After my daughter got sick, my mom sent over a whole bag of wild ginseng.

She'd dug it out of the mountains herself, and nearly broke her leg doing it.

I felt awful about it, so I told Abraham Simmons again and again not to touch it.

But when I got home from work, I found out he'd given the ginseng away to a junior secretary at one of his client companies.

When I confronted him, Abraham didn't even look up.

His tone was dismissive. "Oh, that red bag?"

"Charlotte liked it, so I let her take it."

"I'm swamped at work. You really expect me to remember every little thing you say?"

"It's not like it was worth anything anyway."

"If you want some that badly, I'll just buy you another bag."

He was always like this. My words never registered with him at all.

Before, I might have talked myself down.

He worked hard, and it was all for this family.

After so many years together, we ought to cut each other some slack.

But today, something was different.

Staring at the empty cabinet, I suddenly felt it.

My heart seemed to hollow out right along with it.

——

That bag of wild ginseng was from my mom. It meant something.

Refusing to give up, I rummaged through the cabinet a few more times.

A pink notebook slipped out by accident.

Abraham, busy with his video game, didn't hear it.

He had his headphones on, completely absorbed.

And he muttered, carelessly brushing me off.

"It's just a few crummy ginseng roots. What's the big deal?"

"Poverty really does make people petty. Never seen anything of the world."

It wasn't just ginseng. It was wild ginseng.

Wild ginseng my mom had spent more than half a year digging up for me.

I was about to fire back when May Simmons came out of her room, her forehead beaded with sweat.

"Mom, my tummy hurts so bad…"

Her stomach trouble was acting up again.

I rushed to dig through the medicine box for her pills.

The anger I'd barely tamped down came surging back all at once.

"Abraham! I told you May has a bad stomach. She can't eat this junk food."

"Why can you never remember a single thing I tell you?"

Abraham, still glued to his game, finally bothered to look up.

But his face was all impatience.

"What are you yelling for? Can't you say things like a normal person?"

"I'm right in the middle of talking shop with a client. Could you stop bugging me with these little things?"

Little things.

Forgetting May at preschool last month, leaving her out in the rain until she ran a fever. A little thing.

Forgetting yesterday that I'm allergic to shellfish, sending me to the ER in the middle of the night. A little thing.

And now triggering May's stomach attack was a little thing too.

It was as though, in his eyes,

anything to do with me or our child was a trivial, unimportant little thing.

The DoorDash bag at my feet was a glaring red.

The fury knotted up inside me with nowhere to go.

But my daughter was in real pain, so all I could do was get her to the hospital first.

May had an acute stomach spasm.

Five or six hours had already passed since the attack began.

Any longer, and her life would have been in danger.

I was furious and heartbroken all at once.

Then May suddenly lifted her head.

"I told Daddy my tummy hurt, but Daddy said he was really busy with work and didn't have time for me."

"Mom, Daddy isn't actually that busy, is he? He just doesn't want anything to do with me, right?"

Those innocent little words landed like a sledgehammer.

They shattered every last illusion I'd been using to fool myself.

Somewhere along the way, Abraham's work had suddenly become so very, very busy.

Too busy with overtime, too busy with business trips.

Too busy shopping, too busy gaming.

As if all he had to do was wave the banner of "work,"

and every single thing at home stopped being his problem.

I wanted so badly to make excuses for him, the way I always had.

But looking into May's pure, trusting eyes, I couldn't get a single word out.

I pulled out my phone and keyed in that number I knew by heart.

Dial. Hang up.

After a dozen calls in a row, Abraham finally deigned to pick up.

"What now?"

"Didn't I already tell you I'm slammed right now? What's so earth-shattering that you have to bother me while I'm working?"

"May's in the hospital. Because of that takeout you ordered."

The line went quiet for a moment.

Abraham softened his voice.

"Because of the takeout? No way."

"How did that kid end up so fragile."

"Forget it. Send me your location, I'll come keep you company now."

The call ended.

The last thing that reached my ear was the sound of a game loading.

And Abraham's voice, saying:

"It's fine, don't worry about her."

"Married women are nothing but trouble."

"One little thing, and she has to make a whole production out of it, drag the whole world into it."

If I could hear it, then of course May could hear it too.

She looked at me, her expression calm.

A calm that didn't belong to a child.

Numb, hurting, stripped of any expectation.

"Daddy's not coming, is he?"

Yes. We both knew the answer.

I pressed down the ache in my chest. I reached out and pulled the little girl in front of me tight against me.

"It's okay if Daddy doesn't come. Mommy's here with you."

"Even without Daddy, Mommy and May can still live a happy life."

May was good that way. She didn't push the question any further.

Maybe she'd just grown used to Abraham's coldness and neglect.

She was sad for only a little while before sinking into a deep sleep.

More than three hours passed, and Abraham still hadn't come.

I didn't dare scroll on my phone, so I dug the notebook out of my bag to pass the time.

I opened it, and the name "Charlotte Pruitt" jumped off the page.

I knew that girl. The secretary at the client company, the one assigned to liaise with Abraham.

What I didn't know was just how much care Abraham had put into her.

The thick little book was filled cover to cover with her likes and habits.

From things as big as her life plans, down to things as small as her menstrual cycle.

Even an offhand remark Charlotte tossed out had been recorded, neat and tidy.

No wonder Abraham never took a single word I said to heart.

It turned out he'd given all his favor to another girl.

Something seemed to lodge itself in my chest.

It took me a long time to finish reading those notes.

By the moment I closed the book, it was already the small hours of the morning.

Abraham came strolling in at last.

In his hand, a half-eaten order of crawfish.

"Work kept me tied up, ran a little late."

"You and May haven't eaten yet, right?"

"I picked up the best crawfish near the office. Let's have some together."

May had stomach trouble and couldn't eat spicy food.

I was allergic to fish and shellfish.

Abraham hadn't remembered any of it.

He peeled out the vein with practiced ease and held the meat up to my lips.

"Try some. I made a point of telling them no cilantro, and an extra scoop of chili."

No cilantro, loves it spicy.

Those were all Charlotte's habits.

There was a passage in that pink notebook that read exactly like this.

"Charlotte loves Cajun food, hates scallions and cilantro."

"Charlotte doesn't like peeling shellfish, afraid she'll ruin her nails."

"Charlotte changes her nail design once a month, costing anywhere from $500 to $800. Sending her a $13.14 'forever love' transfer each time works best."

See. It wasn't that Abraham couldn't be attentive.

It was just that he wouldn't be attentive to me.

He could keep every single word from the woman he loved in his heart, yet he couldn't remember a single thing that had to do with me.

In that moment, an exhaustion settled over me that went bone-deep.

I didn't want to repeat the same words I'd already said a thousand times.

I didn't want to hear another one of his brush-off answers.

I drew a slow breath and spoke, tired to the marrow.

"I saw the notebook you hid in the cabinet."

The hand peeling shrimp froze in midair.

Abraham went still.

Then his voice shot up, loud enough to bury the guilt of a cheating man.

"You went through my things?"

"Cindy, haven't I told you not to touch my work stuff?"

"I'm good to Charlotte for the sake of this partnership, so I can give you and our daughter a better life!"

Sweet-talking a client required a $13.14 'forever love' transfer?

Sweet-talking a client required booking a romance suite and buying strawberry-flavored condoms?

He'd even gone out of his way to write down which positions Charlotte liked in bed.

That kind of care, that kind of favoritism, was something I'd never once dared to imagine for myself.

In her sleep, May knit her little brows.

Swallowing the ache in my chest, I gently covered her ears.

Thinking of May, Abraham let out a sigh.

He opened his mouth, started and stopped several times.

When he couldn't seem to find any reasonable excuse, he used washing his hands as a way out and walked off.

Then, as if granting me charity, he sent me a screenshot.

"What happened today, that was my oversight."

"I bought the ginseng. Something came up at the company, so I won't be staying here with you."

What he really meant was:

"I've apologized. You're on your own now."

I opened the screenshot.

Beneath the free-shipping crushed ginseng dust sat an $8,999 La Mer cream.

That was exactly how little Abraham thought of me.

He couldn't even be bothered to lift a finger and blur out his lover's gift.

Maybe he'd just gotten used to me swallowing everything.

He assumed that as long as the children were there.

I would never leave, would never stop bowing my head and giving in.

But he was wrong.

I could forgive how he looked down on me, but I could never forgive the harm he'd done to my child.

A bitter curl tugged at the corner of my mouth.

I steeled myself and deleted Abraham's contact.

Then I turned and sent a message to a lawyer.

"What's the fastest you can do a divorce agreement and asset division?"

He replied faster than Abraham ever did.

"Three days."

Three days.

Ten years of building a life together, and it turned out three days could end it.

That was fine, too.

A rotten man, a rotten mess. Best to cut it clean and cut it fast.

By noon the next day, Abraham still hadn't shown up.

He hadn't even noticed I'd deleted him.

It was Charlotte who came instead, carrying two bags of fruit.

She wore a head-to-toe designer suit.

On her well-kept face hid a pride that was easy to miss if you weren't looking.

"Mrs. Simmons, I'm so sorry."

"I had no idea your daughter was this frail, that one delivery order could land her in the hospital."

As she spoke, Charlotte suddenly gave a faint smile.

And jabbed a hard finger against May's head.

"Then again, you can't really blame me. The competition in this world is brutal."

"A useless child like this. Honestly, her dying would be her one contribution to the family, to Abraham."

May's little face went white in an instant.

My heart clenched, and I quickly pulled her out of the room.

Charlotte flicked my hand away in disgust and deliberately raised her voice.

"Was I wrong?"

"May didn't inherit a single one of Abraham's good qualities."

"She's sickly, she's timid, she's worthless."

"What right does a child like that have to inherit the business Abraham built with his own blood and sweat?"

"My child is different. Abraham's already lined up the best early-education tutor for him."