Chapter 4

4: 4

4.

I took the baby to the inpatient ward myself.

The nurse reminded me to settle the bill.

One try after another, and every payment failed.

Then a notice popped up on my phone.

"This debit card has been suspended."

Behind me, the people in line clicked their tongues, impatient.

I dug through my whole bag and came up with a few loose dollars.

I stared at my contacts for a long time.

Hudson had just covered the damages at the supermarket for me. I didn't have the face to ask him again, so I called Joyce.

More than a dozen calls, and no one picked up.

All I got back was one cold reply.

"When you've thought it through, come back and apologize to Duane."

"Apologize, and the card will work again."

I stared at the screen, cold all over.

Earlier, when I was leaving the ward, Joyce had taken half a step after me.

She'd looked at the baby's little hand, bruised purple from the needle, and something in her eyes flickered too, a moment of pain.

But in the end, she still stopped.

Because of Duane.

Because she wouldn't let Duane feel slighted.

So this was how she meant to force me to bow my head.

Seeing the baby's high fever, the nurse arranged treatment first and told me to make up the payment before dawn.

The next day the fever broke, and I looked down at my ring finger.

In the end, I slipped off the wedding ring.

A ring that had cost over ten thousand sold for just twenty-three hundred.

The clerk asked me again and again, "Once we buy it back, there's no getting it returned. You're sure?"

I looked at the pale band of skin at the base of my finger and gave a small nod.

I paid the medical bill with the money from the ring, then bought a plane ticket back to my hometown.

That left me with a few hundred dollars.

But it was the first time in all these years that I'd actually held money of my own.

I wanted to go back and pack a few clothes.

The key wouldn't go into the lock, no matter how I tried.

The fingerprint scanner didn't work either.

I knocked for a long time, and finally the door opened.

Duane stood behind Joyce, wearing my slippers.

"Peter, you're finally back."

He said it so easily, as if he were the real man of the house.

Joyce glanced at the baby in my arms, and her face softened a good deal.

Her hand even lifted on its own.

But one look at Duane beside her, and she pulled it back, her face going cold again.

"You can come in, but apologize to Duane first."

I froze for a few seconds.

"This is my home."

"Oh, so you still know it's your home?"

Joyce blocked the doorway, her expression strange.

"If you know it, then stop threatening me with divorce at every turn."

"For the sake of you looking after the baby, bow your head today and we'll call it over."

I picked out the furniture in here with my own hands.

There was still a baby bottle in the kitchen I hadn't gotten around to washing.

And now, to walk into my own home, I had to apologize to the man who'd taken it over.

"Never mind."

I took the divorce papers I'd prepared at the print shop out of my bag and set them down at the door.

I pressed them lightly under that key that would never open the door again.

"I wasn't planning on coming back to this home anyway."

Joyce went still.

The trace of pity in her eyes turned into pure impatience.

"Peter, what more do you want?"

"It's just an apology. It's not some huge deal. Why do you have to be this stubborn?"

I didn't answer.

I held the baby, turned, and walked toward the elevator.

But the instant I stepped into it,

a loud crash came from behind me, out of nowhere.