Chapter 2

Sean's face was cold, and the words came out with a chill that pressed in on me.

"That's right. You owe Lydia."

"You owe her ten whole years. If you hadn't clung on the way you did, I'd have married her long ago."

Something tore open in my chest.

Pain flooded through every limb.

He'd once said I was his salvation. Now it was clinging.

So all my devotion, my patience, my throwing myself into everything for him.

In the space of a breath, in his eyes, it had all become shameless pestering.

Years ago, Lydia really had been dating Sean.

But she scorned poverty and loved money, and before she even finished college she ran off with some rich man.

Sean took it hard, and broke down more than once.

It was me who held out a true heart and warmed his frozen world back to life, bit by bit.

The day he proposed.

He'd choked up and said to me, "Meryl, you pulled me out of the abyss. I'll be good to you for the rest of my life."

But by now, I'd long since become the burden he wanted to shake off.

All at once.

The humiliation of betrayal, five years of bitterness, the fury of being deceived, all churned together.

My fingertips wouldn't stop trembling.

"So you got everyone together and put on this whole show for me?"

I clenched my fingers so hard my nails dug into my palms, and I didn't feel it.

Something uneasy flickered in Sean's eyes.

But he recovered fast, and said it like he was in the right, "That's right."

"We planned all of it in advance."

"Letting you catch me cheating, bribing the hospital and the funeral home to stage it, that was all my idea."

"You drove Lydia away for ten years. Do you have any idea how much she suffered? Making you put up with a little grievance is nothing."

A little grievance?

Every time I closed my eyes.

The image rose up of Mom and Dad being pushed into the cremation furnace.

I took sleeping pills to force myself to sleep.

At first half a tablet, then two, then four.

By now it took six before I could sink into that muddy sleep.

Katie's condition rose and fell.

I worked myself to the bone for money.

No matter how filthy or exhausting the job, as long as it paid, I didn't so much as flinch.

I didn't dare rest, didn't dare get sick, didn't dare let up for even a moment.

Terrified Katie wouldn't last until I had the money to save her.

The long overdraft ate away at my body without a sound, and it had been running on empty for a long time.

All I could do was grit my teeth and hold on.

But only now did I see that all of it was a script written for me ahead of time.

They'd simply let me struggle alone in the mud.

Watched me get gnawed away by suffering, cold-eyed, unmoved.

And then, one light little sentence.

Wiped out all five years of pain I'd endured.

How was I supposed to bear that?

I stared at Sean and asked, unwilling to let it go, "If you don't love me anymore, we could just divorce. What's the point of grinding me down like this?"

Mom saw my eyes redden and couldn't help but step up and take my hand.

"Sweetie, don't blame Sean."

"You've always been proud and stubborn. If Sean had asked you for a divorce himself, knowing your temper, you'd probably have done something terrible to Lydia."

Dad chimed in.

"That's right. Lydia's suffered enough already. She can't be hurt anymore."

"For those ten years she watched you and Sean wrapped up in each other. You can't imagine how much that hurt her."

"This was supposed to be her life. You just stole it from her."

"What we did is a big lesson for a small wrong, making up for your mistake."

And suddenly I understood.

Why the "will" Dad left behind had ordered me to walk out with nothing.

Only that way could every path behind me be cut off, leaving me no room to worry about anything else.

No room to even think that the people closest to me would be laying a trap.

I'd treated that fake will as my one pillar, saved it on my phone and cherished it for five whole years.

When I couldn't hold on, I'd take it out and chew on it again and again.

And it turned out to be their punishment, meant to make me atone to Lydia.

The blade Sean drove into me had already cut me to the bone.

I never imagined my own parents and my daughter, the people closest to me, would twist another one into the wound.

I wrenched my hand out of Mom's grip.

"Is this what Lydia said? That I stole her life?"

Tears rolled down Lydia's face in great drops, her voice shaking out of tune.

"Meryl didn't steal my life. I chose to leave on my own."

"Don't blame Meryl. She just loved Sean too much."

"She did nothing wrong. The one who was wrong has always been me."

The moment she started crying, the tension on every face was plain to see.

Katie swung her little fist at me, furious.

"Bad Mommy. It's your fault Auntie Lydia's crying."

"We were such a happy family, and you made everyone unhappy. I never want you to be my mommy again."

The child I'd once raised cupped in my own hands, swinging her fist at me.

In that moment, everything I'd given, everything I'd sacrificed, became a joke.