Chapter 4

I scrolled down. A post from three weeks ago caught my eye.

It was a photo of a painting. The caption read: "When my inspiration runs dry, thank god I have you."

The painting depicted a beach with a lighthouse.

I knew that lighthouse all too well.

It was the beach in my hometown. It was the exact spot where Alex and I had officially started dating.

He had told me I was his lighthouse.

My fingers shook uncontrollably as I opened the comments section.

The top comment was from an account named "A.W."

The profile picture was just a black screen.

He had replied with just one word: "Always."

A.W.

Alex Wilson.

I clicked on "A.W.'s" profile. It was completely empty. He only followed one person—Aurora.

I went back to Aurora's Instagram and kept scrolling.

I saw countless photos of her traveling the world.

The Eiffel Tower in Paris, cherry blossoms in Kyoto, blue-domed churches in Santorini.

I looked at them one by one, matching the dates of her photos with the dates in my memory when Alex was "away on business."

Paris, three years ago: He said he was attending a tech summit in New York.

Kyoto, two years ago: He said he was meeting a client in Toronto.

Santorini, last year: He said it was a company retreat in Miami.

It turned out his "business trips" and "company retreats" were actually spent accompanying another woman on the other side of the world, indulging in romance.

And what was I doing during those times?

I was probably haggling over grocery prices at the market.

I was probably holding a feverish Betty in my arms, waiting in line alone at the ER.

I was probably at home, washing piles of his dirty socks, looking forward to him coming home from his "hard work."

I shut the laptop down. I felt utterly frozen, as if I had been dropped into a glacial lake.

The love I believed in, the marriage I was so proud of—it was all a carefully crafted scam from the very beginning.

And I was the fool who had been kept in the dark the longest.