When Otto Henson and I were dating, he always kept a careful distance, tender and restrained.

It wasn't until the second year of our marriage that we finally lived like newlyweds, tangled up in each other, the heat of it consuming.

But every night, afterward, Otto would insist on wiring money to my account.

Sometimes two hundred dollars, sometimes three, sometimes as much as three thousand.

Each time, he'd explain with that delighted smile,

"My wife works so hard. A little something to treat yourself."

I'd take it shyly, even tucked it away in quiet to cover our household costs.

Until the day I accidentally overheard him talking with a friend.

"Beth Swanson is just a warm body to sleep with. With the lights off, they're all the same. I know Cindy would forgive me. She wouldn't want to watch me suffer while she's gone."

The Cindy he spoke of was his first love, dead these past five years.

At the mention of the departed, his friend softened, moved, offering comfort,

"You really are the most devoted of us, Otto. After all these years, you still keep Cindy enshrined in your heart. Her spirit must be watching over you. All this time you've cared for her mother and raised her child in her place. Every one of us has seen it."

The words landed, and Otto could no longer hold himself together. He buried his face in his hands and broke into helpless sobs.

"Once I've seen Cindy's mother to the end of her days, I'll go down and be with her. I miss her. God, I miss her so much!"

I stood frozen outside the door, the blood in my veins turning to ice in an instant, my chest hollowed out in a single breath.

So this was the truth. Five years together, and I'd been nothing more than a body for Otto to lie beside.

And the child I'd raised for five years, the one he called his little brother, was his own son with that dead first love.

From beginning to end, he'd carried the ghost of his idealized love in his heart. He'd never spared me even an inch of room.

If his obsession ran this deep, then there was no reason for a tool like me to keep cluttering his line of sight.

I dug up the messages from my mother, all the way over in Barcelona, and replied with trembling hands,

"Book me a flight for three days from now."

——

It was already past eleven at night when Otto came through the door.

"Why are the lights off?"

He startled a little at the sight of me sitting motionless on the sofa.

"Sign them."

I didn't answer. I just pointed at the divorce papers on the coffee table.

The air froze solid. Otto went silent.

I turned my head and looked at this face I'd shared five years with, a face that now made me sick to my stomach, and I lost control completely.

"Five years. You lied to me for five years! What was I to you? What was I ever?"

"You already know?"

Otto's expression shifted, again and again,

until finally he stopped bothering to hold it in place. He let out a long breath,

like a man peeling off a mask he'd worn far too long.

"Since you already know, there's no point hiding it anymore. Keeping up the act all these years has worn me out too."

He glanced again at the divorce papers on the table and let out a scornful laugh.

"Though it's a little laughable, you wanting a divorce. All these years you've had nothing and no one. I've carried you. How exactly would you live without me?"

"Not to mention……"

"Not to mention what?" Tears welled in my eyes as I pressed him.

Otto looked at my wounded, grief-stricken face, and something like reluctance flickered deep in his eyes.

He turned away, walking straight toward the bedroom, his voice dropping low,

"Not to mention you've had three abortions. You can't have children anymore. Aside from me, what man would ever want you?"

"Beth, why bother holding a grudge against a dead woman? If you don't have the standing to throw a fit, then don't. You're not a young girl anymore."

The bedroom door slammed shut, a dull, heavy thud,

like a blunt knife dragging back and forth across my heart, the dull ache flooding through my whole body.

Three abortions.

He knew too. In less than a year, I'd had three abortions for him.

During those tender days with him, I'd been so eager, checking my temperature without fail every single day, timing my cycle to the hour, forcing down herbal medicine so bitter it turned my stomach.

My belly was a map of needle marks from the fertility shots. I'd given up hotpot, given up coffee, soaked my feet in water so scalding the skin turned an angry red.

All of it so I could carry his child sooner, so I could surprise him.

But every time I pressed a positive pregnancy test into his hands, beaming,

the first two times he explained it away, his face cold.

「Beth, my career is still climbing. Now isn't the right time for a baby.」

The third time, he finally didn't refuse.

But we couldn't dodge the accident. I was riding shotgun in Otto's car.

He took a call, said something urgent had come up, sped up, and not long after slammed into the car ahead.

When I came to, Otto was holding me and sobbing, swearing to me with eyes full of anguish,

「Beth, this was my carelessness. We'll have another baby. I'll protect you for the rest of my life.」

Looking at his face wrapped in bandages, I had no grounds left to blame him.

After that, the doctor declared the damage permanent. I would likely never conceive again.

And he did grow more attentive, more tender from then on.

What I never imagined was that all those years of careful comfort after I lost the baby

were nothing but indifference. Because his child had already been born long ago, to Cindy.

From behind the door of the guest room, Otto's voice rose as he answered the phone.

「Mom, I'll be right there.」

He hung up in a clipped, hurried tone, then turned to me with a furrowed brow, his voice forced into something softer.

「I'm sorry, Beth. I was drunk and spoke too harshly just now.

Mom called. She said she found the diary Cindy kept before she left. I'm going to go look at it.」

He paused, then added,

「You've worked hard these past weeks. Set aside looking after Mom for now. Rest a few days.」

His tone was easy, intimate, calling Cindy's mother Mom over and over.

As if those soul-cutting words, those brutal truths, had never been dragged into the light.

Back when Otto used to ache for me, an orphan with no parents at her side, he'd often tell me,

「Beth, care for my mother as if she were your own. It'll make up for what you've missed.」

I'd always thought it was his concern for me. Turns out he was only afraid I'd slack off in tending to his beloved's mother.

Otto. In your eyes, I was a tool from the very start, wasn't I……

You truly don't have a shred of a heart.

But you're wrong. I have a mother.

Years ago, I ignored her objections and chose to stay in the country with Otto.

We fought bitterly over it, and in the years since we'd nearly stopped speaking.

Yet blood runs thicker than water. Not long ago, Mom invited me again to come live with her abroad.

Once, for Otto's sake, that offer hadn't moved me in the slightest.

This time, it was time to accept.

The flight was booked for three days out.

I'd packed my bags early.

In five years with Otto, every day swallowed up caring for his young brother and a gravely ill old woman,

there wasn't much in that closet that belonged to me.

Even when Otto walked in and saw the suitcase, barely twenty inches, he showed not a flicker of surprise.

「Is that the things you packed for Mom? I knew you were sensible, Beth. You'd never make this too hard for me.」

「The caregiver I hired is clumsy, completely unreliable. I still need you.」

The look he gave me lost some of its venom, scraping together a thin gesture of goodwill.

「I won't be foolish enough to nurse your beloved's mother ever again.」

I lifted my eyes and looked straight at him. Nothing was left in them but a dead, frozen stillness.

Otto looked as if he thought he'd misheard, staring at me, thrown.

「What did you say? You handled every last detail of Mom's care before. You're walking away now, just like that? What am I supposed to do?」

He paused, and his voice softened in a way I couldn't place.

「Don't forget what you said the day your father died.」

My head snapped up, my eyes locking onto his.

My heart felt like it was being sawed back and forth by a dull blade, the ache spreading through every inch of me.

All at once I remembered a night three years ago, the night of my car accident.

When I came to, the weak glow of the headlights showed me my father in the driver's seat, his body torn and bloody.

Stranded in the middle of nowhere with no signal, I'd lost every chance to call for help, and no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the door open.

I was trapped in that cabin reeking of blood for a full day and night,

forced to watch the blood drain from my father's body, drop by drop,

the terror and torment magnified beyond measure in that sealed, lightless space.

After the rescue crews arrived, I stayed unconscious for three whole days before I woke.

From then on I carried severe claustrophobia and a wound that never healed.

When I was drowning in the grief of losing the only family I had, it was Otto who held me and soothed me.

「Don't be afraid, Beth. You still have my mother. Pour all that loss into caring for her. We'll look after her together, and everything will be all right.」

Tears streamed down my face. I nodded hard and made him that promise.

That same year, the old woman's illness took a turn for the worse.

She had a fierce temper by nature, and every time I bathed her or cleaned her in her sickbed, she'd scowl at me,

bark orders, treat me with nothing but contempt.

Days like that went on for three years.

I'd thought about telling Otto how much I was suffering, but every time I remembered the words he'd said after my father died,

my tenderness for the old woman only deepened.

Yet now the truth told me that all the blood and devotion I'd poured out over those years had gone to the mother of the woman my husband loved.

And those so-called words of comfort, did Otto truly mean them to console me,

or was he using my devotion and my heart's labor to pour out all the love he felt for Cindy?

「Otto, you have no right to bring up my father's death.」

My throat tightened, and I forced out a bleak smile.

「Even now that you know she's Cindy's mother, after living under the same roof with her all these years, don't you feel anything at all?」

Otto knit his brows in reproach even as he shoved me into the wardrobe, his movements brutal.

「Since you've forgotten the promise you made, then go back to where it all began and remember it properly.」

As he turned the lock, his hand slowed.

「Don't hold this against me, Beth. The dead deserve our respect. Cindy is gone, and caring for her mother is our duty now.」

「Beth, I won't hurt you. Once you've thought it through, I'll let you out.」

As Otto's footsteps faded farther and farther away, nothing was left but dead silence.

The cramped space sent my heartbeat spiraling out of control, the familiar suffocation sweeping through me in an instant,

exactly like the despair of being trapped in that crushed cabin all those years ago.

Panic seized me until my whole body went rigid and convulsing, and on the edge of suffocation, all I could do was pound frantically at the door and beg for help.

I don't know how long passed before soft footsteps came from outside the wardrobe,

sounding like Dylan Henson, the child I'd loved for five years.

「Dylan, get someone to help me out.」

The plea left me on instinct.

Beyond the door it went quiet for a few seconds, and I could feel a small figure standing just outside the wardrobe,

but he made no move to help. Instead, he let out a sneering laugh.

「Haha, the bad woman finally got punished! Grandma says you stole my mommy's place, so you're a bad woman!」

The shrill, piercing child's voice was nothing like the warm, sweet one I knew.