We each sat in the yard with half a watermelon, scooping out bites with spoons in the shade of the old tree.

Lily spoke up out of nowhere.

"Does this feel familiar to you? Like we're back at Sunnyside."

She pulled up a photo on her phone and turned the screen toward me.

It was the two of us as kids, each holding half a watermelon, grinning at the camera without a care in the world.

There should have been a third person in that photo. Chad Harding. Lily had cropped him out.

Talking about the old days always made Lily laugh so hard she could barely breathe. But the moment Chad's name came up, her expression turned dark.

"That man has no conscience!"

"After everything you did for him, he cheated on you! You gave up your spot in college for him!"

"If I were you, I'd regret it until my dying day!"

If anyone asked whether I regretted it? Of course I had.

Chad and I had always been the top students at Sunnyside. I was always first, and he was always right behind me in second.

But the year of our college entrance exams, the group home's funding was slashed overnight. There was only enough to send one of us to college.

Chad had already resigned himself to dropping out and finding work.

No one expected what I did next. I left the essay portion of my exam blank.

I gave up my spot so Chad could go.

That opportunity carried him out of Sunnyside, out of the mountains, and further and further away from me.

Once I aged out with no school to attend, I couldn't stay at the group home anymore. I had to fend for myself.

Chad came and brought me to live near him. He rented a tiny room in the old neighborhood near campus for two hundred dollars a month.

Lying together in that cramped, damp little room, he held me tight. His eyes were full of tenderness.

"Jade, thank you."

"I'm going to work hard and give you a real home. I won't make you suffer like this forever."

I shook my head and held on to him a little tighter.

I didn't think it was suffering.

Even though I worked three jobs a day, from five in the morning until ten at night before I could rest.

Even though my hands were cracked and bleeding from washing dishes, and the soles of my feet were covered in blisters.

Even though my young shoulders had to carry the weight of two people's expenses.

Sometimes, when a customer gave me a hard time or a boss yelled at me, I wondered when it would ever end.

But then I'd come home and see Chad sitting under the desk lamp, bent over his books, and everything felt worth it again.

Seven years passed like that.

Finally, Chad finished graduate school and was offered a teaching position at the university. Our lives started to get better.

On his very first day of work, he placed his debit card in my hand and told me I wasn't allowed to take another job.

The card was still warm from being clutched in his palm the whole way home. I held it, and warmth spread through my chest.

After that, I hung up my aprons and uniforms and stepped into a different role, taking care of Chad's life and everything that came with it. The big things, like maintaining relationships with his colleagues and navigating faculty politics. The small things, like laying out which underwear he'd wear after his shower. All of it was me.

I played the part of a devoted wife, and in my heart, I held on to the hope that we'd build a real family together.

On my birthday, Chad set a small velvet box in front of me.

My heart pounded like it never had before. I silently rehearsed the words I do over and over in my head.

He opened the box slowly. Inside, resting on the satin lining, was a pair of stud earrings.

He put them on me, showering me with compliments about how beautiful they looked. He never once noticed the disappointment on my face.

I told myself it was fine. Chad's career wasn't stable yet. I just needed to give him a little more time.

The following year, on my birthday, Chad spent several months' salary on a diamond necklace.

I told myself again that it was fine. We had all the time in the world.

But things kept drifting further from what I'd hoped.

Chad came home later and later. I reheated dinner more times than I could count. Some nights, he didn't come home at all. Even when we were intimate, it was rushed and perfunctory.

I tried talking to him. The answer was always the same.

"I'm exhausted from work. Don't overthink it. Just get some sleep."

I convinced myself it was nothing but work pressure, and I threw myself into finding ways to ease his burden. If I couldn't help with his career, I'd make up for it in the kitchen. I rotated the menu weekly, never repeating a dish. I believed that with enough effort, things would get back on track.

Then I met Eunice Maddox.

I'd gotten up early that morning to make Chad's favorite corn and pork rib soup, and I brought it to the university before lunch. When I reached his office door, I could hear him deep in a heated discussion about a physics problem with a female colleague beside him.

The woman looked up, a flicker of confusion in her eyes.

"Can I help you?"

I gestured toward Chad. "I'm here for Professor Harding."

In that single moment, I caught it—a flash of panic darting through Chad's eyes. The hand that had been resting on Eunice's back quietly dropped to his side.

I set the soup on the desk. Chad poured half of it into a bowl for Eunice.

During the small talk that followed, she turned to me.

"Are you part of the university too, Mrs. Harding? Do you study physics as well?"

I shook my head and started to explain. "We're not actually married—"

Chad cut me off. "No. She never went to college."

Eunice gave me a long, knowing look and let out a soft, measured "Oh."

My cheeks burned. My fingers dug into the edge of the desk so hard the knuckles went white. I wanted to disappear.

I carried the emptied containers home.

I stood at the kitchen sink for a long time, staring at nothing.

I regretted it. I regretted not going to college. I regretted not continuing with physics.

In high school, physics had been my best subject. Every problem Chad couldn't solve, I'd cracked with ease. Now I couldn't even follow the terminology he and Eunice tossed around like it was nothing.

The gap between us was widening, and for the first time, I felt the ground shifting beneath my feet.

So I decided to change.

I started reading the physics textbooks stacked on Chad's desk. Whenever I hit something I didn't understand, I wrote it down and waited for him to come home so I could pester him for an explanation.

His answer was always the same: "I could explain, but you wouldn't get it."

Still, I was happy. At least we had something to talk about.

What made me even happier was the day I found a lace nightgown while organizing the closet. It was exactly my size.

A secret thrill ran through me. I figured Chad had finally gotten the hint but was too shy to give it to me himself.

That evening, I changed into the nightgown before he got home, dabbed on perfume, and slipped under the covers.

I fought off sleep until well past midnight before the bedroom door finally opened.

But when Chad pulled back the blanket, there was no surprise on his face. No warmth. Nothing I'd imagined.

His brow furrowed. His voice came out flat and cold.

"That doesn't suit you."

"You'd need to be curvier to pull it off."

Then he scolded me for going through his things and ordered me to take it off.

I stood at the foot of the bed with nothing on.

He rolled over, turning his back to me, and fell asleep without another glance.

The humiliation swallowed me whole. I lay there with my eyes open until dawn, tears soaking half the pillow.

After that night, we stopped talking. I packed my things and stayed at Lily's place for several days.

But I couldn't stop thinking about Chad. I worried he couldn't even manage three meals a day on his own. After all, I'd taken care of him for ten full years. Habits like that are the hardest to break.

In the end, I couldn't harden my heart. I loaded up on groceries at the supermarket and headed home, arms full of bags.

I pushed the door open.

Two half-naked bodies were tangled together on our bed.

Eunice was wearing the lace nightgown.

The grocery bags slipped from my hands and hit the floor.

I lost all reason. I lunged at Eunice like a woman possessed, clawing at the nightgown on her body. She shrieked, scrambling to hide behind Chad.

"Jade! That's enough!"

Chad's palm cracked across my face, and he wrenched me to the ground.

I didn't feel the pain. I threw myself at him, screaming.

"You ungrateful bastard! I took care of you for ten years! I put you through college!"

"You wouldn't even have gotten the chance to go to school if it weren't for me! And this is how you repay me?"

"You two deserve each other! Karma will come for both of you!"

Chad watched my breakdown with cold detachment, looking at me the way someone looks at a lunatic.

Then he grabbed my wrists, tied them behind my back, and shoved me into the storage closet.

I hit the floor hard, and the impact kicked up a cloud of dust.

The coughing started immediately. Violent, uncontrollable. My asthma.

I pounded on the door with everything I had, my words slurring together as I begged.

"Let me out, Chad."

"Please... let me out..."

I couldn't even finish a full sentence.

On the other side of the door, Eunice whined, "God, she's so loud. When is she going to shut up?"

Chad knew I had asthma. He knew. And still he said, "She needs to learn her lesson this time. I'm going to make sure she remembers."

Gradually, each breath became harder to draw. My fists against the door grew weaker and weaker.

Lily saved me. She'd gotten my message just in time.

The doctor shook his head. "Young lady, that was a close call. One more minute and you wouldn't have made it."

Surviving that brush with death changed something in me. It was like a fog lifted.

If I wasn't the one who was supposed to die, then someone else deserved to.

I went to Chad's university and reported their affair. Then I compiled a full twenty pages of evidence into a presentation and posted it online.

But justice never came. What came instead was Chad, trying to talk me down.

"Jade, I do love you. I just... lost my way for a moment."

"Can you stop making a scene? If you're willing to let this go, you can go right back to your easy, comfortable life."

"All you have to do is stay home like before. You don't have to go out and deal with the world. Isn't that nice?"

So that was it. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year of devoted, tireless care, and in Chad's eyes, I'd just been sitting at home.

I couldn't understand how my life had come to this.

My mind started to crumble, piece by piece.

Every window ledge I passed made me want to jump.

Standing on the beach, I'd find myself drifting toward the water without thinking, wanting to keep walking until the waves swallowed me whole.

Then one night, late, when no one was around.

I pressed a blade to my left wrist and cut deep. Warm, thick liquid pulsed out in steady streams.

I closed my eyes and felt my body temperature draining away, degree by degree.

What pulled me back was a phone call from Sunnyside Group Home.

"Jade, we've found your birth mother."

"She's in the hospital right now, but her condition is stable. You should come see her when you get the chance."

A mother I had never met in my life reached across the void and pulled me back from the edge of death.

She reminded me that I wasn't alone in this world. That somewhere out there, someone still cared whether I lived or died.