While I was massaging my paralyzed husband, feeling came back to his left foot.

I was overjoyed, and right away I went and found a doctor to recheck him.

But the answer I got was: “It's still no good. The odds of your husband ever standing again are next to zero.”

“It's fine. I'll take care of him my whole life.”

Afterward I went to work with red eyes, and halfway there I realized I'd forgotten my car keys, so I turned back.

Through the crack in the door, I saw Morgan Sawyer, who was supposed to be lying helpless in his sickbed. At that moment he was standing bolt upright, pinning a girl into the corner, kissing her like a man possessed.

“How much longer do we have to keep lying to her? Every time we're together I'm on edge the whole time. I'm sick of it.”

“Hang on a little longer. In a few days I'll figure out a way to fake my death, and then we'll take the money and settle down overseas.”

In an instant my head cleared. So it turned out that his suicide leap five years ago had been faked.

It was only to escape the company's debt crisis, and so he could be glued to Meg Simmons all day long.

I stayed silent for a long while, then walked into his attending physician's office.

“I've made up my mind. Stop the treatment. Just do a high amputation and fit him with a prosthetic.”

——

When I pushed the door open and went in, Morgan was hunched in the corner of the bed as always, sickly and frail, the light long gone from his eyes.

“The nurse said you went pestering Dr. Dickerson again. Heh. I'm just a useless cripple. There's really no point wasting medical resources on me.”

He'd always said this kind of defeated thing before.

On the surface I'd put on a brave face and coax him to think more positively, while in truth I'd hidden alone in the bathroom and cried more times than I could count.

I gripped the protective charm in my hand and let my eyes drift toward the trash can.

A sticky, oily smell hit me all at once. Inside, plain as day, sat a few just-used condoms, the sight of them turning my stomach.

So Morgan had been putting on an act in front of me this whole time.

Five years ago he'd run the company into the ground, racked up an enormous debt, and been driven by his creditors to jump.

He hadn't budged an inch, no matter how I'd knelt before him and begged.

In the end he'd dropped straight down from the fifteenth floor, landed in a heap of mud, and ended up paralyzed for life.

And I, from the shock of it, had lost the baby I'd carried for seven months.

That stretch of time was the darkest, most helpless period of my whole life.

By day I'd swallowed my disgust on the trading floor to land deals, drinking with all manner of handsy old men.

After work I'd gone straight to the hospital to talk Morgan down from the suicidal urges that never seemed to leave him.

Everyone urged me to give up.

“He blew all that money himself. It's got nothing to do with you. Find someone else to marry while you're still young.”

“A man who tries to kill himself every other day is no use to keep around. Just let him go.”

Even Morgan's parents pleaded with me, earnest as could be, to let go.

“He's lost the will to live. Staying alive is just suffering for him. Stop forcing him.”

But I wouldn't. I gritted my teeth and held on all the way to now.

The company that had been on the brink of bankruptcy came back from the dead under my hands.

Whenever I had time, I sat at Morgan's bedside, reaching out to renowned orthopedic specialists all over the world for him.

Just this morning, I'd even climbed all nine hundred and ninety-nine steps, bowing to the ground at every one, to a temple to ask for a protective charm just for him.

And yet, before I could even give it to him, it was thrown back in my face.

“Bringing me this useless garbage to fob me off again.”

These past few days his temper had grown more and more violent. He snatched the charm from my hand and hurled it out the window.

Afterward he bowed his head, buried his face in his hands, and tears spilled out by the fistful, like some beast whimpering.

“Lucinda Floyd, if you really love me, get me a bottle of sleeping pills. I'm tired. I want to sleep forever.”

I swallowed the contempt rising deep inside me.

His pretense of despair was a world apart from the man who'd been pinning Meg down, taking her like a thing possessed.

It made me frown. "I won't let you die."

My throat felt scraped raw, as if dragged over sandpaper, every word carrying the taste of blood.

He'd deceived me for so long.

The very least I could do was make sure he didn't get to die so easily.

I walked out the hospital doors and drifted aimlessly down the street.

There was hurt inside me, but more than that, there was an unwillingness to accept it.

Morgan and I had gone from school uniforms to wedding clothes together.

The moment we graduated from college, he took my hand and walked me down to the courthouse to get our marriage license.

In that dim, damp little basement apartment, we spent several happy years.

Four days of instant noodles a week, three days of plain bread rolls, and not once did I complain that it was hard, that I was tired.

Then came his accident, and I carried the company we'd built together on my thin shoulders.

All these years, his parents' retirement and daily expenses had been mine to cover as well.

As a wife, as a daughter-in-law, I gave everything I had, until even strangers couldn't find a single fault in me.

I'd never believed in God, but they said that if you gave up meat with a sincere heart, your prayers would be answered.

So that Morgan's legs might heal, for five straight years I didn't touch a scrap of meat. Even when malnutrition made me faint at my desk, I'd just gulp down a few mouthfuls of plain porridge and force myself through.

Now, looking back, I'd been such a fool.

To grind myself down like this for a man whose every word was a lie. It wasn't worth it.

At ten that night, I returned to the marriage home I'd once prepared for us.

A finely furnished three-story townhouse with gardens front and back.

I'd only taken part in the renovations and buying the furniture. I'd never lived in it a single day.

Most of the time I slept in hospital corridors, or on the office couch.

The instant I pushed the door open, I was startled to find the whole place redecorated in an entirely different style.

The simple, elegant French lambskin sofa was now buried under all sorts of plush dolls and stuffed toys, every shape and size.

On the coffee table sat a matching set of cartoon couple's mugs that hadn't been there before, one pink and one blue, engraved with the letters "J" and "S." How perfectly they matched.

I drew a deep breath and made myself walk into the bedroom.

The wedding photo of Morgan and me had been taken down from the wall, tossed carelessly into a corner under a thick layer of dust.

In the walk-in closet, all my clothes were gone.

Even the treasured wedding gown I'd loved most on my wedding day had been cut to shreds and thrown in the trash.

My feet carried me to the side of the bed against my will, and I stared down at the tangled, rumpled sheets.

I had a vague idea of what those two had been doing here not long ago.

Fighting down my nausea, I pulled a pair of women's lace panties out from between the sofa cushions.

There was no need to wonder. Their activities had hardly been confined to the bedroom.

In an instant a violent surge of acid rose up from my stomach, and I rushed to the bathroom, gripped the toilet, and threw up for a long time.

Long enough that my phone was ringing before I wiped away my tears and answered.

The butcher I used to buy from so often was calling, kindly, to remind me.

"Ms. Floyd, I set aside a fine cut of beef short ribs for you today. Best thing there is for making soup for your husband. When do you think you'll have time to come down to the market and pick it up?"

My voice was calm. "No need."

He paused, taken aback. "That's not like you. You used to wait in line however long it took just to grab the freshest bones for him. What's the matter today? You don't even want it when it's set aside and ready?"

A stab went through my chest. "I won't be needing it anymore."

Not long after I hung up, the front door downstairs seemed to push open from outside.

I held my breath and, like a thief, hid myself inside the empty closet.

As the entwined, panting breaths of a man and a woman drew closer and closer, I made out Morgan's face through the gap.

And the woman in his arms, bare as the day she was born.

Meg Simmons. In college she'd been two years behind me, in my direct line of study.

Every finals week, she'd cling to me, begging for my course review notes so she could cram for her exams.

In the beginning, Morgan actually didn't think much of her. He used to complain to me that she was eating into our time together.

But little by little, things shifted.

He'd compliment Meg right in front of me, saying how pretty her dress was, how sweet and guileless she seemed.

There was even a time I caught the two of them coming out of the men's restroom together. Meg was crying and scolding him for being a brute, for having no tenderness toward a woman at all.

So that was when it began. They'd been carrying on behind my back since then.

About two hours passed.

Morgan came out of the bathroom with Meg cradled in one arm, then stood by the bed and gently dried her hair for her.

They tussled and teased for a good while before Meg finally pushed his shoulder away, pouting in mock reproach.

"Today was our son's first day at preschool, and you, his father, didn't even go. Hmph. You're not the least bit fit for the job."

Morgan pulled her into his chest. "Blame that Lucinda. Every single time she dawdles forever before she'll leave, holding up the three of us getting to be together as a family."

"Don't be cross anymore, baby. How about I get you a jewelry set to make it up to you?"

"And what about our son?"

Morgan smiled and raised three fingers, swearing an oath to the heavens.

"For the next week, dropping our son off and picking him up is all on me. Now are you finally satisfied?"

I clenched both fists, nails nearly digging into my flesh, yet I felt nothing of the pain.

I kept thinking: how could a person sink to such shamelessness?

Morgan had lain there faking illness for eight years. Eight years of cold words and colder looks aimed at me.

And all the while, behind my back, he and Meg had gone so far as to have a son.

That child. I'd seen him.

Morgan's parents had lied to me, said he was a relative's boy they were fostering for a while. Yet the two of them doted on him as if he were their own grandson.

Every time I went to drop off their living allowance, that child would leap out from behind me and deliberately squirt me with a toy water gun, his mouth full of filth, calling me a "wicked woman," shouting things like "you stole my daddy."

A child like his mother, sure enough.

By now the heat had risen in Meg's body again, and she wound herself around Morgan for three more rounds.

Afterward, she cupped the man's face triumphantly and looked toward my figure in the wedding photo.

The gesture seemed meant to stake her claim.

"Morgan, do you know why I threw out everything in this house that had anything to do with Lucinda, yet kept that one photo?"

Morgan smirked and reached out, doting, to flick the tip of her dainty nose.

"Up to no good again?"

"That's right. I want her to see with her own eyes that on every unremarkable night, you're right here in this honeymoon room she decorated with her own hands, tangled up with me, unable to bear letting go."

"It was so infuriating, the way she married you a step ahead of me. When we're so clearly the better-matched pair."

"Still, watching her get led around in circles by us all these years, I've finally vented my spite."

"Then again, don't you think she's pitiful? Trying to find a treatment for you, she's worn herself down into an old hag. She's not even thirty, and already a big patch of her hair's gone white, her whole face lined with wrinkles. Hahaha. Every time I see her she gives me the creeps."

"That was her own choice."

Morgan toyed with the ends of Meg's hair, his face full of amusement.

"Lying there crippled and faking it, I'm the more pitiful one. How come I never saw you feel sorry for me?"

"You're awful."

……

The night was as long as ever.

Some lay sleeping in each other's arms. Some were breaking apart inside.