Chapter 3

The next day, Mark came home from work and immediately zoned out on the couch.

Every day after work, he would sit there for ten minutes.

Silent, no phone, no TV.

I once thought it was just his way of relaxing.

It was only today, looking at his empty, distant gaze, that I understood: his body was here with me, but his mind was miles away.

A chill snaked up my spine, my voice dry. I blurted out:

"Mark, who are you thinking about right now?"

"Is it Christina?"

His face instantly changed.

"Are you done or not?!"

"She's getting married soon, why can't you just let it go already?!"

With that, he got up, grabbed his jacket, and slammed the door shut.

A loud "BANG" echoed through the living room.

His phone, which had slipped from his pocket, lay quietly in the couch cushion.

I couldn't help but reach for it and unlock it.

The WhatsApp interface was open to his chat with Christina.

The messages were frequent, especially recently, with her wedding approaching.

Mark was bustling around, a hundred times more invested than he ever was for our wedding.

He helped her pick out wedding dresses, finalize the hotel menu, and even painstakingly reviewed the wording for the invitations.

When we got married, his best man helped him choose his own suit.

Scrolling further up their chat history, I felt like a beggar who had stumbled into a lavish feast, utterly out of place.

His messages to me were always the same few things:

"Working late tonight."

"Okay."

"Alright."

I used to think he just had a bland personality, not good at online communication.

Every time I shared a pretty cloud, a cute dog, or a funny meme with him, he never replied.

But it turned out he forwarded all of those to her.

They could chat back and forth for ages, even about trivial things like "The pork chop for lunch today was really good."

His capacity for emotional connection was always there; he just never shared a single ounce of it with me.

I remembered when Christina lost her job.

He pulled every string to get her into his own company, with a salary even higher than mine.

I was fresh back in the workforce after having Harry, suffocating from the office politics, and I begged him to help me transfer.

He coldly refused: "I'm just helping a friend; there's nothing more to it. You're my wife, I need to keep things professional."

Christina cried in the breakroom, red-eyed, because her boss was giving her a hard time.

When Mark found out, he stormed into the office and ripped that boss a new one, almost getting physical.

Then he transferred her to work directly under him.

But when my boss publicly humiliated me, and I came home crying for help.

He just shrugged it off, still playing his game: "Isn't that just how workplaces are? Just deal with it."

I couldn't help but say, "He said some really nasty things."

He didn't even look up: "You're just too sensitive."

My heart sank further and further, dropping into an icy pit.

I looked at our son playing.

His little face, so much like Mark's, made the pain almost unbearable, choking me.

Where was I supposed to go from here?