Chapter 3

I stared at that message for a long time, unable to move.

"Ma'am! Ma'am!"

Abigail's voice pulled me back. She draped a cashmere shawl over my shoulders.

"It's turned cold."

By evening my phone had filled up with photos.

Martin's eyes had lingered on those soft little baby clothes, so tender they could have brimmed over.

It wasn't that he disliked children. He only disliked a child that was mine.

The doorbell rang, and a line of people filed in.

Trays of glittering jewelry were spread out one by one in front of me.

"Ma'am, the master picked these out for you."

I lowered my head, scooped up a spoonful of soup, and said calmly, "No need. Send them back. I'll tell Martin myself."

Martin never grudged me money. But jewelry and cash were nothing to him, a flick of the hand.

What I truly wanted, he hadn't wanted to give me before, and now he'd already given it to another woman.

Outside the window the autumn rain fell without end, and the light of a turn signal flickered in and out through it.

After a while, Abigail's voice came again. "The master's back!"

I felt him draw near, and I spoke first.

"You don't need to send me those things. I hardly use them anyway."

But the next second my whole body was yanked up.

My lower half hung in the air, and I had to lean into him to keep my balance, humiliation crawling over every inch of me at once.

The veins in his neck stood out, and his eyes churned like a storm at sea.

"Didn't I tell you, if you want revenge, come at me?"

He threw me down hard. With a thud I dropped into the carpet.

His hand braced behind me as he leaned over, holding his phone screen down in front of my face.

Dozens of photos, every one of them evidence pointing at me.

Chicken blood all over the ground outside Lisa's door and the word slut scrawled on the wall, a testimony from some woman at the mall, and even an accusation from an OB-GYN.

"Sophie, how could you be this vicious?

"If she really had gone tumbling down those stairs, were you trying to kill her and the baby both?

"You even wanted her to never come off the operating table!"

My head was a blank fog, but I didn't need to think to know this was my mother-in-law's doing.

She didn't like me, but there was no way she liked Lisa either.

He was breathing hard, his eyes red, as if forcing himself not to lose control.

"Sophie, if anything happens to the child she's carrying—"

He swallowed, then went on.

"I'll make you pay."

I watched his retreating back and let out a bitter laugh.

"You care about her child that much?"

I gripped the armrest to prop myself up in the chair, and the words jammed in my chest came out on their own.

"And if I told you I once had a child too?"

His back went rigid, then in a few strides he crouched down in front of me.

"When? What gave you the right not to tell me?"

"What would telling you have done? Would you have come back?

"You were busy in Scandinavia with Lisa. If I'd said something, would you have dropped her and come home?"

He craned his neck to look at me.

"So you got rid of our child?"

He bowed his head and laughed, but the laugh grated like a wheezing bellows.

Seeing how wretched I looked on the floor, Martin still lifted me into the wheelchair, yet the words out of his mouth cut colder than the weather outside.

"You're right. Even if I'd known, I couldn't have come back.

"It was just a puddle of blood. Gone is gone. What's that next to her?"

The door slammed shut, but his voice kept echoing in my head long after.

I'd thought that since he loved children this much, he would at least have grieved a little for mine.

I sat back in the wheelchair, hurting so badly all over that I could hardly breathe.

The first time I'd felt this was when I lost the baby, when Martin was away on a monthlong trip in Scandinavia.

Back then I worried his work was too much, I didn't want him fretting over me, and I got through the depression after the miscarriage alone.

I thought two years had passed and I'd healed.

But a few words from him knocked me right back into the past.

After a while, with a trembling hand, I dialed my mother-in-law.

"Mom, I can't wait anymore.

"I can't face Martin calmly any longer.

"I hate him. I truly hate him."

She agreed to my request. At the soonest, I could leave within a week.

I went to my parents' grave. Father's plot had been restored to the way it was before.

I leaned against the headstone and talked through how hard these years had been, the rain coming down harder and harder, just enough to let me cry my heart out.

But partway through, someone cut in, and before I could make out who it was, I fell into darkness.