Chapter 5
No one moved.
Emily looked at my dad.
"Mr. Crawford, should I call the police?" she asked.
Robert's face turned ashen.
He grabbed the file and stormed out.
Linda dragged David and Susan out after him, looking utterly defeated.
The door slammed shut.
Only Emily and I were left in the room.
And that iron box.
I stood there, frozen for what felt like forever.
Emily walked back to the table and slowly put the savings certificates, gold bars, and passbooks back into the box, one by one.
Her movements were slow.
I spoke in a low voice, "Emily, I'm sorry."
She didn't look up.
"For what?" she asked.
My heart sank.
She closed the box. "Is it for lying to me about the debt?
"Or for inheriting 187 million dollars, and not telling me?
"Or for treating our marriage like some kind of experiment?"
I couldn't say a word.
She finally looked at me.
Her eyes were red.
She said, "James, when those people tried to take your money, I could stand by your side.
"But what you did today, I can't pretend it never happened."
I reached out to pull her closer.
She stepped back.
"Don't touch me," she said.
Those three words hit me harder than any argument we'd ever had.
She clutched the iron box to her chest, turned, and walked into the bedroom.
Before the door closed, she left me with one last sentence. "I'll go with you to meet the lawyer tomorrow.
"After that, we'll talk about divorce."
That night, I slept on the couch in the living room.
The bedroom door was shut tight.
Not a single ray of light seeped through the crack.
I walked over to the door a few times, hand hovering, but in the end, I let it drop.
I knew I didn't deserve to knock.
When Emily called me a loser, I was still finding fault with her in my head.
But when she hugged that iron box to her chest, it hit me. The real loser was me.
I used money to see what she'd do.
She put her life on the line for me.
At three in the morning, I opened my banking app and stared at the balance. For the first time, I couldn't stand to look at it.
I thought about sending her half of it right then and there.
But when the transfer screen popped up, I froze.
It wasn't that I was unwilling to part with the money.
It was that I suddenly realized trying to make it up to her felt like I was humiliating her.
The next morning, at seven, the bedroom door opened.
Emily was dressed in a black suit, her hair pulled back, her face pale.
She was holding the iron box.
I stood up.
"Emily, let me take you," I said.
She didn't look at me. "You're not taking me. I'm going with you to see the lawyer."
My throat felt tight and sore.
"Can we hold off on talking about divorce?" I asked.
She finally looked up. "James, right now you need to take care of everything your grandfather left behind.
"As for us, we'll talk about it after you've sorted all that out."
She said it so calmly.
So calm, it felt like I was already out of her life.
On the way to the law firm, neither of us said a word.
The only sound in the car was the GPS.
I kept wanting to explain myself, that I was afraid she'd change someday.
But whenever the words were about to leave my mouth, it sounded so pathetic to me.
Emily was willing to put up five hundred thousand dollars to help me pay off my debts, and yet I was the idiot who thought she'd sell out for money.
When we got to the law firm, Mr. Bennett was already waiting in the conference room.
He was in his fifties, wore gold-rimmed glasses, and spoke in a calm, steady voice.
When he saw Emily, he stood up and gave her a polite nod.
"Mrs. Turner, Mr. Crawford spoke of you often before he passed," Mr. Bennett said.
Emily froze for a moment, caught off guard.
I was as shocked.
I knew my grandpa was fond of Emily.
But he never mentioned anything about it to me directly.
Mr. Bennett slid a bound copy of the will across the table to me.
He said, "Mr. Crawford, yesterday you only looked at the asset transfer section.
"Today, we need to go over all the terms."
I flipped to the second page, and my gaze froze.
That line was crystal clear. [Everything under Mr. Crawford's name-cash, stocks, real estate, and anything else-would go to James alone. It was his, and his alone. Marriage didn't make it shared property.]
My hand froze on the page.
Emily's eyes landed on it as well.
There was no greed in her eyes, no disappointment.
The tiniest hint of sarcasm, barely noticeable.
I spoke up right away.