Chapter 2

Barret looked up at me, disbelief on his face.

Anger flickered in his eyes.

"Irma, after everything it took for us to get here, you want a divorce? Over a woman?"

"Is it really worth it?"

"Besides, they're both dead. Is anyone dead more important than someone alive?"

His grip on my fingers tightened until his nails nearly bit into my skin.

He'd just brushed off my parents' deaths as if they were nothing.

Anyone else could have said those words. Anyone but him.

Back then, it was supposed to be our wedding.

But my parents were killed in a car crash, and I begged everyone I could think of to help me find the man responsible.

Just when things finally started moving, they told me the driver couldn't handle the punishment.

I appealed after that, again and again, and lost every time.

Like someone out of her mind, I knelt at the courthouse doors every day, praying they would bring the guilty man to justice.

On a rainy day, I knelt there soaked to the skin, burning with fever for three days and nights, and no one came.

In the end I fell into depression.

I tried to end my life more than once, and every time it was Barret who pulled me back.

I swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills, and he rushed me to the hospital in the middle of the night to have my stomach pumped, then stayed by my side for three full days.

When I climbed up to jump, he ran in front of me, pressed a knife to his own throat, and said:

"Irma, if you dare jump today, I'll die right here in front of you!"

That was how it went. Time after time, he saved me.

And that was how, little by little, the depression began to lift.

So this wedding finally made it onto the calendar too.

I still remember how, earlier at the wedding, he'd knelt on one knee before me and smiled:

"Irma, your past was mine to save. For the rest of your life, I hope you'll only get better."

"With me beside you, you have nothing to worry about!"

I was naive enough to believe he'd always be good to me.

But before the two of us even walked out of the bridal suite, the blow landed straight in my heart.

It hurt so much I couldn't catch my breath.

I dragged in a breath, and my whole body started to shake.

Even breathing turned unbearable.

Without thinking, I threw off Barret's hand and crumpled to the floor.

This was the aftermath of the depression.

I looked at myself in the mirror, my eyes swollen beyond recognition.

My fingers had curled into strange shapes.

I hadn't wanted to cry, but the tears kept spilling out anyway.

Barret watched me, then pulled me tight against him.

"Irma, is it happening again? Where's your medicine? Tell me, quick."

It had been a long time since my last episode.

Getting married today, I'd never once imagined something like this could happen.

Least of all that Barret would do something like this behind my back.

I shook my head with difficulty.

He stroked my back and said:

"I'll go buy some for you right now. Wait for me!"

Then he turned his back on me and left.

Watching him walk away, something bitter welled up inside me.

But I waited three whole hours, and he never came back.

I glanced at the app the two of us had linked.

It let us see each other's current location.

I opened it, and I laughed.

So he hadn't gone to the hospital at all.

He'd gone to a hotel.

The hotel where Angela was.

I set the phone weakly on the floor and dialed 911.