Bruno Gilbert had clung to consciousness by sheer will.

Then that calloused hand of his had brushed against my cheek. "If I die, let it be my way of atoning. All I want is for you to forgive me, and to take Rosie and live a good life."

Of course Bruno didn't die. And I softened. I struggled and agonized for months, and in the end I chose to forgive him.

But never once did I imagine that what I'd get in return was being toyed with like a fool for four whole years.

The sound of the two of them carried on late into the night.

Bruno lit a cigarette, brow furrowed as he stared at the shut front door.

"Where the hell did she go? It's this late and she can't even call to say she's safe."

Irritated, he reached for his phone and dialed my number.

In the dead silence, a shrill ringtone suddenly cut through the air, coming from the locked nursery next door.

The hand holding his cigarette froze in midair.

A flicker of glee shot through Irma Finch's eyes before she arranged her face into worry. "Bruno, why is Ruth in there? Those things we just said... do you think she heard all of it?"

Face dark, Bruno buttoned his shirt, pushed her aside, and strode toward that closed door.

My spirit drifted behind him, watching his palm clamp down on the handle, his knuckles whitening from the force.

He hesitated a few seconds. Then, click.

The door swung open.

I lay there, body rigid, curled under the blanket with my back to him.

Bruno stared at my back and tugged the corner of his mouth into something almost self-mocking.

"Ruth Stephens, since you've already heard it, there's no point hiding anything from you. Yes, I sent Rosie to Harborisle. But you brought this on yourself. Who told you to throw your family's weight around and force Irma to drop out of school back then? And then threaten me with divorce?"

His voice was ice-cold, carrying the certainty of a man handing down charity. "As long as you drop that high-and-mighty act of yours from now on, the position of Mrs. Gilbert is still yours, and no one else's."

The air went terrifyingly still.

When Bruno had waited a long moment and heard nothing, his expression turned vicious. "Giving me the silent treatment? Fine. Let's see how long you can keep it up."

He slammed the door and stormed off in a fury.

I gazed helplessly at his enraged back, wanting to call out for him to stop.

No matter how much he loathed me, we were still husband and wife, weren't we? Cremate me soon, so I could go find Rosie, instead of being chained here beside my own corpse.

But what I couldn't manage in life, how could I possibly do in death?

What I never expected was that, after only ten minutes, he came back.

In his hand he dragged a small, stumbling figure.

It was Rosie!

The daughter I had ached for, day and night, for four years!

"Didn't you go mad for four years trying to find her? I brought her back from Harborisle ages ago. Are you satisfied now?"

Bruno gave a cold laugh and tossed the crying child toward the corner of the bed, then swept out with Irma at his side.

Animal!

How could he lock a sobbing child in with a corpse?

Rosie pounded on the door until her little palms went swollen, and still it never opened.

The room was very dark, and she was frightened of the shape rising under the blanket on the bed, too scared to make another sound.

So she huddled in the corner, buried her face against her shoulder, and shivered now and then.

I knelt before her in despair, desperate to wrap her in my arms. "Rosie, don't be scared, Mommy's here. Even as a ghost, Mommy would never hurt you..."

But again and again my spirit passed straight through her tiny body.

Cried out and exhausted, Rosie finally fell into a deep sleep beside the corpse.

When morning came, Rosie sat up, rubbing her swollen red eyes, and looked timidly at me lying on the bed, my face mottled blue.

A long while passed before she seemed unable to hold it in any longer, and spoke in a small voice. "Lady, can you wake up? I'm so hungry..."

The figure on the bed still hadn't moved.

Rosie's head drooped, crestfallen.

Then her eyes lit up, and she snatched up the pill bottle from the floor, the one I'd emptied into myself.

"Wow, pretty candy!"

Two stray pills still rolled in the bottom of the bottle. Pure poison.

Rosie popped them toward her mouth, delighted. "Sorry, lady, I'll only eat two. I'm just really, really hungry."

"No!"

The scream tore out of me, shrill and useless. I couldn't stop her. I couldn't touch anything.

That was the moment the door burst open with a crash.

Bruno Gilbert had come to see whether I'd finally caved. Instead he walked straight into this.

He ripped the bottle from her hand, read the label, and the color drained from his face. In an instant he had her cheeks pinned between his fingers, digging into her mouth. "Spit it out! Spit it out right now, you idiot child!"

Rosie wailed, terrified. "Daddy, don't hit me, I won't do it again, I promise…"

Only when he was sure she hadn't swallowed did he let go, white to the lips.

He turned toward me on the bed, worn down and bitterly disappointed.

Irma Finch had followed him in. One glance, and she gasped. "Ruth, no matter how much you hate us, how could you poison your own daughter? She's just a baby. You were going to kill her!"

Bruno wrenched his face away, unwilling to look at me a second longer.

One more step and he could have touched my cold, stiffened skin, caught the faint smell of death already thickening the air.

But he only scooped Rosie up, turned on his heel, and walked out.

Irma trailed after him, easy as anything.

Bruno drove to the most expensive restaurant in the city and ordered a whole table of lavish handmade brunch.

Rosie dug in, eating happily.

He couldn't settle.

The tea Irma poured for him sat pushed to one side. He lit one cigarette, then another.

Restless, he swiped his phone open. The last message between us still sat there, two days old.

My wife had her pride, deep in the bone, but she had never once gone dark this long.

Something inside him snapped taut and broke. A cold sweat broke out across his back.

"No… something's wrong with her!"

The blood left his face as he shoved his chair back. He didn't even spare a glance for the startled child. He bolted for the parking lot like a man who'd lost control of himself.

His hand was on the car door when Irma caught the hem of his jacket, breathless.

"Bruno, don't panic. The truth is, late last night I caught Ruth up rummaging through the fridge. I went over, meaning well, just to ask after her. She wouldn't even answer me. She shoved me, hard, and told me to mind my own business…"

Then she let go, deflated, and pressed her lips together. "Bruno… do you think Ruth still hasn't forgiven us?"

His step toward the car froze mid-motion.

He let out a quiet breath and turned around, the fury in his chest curdling into a sneer. "I knew it. So she's using a hunger strike for cover. She'd even gamble Rosie's life to play the martyr. How clever of her."

Cold-laughing, Bruno went back into the private room and set aside, for now, any thought of going home.

My soul drifted back to that empty mansion.

Before long, footsteps came stumbling and lurching through the front hall.

It was my mother.

Four years of helping me search for Rosie, like hunting a needle in the ocean, had cried her eyes nearly blind.

"Ruth, where are you? Mom brought you some rib soup…"

She felt her way to the nursery and pushed the door open.

When those trembling hands finally found my long-cold, stiffened cheek, a single scream of pure despair ripped through the dead silence.

Watching my mother clutch my corpse, sobbing as if her own breath would give out, my spirit body actually felt the pain of it.

Hours later, she wiped her eyes dry.

To keep my body from being defiled by Bruno's touch one more time, she steeled herself, hired a professional funeral team, and quietly carried me away.

It was three nights later, deep in the dark, before anyone pushed open the mansion doors again.

Bruno came home reeking of liquor. He shoved Irma off where she clung to him and kicked open the door to the child's room. "Ruth, how long are you going to keep up this act? Enough already!"

But all that greeted him was an empty bed.

His heart skipped a beat for no reason he could name.

Then he caught himself. "Fine. Very good! Grown so bold you'd actually run away from home! If you've got the nerve, then go die out there and never come back!"

He strode into the master suite and yanked open the lavish walk-in closet.

Every piece of her lingerie was still there. He let out a breath.

The next morning, with one sweep of his hand, Bruno summoned dozens of servants and moved Irma into the mansion in grand style.

In the days that followed, Bruno ruled the boardroom by day, cutting and ruthless, and squired Irma to glittering society dinners by night.

Everything ran like clockwork, yet his eyes grew darker by the day, his gaze fixed again and again on his phone, lost in some place no one could reach.

By the seventh day since I vanished, Bruno couldn't stand it anymore.

He dragged Rosie back from the old house and shoved the phone up to her mouth. "Say Mommy! Tell her to get her ass back here!"

Rosie shook all over in terror and burst into wailing sobs.

Bruno's eyes went red at the corners with rage. "Useless. Is crying all you can do? Can't even call her? What good are you to me at all?"

"Daddy, don't be like this. Is that... is that Mommy? I'm so scared..."

Bruno cut the recording short and sent it.

Then, after a moment's thought, he added a voice message. "Ruth, Rosie is in my hands. If you're not back here within half an hour, you can forget about ever seeing her again in your life!"

Irma had stood beside him listening in silence all this while. She sighed. "Bruno, there's no need for this. You know how Ruth is. When she comes back she'll understand how much you've gone through for her. It's just... it almost seems like Rosie doesn't matter all that much to her either..."

Bruno didn't take in a word of it.

He just glared, hard, at that screen that gave no flicker of a reply, then dialed my number again and again.

And through one unbroken stream of "the phone is turned off" tones, he suddenly snapped his arm up and smashed the phone against the floor, shattering it.

Irma went white with fright.

She had never seen Bruno, always so steady, always in control of everything, lose his grip like this.

"Bruno, since she's heartless enough to stay out of sight, then just file for divorce! With the Gilbert legal team, you could leave her without a penny, send her out with nothing. Why torture yourself like this?"

The word divorce drove into Bruno's strung-tight nerves like a blade pulled red from the fire.

He let out a cold laugh that bordered on madness. "She thinks she's worthy of saying that word to me?"