Chapter 3

Sarah stared at me for a long moment, then she let out a short, sharp laugh. A sound of pure derision.

"You're still on that?" she said, shaking her head as if I were a particularly stupid child. "It's not funny anymore, Ethan. It was never funny. It's just sick."

"I'm not lying," I said, my voice flat.

"Oh, please," she scoffed. "You're just trying to ruin my mood because I was happy for David. You can't stand it when I have anything for myself, can you? You always have to make it about you and your feelings."

She turned to her parents. "Are you two just going to let him say these things? Are you taking his side again?"

John stepped forward, his face like stone. "Go home, Sarah."

"What?"

"Go. Home," he repeated, his voice leaving no room for argument.

Sarah's eyes darted between us, a flicker of uncertainty finally entering her expression. She looked back at me, her lip curled in a sneer.

"Fine," she said, her voice cold. "Stay here and wallow in your fake misery. But don't come crawling back to me when you get tired of this little performance." She walked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

I heard her footsteps fade down the hall, the front door open and close. The house was silent again. I raised a hand to my mouth, rubbing my lips furiously, trying to wipe away the memory of her sneer, the sound of her voice. It felt like a stain.

It wasn't always like this. I remembered when I first met her. I was a shy, awkward kid, and she was the sun. She pursued me. She told me I was different from the loud, arrogant boys she usually dated. She said she liked my quiet strength. I was a charity case, living in her parents' house, and she, the princess of the school, chose me. I was dizzy with it. I loved her. I really, truly did.

Our first few years together were good. Happy. It was after we got married that things started to change. The marriage was her parents' idea, a way to formalize our relationship and, I now realized, a way for them to keep me in the family, a stable force they hoped would ground their flighty daughter.

Sarah began to resent it. She saw the marriage not as a commitment to me, but as a cage built by her parents. And she started to act out.

It began subtly. Late nights with "friends." Vague answers about where she'd been. Then David came back into the picture. Her high school sweetheart, the one before me. He was married too, but that didn't seem to matter to either of them.

Soon, she wasn't even trying to hide it. They went out to dinner, to movies. She'd post pictures of them online, smiling, their heads close together. The whole town knew. People would look at me with pity in their eyes. The poor, clueless husband.

I wasn't clueless. I knew exactly what was happening. At first, I tried to fight it. We had screaming matches that ended with her laughing at me.

"Are you jealous, Ethan?" she'd ask with that same mocking smile. "David is just a friend. You're so insecure. It's really unattractive."

Her gaslighting was so effective, so complete, that I began to doubt my own sanity. The arguments left me exhausted and empty. So, I stopped. I gave up. I told myself it didn't matter what she did, as long as I had Lily.

I poured all my love, all my energy, all my hope into our daughter. Lily was my reason for getting up in the morning. She was my reason for enduring the hollow shell of my marriage. She was my sun, my moon, my entire sky. I could tolerate Sarah's affairs, her cruelty, her absence, as long as I could come home and see Lily's face light up when she saw me.

"Daddy!" she would yell, running into my arms. "You're home!"

That was all I needed.

Now, sitting in that quiet guest room, the truth crashed down on me with the force of a physical blow. The only thing that had made my life bearable was gone. The one person I was living for was dead.

And the woman I had once loved, the mother of my child, had put the final nail in her coffin and then gone out to celebrate.

My life didn't just feel empty. It felt over. There was nothing left to fight for. Nothing left to hope for.