Chapter 1

On our third wedding anniversary, my husband Stephen Reed was nowhere to be found.

It wasn't because of a business trip or some work event. It was because the woman he could never forget, Claire Sutton, had come back to the country.

He went to the airport to pick her up, drove her to her hotel himself, and had dinner with her.

Meanwhile, I sat alone at a table full of cold food, waiting for him from seven in the evening until one in the morning.

My phone lit up three times with messages.

The first time was at five in the afternoon. Stephen: [Got a business dinner tonight. Won't be home for dinner.]

I replied: [Okay.]

The second time was at nine in the evening. [Go ahead and sleep. Don't wait up for me.]

I replied: [Okay.]

The third time was at half past midnight. It wasn't a message from him, but a photo someone posted on social media.

In it, Stephen was pulling out a chair for Claire at a restaurant. The angle was tricky, but it happened to catch that gentle smile on his lips, the kind I'd never seen in all three years of our marriage.

The caption was simple: [A perfect match.]

I zoomed in on that photo and stared at it for a long time. So long that my phone screen went dark, and I had to tap it back on to look again.

After the third time, I realized something: that smile wasn't polite, and it wasn't the casual kind he would give a friend. It was the kind of soft, unguarded smile you only show to someone who truly matters to you.

In three years, he'd never smiled at me like that.

I turned off my phone and got up, dumping each dish into the trash one by one. Meatloaf, his favorite. Baked salmon, his favorite. Garlic butter green beans, his favorite. And his favorite beef stew. Every single dish was timed perfectly for him.

The moment he texted that he wouldn't be home for dinner, I knew he was with Claire. But I still cooked everything in case he changed his mind. In case he came home. I had been waiting for that possibility for three years.

For three years, I basically became his personal cheat sheet. Every one of his quirks and habits was burned into my memory.

I knew he liked his coffee black with no sugar and no cream. I knew his shirts had to be ironed until not a single wrinkle was left. I knew he hated cilantro so much that he couldn't stand the smell.

I knew he would get insomnia at the end of every month and needed some wine to help him sleep.

I remembered every little thing about him. But he didn't even know I was seriously allergic to lily pollen. And there were always lilies from Claire sitting in our living room.

Every time I sneezed, my eyes watered, and I could barely breathe. Stephen would frown and say, "If you have a cold, go take some medicine. Do not cough around me."

He never realized it wasn't a cold. It was an allergy. The flowers from the woman he cared about were making the woman he didn't care about suffer.

All along, he saw me as some kind of ornament. A responsibility his grandfather shoved onto him on his deathbed. Something he had to put up with.

My name was Emily Warren. I was twenty-six years old. Three years earlier, I had married Stephen.

I didn't marry him because I loved him. Well, okay, I thought I did back then. That kind of love felt like a seed falling softly into my heart. I believed it would take root and grow. Maybe it would bloom one day.

But three years later, standing in my kitchen at one in the morning, listening to the clock tick away, I finally understood the truth.

That seed had landed on stone from the very start. It wasn't that the seed was bad. The soil was never right for it.

My marriage was nothing more than a long lie I told myself.

I thought if I tried hard enough, cared enough, and understood enough, he would eventually turn around and see me.

But the real truth was simple. When someone didn't care about a person, handing over a heart changed nothing. That person would always find a reason to call it dirty.

I washed my hands, dried them, and went back to the bedroom. Our wedding photo sat on the nightstand. In the picture, I was wearing a white wedding dress, smiling gently and bashfully, like a peach ripened, soft, bright, and full of hope.

Stephen stood beside me, his expression distant, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond the camera, probably toward Claire, I realized later.

Back then, I thought he wasn't comfortable with photos. Now I knew: it wasn't the camera he was avoiding, it was me.

I turned the frame over and placed it face down on the table. Then I switched off the light and lay down. In the darkness, my eyes stayed open, staring at the ceiling.

I didn't cry. It wasn't strength. It was that my tears had already run dry after countless nights spent waiting alone.

Outside, the city lights burned bright. Every lamp had a story hiding beneath it. On my third wedding anniversary, my story finally came to an end.

It didn't end with a bang. It faded quietly, the way a string stretched too tight for too long finally snapped.

The next morning, Stephen came home.

When he walked in, I was sitting alone at the dining table eating breakfast: a cup of black coffee and a slice of toast with a thin layer of blueberry jam.

He used to tease me about it, saying I looked silly eating blueberry jam, like a cat sneaking a snack. So I stopped buying it for a long time.

But this morning, passing the supermarket, I grabbed a jar somehow. When I twisted open the lid, the sweet and tangy smell hit me, and I realized this was what I really liked.

Not the meatloaf he loved. Not the beef stew he always wanted. Only blueberry jam, my own small, nearly forgotten preference.

He paused when he saw me. He was probably used to me getting up at six every morning to make him breakfast: fried eggs, toasted bread, fresh-squeezed orange juice, plated like it belonged in a fancy café.

Then I would stand by the kitchen door, waiting for him to take the first bite before nervously asking, "Is it okay?"

He never said it was good or not. He would eat in silence, set down his fork, grab his briefcase, and leave. Like a machine refueling for the day, with no need for any extra emotion toward the person who kept it running.

But today, the stove was cold. No sizzling eggs, no aroma of toasted bread, no faint scent of oranges from the juicer. Just me, a cup of black coffee, and a slice of toast with blueberry jam.

He sat down across from me and was quiet for a few seconds. "Something came up last night," he said, his voice flat, like he was stating something trivial.

I took a bite of toast, chewed, swallowed, and replied calmly, "I know."

He frowned, looking a bit surprised by how I reacted.

Usually I would ask, "What happened? Who were you with? When did you get back?" My voice always gave me away, full of hope and hurt I couldn't hide.

He would get impatient and say, "It was work. Why do you have to ask so much?"

And then I would go quiet, lower my head, and swallow everything back down with my pride.

But today, I didn't ask a single thing, and he actually seemed unsettled by it.

Funny how he was. When I revolved around him, he got annoyed. But the second I stopped, suddenly he felt like something was missing.

"Emily," he said flatly. In three years of marriage, whenever he used my name, it usually meant something unpleasant was coming. He almost never called me "honey" or "babe." Those kinds of affectionate words were like a foreign language to him, one he never learned.

I looked up at him.

"Claire's back in the country," he said. "She doesn't really have any friends here, so I'll probably be spending more time with her."

Claire. Her name rolled off his tongue, sweet and smooth, as if he had been savoring it for years. Effortless. Natural. Perfectly fitting.

My hand holding the coffee cup didn't tremble. Three years ago, I probably would have smashed the cup, my eyes would have filled with tears, and I would have confronted him, "What about me?"

But three years of marriage taught me one thing: questioning him never worked. Tears never worked. Even if I gave my heart to him, he would find it unwanted.

"Okay," I said.

He frowned again. "You don't care?"

I set down my coffee cup and looked at him seriously. I used to think I could stare at his face forever and never get bored.

Those striking features: sharp brows, clear eyes, a straight nose, and thin lips pressed together, always giving off that icy, untouchable vibe. Like a perfectly carved ice sculpture. Beautiful, but get too close and I would get burned, or frozen.

The first time I saw him three years ago, my heart skipped a beat. I thought it was love at first sight.

But now I knew it wasn't. It was a warning. Fate was telling me there was a pitfall ahead, and I should turn back. Instead, I dove right in and spent three years stuck at the bottom.

"Stephen," I said, "would it make any difference to you if I cared or not?"

He stayed silent. His silence said it all.

"So," I said, standing up and putting the empty plate in the dishwasher, "you don't need to ask for my opinion. Inform me."

I had my back to him, so I couldn't see his face, but I could feel his eyes on me, curious, like a scientist watching a lab rat that suddenly started acting differently. Maybe he thought I'd changed.

I hadn't changed at all. I'd finally opened my eyes.

*****

Claire slipped into our world almost overnight. But honestly, "our world" wasn't the right way to put it. She was part of Stephen's life now. I was a misplaced prop, lingering on the edges of their story.

On the third day, Stephen told me to come along to a charity dinner. I got dressed up, did my makeup, and sat in the passenger seat, waiting for him to leave the office.

As he got in, he answered a call, keeping his voice low, but I still caught what he said to Claire. "Don't move. I'll come pick you up."

He hung up and turned to me. He hesitated, like he wanted to say something. I knew that look all too well. He was about to stand me up.

Over the past three years, I had seen that look more times than I could count. Every single time, I could tell how it would end before he opened his mouth.

And every single time, I still held onto that one in a million hope, waiting for him to say it out loud.

"Emily, something happened with Claire. I need to go over there. You'll have to go to the dinner by yourself. I'll send the driver with you."

I looked at him and suddenly smiled, not bitter or cold, but a smile of relief. "Stephen, you're sending me to the charity dinner alone?"

He said, "You're Mrs. Reed. Your presence is all that matters at these events."

I sneered, "Am I supposed to go as your wife, Stephen? But you won't be by my side. If someone asks, what should I say? That you're busy keeping another woman company?"

His expression turned cold. "Emily, don't make a scene. Claire really needs me right now—"

"I know," I cut him off. "She always has some emergency and always needs you. And I'm always expected to suck it up and be the good wife."

I unbuckled my seatbelt and stepped out of the car. The early autumn wind slipped down my collar, sending a chill through me. I hugged my coat closer and stood by the curb, waiting for a cab.

My phone buzzed with a message from Stephen: [Don't be stubborn. Get back in the car.]

I stared at those four words. Stubborn. He called his absence "something came up," and my disappointment "being stubborn." In his dictionary, his actions always had a perfectly reasonable excuse, and my feelings were always inconvenient.

I didn't reply. When the cab pulled up, I got in and told the driver to take me to the office. Since I wasn't going to the dinner, I might as well head back and get some work done.

As the cab merged onto the main road, I caught a glimpse of Stephen's car in the rearview mirror, pulling out of the parking lot and heading in the opposite direction, toward the airport expressway.

Claire's hotel was out that way, right next to the airport.

I looked away and leaned back in my seat. The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror, probably wondering why a woman all dressed up was hailing a cab alone.

I didn't bother explaining. There are plenty of weird things in this world, one more, one less, who was really counting?