Chapter 1
"How much longer are you going to drag this out? When are you finally going to ask Claire for a divorce?"
Lily's voice slipped right through the gap beneath the heavy oak door, ringing with painful clarity in my ears.
I froze outside the threshold.
For months, the aftermath of the car accident had plunged my world into an underwater silence.
Yet this morning, the ringing that had plagued my right ear had suddenly subsided.
First came the hum of the coffee maker, followed by the birds chirping outside the window.
The sounds were still slightly muffled, but by the time voices drifted down from upstairs, I could already piece together full sentences.
I thought it was God's anniversary gift to Ethan and me.
Clutching the handwritten card tight against my palm, I had hurried upstairs barefoot, desperate to let Ethan be the first to know that I could hear again.
I never imagined I would walk into a conversation like this.
From inside the room came Ethan's long, weary sigh.
"Lily, don't push me in our own home."
"I've had enough!" Lily's voice hitched, petulant and tearful. "Watching you pour her water, cut her steak, type everything out on your phone—it's driving me crazy! You promised you'd lay your cards on the table the moment she was discharged!"
"She wasn't just discharged. She is severely deaf."
Ethan's tone remained cool and composed.
"Every business partner and friend in Boston knows she was injured in that crash."
He paused, and each word landed in my ears with brutal precision.
"If I ask for a divorce now, everyone will say I walked out on a disabled wife."
"So you're just going to drag this out forever?"
"No," Ethan replied. "We have to make her ask for it herself."
Inside the room, the air seemed to turn to ice.
"Make her ask for it herself?" Lily countered.
"All it takes is making her feel that, with her disability, this marriage has become an unbearable burden on me."
His voice didn't waver in the slightest.
"She's too sensitive, too proud. Subject her to enough cold indifference and guilt, and she won't last long. She'll be the one to set me free."
"When that happens, people will only admire me for standing by her until the bitter end."
My fingernails dug violently into my palm, the crumpled anniversary card biting into my skin.
I didn't cry, nor did I burst into the room to confront them.
During the months spent trapped in that silent abyss, the first thing I had mastered was restraint.
Silently, I took two steps back, folded the card neatly, and slipped it into the pocket of my robe.
Then, I raised my hand and knocked three heavy raps against the wooden door.
Knock, knock, knock.
The whispers behind the door died instantly.
A full ten seconds passed before it finally pulled open.
Ethan stood there.
His collar was slightly unbuttoned, the faint trace of panic and defensive tension still lingering on his face.
Yet the moment his gaze met my calm eyes, that defensiveness vanished, replaced by an impeccably tender mask of concern.
"Claire?" he said, deliberately speaking slowly and exaggerating his lip movements. "Why are you barefoot? The floor is cold."
Beside the mahogany desk, Lily hurriedly wiped the corners of her eyes, pretending to tidy a stack of printed documents.
It was in this very study that I had once held Ethan's hand, pleading with him to let Lily stay with us after she graduated and moved to Boston.
Back then, I had said that our parents had passed away early, and she was the only family I had left in this world.