Chapter 1
It was three o'clock on a Friday afternoon when my coworker, Sophie Young, sent me a photo.
She and my husband, David Shaw, were standing on a beach, wearing matching swimsuits and smiling like the happiest couple in the world.
The caption was just two words: [Perfect match.]
I stared at the photo for ten seconds, then smiled.
I got up, walked to the copy room, and printed a hundred color copies.
I taped them up everywhere, from the CEO's office door to the break room to both of their desks.
Every spot where someone could see it, I made sure one was hanging straight and clean.
After I put up the last copy, I turned off my phone and drove straight to the airport.
Three days later, I powered my phone back on in a hotel room in the Azure Isles. I had 299 missed calls and over a thousand unread texts.
The one sitting right at the top was from David's mother, Margaret Shaw: [Have you lost your mind?!]
*****
It was three o'clock on a Friday when my coworker Sophie sent me a photo.
In it, she and my husband, David, stood on a beach in matching swimsuits, smiling as if they belonged together.
The Breeze Island ocean was crystal blue, the sky was cloudless, and golden sand stretched beneath their feet. He looked tall and handsome, and she looked petite and sweet.
Together, they could have been straight out of a magazine.
The caption read two words: [Perfect match.]
I stared at the photo for ten seconds.
The man in that picture was my husband of ten years.
One week ago, he had kissed me at the front door with his suitcase in hand. He told me he had an urgent project in Harbor City and wouldn't be back for a week.
The tenderness in his eyes, the way he lingered before he left, still felt like yesterday.
We had been married for ten years, together since high school, and everyone around us thought we were the perfect couple.
He was kind, attentive, and successful.
I took care of everything at home so he never had to worry about a thing.
I even believed we would grow old together.
It turned out, the whole thing was a joke.
The business trip was an affair.
Ten years of love, and all I got was a photo that burned my eyes and a breezy little "perfect match."
In the photo, Sophie was nestled against David's chest, and the sunflower hair clip in her hair was one I had bought for David last month.
He told me it was a gift for an important female client, and I had smiled and called him thoughtful.
Now it was clear how important this client really was. Important enough to share his bed.
In that moment, something inside me shattered. It didn't even hurt. There was no pain at all, only a cold, hollow numbness spreading through my chest.
The glow of my phone screen washed over my face, and I caught my own reflection. My lips were curving upward. I was smiling.
Yes, I was smiling. Not a bitter smile, not a sarcastic one. It was real, like a weight I had carried for years had suddenly been lifted.
For ten years, I had been locked in a cage called "marriage" and shackled by chains called "being a good wife."
And at that one moment, someone had taken a sledgehammer and smashed it all to pieces from the outside.
I felt lighter than I had ever felt in my life.
The office was quiet, nothing but keyboards clicking and the AC humming overhead.
I stood up. The coworker next to me glanced over, then quickly looked back down.
I smoothed my skirt and walked toward the copy room, my heels striking the floor with every step, sharp and steady, like a war drum.
I pushed open the door and uploaded the photo from my phone to the computer. I selected color printing on glossy paper at the highest resolution.
When I got to the number of copies, I paused. Then I deleted the default [1] and typed in [100.]
I hit confirm, and the printer hummed to life. It warmed up and spit out the first page.
Sophie's pretty face and David's bright smile looked so vivid on the paper, and so pathetic.
I picked up the page. It was still warm, and the ink smelled sharp.
Good. This little one-woman show was finally over.
The printer kept going, page after page. I didn't rush it. I just leaned against the wall and waited, watching a hundred copies of the "perfect match" pile up into a small mountain, like a tombstone for their ten years together.
No. Not theirs. Mine. A tombstone for the ten stupid years I'd thrown away.
I picked up the stack. It was thick and heavy in my hands. Then I turned and walked out of the copy room.
Outside, the sun was shining.