Chapter 1

My daughter died when her amniotic fluid embolized, and both families held the funeral together.

At the funeral, Cary Gilbert suddenly pulled out a sheet of paper.

"Where I'm from, the custom is to evaluate the bride even after the wedding."

"If she fails the evaluation, the full engagement gift has to be returned."

They stood in front of my daughter's funeral portrait, passing the evaluation sheet around, talking it over.

"Lazy and a glutton. Points off."

"Barren. Points off."

"No financial value after marriage. Points off."

In the end, my daughter was rated an "unfit wife."

Cary announced in front of everyone that I was to return the full engagement gift.

"Dad, I know you've treated me like your own son all these years, so I won't ask you for extra."

"Eighty-eight thousand in engagement money, plus interest for all these years."

"A hundred thousand total, and we'll call it even."

I looked at my daughter, barely cold in her coffin, and felt the blood run backward through my body.

Return the engagement money. Fine.

Then let's see exactly how these accounts get settled!

1.

I threw the evaluation sheet in Cary's face and shouted.

"Cary Gilbert, are you even human?"

"My daughter died giving birth, and you're at her funeral demanding the engagement money back?"

Torn paper scattered through the air and drifted down in front of my daughter's portrait.

Cary glanced down and simply stepped on one of the pieces.

"Tearing it up won't do anything. This is the evaluation the whole family agreed on. You can't wriggle out of it."

I was shaking with rage. Through tears I pointed at my daughter's portrait.

"Look at Yuna Acevedo's picture and say that again!"

Cary curled his lip, unbothered.

"Fine, I'll say it. What's there to be afraid of?"

"An amniotic fluid embolism means her own body wasn't up to it. You can't pin that on me."

"Everybody else gives birth just fine. Why couldn't she?"

"The baby didn't make it, and neither did she."

"Calling her barren, is that wrong?"

"You—"

I was trembling, and Isabel Gilbert threw an arm around her son to shield him.

"He's right, you know!"

"The dead don't come back. Just because she's gone, our family's losses don't count?"

Cary straightened up again and took a fresh stack of bills out of his bag.

Slap. He tossed them onto the offering table.

The white paper spread out and covered my daughter's black-and-white photo.

"You didn't believe me when I said she was lazy and a glutton."

"Take a good look at how much she spent in the years after the wedding."

Cary pointed at the first one.

"One mattress. Nineteen hundred."

"One pair of shoes. Three-twenty."

The last one he slammed down hard on my daughter's photo.

"Deposit for the postpartum care center. Five thousand!"

"She had no income after the wedding, but she never blinked when she bought things."

"A woman like that, who can afford to marry her?"

Isabel pulled out a calculator on the spot.

The clacking of the keys wouldn't stop echoing through the memorial hall.

"There's also the fruit and supplements she ate during the pregnancy. Every last item should be counted in."

Cary's relatives crowded around, pointing at the bills, talking over each other.

I looked at their small, grasping faces and my teeth were chattering with rage.

"Every one of these things, I paid for!"

The room went silent in an instant.

But my eyes went red with the ache of it.

"Yuna's back hurt so much she couldn't sleep all night, so all I could do was buy her a new mattress."

"And the postpartum center, that was because your mother said she had no time to care for her afterward, so I stepped in and booked it!"

"And these shoes! Seven months pregnant, her feet so swollen she couldn't even get slippers on. She looked at them for a whole month before she let herself buy them!"

"Cary Gilbert, you keep saying she failed. What did you, her husband, ever do for her?"

Cary's eyes flicked away.

"They're all expenses after the marriage anyway. Who paid for them, what difference does that make?"

"Of course it makes a difference!"

I shoved Cary all the way to my daughter's portrait.

"Back then your family had nothing, and my daughter felt sorry for you."

"Other families ask a hundred and eighty-eight thousand in engagement money. She would only take eighty-eight thousand!"

"The day the money came, we didn't keep a single cent. We added to it ourselves to make two hundred thousand and gave it to you for the renovations!"

I will never forget it.

That day Cary held the bank card and knelt down in front of every relative there and called me Dad.

He said he would treat me like his own father from then on, care for me as a son would.

And in the years after the wedding, I treated him like my own son too.

When his business failed, I dug into my retirement savings to plug the hole.

When he was sick in the hospital, I sat by the bed carrying him water and his meals.

But now, at my daughter's funeral, he was here to collect a debt from me!

I hurt so much I couldn't get the words out.

Cary only shook his head, contemptuous.

"I never asked you to be good to me."

"You gave that money of your own free will. You can't put it on me."

"But the engagement money belongs to my family, and now the marriage is over, so of course it should come back."

"And the hundred thousand has to be in my account before the funeral's over, or don't blame me for taking you to court."

My footing gave, and my lower back struck the offering table hard.

My daughter's portrait swayed with it.

I threw out my hands to catch it, and my eyes stung all at once.

"Fine. You want to settle accounts."

"Then today I'll settle them with you!"