Chapter 4

In that moment, I was truly at the end of everything.

Whatever hope I'd had left for Nigel was gone. There was nothing left to feel.

I stopped talking.

I forced my way past him and started walking.

Seeing me about to leave, Nigel panicked and grabbed at the box in my hands.

It was wrapped in cloth, so he had no idea what was inside.

I shouted at him.

"Let go!"

Nigel sneered.

"You're guarding it this hard. What's so precious?"

"It's none of your business!" I yelled. "Don't you dare touch it!"

A knowing sneer curled at the corner of his mouth.

"What kind of shameful thing is it, that I can't even lay a finger on it?"

"The harder you try to stop me, the more I want to see what it is."

And he lunged to snatch it.

Desperate, I cried out at him.

"Nigel, if you don't let go right now, we're getting a divorce!"

"What did you say?"

He stared at me, disbelieving.

As if he couldn't believe I'd actually said the word divorce.

I said it firmly.

"Let go!"

Nigel looked at me, silent for a moment, and then his face twisted with anger.

"What shameful thing is in there, exactly? If you won't tell me, I'm not letting go!"

Inside was his mother's ashes.

And it was her own dying instruction that he wasn't fit to see her off, that there was no need for him to attend the funeral.

I glared at him.

"I'm not saying it again. Let go right now, or else—"

"Or else divorce, right? Still trying to scare me with that?"

Nigel sneered. "Don't think I can't see it. You're this worked up, so it has to be something you don't want me to find!"

"The more you keep it from me, the more I'm going to look!"

His grip surged with sudden force.

I fought to shield it.

And in the struggle, the box fell to the ground.

A shattering crash.

As the box broke into pieces,

my heart broke with it.

Nigel stared at the ashes scattered across the ground, shock all over his face.

"Ger—Geraldine, are you insane? What are you doing carrying an urn around?"

I shouted through my tears.

"That's your mother!"

Nigel froze for a second, then laughed.

"Impossible. Geraldine, you really will stop at nothing to sicken me. You can actually bring yourself to say something like that?"

The wind picked up, and the ashes scattered over the ground, drifting away on the air.

He stepped closer and snarled.

"Geraldine, can you stop the act already?"

"You're just jealous of the widow, aren't you?"

"To keep me from taking care of her, you'd make up a reason this vicious. Are you even human?"

He kicked hard at the broken fragments of the box.

The box flipped over.

And there was the photo of his own mother on it.

The instant he saw that photo, the color drained from his face.