Chapter 3

3: 3

A month later, Mabel came back.

Or maybe I should call her Joanna Cox, the sister she'd invented for herself.

Right now she was my brother's girlfriend, the older of a pair of twins.

At the restaurant, I sat alone across from the two of them.

Back when we used to eat together, Mabel always insisted on sitting shoulder to shoulder with me.

She said that was how couples were supposed to be, and that the seat across the table was for outsiders.

Now I was the outsider.

Mabel lifted her hand, all business, the way you deal with someone you barely know.

She slid a divorce agreement across to me.

"Joanna must have explained it to you. The new project needs her to be the legal representative."

"She's afraid something could go wrong and drag you into it, so she wants the two of you to divorce for a while, just for show."

It was a flimsy excuse.

I looked into Mabel's eyes.

There was distance in them, coldness, both forced, but not a trace of guilt.

Because she knew I would believe her.

The way I did back in college, when I gave up a secure government job just to follow her to Southport for work.

She'd been so angry she said the first thing that came to her, and she broke up with me.

By the time I'd chased her through the downpour to the foot of her dorm, she still hadn't cooled off.

She pointed outside.

"My bracelet fell out there somewhere. If you find it before daybreak, I'll take you back."

Mabel was allergic to metal. She never wore jewelry.

I knew she was almost certainly just venting, but I couldn't bear even a one-in-ten-thousand chance of losing her.

So I really did search the whole night.

By the time they brought me to the hospital the next day, my fever had hit a hundred and six.

Mabel held my hand, her eyes red-rimmed, swearing she'd never lie to me again as long as she lived.

And now, for someone else, she'd gone back on that.

My chest felt tight and heavy, like I couldn't get a full breath.

I read through that divorce agreement slowly, line by line.

Across from me, my brother had his arm around Mabel's shoulders, laughing and teasing, ordering her to pick out this dish and that.

"Babe, I want that shrimp. Peel it for me!"

Mabel looked down at him with the gentle expression that used to be mine alone, and murmured a doting yes.

The shrimp was carefully peeled, dipped in soy sauce, and fed into my brother's mouth.

And suddenly I remembered what Mabel had said about him the first time she visited my family.

"He'll only eat fruit if it's already sliced, needs someone else to peel his shrimp, and calls a cab for a store that's barely half a mile away."

"Your parents must be blind, dumping you in the countryside all those years and ignoring you, all for a precious oversized baby like him."

Back then she'd been so indignant on my behalf, with nothing but contempt for my parents and their favoritism.

Even my brother, the one who'd gotten everything, caught the edge of her anger.

But little by little, she softened toward him.

"Your brother's a newbie. Yesterday he stayed at the office studying project files until two in the morning before going home. Turns out he can handle more than I thought."

"Your brother brought over a bowl of fish soup today. I didn't know he could even cook. I always figured he was some rich boy who'd never lifted a finger in his life."

Somewhere along the way, she stopped resisting him at all.

When my parents asked her to help find him a place to rent near ours, she agreed without hesitating.

She told me, "There's no grudge in a family that lasts overnight. Besides me, they'll be the ones you can lean on your whole life too."

"Neville, you could try to get along with your brother."

All this time I thought she was thinking of me.

So it turned out she was only making excuses for the man she loved.

Seeing me sit there so long without moving the pen, my brother propped his chin on his hand and grinned at me.

"All right, hurry up and sign it. Once you're done we can eat."

"What are you staring at it for? Afraid your own girlfriend's going to cheat you?"

Mabel nodded along.

"Once the project's up and running a year from now, the two of you can still remarry."

At those words, my brother's face went pale for an instant.

I didn't answer.

I picked up the pen and signed my name, stroke by stroke.

No. We would never remarry.

After dinner, it started pouring.

My brother, his arm around Mabel, looked at me with a slightly troubled expression.

"Neville, my fiancée and I still have a date to get to. Would you mind grabbing a cab yourself?"

I nodded, and watched them walk away.

Through the driving rain, what arrived before the taxi was an onboarding notice in my inbox.

【Mr. Neville James, thank you for joining Crestwell Group.

Your one-year training program begins next month. Please report to the Germany headquarters by August 3rd.】

I tapped my finger and pressed confirm.

【Received.】