Chapter 3

I held my phone and read that post over and over, a dozen times or more.

Then I called Queenie.

The other end was loud. Music, cheering, laughter, all of it tangled together.

She was at Quinn's car party, having the time of her life.

My voice came out hoarse.

"You paid the down payment on Quinn's car?"

Not a trace of guilt. Her tone was light, almost smug.

"Yeah. It's Quinn's first car, that means something, of course I'd help him."

I let out a jittery laugh. "Two hundred grand and you don't even blink, but you wouldn't put up eighty thousand for my cousin back then?"

"How is that the same? That was a bottomless pit. He couldn't be saved anyway. Pure waste of money."

When I heard that, I only laughed harder.

A living human being. The cousin who protected me my whole life.

In her eyes, he didn't measure up to a car for her first love.

I didn't fight with her. I just hung up.

After the call I sat on the couch and started thinking back over these three years of marriage.

How much of a doormat had I been?

Three years. I handed over every paycheck, kept nothing for myself.

I wore twenty-dollar bargain-rack clothes all year round, kept wearing socks with holes in them.

Two-dollar breakfast sandwiches, the cheapest set meal in the cafeteria at lunch, never once ordered delivery.

When friends asked me out for drinks, I turned them down every time, afraid of spending the money.

Skincare, lipstick, bags, clothes, whatever Queenie wanted,

I'd buy it for her even if it took me months to save.

She didn't want to do housework, so I came home from work and did all of it, the laundry, the cooking, the mopping.

She'd stay up late binging shows while I fetched her tea and waited on her.

She threw tantrums over nothing, and every time I was the one who backed down and apologized and coaxed her out of it.

I thought a true heart would earn a true heart back.

I thought if I just lived right, she'd eventually see everything I gave.

But I was wrong, completely wrong.

My frugality, my giving in, everything I put in.

To her it was all just her due.

It was the capital that let her shamelessly favor an outsider.

I thought of my cousin, back when he was alive.

Every holiday we met, he'd pull me aside and remind me,

"Hugh, treat your wife well. Don't fight. Just live a good life."

"Starting a family isn't easy. I don't ask you for anything else, only that you're settled and happy."

He even told me, smiling, that once he saved up enough he'd buy a place and we'd be neighbors.

All his kindness, all his hopes, ruined in the hands of the woman I married.

A little after ten, Queenie came home.

Reeking of alcohol, another man's cologne clinging to her.

She walked in, saw me sitting in the dark with the funeral photo in my arms, and her face pinched up at once.

"Sitting here in the dark, holding a dead man's picture. What's wrong with you? You want to jinx us?"

I looked up at her.

I asked, "Why wouldn't you save my cousin back then?"

She kicked off her heels, answered without even looking at me.

"I already told you. It wasn't worth it."

"Throw eighty grand in and you still can't keep him alive. A pure loss, that's all."

My own family's life, in her mouth, was just a deal that did or didn't pay off.

I looked at that pretty face and felt, for the first time, that she was a total stranger, and that she made me sick.

I didn't argue with her, because I truly had nothing left in me to argue with.

Every bit of warmth, love, and hope I'd had died clean the day my cousin drew his last breath.

Seeing me sit there silent, she figured I was just sulking like usual.

She came over and reached for my arm, her voice careless and offhand.

"Come on, it's been a long time. Let it go already."

"Life goes on. Quit acting so passive-aggressive all day."

I turned my body and moved away from her hand.

Her hand froze in midair. She blinked, and her face soured.

I stood, wiped my cousin's photo clean, and set it carefully in the very back of the cabinet.

I knew it, clear as day.

From the moment she sent that money to Quinn, from the moment she stood by and watched my cousin die,

the three years we'd spent as husband and wife were finished for good.