Chapter 2

I asked her why.

She lifted her eyes to me, and the coldness in them was terrifying.

"Hugh Finch, I married you to build a life with you, not to be your whole family's ATM."

In that moment, for the first time, everything inside me turned to ice.

But I still held on to one last shred of hope.

I thought, maybe the hospital had some kind of emergency fast track.

Maybe my uncle could put down a little first, maybe my cousin could hold on.

Three hours later, my uncle sent a text:

【Your cousin is gone.】

That afternoon I couldn't stay on my feet. I crouched on the floor and couldn't catch my breath for a long time.

No one knew that my life, the whole road of it, had all been given to me by my cousin.

From the age of six, I ate and slept at my uncle's house.

My uncle and aunt treated me just like their own son.

My cousin was three years older, and he gave way to me in everything from the time we were small.

When the other village kids picked on me, cornering me on the way home from school, it was always my cousin who charged in to shield me.

He got into fights for my sake and came home covered in bruises again and again.

When we were in school, the family was poor, and there was only enough tuition for one of us.

My cousin's grades were far better than mine. The teachers all said he could test into a top high school.

But he quietly tore up his acceptance letter.

At fifteen, he threw a worn backpack over his shoulder and went off alone to work construction in another city.

He told me, "Hugh, study hard. I'm no good at school, so I'll earn the money to put you through it."

From middle school all the way through college, seven full years.

On the site he hauled bricks, carried rebar, mixed cement, doing the dirtiest, most exhausting work.

He wouldn't spend on food or clothes for himself, wouldn't buy a single new shirt all year long.

Every month when his pay came, the first thing he did was transfer all of it to me.

My tuition, my meals, my clothes, all of it was his blood and sweat.

That I made it out of the countryside, that I had a stable job, that I could marry and start a family.

All of it my cousin ground out, suffered through, fought for with his own hands.

He was only twenty-eight.

He never had a girlfriend in his life, never bought a nice car or a nice place, never enjoyed a single day of comfort.

The biggest wish of his whole life was to earn a little more, save up a down payment, marry a wife, and live out a quiet, steady life.

A wish that simple, and he died without it ever coming true.

On the drive home after the funeral, she said to me, light as anything:

"Just as well he's dead. Now nobody from your family will come around borrowing money every other day. Much more peace and quiet."

That whole week, I didn't fight, didn't make a scene.

Every day I sat silent and blank, and I even kept lying to myself.

I told myself she was just cheap, just short-sighted, just unwilling to part with money.

She wasn't cruel, she just didn't understand how people treat each other...

Until I came across her post.

A brand-new black luxury car, the lighting perfect, the whole shot showy.

The caption: A fine car for a fine man, quite the match~

I tapped into the comments. It was all her friends congratulating Quinn Lawrence on his new car.

I scrolled through several before I finally saw one honest line.

【Queenie's so generous, dropping the whole two-hundred-thousand down payment for Quinn just like that, she spoils him rotten!】

Two hundred thousand.

I stared at those words.

The eighty thousand to save my cousin's life, she couldn't spare.

Two hundred thousand for her first love's car, she handed over without blinking.

In that moment, holding my cousin's memorial photo, I sat in the empty living room.

Every lie I'd told myself shattered clean to nothing.

......