2: 2

Last Wednesday, we'd scheduled my prenatal checkup for the afternoon at the hospital where Stan worked.

That morning Savannah called saying her blood sugar had crashed and her hands were shaking, that she was afraid she'd mix up a prescription, and asked him to come help.

Before he left he patted my hand and promised he'd be back in time to pick me up.

Then I couldn't reach him all afternoon.

I clutched the appointment slip and flagged down a taxi on my own.

Just after we turned the corner, the driver slammed on the brakes to avoid a delivery scooter that shot out in front of us.

My belly hit the back of the front seat, hard.

Warmth spread out of me at once.

Everything went black, and the image flashed up from nowhere of my mother lying on the ground all those years ago, her eyes still open at the end.

That hollow, bottomless despair. I finally understood it now.

When I opened my eyes again, Stan had already reached the bedroom door, his back to me the whole time, never turning around.

"It's gone, so it's gone."

"You can't even keep a home in order. You'd never be able to take care of it anyway."

He said it as calmly as if it were someone else's business, and the moment the words were out he pushed the door open and went into the bedroom without a pause.

I had no expectations left for this man.

But hearing him say that, I still couldn't stop the tears from falling.

Before, no matter how small the thing, we could argue until dawn and he never once turned and walked away.

He'd always hold me and apologize under his breath, because he knew that when I was upset I couldn't sleep.

Now, less than ten minutes later, an even snoring drifted out of the bedroom.

This home suffocated me so much I couldn't stand one more second in it.

I laid the divorce papers on the desk in his study, took my keys, and walked out.

Only when the hot water poured down over me at the hotel did I finally catch a breath.

I stood there with my eyes closed for a while, and the scar on my wrist began to itch faintly.

I lowered my hand and turned the water cooler, and barely got it to settle.

Even after the shower, I still couldn't sleep.

I turned on the TV. The late-night news was running a story about a woman who'd been trafficked.

And I thought of that stifling summer day when I was a child.

I secretly set free a woman a household had bought.

I also stole three hundred dollars from the tin box where my mother kept her money, the whole family's living expenses for a month back then.

I led her along the back roads and got her away.

The whole way she gripped my hand, her palm slick with sweat, her whole body shaking.

She got on the bus and didn't look back.

When I got home my mother found the money missing, and I had to confess.

But she didn't hit me. She only told me not to breathe a word of it.

Afraid that family would come demanding I pay them back for their wife.

I was still small then, and didn't understand the twisted logic of grown-ups.

I just thought she was so young, married off to some old man and beaten every single day.

She had to want to go home.

But later I learned that woman was the mother of the boy who sat next to me.

Back then Stan sat beside me, thin as a bean sprout.

The bigger kids at school were always saying he was a motherless kid, like a stray weed.

They'd fling mud at him.

He never hit back. He just stood there, gripping the hem of his shirt, waiting for them to finish.

I felt it was my fault.

I'd set his mother free, and that was how he'd lost her.

His father took it out on him, and everyone at school picked on him too.

I always felt I owed him.

So every time someone hit him, I threw myself in front.

And then the two of us got beaten together.

But that scared little boy, thin as a bean sprout, who only clutched the hem of his shirt when he was bullied, later became the hero who broke in one night and saved me.

My mother and I had run from my father, a drunk who beat us, and rented an old house in a small mountain village on the edge of Harborough.

But he still found us.

That night he came reeking of liquor and pounded on the door for half an hour.

Afraid of disturbing the landlord and getting us thrown out, I gritted my teeth and opened it.

The next second his fist swung at me.

My mother, six months pregnant, threw herself over me with her arms around her belly to shield me.

He kicked her square in the waist and stomach, and she collapsed on the spot.

Blood seeped down her pant leg........

In the chaos, he turned on me and beat me half to death.

That brutal scene was exactly what Stan walked into, having come to drop off the math notes I'd left behind.

He was so frightened his voice shook, but he still shouted:

"I already ran to get the village police. They're on their way right now."

My father cursed and ran.

He scooped up my bloodied body and rushed me to the clinic.

After handing me to the doctor, he ran back with the villagers carrying the stretcher to save my mother.

Later, once the doctor had finished treating my injuries, he told me quietly that my mother had already stopped breathing when she was brought in.

The six-month-old baby brother in her belly hadn't made it either.

It was the door I opened that destroyed that little family hiding in the mountain village.

3: 3

I grabbed the scalpel from the tray on the clinic table.

I dragged it hard and fast across my wrist, and the blood came at once.

Stan lunged over and wrenched the blade away.

I was crying, screaming that it was my fault, that if I hadn't opened that door Mom and my little brother would still be alive.

He suddenly caught my face in his hands, made me look at him.

He said that door, even if I hadn't opened it,

my father would have found some other way through it.

The tragedy would still have happened afterward.

It was never my fault.

The one to blame, start to finish, was that man and no one else.

The boy held me tight, terrified I'd do something reckless again.

"If you die, your mom won't be able to close her eyes up in heaven. The right thing is to live well, for her."

He held me until I stopped shaking, and then he said,

"I got into the high school in the city. I've already arranged for you to transfer in with me. We'll leave together, and we'll never come back."

Even as a kid, he was smarter than the other children in the village.

It took me many years to work it out. That wisdom of Stan's, far beyond his age,

maybe it came from the woman who'd been trafficked into those mountains, the one I set free in secret.

At eighteen he stood there with his Harborough University acceptance letter and put his arms around me, saying we'd never have to hide again, that he'd protect me forever.

He said it was a thought he'd carried since the day he first lifted me up and carried me to the clinic.

Fresh out of school, trying to get a foothold in the big city, we crammed into a ten-square-meter rental in the old downtown neighborhood.

He pulled back-to-back day and night shifts during his hospital residency, and I did admin work and picked up freelance copywriting on the side.

Every day we were so tired we fell asleep the moment we hit the bed.

His white coat always had hospital candy in the pocket, snuck out for me.

That tiny rental in the old neighborhood, we were dead broke, but we loved each other more truly than at any other time.

We held each other up for more than ten years. How good it would have been if we could have just gone on like that...

"Ms. Swanson, your medication is ready."

My blank face was reflected in the glass of the pharmacy window.

It wasn't until someone behind me lightly touched my arm that I snapped out of it and quickly reached for the medicine.

Today was the tenth day after the miscarriage, and I'd come back to the hospital for a follow-up because of complications from intrauterine adhesions.

Just as I turned around with the medicine in hand, Stan and Savannah came walking up, chatting and laughing together.

"Claire, why didn't you tell us ahead of time you were coming in to see a doctor?"

Seeing that I said nothing, Savannah's tone carried a hint of showing off.

"If Stan had known, he'd definitely have come with you. Look, I was on night shift last night, and when I got off this morning he insisted on waiting for me at the hospital entrance. He said it wasn't safe for a girl to walk down an empty road so early in the morning."

Stan's gaze moved off of Savannah and landed on my face, as bland as water, and he asked offhandedly,

"What are you doing here?"

Seeing that I ignored him, he turned to leave.

He snatched the medicine bag out of my hand, glanced over it twice, his tone full of impatience.

"The baby's been gone almost ten days now. Why are you still coming to the hospital making a fuss? If you'd been more careful back then, none of this would've happened."

Something went cold in me, and I couldn't be bothered to argue with him.

The truth was, if he had paid the slightest attention, he'd have known that all these days my face had been pale and I kept pressing my stomach.

It was the constant dragging pain from tissue that hadn't fully cleared out of my womb.

At night the pain kept me tossing and turning, unable to lie still.

It was nothing like the fuss he imagined.

Too bad he was busy working while squeezing in time to take Savannah out everywhere.

There was no spare attention left over for me.

Seeing that I still had no intention of dealing with him, his anger flared up.

"Stop right there! I'm not done talking. Where do you think you're going?"

"Where have you been these past few days?"

"A married woman not going home for days, what does that look like?"

His voice, too anxious, too high, made the people in line at the pharmacy turn to stare.

Just then my phone buzzed with the alert that my Uber had arrived. I met his eyes calmly.

"Get your emotions under control."

In recent years, whenever I broke down at him, Stan had always brushed me off with that exact line.

Like a pane of cold glass, seemingly weightless, yet able to instantly block back every surge of feeling I had.

I knew too well how much power that line held.

Sure enough, his face tightened, and after a few seconds of silence he looked at Savannah.

"Can you get a car home on your own? Let me drop off—"

I cut Stan off coldly.

"My car's already here."

4: 4

The Uber pulled up at the entrance to the gated suburb.

If it weren't for keeping my mother's inheritance out of someone else's hands, I doubt I'd ever have set eyes on that man again in this life.

The iron gate had a keypad lock now, and he'd had the housekeeper enter my fingerprint in advance.

Inside the living room, my stepmother brought me tea with practiced ease.

Something inside me turned bitter.

The home my mother had once arranged so carefully now had a new mistress after her death.

And her own child had become a guest.

My father admitted, plainly, that he had late-stage cancer and only six months left.

He wanted me to come back, take over the company, and see him through the last stretch of his life.

In return, he would leave me the bulk of everything in his name.

In his younger days he'd been in fights that damaged him where it mattered.

He'd gone through countless women, sought out countless famous doctors.

Still he could never father another child. In his whole life I was his only blood.

A lonely old age was probably just heaven paying him back.

Once the gift-of-inheritance agreement was signed, I said calmly:

"I still have some private matters to deal with. Once everything's settled, I'll come back and stay with you."

The moment I finished, I couldn't stand to be there another second, and I fled the house in a rush.

For the next several days I was buried in the loose ends of my mother's estate, run ragged by it.

That day, just as I'd finished going over all the paperwork with my lawyer, Stan's call came through out of nowhere.

His tone on the phone was gentler. He said he'd agree to talk over the divorce, and asked me to come by when I had the time.

I went, as agreed.

But when I got there I found out his department was holding a Doctors' Day appreciation dinner for the families, and everyone was expected to bring their spouse.

I'd barely stepped through the door of the banquet hall when I saw Savannah standing in front of Stan.

Her hands reaching up to fix his tie.

A few seconds later, Stan saw me.

His face froze for an instant, and he instinctively pushed Savannah's hands away and came striding toward me.

"Claire, you're here. What do you want to drink? Let me get you something to eat first."

Savannah came over from the side out of nowhere, took the drink out of Stan's hand and drank from it. "So thirsty."

Stan stiffened, and looked at me with a guilty edge.

I said nothing. I turned and took a wine glass from Drew Delgado, Stan's good buddy standing nearby, took a sip, and said, "This one's fine."

When I looked up again, Stan's eyes were going back and forth between me and the handsome Drew.

His brow drawing tighter and tighter, his face darkening like a cloud had settled over it, so much that he didn't even react when Drew clinked glasses with him.

Halfway through the dinner my phone rang. It was the lawyer.

I slipped into a bathroom stall to take it, confirmed the terms with him in a low voice, then hung up.

And then I heard people talking outside.

"Dr. Mason bringing his wife along, isn't he afraid Savannah will be upset?"

"So what if she finds out? I heard she's already miscarried two of them, and she's older too. Who'd want her once she leaves Dr. Mason?"

"Honestly, if she hadn't lost two babies for him, I bet Dr. Mason would've divorced her long ago. Look at the color of her face. Her health's obviously bad. Away from Dr. Mason she probably couldn't even support herself."

At eighteen, Stan and I tasted the forbidden fruit.

We didn't know about protection, and I ended up pregnant.

He panicked.

I bought the pills myself and swallowed them.

I rolled around the bed all night in the pain, and my body was never well again after that.

The voices outside stopped. I didn't push the door open. I stood there quietly for a few seconds, then walked back to the banquet hall.

When I got back, I walked straight into Savannah rising on her toes to kiss the corner of Stan's mouth.

In a round of Truth or Dare she'd drawn Dare and chosen him.

And Stan didn't push her away either.

Drew came over with a glass of wine, smoothing it over with a smile.

"Don't be upset, ma'am—the boss and I go way back. They're just messing around. It's only a game."

A few colleagues nearby chimed in. "Right, it's just a game, don't take it seriously."

Just then Stan saw me too. He froze, then pushed Savannah off and hurried toward me.

"Claire, that was just for fun a moment ago. It's only a game."

I looked at him, then looked at the striking Drew beside him.

And I reached out, hooked my hand around the back of Drew's neck, and kissed him.

Longer than when Savannah kissed Stan. Deeper than that, too.