Chapter 2

Standing on a street back home, I still felt like I was in a daze.

As if it had only been a dream.

Then my phone buzzed. A text from Sadie.

"Peter, remember to take your medicine on time."

"Don't do anything that puts your life in danger again and make me worry."

I looked down at my watch. Sure enough, it was eight in the evening.

She was like an alarm clock.

Every night at eight, right on schedule, she reminded me to take my medicine.

Because only if I took it on time could my mind and moods stay stable.

Then the next message popped up.

"Be good. I'll be back from my business trip tomorrow, and once I'm home I'll go with you to your treatments."

If I hadn't seen her abroad with her childhood sweetheart with my own eyes, I might really have believed her lies.

After I got home, I said nothing.

I didn't even confront anyone.

I just went through the same life as before, step by step, like a walking corpse.

Sadie noticed nothing off, and kept going on trips every few days.

Every time she came back she carried the milky smell of a baby.

She explained it was a work dinner, and partway through she'd thought the client's kid was cute and picked it up for a bit.

I didn't expose her lie.

At the dinner table, Sadie looked at me, surprised.

"Peter, how did you get so quiet lately?"

"What is it? You're not making scenes like you used to anymore."

In the past, this house had a scene playing out every single day.

Me, sobbing in front of my mother's memorial photo, blowing up into a huge fight, then forcing Sadie to her knees to apologize.

Blaming her, because if she hadn't gone and gotten herself tangled up with someone outside our marriage,

my mother wouldn't have swallowed those pills.

In the end it always became a farce where neither of us would back down, with nothing to show for it but broken dishes all over the floor.

"There's no point anymore."

I shook my head with a bitter smile.

"Even if I made you kneel and apologize every day, would it bring my mother back?"

Something eased in Sadie's eyes, and she came over to sit down beside me.

"Peter, I'm glad you can let it go."

"Forget the past. Let's call it even and wipe the slate clean."

She wanted to be close to me. She even offered to share a room with me that night.

But I drove her off with one cold line. "I don't like having someone next to me."

So she took her pillow and went to the study.

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

My mother's memorial photo still stood in the living room.

In the picture she smiled so kindly. Really, what a joke.

The next day I pulled out the box from under the bed, the one I'd treasured, meaning to throw it away.

The box held all of my mother's belongings.

After she swallowed the pills in the bathroom and killed herself,

I fell into enormous guilt and self-blame.

At the worst of the severe depression, only looking at those keepsakes made me feel a little better.

After my mother died, Sadie was full of guilt too, falling silent every now and then.

But more often she simply vanished.

Off drinking alone somewhere.

Or away on some far-off business trip, gone for ten days, half a month at a stretch.

Back then the reason she gave me was this:

"Peter, I can't bear to look at your face, or I'll think of your mother, and of the baby in my belly that you got killed."

So we'd start fighting again, going cold on each other, our relationship getting worse and worse.

But it never once occurred to me that those days she disappeared had nothing to do with any silent standoff with me.

She'd gone abroad, reuniting with Aiden and their child.

The baby had never been miscarried at all. She'd run off overseas and delivered it safely.

While I carried every bitter consequence.

That day, I came home from the hospital.

When I pushed open the door, Sadie was sitting on the living room couch.

"You're back?"

She stood up and pointed at the gift box on the coffee table.

"Brought this back from abroad this trip. It's for you."

I said nothing, changed into my slippers, and set my medical file down on the entryway cabinet without thinking.

"You went for a checkup?"

She came over and picked up the report to read it. "What did the doctor say? Is it any better?"

I said nothing. She read it for a long time.

Long enough that I came back out in my house clothes,

and she was still standing at the entryway, her brow drawn tight.

"Severe depression, eating disorder, insomnia…"

Her voice was strained.

"Peter, aren't you taking your medicine on time? How did it get worse again?"

I walked into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water.

"I'm fine."

She grabbed my wrist. "You've lost this much weight, and you call that fine?"

I gently pulled free and didn't answer.

She followed me into the kitchen and looked at the scars on my wrist, the ones left from cutting myself.

She was quiet for a long time.

"I… won't go on trips anymore. I'll stay home with you this whole time."

"Peter, your health is so bad right now."

Her heart suddenly softened and she threw herself into my arms.

Breathing in the familiar smell of her, my face must have been numb.

So what if she was tender now?

Their betrayal was real.

It could never be erased.

I gently pushed her away. "I have to go take my medicine."