Chapter 4

By the time I got back to the hospital, my father had already been wheeled into the ICU.

The doctor said they had missed the best window to save him.

He put it gently.

But I understood.

My father didn't have much time left.

I watched him through the glass.

A tube ran into his face, his eyes shut tight, the back of his hand a mess of tiny needle marks.

When I was little, I was scared of shots, and he would coax me through them with a piece of candy.

Later, when I got married, he took out the money he had saved for years and used it for my dowry.

He was always afraid I'd suffer, marrying into the Gilbert family.

Every time, I told him Jim treated me well. Three years of lies.

At three in the morning, the doctor came out to tell me.

My father hadn't made it.

I stood there. It was a long time before the tears finally fell.

Jim called.

I didn't answer.

He called more than a dozen times in a row, and in the end I picked up.

"Where'd you run off to in the middle of the night again? Shirley's in a really bad way right now. Come back and talk to her, calm her down."

"My dad's dead."

The other end went quiet for a moment.

Jim's voice dropped low.

"...How did it happen so suddenly?"

"Weren't you the one who swore up and down his condition could never kill him?"

He didn't answer.

After a while, he said, "My condolences. On the day of the funeral, I'll try to find time to make it."

The day my father was buried, it rained hard.

I stood at the cemetery gate for three hours, holding the urn.

Jim didn't come.

Shirley, though, posted to her feed.

In the video, Jim had booked out an entire amusement park and was riding the carousel with her.

She leaned against his shoulder, laughing, while he held her cotton candy.

The caption was a single line.

【Thank you for always being willing to be by my side and take my mind off things.】

I watched that video until my fingers went stiff with cold.

So this was what "trying to find time to make it" meant. Taking Shirley's mind off things.

I shut off my phone and went back to our marital home one last time, to be done with Jim for good.

The moment I walked in, I saw Shirley sitting in the living room, the Samoyed lying at her feet.

The dog bed was lined with a heap of shredded paper.

I went closer and looked. It was the painting my father had left me.

When he was young, he'd asked a friend and waited a long time to get that out-of-print piece.

Before he died, he even said that someday, when I had a child, we'd hang it in the nursery.

Now it was torn to pieces, matted with dog hair and stains.

"Who did this?"

Shirley looked up, all innocence.

"The dog's still little, he doesn't know any better... maybe he just got mischievous and dragged the painting out of the cabinet himself."

Jim came down from upstairs, saw the state of me, and sighed first.

"It's just an old painting. Broken is broken. At most I'll buy you a new one."

I looked up.

"That was what my father left me!"

"Olivia, your dad is already gone. Do you really have to make a scene over some old painting?"

Shirley held the dog and spoke softly.

"Olivia... keep your voice down, don't frighten the dog, he's very fragile too."

I stood up and walked to the bedroom.

I started packing my things.

Jim leaned in the doorway, watching me.

"What are you packing for? Trying that whole running-away-from-home act again?"

"I'm moving out."

"If you're moving, wait a few days. Shirley's staying here right now. You dragging a suitcase back and forth will disturb her rest."

The clothes in my hands dropped to the floor.

Right then, Shirley suddenly screamed.

"Ah! My diamond ring's gone!"

She clutched her hand, crying so hard she could barely breathe.

"It was right here in my pocket a second ago... that's the only thing I have left of my mother."

Jim's face darkened, his eyes cutting toward me.

"Olivia, open your suitcase. Let me check it."

I didn't move.

"I told you, I didn't take it."

"You're this worked up today. Who knows what you'd do on impulse?"

He kicked the suitcase over, and clothes and photo albums scattered across the floor.

My father's death certificate slid out of an inner pocket.

Jim stepped on it, the sole of his shoe grinding over my father's name.

I stared at that foot, and suddenly I laughed.

Laughed until the tears came down.

Jim frowned.

"At a time like this, you can actually still laugh?"

I bent down and picked up the death certificate, carefully brushing off the dust.

"I'm laughing at myself. Three years, and I lived it out as a joke. How pathetic."

I took the divorce papers out of my bag and set them in front of him.

"Sign it."

At that, Jim's expression changed.

"Over some trivial little thing like this, you want to fight me for a divorce?"

"That's right. A divorce."

"Olivia, think it through. Leave me, and where would you even have to go?"

I pulled off my wedding ring and threw it down at his feet.

The ring rolled twice and came to rest beside that trodden, dirtied death certificate.

"Jim, you'd better never regret what happened today."

I dragged my suitcase out the door.

Behind me, he called my name.

I didn't look back.

The pre-dawn train pulled out, and the city outside the window kept falling further and further away.

Holding my father's portrait, I finally let the tears fall, in spite of myself.