Chapter 3

Chapter Three

It was already past noon the next day when I woke in the hospital.

The nurse adjusted my IV, sighing as she worked. "Photosensitive epilepsy can turn deadly in a second. Why would you be alone in a place with lights like that? Where's your husband?"

"He's with someone else." My voice came out raw as sandpaper.

She started to say something, then thought better of it, and only shook her head and patted my shoulder. Pity, probably.

I closed my eyes and thought of the way Eugene's footsteps had paused before I passed out.

Those three meters of distance were a dull blade, sawing back and forth across my heart.

Eugene came in the evening.

He carried a box of osmanthus cakes, the ones I liked. He sat on the edge of the bed and reached out to touch my face, and I turned my head away.

"Candice, I'm sorry." His voice was thick with guilt. "Isabel twisted her ankle in those heels yesterday. She has a show next week, one she's spent three years preparing. I couldn't let all that work go to waste."

"And besides…" He paused. "I know you don't like her. But she took a knife for me back then. I owe her my life. I can't just not repay that."

I looked at him, and then I laughed.

"Eugene, she took a knife for you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

I didn't answer. I pulled open the collar of my hospital gown and bared the vicious scar across my belly. "This scar. You've asked me three times how I got it. I told you it was appendix surgery, and you believed me."

"The truth is, that kidnapping two years ago, they were after you. I threw myself over you and took that knife for you. It went straight through my abdomen. Saving you nearly killed me on the operating table."

The color drained from Eugene's face all at once, disbelief written all over it.

"Your so-called savior, Isabel," I said, one word at a time, "she was hiding in the back seat of the car. She didn't dare lift her head, didn't dare blink, didn't even have the nerve to look at you. With what, exactly, did she take a knife for you?"

"You're lying!" Eugene shot to his feet. "Isabel, she… she has a scar on her back. She showed it to me!"

"That's a burn." I looked at him, calm. "Eugene, a man as sharp as you, and you can't tell a knife scar from a burn? You've just been lying to yourself this whole time!"

The room went dead silent.

Eugene's phone rang. It was Isabel.

He looked at the name flashing on the screen, then at my eyes, dry as a dead well, and in the end he silenced it.

"Candice, I'll get to the bottom of this. I'll give you an explanation. But don't slander Isabel. She isn't that terrible a person."

I gave a faint twist of my lips.

I already knew. Eugene would never believe me.

Just like two years ago, when Isabel "accidentally" pushed me down the stairs, and he said, "Isabel didn't mean it. Be the bigger person."

Just like yesterday, when I was seizing at death's door and he walked off carrying Isabel without once looking back.

"I want to be discharged," I said.

"No. You're not well yet!"

"I want to go back to Tang Manor." I looked at him. "Eugene, today is our wedding anniversary. You promised you'd come back to Tang Manor and have a meal with me."

Eugene let out a breath, thinking I had finally decided to soften.

"All right, I'll go back with you. Let's have a good anniversary. Everything in the past, we turn the page on it, all right?"

I smiled and nodded.

"All right."

Turn the page.

Turn it to the one where it's your life or mine.