Chapter 1
The day Emily Carter died, Andrew Bennett was drinking with friends.
Andrew's reaction wasn't dramatic. He didn't drop his glass and race to the hospital. In fact, when he got the call, he frowned.
The nurse said, "Mr. Bennett, your wife took a large dose of sleeping pills. She's at Central City Hospital..."
"Wait," he cut off the nurse, sounding impatient. "Who are you talking about?"
"Emily Carter, Mr. Bennett. Your wife."
He pulled the phone away, glanced at the number, then put it back to his ear. "There's no way she took pills. She posted a video of herself baking a cake last night."
The nurse paused. "Mr. Bennett, sometimes people who are about to end their lives make themselves look perfectly normal right before."
Andrew didn't understand that sentence. Or rather, he had never understood a single sentence about Emily in his entire life.
He hung up, picked up his glass, and said to his friend across the table, "It's nothing. Let's keep going."
His friend asked what happened.
He said, "Emily's throwing another tantrum."
That word "another" said it all. In Andrew's mind, Emily was always good at two things: doing pointless things and using those pointless things to annoy him.
He took his time to drink, call a driver, and get to the hospital.
By the time he arrived, she was already in the ICU.
*****
Andrew found a chair in the hallway and sat down, not bothering to ask the doctor anything.
He pulled out his phone, scrolled through some clips, and chuckled a couple of times at a funny video compilation. Then he stumbled on Emily's post from last night.
The photo showed a tray of cupcakes that looked pretty good, with the caption: [First time making these. Not bad, I guess. You gotta find a little sweetness in life.]
There were a bunch of likes from their friends.
Andrew had liked it and commented: [Wasting flour again.]
He didn't think there was anything wrong with that comment. He was telling the truth.
Emily had tried baking bread once, and it turned out so hard that it could've been used as a brick. She ended up throwing it all away.
That was her. She could never get anything right, but she always liked to make a fuss.
As he was putting his phone away, the ICU doors swung open.
A young doctor stepped out, pulled off his mask, and glanced at him. "Family of Emily?"
"I'm her husband," Andrew replied.
The doctor hesitated, as if he wanted to say something more, but in the end, he gave the standard update. "She's out of immediate danger, but her condition isn't good.
"She took a large dose of Temazepam, and we didn't catch it early enough. Her liver and kidneys are damaged, and the next forty-eight hours are critical."
Andrew nodded. "Can I go in and see her?"
"You can, but she's still unconscious. She probably won't hear you," the doctor replied.
Andrew said it was fine and pushed the door open.
The ICU was lit with a cold, sterile glow, machines ticking away in a steady rhythm.
Emily lay in the middle of the bed, an oxygen mask strapped to her face, her arms riddled with needles. She looked so small, curled up on that oversized hospital bed, like a forgotten rag doll tossed in a corner.
Andrew stood at her bedside, staring down at her.
Suddenly, he noticed that Emily's hair was falling out in big chunks, littering the pillow.
She used to have gorgeous hair, cascading all the way down to her waist. Back when he was still trying to win her over, he got drunk one night.
He buried his face in her hair and mumbled about how good she smelled. That was eight years ago.
Andrew stood by her bed for about three minutes, then wandered back to his chair in the hallway. His legs were starting to ache from standing there.
He pulled out his phone again and scrolled to his WhatsApp messages with Emily.
The last one was from her, sent yesterday at 4:12 PM: [Honey, I made a cake today. Do you want to come home and try it tonight? I didn't put much sugar, since you don't like things too sweet.]
He didn't reply.
Scrolling up, he found the one before that was from two days ago: [The water heater at home seems to be broken. Can you get someone to check it out?]
He didn't reply.
Scrolling further up, he found a message three days ago: [I got a reservation at the restaurant you wanted to try. How about Friday night?]
There was one word from him: [Busy.]
He kept scrolling until his thumb started to ache, and then it hit him. He'd ignored about eighty percent of Emily's messages.
Whenever he did reply, it was always something like "Yeah," "Busy," or "Whatever."
He never thought there was anything wrong with that.
He was busy. His company was in the middle of a Series A funding round, and he had a million things to deal with every day.
Emily, as a housewife with nothing to do, was bored out of her mind, sending him all these pointless messages and wasting his time. Honestly, it was plain inconsiderate.
He'd always thought Emily's biggest problem was that she never knew how to be considerate.
She married him at twenty-five and quit her job at twenty-seven to become a full-time housewife. She was thirty by the time.
In five years, she'd gone from a pretty normal woman to someone who spent all day orbiting around him, breaking down in tears for no reason, and acting neurotic whenever she felt like it.
He figured all her problems came from having too much free time, so he ignored her more.
If he paid her any attention, she'd only make a bigger fuss. That was one of Andrew's life rules: treat women like subordinates and never spoil them.