper the glares from the onlookers became. My mother handed the necklace back to Bella, then turned her full attention to me. There was no rage in her eyes. Instead, there was something far worse, something that suffocated me from the inside out: utter disappointment. “Diana, is it really so impossible for you to share this life with her?” she asked, her voice quiet but heavy. “I am so incredibly disappointed in you.” Above her head, the digital display flickered violently, crashing from [6] straight down to [1]. I stared at that [1]. A cold, hysterical laugh escaped my lips. I spun around and walked out of the restroom, and then out of the hotel. When I reached the lobby, I stopped and looked back one last time. The heavy oak doors of the ballroom were shut, but the muffled swell of classical music and polite laughter leaked through. Bella was in there, basking in the light and the blessings of my former life. And I was out here in the dark. No longer a Westbrook. That night, I packed a single suitcase of my own belongings. I spent the night at a cheap motel near the highway, and the next morning, I bought a one-way bus ticket to West Virginia. It was a grueling six-hour ride. The highway eventually gave way to winding mountain roads, the lush pine trees of the Appalachians closing in around us. My phone signal steadily dropped from four bars to one, before blinking out entirely. The bus sputtered to a halt in a fading, dusty mining town. I paid a local guy twenty bucks to take me the rest of the way on the back of his pickup truck. When we pulled up to the edge of the dirt road, I saw a middle-aged woman standing by a rusty mailbox. Her skin was deeply tanned and weathered from years of outdoor work, her hands rough and red. She was wearing a bright red winter coat that was clearly brand new; the paper price tag was still dangling from her sleeve. She was clutching a wrinkled school portrait—my photo. She kept looking up from the paper, frantically scanning the road. The moment our truck stopped and I climbed down, she froze. The photograph slipped from her fingers, fluttering into the dirt. “Diana?” she breathed, her voice cracking. I looked up at her head. Above her weathered hair, a soft, warm green number hovered: [83]. We had never met. Not once in eighteen years. Yet her love for me was already at eighty-three percent. “Mom,” I said. The word felt heavy and foreign on my tongue. Martha Greer’s tears spilled instantly. She lunged forward, throwing her arms around me and pulling me against her chest. There was no expensive French perfume. No soft cashmere. She smelled of cheap laundry detergent, woodsmoke, and sweat. “My baby… my baby is home,” she sobbed, her entire body shaking. Her calloused hands cupped the back of my head, holding me so tightly as if she feared I might evaporate if she let go. Their house was a small, wood-plank cottage with a tin roof, but inside, it was meticulously clean. On the worn wooden kitchen table, six steaming dishes were carefully laid out. A quiet, broad-shouldered man walked out of the kitchen carrying the final platter. His hands were thick with callouses, coal dust permanently embedded under his fingernails. When he saw me, his hands trembled, and he nearly dropped the dish. He set it down quickly, then wiped his palms on his stained apron over and over again. “Eat,” he muttered, his voice incredibly raspy. Just that one word. I glanced up. Above his head: [85]. Martha pulled me down onto a wooden chair, immediately piling food onto my plate. “We didn’t know what you liked,” she said, her eyes shining. “I made your dad buy everything we could find at the market. Try the trout—he caught it fresh from the creek this morning.” I took a bite of the fish. It was full of small bones, but it was incredibly sweet and fresh. “It’s delicious,” I whispered. Martha beamed, quickly standing up to ladle some soup for me. I lowered my head, and a hot tear slipped quietly into my bowl. That afternoon, Martha insisted on walking me down the town’s single main road. To every neighbor we passed, she proudly declared, “This is my daughter! My real girl!” Her smile was deep, carving lines into her face, far more radiant than my adoptive mother’s polished smile at the gala. Her number ticked up to [89]. Still rising. At dusk, she boiled a large pot of water on the stove and poured it into a plastic tub for me to soak my feet. “The mountain air gets cold at night,” she said softly. “Keep your feet warm so you don’t catch a chill.” I slipped my feet into the warm water, feeling the heat rise through my bones. At that moment, my phone buzzed. A single bar of signal had finally found its way through the valley. A deluge of notifications flooded my screen. Thirty-four missed calls from Catherine Westbrook. And right before my eyes, the number representing her love began to fluctuate wildly: [19]… [67]… [82]… still climbing.

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I peeled her shrimp for three years. Then, in front of a whole table of people, she said, “He’s not my boyfriend. He just does it because he wants to.” I didn’t say a word. I just slid the plate of shrimp back to the center of the table and wiped my hands. My phone lit up. It was a text from my mother: “The new place is finally finished. When are you bringing her over to see it?” I turned the phone face down. After that night, she never again saw the car that used to wait for her after work every single day. 1 The steam from the seafood boil blurred the faces across from me. It was the third time Sophie had nudged the conversation back to me. “William, you drive Chelsea home from work every single day. What’s the real story with you two?” I was midway through peeling a shrimp, the shell cracking against my thumb. Two seats down, Chelsea was staring at her phone, her thumb scrolling through texts, a soft smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “He’s not my boyfriend.” She didn’t even look up. Her voice wasn’t loud, but all six people at the table heard it clearly. Sophie’s mouth opened slightly, then snapped shut as she glanced my way. Across the table, the clinking of glasses paused. Suddenly, the heavy bubbling of the shared pot in the center of the table seemed incredibly loud—”simmer, simmer”. I kept my head down, pulling the tender meat clean from the tail and placing it gently on the edge of her plate. That was the third one. Right then, her phone rang. She answered it and immediately headed for the door, her voice trailing off as she stepped outside: “Chase? Yeah, is your stomach acting up again? The medicine is…” The door swung shut. Sophie leaned in, lowering her voice. “William, what are you even doing?” I didn’t answer. I picked up my chopsticks, took the shrimp back off the edge of her plate, and dropped it into the serving dish in the center. The discarded shells on my plate still carried the warmth of my hands. I took a long drag of my beer. It was freezing cold, burning all the way down to my chest. My phone vibrated. It was a text from my mom, attached with a photo. A bright living room, a lush pothos plant sitting by a floor-to-ceiling window, sunlight spilling across the light oak floors. Underneath, she’d typed: “Sweetie, the renovations are done. Do you like the curtain color? Didn’t you say she loves pale purple? When are you going to bring her by to see it?” The curtains were a soft lavender. Last month, I had taken three days off work and made six separate trips to the design district just to find that exact shade. I flipped the phone face down on the wooden table. When Chelsea pushed the door open and sat back down, she was still smiling. “Chase has a stomach ache. I need to drop some meds off for him in a bit,” she said to Sophie, before turning her gaze to me. “William, can you drive me to the pharmacy in a minute?” In the past, my answer would have been an instant “sure”. In the past, I would have pre-cooled the car to sixty-eight degrees, made sure there was a cold bottle of her favorite sugar-free sparkling water in the cup holder, and pulled up right to the curb. But tonight, I just looked at her. Her eyes were bright, her lips curved into a smile, but it was the exact same smile I’d seen three minutes ago—the one meant for the name “Chase” lighting up her screen. “I’ve been drinking. Can’t drive.” I set my fork down against my plate. “You should call an Uber.” She paused. It was barely a flicker of hesitation. Then she shrugged and nodded. “Alright.” She bent her head back over her phone. When dinner wrapped up, I trailed behind the group. The phone in my pocket buzzed again. My mom: “Don’t forget the built-in shelves in the spare bedroom. You said she loves mystery novels, so I had the carpenter add two extra rows.” The September wind slipped down my collar, sending a chill down my spine. I stood beneath the streetlamp outside the restaurant, the drift of exhaust from a nearby street food cart stinging my eyes until they watered. I dialed her number. “Hey, Mom.” “Oh, sweetie! Did you see the photos?” “Yeah, I saw them.” “Is it nice? What do you think of—” “Let’s just leave the apartment empty for now.” Silence stretched over the line for a few seconds. My mother didn’t push. She simply let out a quiet sigh and said, “Okay. Whatever you think is best.” I hung up and walked to the curb, watching the yellow cabs and ride-shares roll past one after another. No more sparkling water waiting in the passenger seat. I hailed a cab. I climbed in and gave the driver my own address. Not hers. For the first time. In three years, the very first time. 2 The next morning, my alarm woke me at six-thirty, right on schedule. My head felt heavy. I reached out to grab my phone off the nightstand—my routine had always been to text her first thing: “You awake?” My thumb hovered over the screen. Our chat history was frozen three days back: “I’ll pick you up after work tomorrow.” “K~” I set the phone back down. While brushing my teeth, white foam dripped down my chin. The face looking back at me from the mirror felt slightly unfamiliar, shadowed by dark circles under my eyes. I hadn’t slept well. Not out of heartbreak, exactly. But because of the sudden, staggering realization that every single habit I’d built over the last three years had revolved entirely around her. Waking up at six-thirty was solely to ensure I’d be parked downstairs by seven-twenty. The Greek yogurt that always stocked my fridge was there only because she liked to grab one on the rare occasions she stopped by. The soft throw blanket in my backseat was for when she complained about the autumn drafts. I opened the fridge. Three cups of Greek yogurt. Expiring tomorrow. I pulled one out and peeled back the foil. I took a bite. Too tart. I actually hated Greek yogurt. On my commute, my hands didn’t automatically turn the steering wheel at the usual intersection. I drove straight, crossed two traffic lights, and pulled directly into my office parking garage. It saved me forty minutes. The detour I used to take every day—the extra nine miles just to pass her apartment building, waiting for her to step out of the lobby, open the passenger door, slide in, and say, “Let’s go.” Three years. Every single workday. At least seven hundred times. I did the math. Seven hundred trips, nine extra miles each time. That was over six thousand miles. Enough to drive coast to coast across the country and back. At my desk, I booted up my computer. A calendar notification popped up in the bottom right corner: “Chelsea’s Company Anniversary—order flowers ahead.” I right-clicked. “Delete.” Claire walked past carrying two travel mugs and paused. “William, you’re early today.” “Yeah.” She set one of the mugs on my desk. “Black coffee. No sugar. I remember you saying you like it bitter.” “Thanks.” She took a couple of steps, then turned back. “Oh, by the way, the director looked over your quarterly proposal. Said it looked great. You’re presenting at the meeting next week.” I took a sip of the coffee. The bitterness coated my tongue, sharp and grounding. All day, my phone sat as quiet as a brick. At three-thirty in the afternoon, a text finally popped up. Chelsea: “Are you not coming today? Stuck in traffic?” I stared at it. I typed three words: “Busy with work.” After hitting send, I scrolled up. The entire thread was just me. “I’m here.” “I’m downstairs.” “Waiting outside.” “It’s raining, I brought an umbrella.” “Picked up your package for you.” Her replies were always monosyllabic. “K.” “Cool.” “Sure.” “K.” Three years of this. I scrolled up through five screens of chat history. There wasn’t a single “Thank you.” Not a single “I appreciate it.” I locked the phone, the screen turning black and reflecting my face back at me. Neutral. No anger. No lingering resentment. Just empty. At seven that evening, the phone buzzed again. Chelsea: “What about tomorrow?” I didn’t reply. I tossed the phone onto the sofa, turned on the TV, and picked a random channel. A commercial for laundry detergent came on, a woman smiling warmly at the camera. I turned the volume up two notches. Just enough to drown out any further vibrations. The next day, I didn’t go. Nor the day after that, or the day after that. A week went by. The Greek yogurts in the fridge expired. All three went down the kitchen sink. I folded the blanket from the backseat and shoved it into the bottom of a storage bin in the trunk. I reset my alarm to seven-fifteen. An extra forty-five minutes of sleep every single day. It felt surprisingly good. 3 On the eighth day, she called. It was ten-thirty at night. I had just stepped out of the shower, water dripping from my hair. Her name flashed on the screen three times before I slid to answer. “Hey.” “William, what have you been up to? You aren’t picking up my calls or answering my texts.” Her tone wasn’t frantic or worried. It sounded more like someone asking a plumber why he was late for a scheduled appointment. I rubbed the towel against the back of my neck, cold droplets sliding down under my collar. “I’ve been busy.” “With what?” “A project at work.” The line went quiet for a beat. “Oh… well, can you pick me up tomorrow? Chase is taking me to a play this weekend, and I wanted to leave a change of shoes in your car.” My grip tightened on the towel until my knuckles went white. Her logic was always so flawless—I was the utility; Chase was the destination. In her mind, there was absolutely no contradiction there. “I have a meeting tomorrow,” I said. “You’ll have to take a cab.” “Oh.” She didn’t push. “Okay then. Good luck with work.” She hung up. Swift and clean. Like every phone call we’d had over the last three years—she never lingered a second longer than necessary. I sat on the sofa, the dampness from my hair slowly soaking through the back of my t-shirt. The phone rang again. For a split second, I thought she was calling back. But the caller ID wasn’t hers. It was my mom. “Sweetie, you’re still up?” “Yeah, just finished showering.” “So… Mom wanted to tell you something. Please don’t be upset.” “What is it?” “That apartment… those mystery novels on the shelves in the spare bedroom. I boxed them up and took them out today.” “Okay.” “I put them in your old room back home. Don’t think of me as an intrusive mother… I just felt like having all those brand-new books sitting there collecting dust was such a waste.” Her voice was tentative, cautious. She was walking on eggshells around me. “That’s fine, Mom.” “Really? You’re not upset?” “Not at all.” I looked down, watching the water droplets on the hardwood floor slowly spread. “Actually, if you know anyone who likes those kinds of books, just give them away.” My mom let out a soft breath, her relief palpable. “Okay, sweetie. I’ll do that.” The weekend came. A new post popped up on my feed. It was Chelsea—a neatly arranged photo grid: theater tickets, artful latte foam, and a man’s hand resting casually on a steering wheel, a sleek watch peeking from his cuff. The caption was just one word: “Weekend.” That wasn’t my hand. I have a faded scar on the side of my right middle finger—a souvenir from a rough basketball game back in high school that never quite went away. The hand in the photo was smooth, clean, with perfectly manicured nails. In the comments, someone screamed: “Omg who is he?!” Chelsea replied with a single blushing emoji. I scrolled right past it. Like scrolling past an ad. On Monday, Claire tapped the partition of my cubicle. “William, team dinner after work. You in?” “Sure.” She raised an eyebrow. “Wow, that was fast. Usually, you tell me you have plans.” Usually, I had to leave by five o’clock to fight traffic and be downstairs by six to pick up Chelsea. “I used to have things to take care of,” I said. “Not anymore.” Claire didn’t pry. She just smiled and walked back to her desk. We grabbed some drinks at dinner that night. Claire sat next to me, her voice soft under the ambient noise of the restaurant. “You look much better lately.” “Do I?” “Yeah. You used to always look like you were racing against a clock. You seem… lighter now.” I clinked my glass against hers. “Cheers to that.” On my way home, my phone buzzed in the console. Chelsea: “William, my laptop screen just went completely blue. Can you come over and take a look?” It was 11:40 PM. In the past, I would have replied “Give me twenty minutes”, thrown on a jacket, driven the nine miles, and worked on it until the early hours of the morning. Tonight, I typed four words: “Try restarting it.” I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. I didn’t wait for a reply. I got home, brushed my teeth, and crawled into bed. My alarm was still set for seven-fifteen. The last image in my mind before I closed my eyes wasn’t her face. It was the photo my mother had sent.

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I’ve always been able to see exactly how much people despise me. It hovers over their heads like a digital readout, a raw metric of their secret resentment. Five years of marriage, and tonight was the first time Victoria didn’t come home. No answered calls, no returned texts. It wasn’t until the sky began to bruise with the pale light of dawn that the front door finally clicked open. I hurried to the foyer, my chest tight with worry. “Where were you?” She offered a soft, rehearsed explanation, her voice as gentle as it had always been. “Emergency at the office, sweetheart. I had to put my phone on silent.” But my eyes were locked on the space just above her head. My heart bottomed out. Since our wedding day, her disdain meter had been a solid, reassuring zero. But in that exact second, the number flickered. It jumped to 5. Panic set in. I was about to ask if I’d done something wrong, if I’d somehow hurt or annoyed her, when her phone buzzed on the entryway console. An incoming text. Behind a playful cartoon avatar, the sender’s contact name read “Brody”. Victoria instinctively turned her shoulder, shielding the screen from my view. But as she looked down, the faint reflection of her smiling lips caught in the windowpane. And right above her, the harsh red numbers surged again. “Disdain Level: 50.” … A single text. A forty-five-point leap into pure contempt. I clutched the medical scan results in my palm, my fingers going numb. I didn’t need to ask. I already knew the answer. Victoria turned back around. Seeing the color drain from my face, she stepped forward, wrapping her arms around me with a familiar, practiced tenderness. She tilted her chin up to press a soft kiss against my cheek. “Hey, stop worrying,” she murmured. “Work has just been insane lately. I should have texted you beforehand.” “Next time I have to stay late, I promise I’ll let you know.” I didn’t say a word. I was staring at her left hand. Her ring finger—where her wedding band usually sat—was bare. There was only a faint, pale indentation left in the skin. She noticed my gaze. Her hand instinctively curled into a tight fist, hiding the empty finger. “I took it off when I was washing my hands yesterday,” she said, her voice smooth but slightly too fast. “I think it slipped down the drain. It was getting old anyway. We can go buy a new one whenever we have some free time.” That ring. I had forged it myself when we got married. I had spent weeks in a local metal workshop, sweating over the forge, ending up with blistered, calloused hands. Back then, Victoria had cried when she saw it. She’d gently applied ointment to my burned skin, her voice thick with tears: “This is the most precious thing I’ve ever received. I’ll never take it off. I’ll never lose it.” For five years, even during the winters when her fingers swelled slightly and the band pinched, she’d never taken it off. Not once. And now, she was telling me it was gone with the casual indifference of a misplaced set of keys. Victoria was a terrible liar, though she probably didn’t realize it. Whenever she fabricated a story, she had a nervous habit of tightly pressing her lips together. I saw right through it. But I didn’t call her out. I walked over to the kitchen, tossing the medical report into the trash can on the way. There was no point. Sensing that I wasn’t going to press the issue, Victoria let out a quiet sigh of relief and headed into the master bathroom. As the hum of the shower started up, her phone buzzed again on the coffee table. The same cartoon avatar. As if possessed by someone else, I walked over. I punched in my birthday—the passcode we’d shared for years. The screen unlocked instantly. The boy was a new assistant in her department. Brody. Twenty-one years old. They had only been connected on the app for less than a week, yet the thread was an endless scroll. There were more messages here than Victoria and I had exchanged in the last five years of our marriage. A hot, blurry haze filled my eyes. I tried to read the words, but my tears kept falling onto the glass, smudging the screen. One tear fell directly onto Brody’s profile picture. I tapped it, and his social media feed opened up. And there, beneath the glare of the screen, was Victoria’s “lost” wedding ring. In the photo, the boy held the silver band in his open palm, grinning boyishly at the camera. The caption read: “I casually mentioned how much I liked it, and Ms. Crawford literally took it off her finger and handed it to me lol. If this isn’t being spoiled, I don’t know what is.” My fingers began to shake violently. A sharp, suffocating ache bloomed in my chest, so intense it made my knees weak. I had to lean against the wall to keep from collapsing. I had prepared myself for a lot of scenarios. But I never imagined this was how she had “lost” her ring. I remembered the night I met Victoria. My father had kicked me out of the house, stripping me of everything. I was sitting on a cold curb, without enough change to buy a cheap cup of instant ramen. She had stopped in front of me, handing me a bag of groceries and a warm carton of milk while I sobbed so hard I could barely breathe. Victoria, with her endless capacity for sympathy back then, couldn’t bear to leave me there. She took me back to her cramped, rented studio apartment. People always talk about the light that saves you from the dark—the savior trope. For years, Victoria was mine. She had literally pulled me out of the mud and built a home with me. Back then, I thought I was the luckiest man alive. Even if my own blood rejected me, I had found a woman who wanted to build a life with me. Who would have thought that before we even reached our seven-year itch, our marriage would disintegrate like this? “What do you think you’re doing?!” A sharp yell shattered my thoughts. Before I could even process the sound, Victoria lunged forward, ripping the phone out of my hands. She used so much force that I stumbled backward, my leg scraping hard against the sharp edge of the coffee table. A thin line of blood welled up instantly. When I looked up, the red numbers hovering above her head were blinding. “Disdain Level: 55.” “Jesse!” It was the first time she had ever used that cold, sharp tone with me. Her face was twisted in a look of pure disgust. “Snooping through my phone is incredibly toxic. There are boundaries, Jesse.” Then her eyes flicked down to the scrape on my leg. Her tightly knit brow softened, just for a fraction of a second. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you.” “I just… I really don’t appreciate you invading my privacy.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, my voice barely a whisper. “We’re married, Victoria.” Her frown returned, deeper this time. “Even married people need space, Jesse. We need to respect each other’s boundaries.” Without waiting for a response, she turned and walked into the home office. Before I could say another word, the heavy wooden door clicked shut. She locked it from the inside, shutting me out entirely. On the stove, the pot of sweet corn chowder—her favorite—was sizzling furiously. The bottom had scorched, filling the small kitchen with a bitter, burnt smell. I walked over and quietly turned off the burner. In the early days of our marriage, Victoria wasn’t like this. She had climbed her way up to the executive suite through sheer grit, becoming one of the most respected directors in her industry, yet she had always been incredibly tender toward her ordinary, quiet husband. Our friends used to tease me, saying marrying her was the single greatest stroke of luck in my life. Maybe I had listened to those compliments for too long. Maybe I had been naive enough to believe she was different from everyone else. Now I knew. She wasn’t different at all. I changed my clothes and went to work, keeping my head down. I didn’t call her, and I didn’t send a single text. Stepping back wasn’t just a tactical retreat; it was a matter of basic dignity. I knew when I wasn’t wanted. Maybe she felt a twinge of guilt, or maybe it was just a passing whim. Late that afternoon, a text from Victoria popped up on my screen. “Hey babe, let’s not fight. I booked a table at that new Italian place downtown to make it up to you.” Part of me wanted to refuse, but I knew we needed to talk. We couldn’t keep living in this suffocating silence. I agreed to meet her. When I arrived at the restaurant, I spotted her immediately through the floor-to-ceiling windows. She had an effortless, regal elegance that didn’t rely on designer labels. Even in a simple white linen dress with no jewelry, she commanded the room. But then my gaze shifted to the young man sitting next to her, and my throat tightened. He was holding a boba tea, taking a happy sip before smiling and pressing the straw directly to Victoria’s lips. Victoria laughed, leaning in to take a sip herself. The same cup. The same straw. There was no hesitation. The movement was so fluid, so casual, like a pair of college sweethearts in the middle of a honeymoon phase. Victoria had always been a germaphobe. She never shared food or drinks with anyone. Even if I offered her a bite of my food, she would politely but firmly decline. Yet here she was, drinking after another man without a second thought, her eyes sparkling with laughter. I stood outside the glass doors, my teeth clenched so tightly I could taste copper on my tongue. Even before I saw his face clearly, I knew. It was Brody. As if sensing my presence, Victoria looked up. Our eyes locked through the glass. The laughter vanished from her face instantly, replaced by a sudden, fleeting look of guilt. She stood up and hurried to the entrance, pulling me toward the table. “This is Brody, the new associate in my department,” she said quickly. “He didn’t have any dinner plans, so I told him he should tag along.” “The more the merrier, right?” With that single, breezy sentence, she effectively choked out any questions I might have asked. I forced my lips into a polite line, trying to keep my composure. A three-person marriage is certainly crowded, but it is anything but merry. Like the small round table before us, it was built for two. A third person meant someone was always squeezed out. Brody leaned back in his chair, offering a lazy, confident smile. “You must be Jesse. Wow, you look… a lot older than Victoria.” “Sorry for crashing your date night, man. I promise I’ll try not to be too much of a third wheel.” The mockery in his eyes was naked, a childish but deliberate provocation. The urge to turn around and walk out was overwhelming, but Victoria caught my arm, forcing me down into the chair beside her. “Come on, sit down. Brody’s just teasing you.” “He’s young, Jesse. Don’t be so sensitive. Let it go.” She smiled warmly, but above her head, the vivid red numbers flared. “Disdain Level: 65.” I hadn’t said a single word, yet my mere presence had cost me another five points of her respect. The waiter approached, placing a menu in front of Victoria. “Ma’am, the couples’ tasting menu you ordered last time is off the menu today, but you and your boyfriend can look at our new seasonal selections.” He handed the second menu to Brody. Brody didn’t bother correcting him. He just pointed at the page. “Sure, let’s do the new couples’ menu. It looks great.” Only after the waiter walked away did Brody look at me with a performative gasp of realization. “Oh, shoot. I’m so sorry, Jesse. I totally forgot you were here.” “But don’t worry, the portions are huge. Honestly, I have a tiny appetite. Last time, Victoria had to finish half of my plate anyway. We can just share.” Victoria tapped Brody’s forehead with a playful, reprimanding finger. “Stop misbehaving,” she chided softly. “You can’t offer Jesse your leftovers.” It was a scolding in theory, but her tone was soaked in affection. There was no real bite to it. “Jesse,” she said, pushing her menu toward me. “See if there’s anything else you want to add.” I didn’t take it. I just shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m not hungry.” Victoria opened her mouth to argue, but Brody beat her to it. “I don’t blame you, Jesse. Honestly, if I showed up to a place like this wearing rack-discount clothes, I’d probably lose my appetite too.” “Oh, by the way, when I closed that big account last week, Victoria bought me a couple of designer suits. I have way too many now. You should come over and pick one out.” Before I could find my voice, Victoria leaned over and draped a soft cashmere wrap over Brody’s lap. “Don’t worry about it. What’s bought for you is yours. Besides, those cuts wouldn’t really suit Jesse anyway. He doesn’t really have the frame for it.” “He’s… different from you guys.” My hands balled into fists under the table, the nails biting deep into my palms. Different. Of course I was different. I was thirty years old. And Brody was barely twenty-one, in the absolute flush of his youth. The warm amber light from the chandelier washed over Victoria’s face. She looked so perfectly casual, completely oblivious to the casual cruelty of her words. While I sat there frozen, the food arrived. Two beautifully plated steaks. One was placed in front of Victoria. The other went to Brody. I couldn’t breathe. I stood up, turned on my heel, and walked out. Just as the glass doors swung shut behind me, I caught a final glimpse of her through the window. She hadn’t stood up to follow me. Above her head, the numbers shifted. “Disdain Level: 70.” Victoria didn’t come home until long after midnight. The moment she stepped through the door, her phone rang. It was a custom ringtone—the one she had recently assigned specifically to Brody. She answered it almost instantly. “Brody? What’s wrong?” Through the receiver, his voice sounded fragile, trembling with a quiet sob. “Victoria… there’s someone walking around outside my apartment building. I’m really scared…” Victoria’s face went entirely pale. “Stay inside,” she said, her voice tight with panic. “Lock your doors. I’m coming right now.” She kicked her shoes back on and grabbed her keys. As she turned toward the door, I finally spoke. “Victoria.” She stopped. Her back was to me, her shoulders stiff. “Just because I don’t say anything doesn’t mean I’m blind,” I said quietly. “Please don’t treat me like an idiot.” For a long moment, she didn’t move. She stood perfectly still in the entryway. But she didn’t explain. She didn’t look back. She opened the door and hurried out into the night. Before the door clicked shut, the red numbers above her head flashed one last time. “Disdain Level: 75.” The door slammed shut. The apartment fell back into a heavy, suffocating silence. She had left in such a rush that she hadn’t even taken her coat. Another night alone. I didn’t call her, and I didn’t text. The next morning, I took a cab to a lawyer friend’s office. I asked him to draft a divorce agreement. My friend stared at me, trying to talk me out of it. “Jesse, are you sure? Women like Victoria—successful, brilliant—don’t come around often. You should be fighting to pull her back, not just handing her over to some kid.” “Ending a five-year marriage like this… it’s a waste.” I took a slow sip of my black coffee, letting the bitter taste settle on my tongue. I didn’t offer an explanation. Walking away was painful, yes. But holding onto something that was already dead was worse. Our marriage had cracked open, and once the foundation of trust was gone, the rest of the house was bound to collapse anyway. There was nothing left to salvage. Sometimes, letting go is the only way to save yourself. A few hours after the papers were drafted, my phone rang. It was Brody. “Let’s meet up,” he said, his voice dripping with smug satisfaction. “I have some things I think you’d love to see.” He was young and reckless, clearly riding high on the victory of the night before, eager to rub my face in it. I didn’t back down. I agreed to meet him at a quiet park nearby. The moment I arrived, Brody pulled out his phone and thrust the screen in front of my face. It was a photo of the two of them. They were in his bed, tangled in the sheets, pressed close. Victoria was looking at him with a look of soft, dizzying adoration I hadn’t seen on her face in years. “Victoria spent the whole night in my bed,” Brody sneered, his eyes narrowed with triumph. “She promised me she’d give me everything I ever wanted.” “To her, you’re just a glorified housekeeper who cooks her meals and does her laundry. I’m the one who actually belongs by her side.” I stared at the screen. A dull, heavy ache settled in my chest, but I forced my expression to remain entirely flat. “Good for you,” I said, my voice steady despite the tightness in my throat. “I hope you two are very happy.” Brody’s smile faltered, irritated by my lack of reaction. He grabbed my wrist, his grip surprisingly tight. “Oh, come on, Jesse. A simple blessing isn’t enough.” Before I could pull away, his face twisted into a performance of sheer terror. He grabbed my hand and yanked it toward his own cheek, striking himself hard. “Ah! Victoria, help!” Before I could comprehend what was happening, a violent force shoved me from behind. I stumbled backward, my head colliding hard with the stone base of a nearby statue. A sharp, blinding pain exploded at the back of my skull. Through the high-pitched ringing in my ears, Victoria’s furious voice cut through the air. “Jesse! If you have a problem with me, take it out on me! Don’t you dare touch Brody!” Warm blood began to trickle down my neck, dripping onto the concrete. I forced the words past my lips. “Victoria… call an ambulance.” Even though I wanted a divorce, I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live my life. But Victoria’s attention was entirely consumed by Brody. “Victoria, I was just trying to apologize to him…” Brody whined, clutching his cheek. “It hurts so bad. Do you think it’ll scar?” Victoria held him close, her voice thick with worry. “Shh, it’s okay. I’m taking you home right now to get some ice. It’ll be fine.” She didn’t look back at me. Not once. She helped Brody to his feet and hurried him toward her car. In my fading consciousness, I saw the crimson numbers above her head spike to their absolute limit. “Disdain Level: 98.” I let out a bitter, silent laugh. Summoning the absolute last of my strength, I pulled out my phone and dialed 911. An hour later, after Victoria had dropped Brody off at his apartment, her phone rang. It was the hospital. “Is this Victoria Crawford? Your husband, Jesse Crawford, was admitted with severe head trauma resulting in an intracranial hemorrhage. He is currently in emergency surgery. We need you here immediately to sign the consent forms.” Her breath caught. The world seemed to stop spinning. “Intracranial… hemorrhage?” When reality crashed back in, she ran out of the building, driving like a maniac toward the hospital. At that exact moment, the bright red numbers above her head plummeted for the first time in months. “Disdain Level: 20.”

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It was our wedding anniversary, and Jude finally had the time to take me to Kyoto to have the ceremony we had missed. But right before we boarded, he swiped his digital pass off his screen and spun around, already walking back toward the exit. “Miranda has a toothache,” he said, his voice tight with an urgency that belonged in an emergency room, not an airport terminal. “We’ll have to go next time.” My phone screen was still glowing with the PDF of our itinerary. I had spent six months planning every single detail of this trip. Phoebe’s texts were buzzing, lighting up my screen with rapid-fire excitement. “You’ve been dreaming about the Kyoto cherry blossoms since high school—literally over a decade. I guess Jude actually has a heart after all. Your dream is finally coming true!” “When you put on that wedding dress I designed for you, and the petals start falling, I am going to take the most gorgeous photos of you two!” But Jude had already stood me up for six years, always for the sake of the girl he insisted was just a sister. This year made seven. “She’s almost thirty,” I whispered, staring blankly at the boarding gate. “Can’t she go to the dentist by herself?” Jude frowned, looking at me as if I’d just said something incredibly cruel. “Willa, I’ve taken her to every doctor’s appointment since we were kids. If I’m not there, she panics.” I managed a small, hollow smile. “Then go.” I watched his back disappear into the airport crowd, then turned around and boarded the plane alone. The cherry blossoms in Kyoto would still fall, with or without him. … As the soft, pale petals drifted down into my open palm, Jude’s Instagram post popped up on my feed. “Shoutout to Miranda for being so brave today.” The photo showed Miranda in a dentist’s chair, her eyes watery, while Jude tightly held both of her hands. On his ring finger, the wedding band I designed glinted in the sterile fluorescent light. I stared at the photo for what felt like hours before finally hitting the ‘like’ button. Phoebe stood across from me, her eyes red and teary behind her camera lens as she snapped photos of me in my white gown. “A wedding for one? This is pathetic. What is so special about Miranda? She’s a grown woman who acts like a helpless toddler!” But Jude didn’t see her that way. The first year of our marriage, Miranda couldn’t figure out her GPS and got lost downtown. I suggested she call a cop, but Jude spent the entire night driving around looking for her, missing our flight. The second year, her water heater burst, flooding her apartment. I told him to call maintenance, but Jude claimed she was terrified of deep water, leaving his packed suitcases behind at the check-in counter. Year three, year four… all the way until now. Every single time, Jude broke his promises over Miranda’s trivial emergencies. Whenever I cried or begged him to stay, he would look at me with that patronizing, exhausted expression, like I was the unreasonable child. “Miranda’s always been fragile, Willa. She’s not strong and independent like you. That’s why I have to look out for her.” “Why can’t you just do things on your own? Why do you always have to be so needy?” Standing alone in a quiet, solemn chapel under the priest’s bewildered gaze, I recited my vows to empty air. I think, in that moment, I finally learned what Jude meant by “independent.” It wasn’t until the day before my flight back that Jude finally texted me. “You’re not home?” If he had bothered to look back for even a second at the airport, he would have known I boarded that flight to Kyoto. I forced a bitter smile, trying to swallow the dull ache in my chest. “Yeah, I’m out.” “Alright. Do you have the recipe for that creamy potato soup you used to make me? Miranda’s hungry.” My fingers hovered over the screen. I remembered the year Jude had an excruciating toothache. We were so broke we couldn’t even afford painkillers. I remembered walking down the street, touching my hair—which I’d spent four years growing out—and walking into a local salon to sell it. After his extraction, I fed him simple potato soup every single day. “I asked the doctor,” I had lied to him back then, “potato soup is the best for recovery.” I lied because potatoes were the cheapest thing at the grocery store; a five-pound bag could stretch for a week. He had touched my newly cropped, boyish hair, tears streaming down his face as he told me it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. Now, I slowly typed out my reply. “Boil the potatoes. Mash them with water.” “That’s it? No cream or broth?” “No. Just that.” “Okay, cool.” I stared out the window at the falling cherry blossoms. “Aren’t you going to ask where I went?” “Oh. Where are you?” “I’m in—” “Actually, gotta go. Need to start cooking for Miranda.” I froze, then slowly deleted the letters I’d typed. In our three years of dating and seven years of marriage, Jude had never cooked a single meal for me. Outside, the wind died down, and the petals stopped falling. But even in their stillness, they were beautiful. I tapped the contact number Phoebe had sent me earlier. “Hello, who is this?” “Hi, is this Mr. Cleveland? I’d like to consult about a divorce.” When I got back from the airport, my key code wouldn’t unlock the front door. The passcode had always been my birthday, but after three failed attempts, the keypad locked me out. I sat huddled in the hallway corner, waiting for hours until Jude finally showed up, with Miranda hovering right behind him. “Why didn’t you answer my texts?” Jude asked, his tone entirely casual. He stepped up to the keypad and punched in a new sequence—Miranda’s birthday. “I was taking Miranda shopping. I didn’t see my phone. What did you text?” I dragged my suitcase inside, bone-tired. Jude immediately knelt down, naturally helping Miranda slide off her designer boots. “You changed the passcode?” “Miranda couldn’t remember the old one, so I updated it. Forgot to tell you.” I nodded slowly, not saying another word. Walking further into the house, I realized everything had changed. The couch was different, the indoor plants were gone, and when the TV turned on, it defaulted to a reality show I never watched. In our master bedroom, the sheets on the bed were rumpled, clearly slept in, and the closet was packed to the brim with Miranda’s clothes. I tore through the hangers, a hot, roaring anger building in my chest. “Jude! Jude!” I yelled until my throat burned, but no one answered. Out in the living room, Miranda was sprawled across the sofa. She casually pressed a little silver call bell on the coffee table, and Jude instantly dashed out of the kitchen. “What’s wrong, Miranda? You okay?” Only when she lazily muttered that she was fine did the tension leave his shoulders. I clenched my fists, my voice trembling as I confronted him. “Jude, where is the red wool scarf my mother made for you?” He blinked, shrug-shouldered and entirely unbothered. “Oh, Miranda said it smelled musty. I threw it out.” Tears spilled over my eyelashes instantly. “That was the last thing my mother ever made!” I screamed, my voice cracking. “How could you throw it away?” Miranda jumped off the sofa and shoved me back. “It’s just an old piece of yarn! Why are you screaming at Jude like that?” But as she pushed me, she winced and clutched her jaw, whining in pain. Jude’s face twisted in panic, and he immediately hovered over her, checking her mouth. I stood there, watching them, feeling like the bitter, hysterical villain in some cheap melodrama. I wiped my face, spun on my heel, and ran out into the pouring rain. For two hours, I dug through the dumpster behind our building and the nearby trash bins. Nothing. The rain soaked me to the bone, my fingernails were torn and bleeding, and the water dripping down my cheeks tasted like salt and dirt. When my mother was in the final stages of pancreatic cancer, Jude had casually mentioned how cold the winters got here. Despite her failing strength, she bought the finest wool she could find and spent her remaining days knitting. On her deathbed, she used her last ounce of strength to wrap that red scarf around his neck. “There, Jude. Now you won’t be cold. I know you’re a good boy… please, take care of my Willa.” Jude had fallen to his knees by her bedside, sobbing, swearing he would love and protect me for the rest of his life. And now, the physical proof of that promise was rotting in a landfill. I collapsed onto the wet pavement beside the trash bins, letting out a raw, broken sob. Suddenly, a sharp, white-hot pain bloomed in my abdomen. I looked down, and a dark, terrifying stain was spreading down my jeans. Shaking, I pulled out my phone and dialed Jude’s number. Once. Twice. Seven times. He never picked up. Finally, a text lit up the screen: “Stop calling, you’re going to wake Miranda up. Where did you even go? Get back here, it’s pouring.” My hands shook so hard I couldn’t even reply. The world spun, turned completely black, and I collapsed. I lost the baby. Eight weeks along. A silent arrival, a silent departure. The ER doctor told me softly that if I had been brought in just an hour earlier, they might have saved the pregnancy. I stared at the sterile white hospital ceiling, tears pooling in my ears. The old, jagged scar in my chest tore open all over again. A week before our wedding, seven years ago, I was seven months pregnant. Miranda had insisted on making me prenatal herbal soup but forgot to turn off the gas stove. That night, the apartment filled with carbon monoxide. I lost our baby girl in the ICU, and our wedding was canceled. Jude had knelt by my hospital bed, slapping his own face until his cheeks were bruised and swollen. “Willa, I’m so sorry. Miranda is just stupid—she was trying to do something nice and made a horrible mistake. I’m so sorry.” With bloodshot eyes, he held my limp hand and swore, “We’ll have another baby. I promise, I will protect you and our family next time.” I believed him. But this second baby—the one I had prayed for every single night—was gone, too. My phone buzzed. A PDF from Mr. Cleveland: a draft of the divorce petition. “If there is infidelity, we should gather as much evidence as possible. It will help our case immensely.” I stared at the word “infidelity” until it blurred. Finally, I typed: “Okay.” I ripped the IV needle out of my arm and stumbled out of the ward, clutching my hospital gown. But as I rounded the corner near the clinic’s exit, I froze. There was Jude, his arm wrapped protectively around Miranda’s shoulders as they waited in line at the hospital’s dental wing. My lower abdomen throbbed with a dull, sickening ache. I pulled out my phone and took a photo just as Miranda leaned up to press her lips against Jude’s cheek. Suddenly, Jude’s eyes drifted, catching mine. He froze, panic instantly flickering across his features. “Willa? What are you doing here?” He scrambled to distance himself from Miranda. “Willa, look, she was just saying thank you. It’s like a French cheek-kiss thing, you know? She lived abroad for a bit. She’s always been affectionate like that.” Such a pathetic, clumsy excuse. I looked at him, and for the first time, I didn’t feel angry. I just felt a deep, pitying amusement. “Right. Okay.” My absolute calm caught him off guard. In the past, if Miranda so much as brushed against him, I would have thrown a massive, jealous fit, screaming to assert my boundaries. His friends used to call me a “psycho” and a “controlling bitch” behind my back. But today, I just wanted to leave with some dignity. Jude’s face darkened, walking a thin line between irritation and confusion. “Willa, don’t start with the silent treatment. Because of your little tantrum earlier, Miranda tried to defend me and ended up tearing her dental stitches. Since you’re here, you need to apologize to her.” He grabbed my wrist, dragging me toward her. His grip was brutal, sending a jolt of pain through my arm that brought hot tears to my eyes. “Jude, let go of me! I’m not apologizing to her!” He stared at the tears slipping down my face, momentarily faltering, but his voice hardened again. “You got her so worked up she’s in pain, and you’re too proud to say sorry? Are you really that fragile?” Before I could pull away, a nurse came rushing down the hallway, shouting, “Willa! What are you doing? You just had a miscarriage, you can’t just rip out your IV and walk around!” Jude froze. Every ounce of color drained from his face. “You… miscarried?” His eyes slowly dropped to my abdomen. “When were you pregnant? Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice cracked, rising in a desperate, frantic octave as his eyes brimmed with tears. I just looked at him, completely hollow, completely cold. The nurse stepped firmly between us, glaring at him. “Sir, she is extremely weak right now. Do not raise your voice at her!” She gently guided me back toward the recovery ward. Behind me, I heard Jude’s frantic footsteps trying to follow. “Willa, wait! You can’t be alone right now!” Just then, the clinic’s intercom chimed, calling out Miranda’s name for her follow-up. I didn’t look back. And he didn’t follow. “Was that your husband?” the nurse asked gently as she hooked up a fresh IV bag. I let out a soft, dry laugh. “Not for much longer.” After the IV finished, I took an Uber home. My phone kept buzzing with texts from Jude. “Miranda can’t even speak right now. I couldn’t just leave her there.” “Willa, please just listen to the doctor. Wait for me.” I didn’t reply to a single one. I pulled my old suitcase out from the closet and started packing. There wasn’t much to pack. Most of my things had already been boxed up and shoved into the guest room anyway. The apartment we had shared for seven years had been completely overwritten by another woman’s presence in a matter of days. Once the suitcase was zipped, the physical exhaustion of the miscarriage hit me like a wave, and I collapsed onto the guest bed, drifting into a heavy, dreamless sleep. Sometime in the dead of night, I felt cold, trembling hands wrap around my waist. I opened my eyes to see Jude sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes bloodshot, looking utterly drained. “You didn’t tell me you were leaving the hospital,” he whispered. “I looked everywhere for you after I got Miranda settled. Willa… what happened? How did we lose the baby?” But all I could smell on him was Miranda’s sweet, cloying perfume. It made my stomach churn with violent nausea. I closed my eyes, coldly brushing his hands off my hips, and turned my back to him. Silence stretched between us before Jude let out a sharp, frustrated sigh. “Willa, seriously? I am exhausted, I ran all the way back here to check on you, and you’re still giving me the cold shoulder? You know how desperately I wanted a family!” I bolted upright in bed, tears hot and angry on my cheeks. “You wanted a family?” I choked out, my voice raw. “If you hadn’t forced me to accept Miranda’s ‘kindness’ seven years ago, our daughter would be starting school right now! You literally risked my life and our baby’s life just to spare her feelings!” Jude’s face flushed a deep, angry red, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “That was years ago!” he yelled back. “Are you really bringing that up now just to hurt me? Neither Miranda nor I did that on purpose! Besides, that pregnancy was terrible timing anyway. You were barely out of college, begging me to marry you with a pregnant belly. Do you have any idea what people were saying behind your back? They said you trapped me!” His words hit me like a physical blow. I froze, the air leaving my lungs. I remembered the day we found out. I remembered how Jude’s eyes had lit up, how he had gently wiped away my tears and promised to give me the most beautiful life. I had nodded, trusting him completely. “You’re right,” I whispered, the fight completely draining out of me. “I was pathetic.” Jude turned his head away, unable to look at me, and stormed out, slamming the bedroom door so hard the walls rattled. I sat on the edge of the mattress in the dark, staring at the floorboards until the sun came up. The next morning, I made breakfast. When Jude walked into the kitchen, rubbing his temples, he bypassed the eggs I’d cooked and grabbed a carton of oat milk from the fridge—the one Miranda had bought, still adorned with a little pink sticky note with a hand-drawn heart. He sat across from me, looking uncomfortable. “Look, about yesterday… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things. I didn’t mean them.” He took a sip of the milk. “Losing the baby… that’s on me, too. Willa, we can try again. We can have another one.” I took a bite of my toast and offered him a soft smile, cutting him off. “Jude, just eat with me.” This would be our last meal. He nodded, then glanced at the suitcase by the entryway. “Are you going somewhere? Your body is still recovering…” Suddenly, his phone screen lit up. The caller ID read: “Silly Miranda”. I looked down, slowly stirring my oatmeal. Jude grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair, already moving toward the door. “I need to check on Miranda.” He couldn’t even finish a single meal with me. “Can’t it wait?” I asked quietly. He frowned, defensive. “Of course not. She’s in pain. She needs me right now.” I kept quiet. The apartment fell silent again, leaving me entirely alone. I finished my oatmeal, one slow bite at a time. Downstairs, Phoebe’s car was waiting for me. I walked into the living room, placed the signed divorce papers on the coffee table, and slipped off my wedding ring, placing it on top of a hand-written note: “Jude, let’s get a divorce.”

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My sister and I were twins. But from the moment we were born, she was the beautiful one. The sweet one. The day the earthquake hit our summer cabin, the ground violently tearing itself apart, my mother grabbed my sister. My father grabbed my sister’s dog. I was left buried under the rubble for twelve suffocating hours. I nearly died in the dark. When they finally pulled me out, my parents didn’t hold me. They warned me. “Josie, don’t make a scene,” they said, their voices tight. “If you throw a tantrum over this, we will beat you half to death.” My childhood felt like one long, unyielding season of rain. Right up until the day my sister’s biological parents showed up at our front door, explaining that there had been a mix-up at the hospital. In that fractured, surreal moment, a laugh actually bubbled up from my throat and spilled into the room. My mother grabbed me by the hair. She slapped me across the face. Then again. And again. She leaned in, delivering that same, familiar warning. “Josie, don’t make a scene.” “If you cause trouble now, I swear to God, I will end you.” 01 My mother was a tenured high school principal. She didn’t usually hit her children. And on the rare occasions she did, the apologies followed swiftly. Like right now. My cheek was still throbbing, swollen hot and tight, but she had already said “I’m sorry” three times. “Josie, honey, you know it breaks my heart to lay a hand on you.” “It hurts me more than it hurts you.” “But you cannot be cruel to your sister. It breaks her heart.” Her apology sounded fiercely sincere. But a sudden, visceral wave of injustice washed over me. I lifted my chin, staring right back at her, and forced the words out. “No. That’s a lie. Sabrina isn’t my sister.” “She’s someone else’s kid. She has nothing to do with me.” Yesterday, two strangers—a weary-looking man and woman—had sat in our living room. They explained that fifteen years ago, a nurse had handed them the wrong baby. They said Sabrina was actually their only daughter. I was only stating a biological fact. Yet, my mother raised her hand again. Her face went entirely dead. “Josie, you are incredibly ungrateful.” I was terrified of my mother’s hands, but the suffocating weight of the unfairness was heavier than the fear. Just then, Sabrina emerged from the hallway. She had thrown a fit yesterday and refused to come down for dinner. Now, her eyes were brimming with delicate, crystal-like tears. The thing about beautiful children is that even their grief is aesthetically pleasing. “Mom, please don’t hit Josie,” Sabrina cried softly. “This is all my fault.” And because Sabrina cried, my mother’s palm cracked against my skin once more. Summer clothes are thin. My mother’s acrylic nails were sharp. Angry, crisscrossing red welts began to rise along my arms. In the Gallagher household, the cardinal rule was this: when an adult disciplines you, you do not cry. But the sting was blinding. And Sabrina was still talking. “Mom, please. Don’t let yourself get so worked up. It’s bad for your blood pressure.” It was a dance we had perfected over a lifetime. The more Sabrina begged for mercy on my behalf, the harder my mother struck. Tears finally broke free, streaming down my face. Eventually, my father intervened. He was my rescuer. But all he did was wipe my cheeks with a rough thumb before pulling Sabrina securely into his chest. “Alright, that’s enough. No one is crying anymore,” he declared. “Sabrina is our daughter. Period.” “Anyone who makes her feel otherwise will have to answer to me.” In that moment, the tears just stopped. They dried up in my throat. Yet my parents still felt the need to instruct me. “Josie, you need to be kinder to your sister.” “Imagine how she feels. If she feels alienated in her own home, with no one to talk to… how heartbreaking would that be?” They truly, deeply loved her. I looked at them, my vision blurry, and asked a quiet question. “What about my real sister?” “If she feels alienated in someone else’s home, with no one to talk to… isn’t that heartbreaking, too?” The words hung in the air. I watched the color drain completely from my mother’s face, leaving it the color of ash. My father raised his hand. “Josie,” he said grimly. “You just never learn.” 02 Sabrina was the golden child of the neighborhood. Heart-shaped face, porcelain skin, doe eyes. The neighbors used to coo over her, telling my parents she was going to be a movie star one day. When I was little, I used to tug on their sleeves and ask, “What about me?” “Can I be in movies too?” The adults would offer me polite, pitying smiles. “Sure, sweetheart. Sure you can.” But as I got older, they stopped pretending. To my face, and behind my back, they were casually brutal. “Josie just doesn’t have the look.” I used to fight back. They would actually hold a mirror up to my face and educate me: “Look at your sister. She has a delicate, heart-shaped face. That is beautiful.” “You have a strong, square jaw. That is not.” “Your sister’s skin is pale and flawless. That is beautiful.” “You are dull and tanned. That is not.” They were so earnest in their cruelty. Once, I slapped the mirror out of an aunt’s hand. It shattered on the floor. I put my hands on my hips, glared at the room, and yelled, “You’re! All! Full! Of! Shit!” After that, the extended family mostly ignored me. Only one uncle, a soft-spoken man who liked kids, bothered to pull me aside. “When you pick out a puppy, you want the prettiest, most obedient one. People are the same way,” he told me gently. “Josie, since you aren’t the pretty one, you have to be the sweetest. The most thoughtful.” “Otherwise, your parents are only going to love Sabrina, and there will be nothing left for you.” He genuinely thought he was helping me, and a dark part of my child-brain suspected he was right. But my mother overheard. She stepped in, her voice dripping with maternal nobility. “I have two daughters, and I will always keep the scales perfectly balanced between them.” My uncle flushed red. “Of course. How shallow of me. You’re an educator, you know best.” But my uncle didn’t know the second half of my mother’s philosophy. She explained it to me privately, years later. “It’s hard to keep the scales perfectly balanced,” she had said, brushing my hair with rough strokes. “So, I tip them toward the older sister. Because a good older sister will balance them out herself.” “Josie, I “have” to give Sabrina more love.” “That’s the only way she’ll learn to share it with you.” And that was how it worked. On our birthday, the artisanal, twelve-piece chocolate truffle box was handed to Sabrina. She would eat her fill, then push the half-empty box across the table to me. When they bought us matching dresses, Sabrina got first pick of the colors. Whatever she discarded became mine. I wasn’t allowed to complain. If I did, my mother would sigh. “There were twelve chocolates. Sabrina gave you six. Isn’t that perfectly fair?” “What more do you want, Josie? Do you want seven? Nine? All twelve? What is your sister supposed to have?” Sabrina would look at me with weary exasperation. “There are only two dresses. If I pick pink, you throw a fit because you want pink. If I pick white, you want white.” “Josie, why are you always trying to compete with me?” “When are you going to realize that because you aren’t pretty, it doesn’t matter what color you wear?” 03 No one could have predicted that Sabrina wasn’t my parents’ biological child. But my parents strictly forbade me from ever bringing it up again. After breakfast that morning, they packed Sabrina into the SUV and took her to the amusement park to “clear her head.” They left me with a dining table full of dirty plates. In the span of twelve hours, they had hit me three times. All because of Sabrina. I quietly gathered the plates and carried them to the sink. The house was empty, so I let my tears drop straight into the dishwater. And then, an idea sparked, bright and sharp in my chest. If my parents wouldn’t send Sabrina back, I would do it myself. I remembered the strangers saying they had taken a Greyhound bus into the West Side Terminal. I dropped the sponge. I grabbed my stash of allowance money and bolted out the front door. But the bus terminal was a sprawling, chaotic mess. There were hundreds of people. I searched for hours until my feet ached, finding absolutely nothing. I trudged home, thoroughly defeated. The whole walk back, my stomach tied itself in knots, dreading my mother’s wrath over the unfinished dishes. But the house was still dark and empty. There was a post-it note stuck to the front door. “Josie, your mother texted. They decided to stay at a hotel tonight. Come down to our place for dinner.” I recognized the handwriting. It was the neighbor from the first floor. A tiny drop of sweetness bloomed in my chest. The neighbor was a terrible cook—I usually only managed to choke down a few bites of her dry casseroles. But her son was Tyler. Tyler’s family had only moved into the building this year. He was a year older than me. It took exactly one minute for us to become best friends. He was different from the other kids in the complex. Unlike them, he actually preferred hanging out with me over Sabrina. When Sabrina’s name came up, he was entirely unimpressed. “She always has a whole mob of people around her, making so much noise,” he’d say, kicking a pebble. “Those guys are so basic, just trailing after the pretty girl like lost puppies. I’m not like them.” That was how my trust in him was forged. I gave Tyler all my loyalty. I told him all my secrets. I told him that Sabrina would beg for a white dress, wear it twice, decide she hated it, and demand a new one. “She’s so dramatic,” he’d say. I told him how Sabrina hated pain, how she’d scrape her knee and cry for three hours. “She’s so high-maintenance,” he’d say. I told him how Sabrina would have a nightmare, get depressed, refuse to eat, and send my mother into a panic. “Wasting food is a sin. What a brat,” he’d say. Tyler always said exactly what I needed to hear. So now, I couldn’t wait to tell him the biggest secret of all. “Sabrina isn’t my sister. She’s leaving.” Tyler froze. “What? How did that happen?” I lifted my chin, feeling a surge of pride. “Because I’ve been praying to the moon every night,” I said. “And my wish finally came true.” 04 Last summer, we rented a cabin up in the mountains to escape the heat. That was when the earthquake hit. My mother grabbed Sabrina. My father grabbed Sabrina’s golden retriever. In the chaos, they completely forgot about the sleeping girl in the back bedroom. Me. I was trapped under shattered beams and drywall for twelve hours. By the time the rescue team pulled me out, my vocal cords were shredded from screaming, and my arm was broken. My parents were highly educated, rational people. So they sat by my hospital bed and delivered a very rational apology. “We are sorry.” “But you have to understand, if we had a third arm, we would have grabbed you too.” “Josie, you are not allowed to be angry about this.” “If you throw a tantrum, we are going to be very disappointed in you.” I hadn’t intended to forgive them. But they brought me chocolate. So I swallowed the bitter, jagged question burning in my throat: “Why did Dad use his arms for the dog?” “Is it because keeping the dog alive made Sabrina happier than keeping me alive?” Most days, living with my family felt like living in a coastal fog. Stifling. Humid. But never, ever warm. My childhood was just an endless, dreary downpour. But ever since that day in the rubble, I started looking up at the night sky, whispering to the moon. “Make them love me a little more.” “Make them love Sabrina a little less.” It was the kind of magical thinking you see in old fantasy movies. I didn’t have the flowing gowns or the magic wands, but somehow, my wish had worked. I was pacing Tyler’s room, my voice rising with adrenaline. “My dad says they aren’t going to swap us back.” “But that’s not going to fly.” “As soon as I find her real parents, I’m giving Sabrina back to them, and I’m bringing my real sister home.” Tyler usually agreed with everything I said. But right now, his face was drawn and serious. “Are Sabrina’s real parents richer than yours? Will they treat her right?” he asked. I thought about it. “My parents said they run a fish hatchery. They probably don’t have a lot of money.” Tyler exhaled a long, heavy sigh. “Josie, you can’t be this selfish.” “If Sabrina goes out to the country, what is she going to eat? Where is she going to sleep? What if she wakes up crying in the middle of the night?” “Didn’t you tell me she can’t even eat when she has a nightmare?” “She’s too beautiful to be scooping fish guts on a farm.” In that split second, all the blood in my body rushed to my ears, a deafening roar. I slammed my hands onto his desk. “Whose side are you on?!” Tyler scowled. He shoved my shoulder, pushing me back. “You are actually so toxic, Josie,” he spat. “No wonder your parents don’t love you.” I felt a sudden, freezing draft in my chest, like a window had just shattered wide open inside my ribs. But I locked my jaw. I did not let the tears fall. I looked Tyler dead in the eye, my voice eerily calm and distinctly clear. “I am not toxic.” “You are.” “You only pretended to be my friend so you could get closer to Sabrina.” “You’re a hypocrite, Tyler. And you’re pathetic.”

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Shortly after we got engaged, we took our coworkers out for dinner to celebrate. Over drinks, someone suggested we play the “Newlywed Game” to test how well we knew each other. “Question one,” a coworker grinned, holding up their phone. “What’s the bride’s favorite flower?” Colin glanced across the table at Mia, his mentee, and hesitated for three long seconds. “Roses… right?” I love sunflowers. But the crystal vase on his kitchen island was always filled with long-stemmed red roses. I had always assumed it was just his preference in interior design. “Next! What is the bride’s biggest fear?” “Uh… thunderstorms?” I am terrified of the dark. Mia is the one who cowers at the sound of thunder. The table chuckled, oblivious to the tension, and moved to the third question. “What’s the bride’s go-to takeout order?” Colin blurted out instantly, “Pad See Ew. Mild.” I only eat Drunken Noodles, Thai-hot. Mia was the one who ordered the mild, sweet noodles every time our team worked late. Out of five questions, he got four wrong. The only thing he got right was my shoe size—a standard size six. Only because Mia wore the exact same size. Across the table, Mia looked down, stirring the straw in her cocktail with an impossibly innocent smile. “Don’t be mad, Joanna,” she said softly, batting her eyelashes. “Colin is just messing around with you.” A memory flashed in my mind. Last week, Colin had gifted Mia a birthday present. It was a delicate diamond pendant I had been eyeing for months. When I asked him about it, he’d shrugged and said it was just a random impulse buy for a subordinate. … “Did you really have to embarrass me like that?” Colin’s hands gripped the leather steering wheel, his tone dripping with irritation. I turned my head, watching the city lights blur past the passenger window. I didn’t say a word. “Everyone was just having fun. Did you have to sit there with a stone-cold face the entire night?” He tugged at his collar, his brow furrowed in deep annoyance. “Mia even stepped in to smooth things over for you, and you didn’t even have the decency to say thank you. What is everyone going to think of you?” I stared at his reflection in the dark glass. “What exactly should I be thanking her for?” my voice was quiet. “Thanking her for knowing my fiancé better than I do? Or thanking her for answering what my favorite food is?” Colin slammed his foot on the brake. The SUV jerked to a halt at a red light. He turned to me, his eyes filled with a heavy, patronizing exhaustion. “Joanna, here we go again.” He let out a harsh breath. “Mia is an intern. I trained her. We eat team lunches together all the time. Is it really a crime that I remembered her dietary restrictions? Can you please stop being so ridiculously sensitive?” I pulled my gaze away and looked down, tracing the lines on my palms. “Right. Not a crime.” My voice was flat, devoid of any inflection. Colin seemed satisfied with my submission. He eased his foot off the brake as the light turned green. “Exactly. We’re about to get married. You need to start acting like a mature adult.” He reached for his phone mounted on the dashboard, opened his messages, and held down the audio record button for his group chat. “Hey Kevin, sorry about the vibe tonight,” Colin said, his tone instantly shifting to a breezy, apologetic bro-cadence. “Joanna is just too practical. She doesn’t really get romance, doesn’t even like roses, so don’t sweat it. Drinks are on me next time.” I watched him drop the phone back into the cradle, his movements so casual it was as if he hadn’t just humiliated me to his friends. “Practical. Doesn’t get romance.” So, in his eyes, my love for sunflowers was a lack of romance. And the red roses permanently displayed in our home were the pinnacle of high-class affection. A hollow ache hollowed out my stomach. “I’m a little hungry,” I said. “I want to order something.” Colin kept his eyes on the road. “Your battery is dead, right? Just use my phone. Passcode hasn’t changed. It’s still your birthday.” I reached for his phone and punched in my birthday. The screen unlocked. I opened his DoorDash app, intending to look through his past orders to reorder from that Thai place I liked. But the moment the history loaded, my finger froze hovering over the screen. The order log was completely saturated with recent deliveries. Three times a week. Every single delivery address was to Mia’s studio apartment downtown. Every single order was a meal for two—always from the mild, sweet side of the menu. And in the special instructions box for every single order, he had typed the exact same sentence: “Please make sure there is absolutely no spice. Her stomach is very sensitive.” A slow, numbing frost crept from my fingertips, settling heavy in my chest. He couldn’t remember my favorite flower, but he could micromanage a takeout order down to the exact spice level for another woman. “Figure out what you want?” Colin’s voice broke the silence. “Get whatever. I’ll expense it.” I slowly closed the app and placed the phone back on the mount. “Never mind.” “Suddenly lost my appetite.” Colin glanced at me, completely unbothered. “Probably for the best. Eating heavy takeout this late is bad for your skin, anyway. You have to fit into that wedding dress next month.” There was a sickeningly sweet, almost patronizing generosity in his voice when he mentioned the dress. I pulled my own phone out of my purse. I opened my messages and scrolled down to the bridal party group chat. Just yesterday, my bridesmaids had been buzzing with excitement about the bachelorette trip. My thumbs hovered over the keyboard. I typed a few quick words. “I’m so sorry, guys. We don’t need to do the dress fittings.” I hit send. Then, I clicked on Becca’s contact—my wedding planner. “Becca, could you please pull up the mailing list for the eighty invitations we sent out? I need to prep a cancellation notice.” Just as the message went through, my screen went black. The battery had finally died. At the exact moment the screen faded to black, the SUV descended into the underground parking garage of our condo. Colin parked, killed the engine, and unbuckled his seatbelt. He turned to me, reaching out to affectionately ruffle my hair. “Saw you texting furiously over there. Sorting out the wedding favor details with the planner?” He smiled, the picture of a supportive partner. “I appreciate you handling all this. I’m terrible with the little details. Whatever you decide is perfect with me.” I looked at his practiced, seamless affection. I gave a small, barely perceptible nod. “Yeah.” “You don’t need to worry about it anymore.” The next morning, I woke up before the sun. Colin was still asleep. I sat alone on the living room sofa, wrapped in a blanket. On the kitchen island, the red roses stood tall in their crystal vase. He had just swapped them out for a fresh batch two days ago. After plugging my phone into the charger, I opened Instagram. The first thing on my feed was a post Mia had uploaded ten minutes ago. It was a close-up photo of a diamond pendant, catching the morning light and fracturing it into tiny rainbows against her collarbone. It was the exact necklace I had spent hours admiring at the boutique, the one I ultimately couldn’t justify buying because of the price tag. Swiping to the second slide, there was a handwritten card. I recognized Colin’s sharp, angular handwriting immediately. “Happy Birthday to my little ray of sunshine. May you never have to be afraid of the thunder.” The caption read: “There is no better feeling than being someone’s priority. Thank you to a certain someone for spoiling me~” There were zero mutual likes on the post. It was obvious she had manipulated the privacy settings so only I could see it. I stared at the screen. The girl who was afraid of thunder got the hand-delivered mild dinners, and she got the diamond necklace I had dreamed of. A notification dinged. A direct message from Mia. “Joanna! Did you see my post? I honestly didn’t want to accept it, it’s just way too expensive.” “But Colin insisted. He said if he bought it for you, you’d just complain about him wasting money, so he gave it to me instead.” “Please don’t be mad at him for spending so much! He was just trying to spare you the financial anxiety!” Reading the text bubbles, a bitter laugh caught in my throat. Colin always had a beautifully packaged excuse. He could take the one thing I desired, hand it to someone else, and somehow twist it into an act of profound consideration for “me”. I typed a reply. “I’m not mad at him. Glad you like it.” I hit send, stood up, and went to change my shoes. Colin had an early board meeting today, and he was dropping me off at my office on the way. I walked down to the subterranean garage and slipped into the passenger seat. Minutes later, Colin appeared. He was wearing a sharp, charcoal-grey suit, looking every bit the successful executive. “Waiting long?” he asked, clicking his seatbelt in. “No. Just got down here.” I reached toward the glove compartment to grab a tissue to wipe a smudge off my hands. As I popped it open, a crushed plastic box tumbled out and hit the floor mat by my feet. Inside were three bruised, dried-up sunflowers. Tucked next to them was a generic, mass-printed card from a cheap corner bodega. “Handpicked for you. Hope you like sunflowers.” I bent down and picked up the box. The yellow petals were crumbling into dust. It had clearly been shoved in this compartment for weeks. Colin glanced over, his jaw tightening for a fraction of a second. But he quickly recovered, flashing an easy smile. “Oh, right. That.” “I drove past a bodega a few days ago, saw they were on clearance, and grabbed them. Meant to bring them up, but it slipped my mind.” “Since you don’t really care for all the flashy, expensive romantic stuff, I figured it was perfect for you.” I looked down at the pathetic, crumbling stems. Mia got a carefully curated, five-thousand-dollar diamond necklace. I got the discount bodega flowers he couldn’t even be bothered to take out of the car. I slowly opened the plastic lid. “What’s wrong?” Colin asked, spinning the steering wheel as we navigated out of the garage. “They still look kind of nice, right?” I didn’t answer. Right in front of him, I grabbed the dried flowers and the generic card, crushing them all in my fist. As we pulled out onto the street, I rolled down the window and tossed the entire crumpled mess into a public trash can on the curb. Colin slammed on the brakes, throwing the car into park by the sidewalk. He whipped his head to face me, his brow heavily furrowed. “Joanna, what the hell are you doing? Are you having another episode?” I pulled a tissue from my purse and methodically wiped the dried yellow dust from my fingers. “The flowers were dead. They were covered in dust.” “I was just throwing away the trash.” Colin took a deep, shuddering breath, visibly trying to control his temper. “Are you seriously still pouting about the dinner last night?” “Or is this about Mia’s necklace?” He had finally decided to acknowledge the elephant in the room. “That necklace was a completely random purchase! It was Mia’s birthday. She reports directly to me—I couldn’t exactly show up empty-handed, could I?” “You literally refuse to even buy yourself a five-dollar latte most days! If I bought you a necklace that expensive, you’d just lecture me about budgeting for the mortgage!” “I am constantly bending over backwards to accommodate your practicalities, and this is the thanks I get? Why do you have to be so damn sensitive?” I looked at his flushed, indignant face. Whenever he got angry, the corners of his eyes would turn slightly red. In the past, that redness used to terrify me. The moment he frowned, I would immediately backtrack, apologize, and reflect on what I had done wrong. But today, I felt absolutely nothing. I had no desire to coddle him anymore. “You bend over backwards to accommodate me.” I repeated his words, my voice eerily calm. “Okay. Understood.” My total lack of resistance left Colin entirely unbalanced. “Good. Glad we’re on the same page,” he muttered, defensive. “Stop being so paranoid. The wedding is in a month. Just drop the drama.” That evening, I walked into our master bedroom and pulled my large hardshell suitcase from the very back of the walk-in closet. Opening it on the floor, I began methodically folding my clothes. We had picked out this condo together. Half the wardrobe belonged to me. But I only packed the essentials—my absolute favorite pieces. The rest, I didn’t even touch. Colin stepped out of the en-suite bathroom, a towel draped around his neck, vigorously drying his hair. As he walked past the bedroom door, he stopped. He leaned against the doorframe, watching me. “Why the sudden packing spree?” His tone was back to his usual smooth, affectionate cadence, as if our morning argument had never happened. He walked up behind me, wrapping his arms securely around my waist, resting his chin on my shoulder. “I knew you’d come to your senses. Once you cool off, you’re always the reasonable one.” “It’s going to be humid in the Caribbean. Pack a few extra sundresses.” I smoothed out the collar of a white linen shirt, folding it perfectly in half. “Okay.” A blinding flash of white light illuminated the bedroom, instantly followed by an ear-splitting crack of thunder right above our building. Every light in the condo died. A total blackout. The bedroom was swallowed in a suffocating, pitch-black darkness. I have suffered from severe nyctalopia—night blindness—since I was a child. Combined with a deep, instinctual phobia of the dark, my body immediately went rigid. My breathing grew shallow and frantic. My heart began to batter against my ribs like a trapped bird. Blindly, desperately, I reached out to grab Colin’s arm. But the moment my fingers brushed his sleeve, he was already pulling away. In the crushing dark, I heard the rustle of him patting his pockets. A harsh, blue glow illuminated the space between us as his phone screen flared to life, highlighting the sheer panic etched into his profile. He stared at a notification, and the color drained from his face. “The storm is hitting Mia’s neighborhood, too.” His words tumbled out fast, laced with a frantic, uncontainable anxiety. “She lives alone. She’s absolutely terrified of thunder. I have to go check on her.” I stood frozen in the middle of the dark room, my hand still suspended in the air, grasping at nothing. “I’m afraid of the dark.” My voice was a pathetic, trembling whisper. But Colin had already pivoted toward the hallway, his heavy footsteps rushing toward the front door as he snatched his keys from the console. “Just find a candle! Or use your phone flashlight!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Mia’s situation is different! She’ll have a panic attack!” “I’ll be back soon!” The heavy oak front door slammed shut. The rapid echo of his footsteps down the corridor faded away, until there was nothing left but the oppressive silence of the apartment. I stood in the pitch-black bedroom, slowly lowering my empty hand to my side. The LED beam from a phone flashlight could never warm the glacial chill settling into my bones. I sat on the edge of the bed, shrouded in the dark, and didn’t move for the rest of the night. It wasn’t until dawn, when the first pale rays of sunlight pierced through the storm clouds and the power grid flickered back to life, that I finally stood up. At 10:00 AM, the lock clicked. Colin walked in, carrying an insulated, designer takeout bag, flashing a sheepish, apologetic grin. “Jo, I’m so sorry about last night.” He set the bag on the kitchen island and popped the lid off the container inside. “I drove all the way to the south side to get your favorite breakfast from that artisan deli. Stood in line for an hour. Eat it while it’s hot.” A rich, heavy aroma of seafood wafted through the kitchen. It was crab bisque. I stared at the steaming bowl. I didn’t move a muscle. Colin and I had been together for three years. He knew. He knew I was severely allergic to shellfish. One bite, and my throat would swell up, my skin breaking out in agonizing hives. But Mia? Mia constantly raved about the crab bisque from the south side deli. Colin held out a silver spoon. “Why aren’t you eating? I told you, I waited an hour for this.” I took the spoon from his hand. I picked up the heavy ceramic bowl. And, maintaining unbroken eye contact with him, I walked over to the kitchen sink. I tipped my wrist. The entire bowl of premium crab bisque slid down the drain in a wet, heavy sludge. Colin followed me into the kitchen, his face instantly darkening with rage. “Joanna, you are crossing a line!” “I stayed up all night, I drove across the city to buy you breakfast to make it up to you, and even if you aren’t hungry, do you really have to throw it away right to my face?!” I turned on the faucet, letting the hot water wash the remnants of the soup down the garbage disposal. “I am allergic to shellfish.” Over the sound of the running water, my own voice sounded like it was coming from a thousand miles away. Colin froze. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. I shut off the tap, dried my hands on a towel, and walked past him without a second glance. Back in the living room, I grabbed a broom and started sweeping up the dust and debris from last night’s storm that we hadn’t had a chance to clean. As I swept under the edge of the sofa, a crumpled piece of thermal paper slid out. It was the boutique receipt for the diamond pendant. I bent down and picked it up. “$7,000.00.” I looked down at my left hand. On my ring finger sat my engagement ring—a modest, discounted style Colin had asked a buddy to buy duty-free during a trip abroad. It cost exactly $1,000. I remembered what he had told me when he slipped it on my finger: “Jo, we need to save for a house and a family. A ring is just a symbol. We have to be practical.” I stared at the seven-thousand-dollar receipt in my hand. Then, I tossed it into the dustpan with the rest of the dirt. That afternoon, Colin went back to the office. I sat in the study, booting up his old MacBook. My own laptop was in the shop, and I needed to handle the logistics of canceling the wedding vendors. When the screen lit up, his iMessage app automatically launched. A notification bubbled up in the corner. It was his college fraternity group chat. I normally wouldn’t snoop, but the preview text flashing across the screen caught my eye, sharp as a physical blow. Kevin: “Bro, you actually going through with the wedding next month? Does this mean you’re finally settling down?” Another guy replied with a smirking emoji. “No more pining after little Mia? Word on the street is you rushed out in a thunderstorm like a knight in shining armor last night.” Colin’s typing bubble appeared, followed by his text: “I’m marrying Jo. She’s domestic. A guy needs a stable woman to manage the house.” Kevin: “So what’s the deal with Mia? That necklace you bought her wasn’t exactly cheap.” The chat went dead for a few seconds. Then, Colin sent a long block of text. “I’ve been with Jo for so long, kissing her feels like clocking in for a shift. It’s purely administrative. Completely flavorless.” “But Mia? When I see Mia wearing that necklace, smiling up at me? My heart actually races.” “Getting married won’t change anything. Jo is reasonable. She won’t make a fuss.” I stared at the black text on the bright white screen. My heart didn’t race. I didn’t even feel the sting of betrayal. Instead, a profound, heavy exhaustion seeped out from my very marrow. I closed the messaging app. I opened my email, found the digital RSVP links Becca had set up, and hit “Deactivate”. As dusk fell, Colin returned home. He walked in carrying a beautifully wrapped shoebox, his face beaming with eager anticipation. “Jo! Your custom wedding shoes finally arrived. Come try them on, let’s see if they fit.” He set the box down on the plush living room rug and lifted the lid. Inside sat a pair of breathtaking stilettos, encrusted with hundreds of tiny Swarovski crystals. “I had my guy in Milan rush-order these for you. I know you’re going to love them.” I sat on the sofa, watching him pull the shoes from the tissue paper. Mia and I wore the exact same shoe size. Size six. It was the only question he had managed to answer correctly at that dinner. I slipped off my slippers and slid my bare feet into the heels. The fit was flawless. I stood up and took two steps across the rug. “Well? Gorgeous, right?” Colin asked, looking deeply proud of himself. I looked down. My gaze landed on the arch of the sole. Embedded into the leather of the arch, spelled out in miniature rhinestones, were two letters. “C & M.” Colin & Mia. I stared at those two letters for a long time. Colin followed my line of sight. For a fraction of a second, raw panic flashed across his face. But he buried it instantly. “Oh, those letters? It’s just… a signature rhinestone pattern the brand uses. I didn’t even notice.” “If it bothers you, I can take it to a cobbler to have it scraped off.” He stepped forward, reaching down to help me take them off, when his phone buzzed on the coffee table. The lock screen lit up with a message from Mia. “Colin, I just walked past the florist. I saw the mock-up for your wedding arch.” “Sunflowers everywhere. They’re so bright, it hurts to look at.” “I can’t go to your wedding. It’s going to break my heart.” Colin read the text, freezing mid-motion. He slowly stood back up, picked up his phone, and without a second of hesitation, dialed the florist. “Hey, Becca. We need to revise the floral arrangement for the ceremony.” “Cancel the sunflower arch. It’s too flashy. I don’t like it.” “Right. Not a single sunflower.” He hung up, his tone leaving absolutely no room for debate. “Jo, I just think we should keep the aesthetic more understated. Sunflowers are just… tacky.” A second later, his phone vibrated again. It was a flight confirmation email from Delta. Our romantic honeymoon to the Caribbean—the one I had spent months planning—had been entirely canceled. In its place were two first-class tickets to Aspen. I despise the cold. I have never skied a day in my life. But on Mia’s Pinterest board, her number-one bucket list dream was to see the snow in the Rockies. I looked at Colin. He didn’t even bother swiping away the airline notification. Because he was the one who had booked it. His phone buzzed again, and a soft, private smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Mia, obviously. “I need to step out for a bit,” he announced, already heading toward the door. I slowly bent down and slipped the C & M stilettos off my feet, stepping barefoot onto the wool rug. “Suit yourself,” I said softly. Colin seemed relieved. He walked back over and tried to pull me into a hug. I shifted my weight, turning my shoulder just enough to dodge his embrace. He stood awkwardly for a second, then just patted my head. “Be a good girl. I’ll be back later to keep you company.” With that, Colin hurried out the door. I reached down and twisted the discount diamond ring off my left ring finger. Then, I picked up the ring and the custom stilettos. I walked over to the kitchen island and dropped them directly into the crystal vase, right into the murky water beneath the long-stemmed red roses. The water rippled as the diamond sank to the bottom. I walked into the bedroom and grabbed the handle of my packed suitcase. By the time I opened the front door, the sky outside was pitch black. I pulled out my phone and sent one last text to Becca. “All eighty invitations canceled.” “The wedding is off.”

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The day the wedding vows were revised for the third time, Devin and Margot got into another screaming match. One was my older sister. The other was my fiancé. Margot insisted on cutting the line “for richer or poorer.” She said it felt tired and incredibly cliché. Devin scoffed. “What do you know about it? The classics carry weight. That’s the whole point.” They argued in the church aisles, they argued through the tasting menu at the restaurant. They fought over the word count of the vows and tore each other apart over the processional music. By early evening, Margot called me. “I finally got Devin to cave. We’re keeping that stupid line, but the entrance music is being changed to an acoustic string cover of “Starlight”. I’ve already hired an arranger. Noelle, what do you think?” 01 Margot’s voice was a little hoarse—evidence of how long she’d been yelling. Yet her tone was distinctly elevated, triumphant. She sounded like she’d just won a war. Before she even finished her sentence, the other end of the line exploded. Devin’s voice chased after hers, the muffled rustle of the receiver making it obvious he was physically trying to wrestle the phone out of her hand. “I didn’t agree to a damn thing! You play dirty. You couldn’t win the argument so you resorted to kicking me under the table!” Margot’s voice dripped with venom. “Shut your mouth, you absolute dog.” Devin let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. “Why don’t you shut up? You threw the wedding binder at my head!” “I wouldn’t have thrown it if you weren’t crowding my space!” “I only crowded your space because I was trying to get the binder back!” “So you admit you grabbed it first! Hence, the throw!” “Margot, you are a complete psychopath.” I sat in my apartment, gripping my phone, listening to the volley of their voices. They grew louder and louder. Just like they had a thousand times before. Neither willing to yield a single inch. Until they finally remembered I was on the line. “Noelle, listen to me,” Margot demanded, breathless. “Tell him you agree with my vision. You do, right?” Devin wasn’t having it. “Noelle, don’t listen to a word she says.” He immediately pivoted back to Margot. “Why are you even asking her? Asking her is just forcing her to pick sides.” Margot let out a cold, sharp laugh. “She’s my little sister. So what if she takes my side?” “She’s my “fiancée”. Why the hell would she take yours?” I opened my mouth to speak. They started shouting over each other again. During a thirteen-minute phone call, I spoke exactly three words. “Hello.” “Yeah.” “Okay.” I slipped them into the microscopic fractures of their argument. It felt like trying to slide a sewing needle between two suffocating brick walls. 02 The strategic merger between the Hughes family and the Garrison family was originally supposed to be between Margot and Devin. They were the same age. They grew up in the same country clubs, attended the same prep schools. Our parents sat down over drinks at the estate three times, and the whole thing was practically signed in blood. Everyone was thrilled. Everyone except Margot and Devin. “Marry him? Are you out of your minds?” Margot had shrieked, face flushed with rage. “Just looking at him makes me want to break something.” Devin was equally dismissive, rolling his eyes. “Margot? Wow, thanks. I wouldn’t marry her if she were the last woman breathing on the Eastern Seaboard.” Both sets of parents tried to run interference. They offered the classic, wealthy-parent platitudes: “Feelings take time to grow. Love is built on partnership. You’ll figure it out.” Margot went nuclear. “I am never marrying Devin Hughes. If you’re so desperate for this corporate alliance, you have another daughter. Give him Noelle. From what I can tell, they get along just fine.” She wasn’t even afraid of sounding ridiculous. Me and Devin? We were acquaintances, at best. Over the course of our entire lives, we had exchanged maybe ten sentences. She was just using my name to disgust him, to make him uncomfortable. But Devin’s reaction threw the entire room off its axis. He looked away. A faint flush crept up his neck, and suddenly, this brash, confident heir couldn’t even form a straight sentence. “If… if it’s Noelle, I wouldn’t be opposed to that. Noelle is quiet. She’s sweet. She listens. Actually, I… I like Noelle quite a bit.” Just like that, the tides turned. The dying embers of our parents’ grand alliance roared back to life. And in the end, the name next to Devin’s on the wedding invitations was mine. 03 But once the engagement was set, Margot suddenly decided Devin wasn’t good enough for me. She stomped her feet. She hunted him down just to berate him. “When exactly did you start looking at Noelle like that? Have you been creeping on her this whole time? Who the hell do you think you are, Devin? You don’t deserve her.” Then she’d turn to me, eyes blazing with righteous indignation. “He’s a player, Elle. He has zero moral compass. Don’t let the tailored suits and the polite manners fool you. Underneath it all, he is an absolute animal.” Because of this, she appointed herself my personal watchdog. Whenever she and Devin were in the same room, it was a bloodbath. They were at each other’s throats instantly. She audited his friends, she interfered with his weekend plans. Above all, she strictly forbade him from being alone with any other women. “You’re overstepping,” Devin would snap. Margot would stand tall, utterly unapologetic. “I am protecting my sister’s investment. I am guarding your so-called purity for her, and I will be watching you like a hawk.” Eventually, they became the social circle’s favorite spectacle. The bickering childhood enemies. Someone at a cocktail party once joked, “Honestly, you two give off major enemies-to-lovers energy.” Margot had been furious. She dragged Devin over to me, practically spitting mad. “Don’t listen to those idiots, Elle. I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. If I actually wanted him, do you think you’d even be standing next to him right now?” I just smiled pleasantly and nodded. “Of course,” I said softly. “I believe you.” 04 My wedding to Devin was fast approaching. My family was rooted in Boston, but my art restoration studio was in Providence. Every weekend, I took the Amtrak up to play my part. Cake tastings, guest list audits, dress fittings. In reality, I was nothing more than a prop. Every single detail of my wedding was born out of a screaming match between Margot and Devin. They fought over the vintage of the champagne, the shade of the floral centerpieces, the font on the RSVP cards, and the brand of the artisan chocolates in the gift bags. It got so intense that our mother eventually teased Margot over brunch, “Darling, at this rate, you might as well be the one marrying him.” Whenever that happened, Margot would flinch, acting incredibly defensive. “I told you I can’t stand him! Why does everyone keep trying to push us together?” Today was my final dress fitting. Two gowns made the final cut, and it was time to choose. Devin drove over early to pick me up. We ran into Margot just as she was walking out the front door. She looked stunning. A tight designer slip dress, strappy heels, her hair blown out into perfect waves, makeup flawlessly understated. Devin took one look at her and raised an eyebrow. “Looking a little desperate today. Where are you going?” Margot’s eyes narrowed. She grabbed the hem of her dress and actually tried to kick his shin. Devin, having clearly anticipated the move, sidestepped it effortlessly. She scoffed, adjusting her purse. “I’m in a fantastic mood today, so I’m not going to stoop to your level.” Devin’s jaw shifted. His eyes swept over her, unreadable. Then, in a low voice, he said, “We’re going to the bridal boutique. You coming?” Margot rolled her eyes. “It’s not my wedding. Why would I go?” “Oh, so now you remember it’s not your wedding? Funny, considering you threw the floral samples in the trash yesterday.” “I threw them away because they were hideous.” “Hideous? You just have zero taste.” Just as they were about to spiral into another shouting match, Margot abruptly snapped her mouth shut. She rolled her eyes and shoved past him. “I don’t have time to entertain you. Move.” She strutted down the driveway, leaving Devin staring blankly at her retreating back. His expression was tight, caught somewhere between fury and something much heavier. I walked up beside him. “Is everything okay?” He immediately forced a smile, his voice dropping into that gentle cadence he always used with me. “It’s nothing. Come on, let’s go.” Devin was a powder keg around Margot, but whenever we were alone, he was mild. Polite. Considerate. He would carry the conversation, trying to make me laugh. Even though I was quiet and rarely gave him much of a reaction, he never seemed to mind. But today, the interior of the car was dead silent. I don’t know how many miles passed before he spoke. He tried to make it sound incredibly casual. “So, your sister looked like she was on a mission today. Where’s she off to?” I glanced at him. I didn’t say a word. He cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. “I mean, just asking. If you don’t know…” “She’s on a date.” My voice was flat. Emotionless. Devin slammed his foot on the brake. “What did you just say?” My body jerked forward violently, the seatbelt locking and yanking me back against the leather. I frowned, rubbing my collarbone. “That hurt,” I said, annoyed. Devin didn’t even hear me. His voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. “Where did you say she went?” I looked up, meeting his manic gaze. “A date. Is there a problem?” Devin let out a harsh, breathless laugh. “No. Nothing. Great.” For the rest of the drive, the air pressure in the car was so heavy it felt hard to breathe. When we finally pulled up to the bridal shop, Devin didn’t turn off the ignition. “You go on in. I need a cigarette.” I murmured an acknowledgment, stepped out of the car, and followed the bridal consultant inside. “Miss Garrison, would you like to get into the first gown?” she asked warmly. I shook my head, taking a sip of the sparkling water they offered. “No rush. I’m going to wait a bit.” I waited for nearly twenty minutes. When Devin finally walked through the glass doors, he was walking fast, his face completely rigid. “Noelle, there’s an emergency at the firm. I have to head back right now. Can we reschedule the fitting?” 05 Devin left. I stood in the mirrored room, staring at the two final gowns hanging on the rack. One was the dress Margot had pushed for. The other was the one I liked. I pointed to the one Margot chose. “I’ll take that one. I don’t need to try it on.” Leaving the boutique, I didn’t go back to my parents’ house in Boston. I took the train straight back to Providence. An antique dealer had recently brought a piece to my studio. It was a 19th-century oil painting, a breathtaking landscape from the Hudson River School. The composition was brilliant, but there was a deep, jagged tear straight through the canvas, and the paint was badly flaking along the edges. It required patching, reweaving the canvas threads, and painstaking color matching. Half a month’s worth of meticulous labor. I was right at the finish line. Back in my studio, I pulled an all-nighter, hunched under the magnifying lamp until it was perfect. After I delivered the piece, collected the final payment, and closed the file, my phone buzzed. It was Devin. “Noelle, do you have some time? We need to talk.” His tone was grave. He had never spoken to me like that before. I narrowed my eyes slightly, my fingernail tapping lightly against my work desk. “I’m catching an afternoon train back to Boston,” I said. “Let’s do dinner tonight. With the families.” “Perfect. I actually have something I need to tell you, too.” 06 I arrived at the restaurant at seven. Both sets of parents were already there, chatting amicably over drinks. My mother was smiling. “Our Noelle is a bit reserved. She’s not as outgoing or charming as Margot, so you’ll have to be patient with her once they’re married.” Devin’s mother waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, stop it. I adore Noelle. Look at her—so well-behaved, so poised. I always tell my friends how jealous I am of you. Two daughters. Two absolute blessings.” I sat there, letting their voices wash over me like white noise, and quietly ordered for the table. Moments later, the heavy oak doors pushed open. Devin and Margot walked in together. They were standing incredibly close. But the second they looked up and realized how many eyes were on them, they froze, immediately jumping apart. It was a clumsy, guilty reaction. Luckily for them, I was the only one paying attention. “Margot, Devin, you’re here. Sit down,” my father commanded. “Waiter, we’re ready for the appetizers.” Devin and Margot exchanged a loaded look. Both of them looked physically ill. Devin took the empty chair beside me. Margot sat on his other side. “So, what’s the occasion tonight?” Devin asked, his voice strained. His mother looked at him, confused. “You didn’t know? Noelle told us she had a major announcement to make.” Every single eye at the table turned to me. I only looked at Margot. She stiffened, her eyes darting away in sheer panic. Devin frowned, his jaw clenched. “Noelle. What are you talking about?” I stood up. “I’m calling off the wedding.”

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The third time I caught Chelsea in bed with Tyler, my voice simply stopped working. Out of some twisted sense of guilt, Chelsea spent the next month training me to communicate with a binary code. 1 meant yes. 2 meant no. It didn’t matter what she asked me, as long as it had to do with Tyler, I only ever gave her one answer. I tapped 1. When she said Tyler’s health was failing and asked to borrow the vintage gold St. Christopher medallion my mother had left me to ward off bad energy, I tapped 1 without a second thought. When she asked to postpone our wedding anniversary trip so she could throw Tyler a birthday party first, I tapped 1. And when she insisted on moving a convalescing Tyler into our house, I still tapped 1. I even packed my things and quietly moved into the guest room, leaving them the master suite. It went on like this until the afternoon I finally took our wedding portrait down from the living room wall. Chelsea’s eyes flared a sudden, violent red. She grabbed my wrist with a desperate, crushing grip. “Sean, you promised me. You said you’d never take this down unless we were getting a divorce. Are you trying to leave me?” Sensing that the number “1” was already on the tip of my tongue, she broke down. She shook me, her voice rising to a frantic shriek. “Damn it, Sean! Don’t you dare say 1! There’s nothing wrong with your vocal cords. You can talk! Say something!” Then, as if terrified she had pushed me too far, her voice instantly dropped to a soft, pleading whimper. “Sean… please. Just say 2. Okay? Just once.” I pulled my hand from her grasp, looking at her with a quiet, hollow confusion. Had she honestly forgotten? During the first year of our marriage—back when she still loved me with a fierce, possessive loyalty—she had insisted on signing a prenuptial agreement. She wanted to bind herself to me. She wrote in a clause that if she ever strayed, she would be allowed exactly two chances. If she crossed the line a third time, the divorce would automatically trigger, and the dissolution of our marriage would take effect immediately. That third strike had happened a month ago. The agreement was already in motion. … The heavy mahogany frame of our wedding portrait hit the floor with a deafening crash. Glass shattered into a thousand jagged diamonds, scattering across the floorboards between Chelsea’s designer heels and my bare feet. I calmly picked up the broom. I swept the broken glass, the splintered wood, and the glossy, smiling photograph into a black trash bag. I didn’t linger. I didn’t look twice. I just threw them into the bin. Seeing my indifference, Chelsea’s grief instantly hardened back into rage. She knew better than anyone how much I used to treasure that picture. I used to dust it every Sunday. Now, I treated it like common household waste. To hurt me, she grabbed Tyler’s hand, pulling him close to her side. “Fine! Since you don’t care about it anymore, Tyler and I will go get our own portraits taken. I’ll hang ours right where that one used to be!” I nodded placidly. I pulled out my phone and tapped: “1.” Tyler couldn’t quite mask the smug triumph in his eyes, though he quickly put on a show of anxious humility. “Chelsea, are you sure about this? I already feel terrible enough staying here, forcing Sean to sleep in the guest room. I don’t want to cause trouble.” Before his words even finished echoing in the foyer, I had already opened my phone, pulled up the website for the high-end photography studio we used for our wedding, and booked their premium portrait package. I forwarded the confirmation text straight to Chelsea’s phone. Chelsea’s gaze darkened, a complex storm of anger and confusion swirling in her eyes. Without another word, she dragged Tyler out the door. I didn’t care. I walked back into the guest room. A notification popped up on my screen: my flight to Boston was officially booked. I pulled my suitcase from the closet and began packing my life away, piece by piece, until a sharp chime broke the silence of the room. It was an Instagram notification. Tyler had posted a new photo grid, and he had deliberately tagged me. It was a layout of nine engagement-style photos. The aesthetic, the lighting, the poses—they were a carbon copy of the photos Chelsea and I had posted the day we got married. Except for one detail. Right in the center of the grid was a live photo. It captured them in a passionate, lingering embrace, their lips parted in a deep kiss that seemed to go on forever. I stared at the screen, my face entirely blank. Then, I tapped the heart icon to like the post, and left a simple, two-word comment: “Congratulations.” In the dead of night, Chelsea kicked my bedroom door open. She reeked of expensive gin and desperate anger as she stumbled toward my bed. “Sean, what do you want from me? What is it going to take for you to forgive me?” “Why aren’t you angry? I took Tyler to get those photos, and I waited for you all day. Why didn’t you come and stop me?” “You used to be so jealous. You used to care!” I looked at her, my eyes cool and distant. My mind wandered back to the ghost of who I used to be. She was right. I used to be an incredibly jealous man. The first time I caught them, I had marched straight into her corporate office and slapped Tyler across the face in front of her entire board of directors. Chelsea’s retaliation had been swift and brutal. She used her massive influence to frame me for academic plagiarism. Within a week, I was stripped of my tenure and fired from my position as a professor of constitutional law. The second time, I found them tangled in our marriage bed. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I simply took a photo and sent it to the firm’s primary investors. To teach me a lesson, Chelsea cut off the funding for my mother’s specialized cancer immunotherapy drugs. The only way she would reinstate the treatments—the only way to save my mother’s life—was for me to agree to a deeply humiliating livestreamed bachelor-party gig for her high-profile elite clients. After that scandal, my career in law was completely dead. Even the smallest boutique firms threw my resume in the trash. I had no income, but my mother’s medical bills were an endless, hungry beast. When Tyler casually complained one evening that the food at his office cafeteria was inedible, Chelsea had a brilliant solution. I went from lecturing in university halls to acting as Tyler’s private chef. My hands, which had spent a lifetime holding fountain pens and law journals, became covered in grease burns and blisters. Every single day, I submerged my hands in boiling dishwater until the skin wrinkled, cracked, and bled. They would scab over, only to be torn open again the next morning. All of it, just to secure my mother’s weekly medication from Chelsea. A vicious, endless cycle. Eventually, the calluses grew so thick that it took a deep, painful tear to make them bleed again. Just like my heart. Chelsea reached up, cupping my face with her trembling, alcohol-soaked hands. “Sean, I made him delete the post. I swear.” “He only got hurt because he protected me during that warehouse accident. Once his recovery is finished, I’ll send him away.” “Please, Sean. Stop punishing me.” My fingers stilled. I opened my phone. Tyler’s post was indeed gone. Even the matching profile pictures they had set earlier had been changed; Tyler’s icon was now a blank gray screen. Meanwhile, Chelsea’s profile picture had been changed to a candid photo of me. Her banner was a photo of us on our first trip to Maine. Her status read: “My one and only, Sean.” Her bio had been updated to: “Forever with Sean.” It was the exact public declaration of love I had begged her for throughout our entire relationship, a standard she had always claimed was “too juvenile” for a woman in her position. Yet, Tyler had received it within ten days of knowing her. Now that I finally had what I once craved, it felt like swallowing a swarm of flies hovering over a dumpster. Vile. Nauseating. Suddenly, Chelsea lost her balance and collapsed onto the floor by my feet, passing out cold. As she fell, her phone slipped from her pocket. The screen lit up with a notification from an unsaved number. “Tori, are we really using burner accounts to text now?” “This is so hot.” “I just learned a few new tricks. You’ll have to be careful next time, though—don’t leave a mark. Otherwise, I’ll have to keep staying in Sean’s bed so you can tend to my ‘wounds’ yourself.” “Besides, if Sean ever decides to beat me to death, who’s going to keep you satisfied?” My right hand began to shake. I pressed my trembling palm flat against my chest, slowly closing my eyes as I forced my breathing to steady. Thank god I was no longer the naive eighteen-year-old boy who had fallen for her. I would no longer let these pathetic, malicious games break me. That boy had wanted Chelsea to love him loudly and fiercely. But the twenty-eight-year-old man sitting here only wanted one thing: to get as far away from Chelsea as humanly possible. Permanently. Chelsea groaned, suddenly retching onto the hardwood floor. The physical discomfort seemed to shock her back into consciousness. She instinctively reached her hand upward, expecting a warm bowl of honey-ginger water to be placed in her palm, followed by my gentle, exasperated lecturing. On countless nights like this, I had stayed up to care for her, rubbing her back and softly scolding her for drinking so much. But this time, her hand met empty air. The heavy, comforting silence of the room was broken only by a single, typed response on my phone screen: “2.” The air in the room turned ice-cold. Making hangover water didn’t require vocal cords. But I didn’t move an inch. Looking at my completely vacant expression, Chelsea’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. She kicked the nightstand in frustration. “Sean, I already apologized for what happened to your mother! That last time with Tyler was a mistake, an accident!” “Tyler’s mother went to prison taking the fall for my company’s financial audit. She left him in my care. What was I supposed to do, throw him on the street?” “I slept with another man. That is all. Why is it so impossible for you to just get over it?” In the dim light of the bedroom, I nodded in quiet agreement. I tapped the screen, letting the digital voice assistant speak for me. “1.” Chelsea lunged forward, grabbing my upper arms with terrifying strength. “Sean, talk to me! Scream at me! Hit me!” She grabbed my hand and forced my palm against her cheek. “Hit me, damn it!” I pulled my hand back, shook my head, and tapped: “2.” Her arms fell to her sides, completely drained of energy. Then, as if nothing had happened, she climbed onto the bed and pressed her body against my back, wrapping her arms tightly around my waist. “Sean, let’s just sleep. I’m staying right here tonight. I’m not going anywhere.” I didn’t push her away. Experience had taught me that struggling was useless. Besides, she wouldn’t stay long. Sure enough, less than thirty minutes later, the butler knocked softly on the door. “Ma’am, Mr. Tyler is complaining of severe chest pains.” Chelsea bolted upright. She threw the covers off, rushing out of the room without a single backward glance. The hallway outside erupted into a chaotic flurry of footsteps and panicked voices. I walked into the bathroom, turned the shower to hot, and thoroughly scrubbed every inch of skin she had touched. I had just lain back down when Chelsea burst into the room again, her eyes frantic. “Sean, Tyler is throwing up blood. We need to go to the hospital, and I need you to—” Before she could finish, I tapped: “1.” She froze, suddenly catching the scent of my body wash. “You showered again?” Her voice trembled with a sudden, sharp hurt. “Do you really find my touch that disgusting?” This time, I didn’t even bother to look at her. The vulnerability in Chelsea’s eyes instantly vanished, replaced by a cold, malicious sneer. She grabbed my chin, forcing my face up to meet hers. “Since you want to act so incredibly generous, I’ll let you play the saint to your heart’s content.” She dragged me out of the house and threw me into the back of her SUV. “Tyler needs emergency surgery. You’re going to take care of him.” She glanced at me through the rearview mirror, a cruel smirk playing on her lips. “After all, you have plenty of experience surviving a knife wound, don’t you?” My hands began to shake again. My fingers instinctively drifted to my abdomen, tracing the thick, jagged scar beneath my shirt. It was the scar I got when I jumped in front of a blade meant for Chelsea. It was our first year of marriage. Her business was skyrocketing, and she had made some dangerous enemies. A rival company had hired someone to end her life. I had taken the hit instead. In the ICU, Chelsea had wept like a broken child, holding my hand and swearing to God that she would spend the rest of her life making me happy. Now, she laughed and told me I was the perfect candidate because I had “experience” with surgical blades. My phone buzzed. It was a message from my old academic mentor, Dr. Catherine Reynolds. “Sean, your research fellowship at Harvard has been fully approved. Don’t worry about the logistics. I’m sending your senior colleague, Helena, to come collect you.” In that single moment, the frantic, terrified beating of my heart finally settled into a calm, steady rhythm. I felt anchored. I sat quietly as Chelsea blew through three red lights to reach the hospital. I didn’t resist when she dragged me into the donor clinic, screaming at the on-duty nurse, “He’s O-negative! He’s a match! Draw his blood now!” I remained entirely silent. But just as the nurse pressed the cold alcohol wipe against my skin, Chelsea suddenly grabbed the nurse’s arm, halting her. She knelt down in front of my chair, forcing me to look at her. “Sean, talk to me. Just say the word ‘no,’ and I’ll call this off. We won’t draw a single drop.” She knew how terrified I was of needles. She knew the mere sight of blood made me faint. Yet, she had brought me here anyway. I stared at the familiar lines of her face, trying to find the girl who had once saved me from a gang of debt collectors, running through the rain to pull me into an emergency room. The girl who had covered my eyes during my vaccinations, whispering in my ear, “Don’t look, sweetheart. It’ll be over in a second.” The girl who had emptied her entire childhood savings account to pay off my father’s gambling debts so I could finish my degree. I looked at her, and in my mind, I whispered: “Consider this the final payment for everything you did for me.” “From this moment on, we owe each other nothing.” I looked into her eyes, smiled gently, and tapped: “1.” Chelsea’s eyes fluttered shut, her chest heaving with sharp, ragged breaths. She stood up abruptly, her face twisting into a mask of pure fury. “Fine,” she spat, her voice dripping with venom. “You want to play the martyr? Let’s see how much you can take!” She turned to the doctor, her voice booming through the clinic. “Draw ten vials. Don’t stop until you have all ten.” The doctor looked at her in disbelief. “Ma’am, drawing that much from a patient with his vitals is dangerous—” “I said draw it!” Chelsea hissed. “My husband is a very generous man. I wouldn’t want to insult his charity.” The doctor hesitated, but I patted his hand gently, nodding to let him know it was okay to proceed. It was pointless to argue. This hospital was heavily funded by Chelsea’s conglomerate. If medical ethics had any power here, my mother would never have had her treatment withheld so easily. I closed my eyes, feeling my life force slowly drain out through the plastic tube. My lips grew cold and numb. The room began to spin. And then, from the recovery room right next door, separated only by a thin medical curtain, a series of soft, suggestive sounds drifted through the air. Tyler, who was supposed to be in critical condition, spoke in a loud, performative gasp. “Oh, Chelsea… slow down. Sean is literally in the next chair…” Her response was a low, breathless moan. “Let him watch.” With a sharp snap, the curtain was ripped aside. The two of them were tangled on the hospital bed, their clothes half-torn, flushed and breathing heavily. Chelsea glared at the terrified nurses and doctors still in the room. “Get the hell out. All of you.” Within seconds, the clinic was cleared, leaving only the three of us. Chelsea let out a cold, humorless laugh as her hands slowly traced down Tyler’s bare chest. “Look at me, Sean,” she demanded, her eyes locked onto mine. “Look at what you’re missing. You think your disgust matters to me? There are plenty of men begging to take your place.” “Don’t ever flatter yourself into thinking I need you.” She leaned down, pressing her mouth hard against Tyler’s. And to ensure I didn’t close my eyes, she had hung my mother’s gold St. Christopher medallion from the curtain rod directly above them. If I looked away, she would know instantly. When they were finished, Chelsea kicked the soiled top sheet off the bed, throwing it at my feet. “Wash it.” Tyler looked at me with a lazy, satisfied grin. “Oh, Chelsea, that’s so mean. There’s… well, there’s a lot of my mess on that sheet.” “How can we ask Sean to clean up after us?” He slowly slid out of the bed, walking over to where I sat, weak and dizzy from the blood loss. He reached up, plucked the St. Christopher medallion from the rod, and began tossing it lightly in his palm. “You know, Chelsea said this little charm was supposed to bring good luck and health. But my chest still hurts.” “I was going to give it back to you, Sean, but honestly… it’s probably covered in bad luck now.” “Let me help you get rid of it.” “No—” My voice didn’t work, but my mind screamed as Tyler casually tossed the solid gold medallion out the open third-story window. I rushed to the glass, watching the small gold glint plunge into the darkness below. A split second later, the heavy tire of a speeding city bus rolled over it, crushing it into the asphalt. My vision went completely red. A primal, uncontrollable rage surged through my veins. I lunged at Tyler, my hands clawing at his throat, a guttural, choked sound tearing from my chest. But Tyler easily slipped behind Chelsea, trembling and clutching his chest. “Chelsea, see? I told you!” Tyler whimpered, a triumphant smirk flashing on his face where she couldn’t see. “I knew if we pushed him hard enough, he’d start talking again!” Chelsea’s eyes narrowed, processing Tyler’s words. But when she saw me trying to claw my way toward him, her protective instincts kicked in. She shoved me back with brutal force. Severely depleted from the blood draw, my legs gave out. I crashed onto the cold tile floor, my body trembling so violently I couldn’t pull myself up. Chelsea took a step toward me, a flash of regret crossing her face, but Tyler suddenly let out a sharp cry, collapsing to his knees. “My chest… it hurts so bad!” “Chelsea, I was only trying to help him speak. I didn’t think he’d actually try to kill me… He knows my heart is weak. He wanted me dead.” “If I die, it’s fine… but my mother is still in prison. I won’t even get to say goodbye to her…” I stared at his pathetic, amateurish acting, desperately trying to formulate words to defend myself, but all that came out of my throat were broken, pathetic grunts. Chelsea’s expression hardened into pure disgust as she looked down at me. “Sean, you really are a monster, aren’t you? All this silence was just an act.” “You did all of this just to find a way to murder Tyler!” She called for the emergency team to wheel Tyler to the ICU. Before she left, she looked back at me, her voice cold as ice. “If anything happens to him, Sean, I will make sure you pay for it with your life.” I lay there, paralyzed on the floor. Not even thirty minutes later, my phone rang. It was the director of Oakridge Cemetery. “Mr. Hastings, we have an emergency. The plot where your mother was recently laid to rest has been flagged for immediate relocation due to an eminent domain order.” “You need to come down here immediately to oversee the excavation, or we cannot guarantee the integrity of the remains.” A high-pitched ringing filled my ears. Without a single second of hesitation, I dragged myself out of the hospital, hailed a cab, and rushed to Oakridge. But by the time I arrived, the grave had already been dug halfway up. I threw myself in front of the workers’ shovels, my body acting as a shield. Tyler stood a few yards away, shivering inside Chelsea’s oversized trench coat. “Chelsea, the spiritual advisor was right. The energy from this grave is killing me. The moment we got here, my heart started acting up again.” I fell to my knees in front of Chelsea, shaking my head violently. My throat burned as I fought with every ounce of my remaining strength to force the words out. “Please… don’t…” Chelsea remained silent for a long moment, but ultimately, she waved her hand, signaling her private security guards to drag me away. “Sean, Tyler’s mother sacrificed everything for my family. I can’t risk his life over a piece of land.” “Don’t worry. I’ll buy your mother a much better plot in a premium cemetery.” I was pinned to the ground by two heavy guards, forced to watch as they hauled my mother’s casket out of the fresh earth. While the workers were busy, Tyler slipped away from Chelsea’s side, kneeling down next to me on the damp grass. He leaned close, his breath warm against my ear. “You still don’t get it, do you, Sean? Your mother didn’t die from cancer.” “She died because she woke up and saw Chelsea and me having sex right there on her hospital bed. The shock gave her a massive stroke.” “Oh, and that night? Chelsea ignored your calls because she was busy helping me rewrite my corporate portfolio. Your mother died completely alone.” “Thank you for all your hard work, big brother.” “Ah!” A wild, animalistic strength surged through me. I broke free from the guards’ grip and lunged at Tyler, burying my fingers into his hair, tearing at his face. In the scuffle, a heavy boot slammed into my abdomen. The pain was blinding. I fell back, gasping for air. When I opened my eyes, Chelsea was standing over me, holding the small marble urn containing my mother’s ashes. I clutched my throat, forcing the words out through the blood in my mouth. “Give… me… my… mother.” Chelsea let out a cold, humorless laugh. “Look at that. You can speak just fine when you actually want to.” “If it takes a little trauma to make you talk, then let’s play.” With a casual, elegant flick of her wrist, she tossed the marble urn over the edge of the cliff. The urn shattered against the jagged rocks below. A cloud of fine, grey ash caught the wind, scattering into the empty air, disappearing over the valley. “Mom!” I screamed, a raw, agonizing sound that tore my throat open. I tried to throw myself over the edge after her, but the guards pinned me back down, grinding my face into the dirt. Chelsea turned her back to me, pushing Tyler’s wheelchair toward her car. “Keep him here,” she directed the guards. “Don’t let him leave until he can speak to me in full, coherent sentences.” She didn’t notice the low, rhythmic thumping echoing from the clouds. A sleek, private helicopter was descending rapidly toward the clearing. When the cabin door opened and I saw the woman stepping out onto the grass, tears finally broke through my defenses, blurring my vision. Chelsea returned home in a daze. Tyler called her name several times, but she didn’t seem to hear him. “Chelsea, we had to do that,” Tyler said softly, wrapping his arms around her neck. “It was the only way to shock Sean out of his selective mutism. He’ll understand eventually. He won’t hold a grudge.” Chelsea looked up, a deep, gnawing anxiety clawing at her chest. Just as she reached for her phone to tell the guards to release him and bring him home, the butler burst into the room, panting heavily. “Ma’am… someone just delivered these to the front gate.” He held out two small, navy blue booklets. They were official divorce certificates.

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