Chapter 2
The next day was Saturday.
For once, Edward was home for breakfast. He sat at the table in loungewear, scrolling through his phone. Charlotte fried him an egg, warmed up some milk, and set everything in front of him.
He didn't even look up. He just said, "I'm heading out later. Don't wait for me tonight either."
Charlotte asked, "Where are you going?"
"Team-building thing from work."
She gave a quiet "oh" and didn't ask anything else.
At two in the afternoon, she went out to buy some household supplies. To get from her neighborhood to the supermarket, she had to pass Central Plaza Mall. Normally she stuck to the sidewalk outside and never went in. Looking at all the stuff in those display windows made her feel awful.
But today, for some reason, she walked in.
Maybe it was too hot outside and she wanted the mall's air conditioning. Or maybe she had been away from shiny, polished places for so long that she wanted to see what normal people's lives looked like.
The mall was crowded, with people coming and going in front of every store. As she passed one display window after another, the glass reflected her image back at her: a faded sweatshirt, plain jeans, and canvas sneakers worn almost white.
She looked completely out of place here.
When she reached the Louis Vuitton store, she stopped for a second.
Not because of the bags in the window. Because she saw two people.
A man and a woman stood at the counter with their backs to her. The man had an orange shopping bag hooked over his arm. The woman was holding onto his arm, smiling sweetly. He was wearing a dark blue polo shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, with a silver watch on his wrist. Charlotte knew that back all too well.
Edward Lane.
The woman turned around. She looked young, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, with long blonde hair, perfect makeup, and a well-tailored dress. Holding onto Edward's arm, she tilted her head up at him and smiled. "Eddie, thank you. I love this bag so much."
Edward reached out and stroked her hair, his voice so gentle it barely sounded like him. "As long as you like it. It wasn't that expensive anyway."
Not that expensive.
Charlotte stood frozen, staring at the price tag on the bag: 12,300 dollars. Her monthly living expenses were 700 dollars.
A year came to 8,000 dollars. That one bag cost more than a year and a half of what she lived on.
She should have stormed over. She should have demanded to know who that woman was, why he was using marital money to buy another woman a bag, and where exactly he'd been "working late" the night before.
But she didn't.
She looked down at herself. A pilling sweatshirt, wrinkled jeans, and canvas shoes with the soles worn flat. Standing in front of that girl in a designer dress, she felt like a drenched sparrow beside a peacock.
She turned and walked away.
She went into the first-floor restroom, locked herself in a stall, and sat on the closed toilet seat with both hands covering her face.
Tears slipped through her fingers, silent and endless.
She remembered that three years ago, when Edward had been courting her, he bought her a bag too. It wasn't Louis Vuitton. It was some niche label she couldn't even name, but it had been the most expensive gift she'd ever received. He had told her, "Once you marry me, I'll buy you even better ones."
Later, she married him. Later, she stopped needing bags at all, because she had nowhere to go.
Ten minutes later, she stood up, turned on the faucet, washed her face with cold water, and wiped away every trace of tears in the mirror.
The person in the mirror had swollen red eyes, dull skin, and pale lips. She looked at that face and barely recognized herself.
She walked out of the restroom, out of the mall, and onto the sidewalk, making her way home one step at a time.
When she got home, she sat at the dining table and pulled out her expense notebook again. But this time she didn't just look at her own spending. She opened Edward's bank statements.
She had been a full-time housewife for all three years of their marriage. The household bank card was under Edward's name, but she was a co-holder on the joint account, so she could see every transaction. She had never looked before, because she trusted him.
Today, she looked. Starting from the first page, she went through it line by line.
Meals, alcohol, hotels, plane tickets, luxury goods. Every transaction was like a needle stabbing her in the chest.
One transfer caught her eye: three months ago, Edward had sent 67,000 dollars to an account called Everstyle Studio, with the note [Project consulting fee].
Everstyle Studio.
She memorized the name.
A few pages later, she found even more records that shocked her.
Not Edward's. Her mother's.
Every month on the fifteenth, Edward sent a fixed 2,000 dollars to an account ending in 3821, marked [Support payment]. That account belonged to Mrs. Nolan.
Charlotte stared at that line for a long time. Her mother's retirement check wasn't much, so Charlotte sent her about 700 dollars every month to help out. But this extra 2,000 dollars from Edward? She had never known about it.
Why was Edward sending money to her mother? And why call it support payment?
Her mother had never mentioned any of it.
Charlotte took out her phone and sent her mother a message: [Mom, besides the money I send you, have you been getting money from anywhere else?]
After sending it, she stared at the screen and waited.
Three minutes later, her mother replied: [Why are you asking that? Did someone say something to you?]
Charlotte's heart sank.
She didn't reply. Instead, she kept going through the bank statements.
Her mind worked like some kind of precision machine, replaying every detail of the past three years. Every late night Edward came home. Every careless answer. Every moment she had said, "It's okay."
Everything she had chosen to ignore was rising to the surface now.