Chapter 3

While I was taking my medication, Sadie slipped out to the balcony to take a call.

"Can't it wait a little longer?"

"Peter's in a really bad way right now. I'm afraid that the moment I bring up divorce, he won't hold together..."

I couldn't hear what the other side said.

Sadie's voice sank into a sigh.

"All right. I'll tell him as soon as I can."

I didn't have to guess. It had to be my mother and Aiden, calling from abroad, pushing her to finish the divorce with me.

What Sadie didn't know was this.

Today, besides going to the hospital, I had also gone to a café to meet my brother.

My wealthy sworn brother, Tristram Simmons, had sent a private investigator overseas to follow them.

He'd sent me a video.

In it, my mother was praying before the shrine.

"It truly isn't that I'm a heartless mother, that I set out to wreck Peter's marriage."

"It's only that, compared to Peter, Aiden needs Sadie so much more. Sadie even bore his child. They're the ones who should be a family."

"It was one wrong turn of mine back then that made Aiden an illegitimate son and left him to suffer all these years."

"I can't let his child repeat the same fate."

"Making Peter let go really is the best choice."

"And with my death standing between them, Peter and Sadie had already fought their way to divorce. I only nudged it along, wanting to set them free. Buddha will forgive me, won't he?"

When I saw it, I said nothing.

So it turned out she wasn't blind to the wrong she was doing.

She simply believed Buddha would forgive her.

My brother was hopping mad.

"I've had it. Is this really your birth mother? How can there be a mother in this world so ruthless to her own son?"

"Even playing favorites, no one takes it this far. Ruining her own son to the bone just for an illegitimate one."

"I honestly suspect there's some blood feud between you two. You're basically a kid your mother picked up off the street!"

When I first learned she'd faked her death, I couldn't sleep for nights on end, unable to work it out.

Why would my own mother do this to me,

even help that illegitimate son of hers take everything I had, and hand over my wife to him too.

But I understand now.

In her heart, her only son is Aiden. She'd fake her own death,

and even if it meant never seeing me again as long as she lived, she'd reunite with Aiden.

"She wants me to divorce. Then I'll give her what she wants."

I thought back to how, ever since Aiden went abroad after the miscarriage,

Sadie had kept trying to force me into a divorce.

"Rather than torment each other like this, better to end it cleanly and part on good terms."

But I refused, again and again.

"This marriage was bought with my mother's life. What right do you have to force me out of it?"

My eyes red, I hated Sadie with everything in me.

"If you hadn't gone out and taken up with Aiden, if it weren't for the debt you ran up carrying on with him,"

"none of this would ever have come to this point."

So I meant to drag it out with her, even if it dragged me to death, so we'd both go down together.

That's why I threw out that vicious threat: "If you want a divorce, then we die together."

I can understand, too, why she hesitated for so long.

However urgently they pressed her from abroad, she never once brought up divorce.

She was afraid of truly pushing me over the edge, of another death.

But lately, the calls from abroad came more and more often.

At first she still hid on the balcony to take them.

Later she just took them in the living room.

"Mom, I know, but he can't sleep at night, he can't even walk straight anymore."

"I can't just, right now..."

"Aiden's side... tell him to wait a little longer."

"What do you mean I can't bear to let go? I'm human. I have a conscience."

"Mom, you used to love Peter so much. How can you now..."

She stopped short and drove a fist into the wall.

After hanging up, Sadie sat on the couch, weighed down and utterly still.

In my pajamas, I watched her through the crack of the bedroom door.

She was smoking.

But she'd quit three years ago.

The moment she saw me, she stubbed out the cigarette fast, panic flooding her eyes.

"Peter, when did you get back?"

"Or did you... never leave at all today?"

Sadie had thought I wasn't home. That was why she'd taken the call so freely in the living room.

"Sadie, let's get divorced."

This time I'd made up my mind.

Since not one person in this world loves me, all the more reason I should love myself.

Dragging it out forever was no answer.

So let it come from me.

The timing was just right.