He Chases Mountains and Seas, I Keep the Quiet and the Love

1: 1

When I was three months pregnant, my husband was busy talking to the baby.

You're going to grow up just like your Aunt Marina. Smart, brave, out on the slopes, off seeing the world all on your own.

My smile stiffened for a second. I asked, on purpose,

So if Marina Henson and I both fell into the sea, who would you save?

Thomas James didn't even stop to think.

"You, of course."

Warmth had barely stirred in my chest when he added, smiling,

"Marina can swim, and she's won surfing titles. Why would she ever need saving?"

Right then, a photo of Marina popped up in our group of three.

She'd just finished a trip to Antarctica, standing in front of a glacier, laughing into the wind.

Thomas snatched up his phone at once and typed a careful reply.

You really do live the good life.

Once the baby's born, I'll come skydiving with you.

When the screen went dark, I saw myself reflected in it.

A pale face, feet swollen under the loose maternity dress, stretch marks all over my belly and waist.

For this family I'd quit my job, given up every friend I had, until my life was nothing but prenatal checkups and shopping for baby things.

But what Thomas admired had always been someone like Marina, free and dazzling.

I didn't cry, and I didn't ask again.

I only lowered my head and touched my belly, and suddenly I knew, clearly.

This marriage of mine and Thomas's had already reached its end.

Only after Thomas finished replying did he notice I hadn't said a word.

He set the phone down and pressed his hand back to my belly.

"What's wrong?"

"Are you really sulking over one little line?"

I didn't answer.

He laughed and pinched my cheek.

"You're not like Marina."

"She can't sit still. She's meant to go out and take on the world. You're steady. You can take good care of a home. That's a strength too."

He said it like it was the most obvious thing, but the words went into me like sharp thorns.

The phone buzzed again.

In the group, Marina said she'd cut her trip short and would be home tonight.

Thomas replied at once.

Come eat at our place. Let me throw you a welcome dinner.

Only after sending it did he look up at me.

"Marina's been in Antarctica over a month. She definitely won't be able to stomach restaurant food."

"Make a few dishes she likes tonight, and put on a pot of beef stew too."

My stomach churned.

Ever since I got pregnant I couldn't stand the smell of cooking oil. I'd been throwing up for a whole month.

"Can we just eat out?"

"I'm not feeling well today."

The smile on Thomas's face faded a little.

"She sat on a plane for over twenty hours straight and didn't once complain about being tired."

"You're only three months along. How is it that every single day you're either dizzy or about to throw up?"

"Even the doctor said pregnant women can't just lie around. A bit of housework is good for you."

With that, he lowered his head and went back to chatting with Marina.

That afternoon, I forced down the nausea and went to the kitchen.

The glazed pork ribs had barely hit the pan when the oily smoke hit my face, and I clamped a hand over my mouth and rushed to the bathroom.

There was nothing in my stomach.

I hunched over the toilet, dry-heaving for a long time, until the tears were wrung out of me.

Thomas passed by the doorway and stopped for only a couple of seconds.

"You okay?"

Before I could speak, his phone rang.

Marina was already downstairs.

Thomas turned on his heel at once.

"Rinse your mouth when you're done. I'm going down to get her."

After the door shut, I knelt alone on the cold tile.

And suddenly I remembered the day the test came back positive.

Thomas had held that report and stared at it for a long time.

A man who was always so calm, and yet the rims of his eyes slowly went red.

He crouched down and kissed my belly, his voice trembling.

"Carrie Pruitt, quit the job at the bank."

"You leave early, come home late, and deal with all those clients. I can't stop worrying."

"From now on you just focus on the baby. I can support you and the child."

I hated to give up that job. I'd done it for six years.

But he said we'd only have this one child, and a job could always be found again later.

He said he'd never let me suffer, not for a moment.

I believed him.

Yet less than two months after I quit, in his mouth I'd become a woman who did nothing but lie around all day, who wouldn't even make a single meal.

The cold of the floor spread across my skin.

I raised a hand and wiped away the tears that had covered my whole face without my noticing.

I sent a message to a lawyer.

I'm sorry to trouble you. Could you help me draw up a set of divorce papers.

2: 2

Half an hour later, laughter drifted in from the hallway.

Thomas came through the door dragging three suitcases for Marina, her windbreaker still slung over one arm.

Marina took in the full spread on the table and threw her arms around me with a dramatic squeeze.

"Carrie, no one's better than you."

"If I were Thomas, I'd marry you too. A hot meal on the table every night when you come home. How is that not paradise?"

Thomas set her luggage down and let out a short laugh.

"You couldn't do it if you tried."

"Carrie's got no real career drive. If you stayed home three days, you'd probably tear the roof off the place."

They both laughed.

I stood where I was, my fingers slowly curling into my palms.

"My job. You're the one who told me to quit it."

For a beat, the laughter in the living room stopped.

Thomas frowned at me.

"I just didn't think that paycheck was worth wearing yourself out while you're pregnant."

"You agreed to quit yourself. How is that suddenly my fault now?"

Marina hurried to catch my hand.

"Carrie, Thomas only says it because he cares about you."

"And a woman doesn't have to have a career. You keep this whole home running. That's already something to be proud of."

Her tone was sincere.

But hearing it sat worse than any sneer.

Marina could win international awards, travel the world, surf and skydive.

And I quit my job, carried a baby, swallowed my morning sickness, and put a full dinner on the table.

And the highest praise I could earn was that I kept the home running nicely.

Over dinner, Marina pulled out her tablet and showed Thomas the project proposal she'd just finished.

The two of them went from overseas markets to funding plans.

I had watched this scene for seven years.

Back in school, they were the two brightest stars on campus.

They won the startup competition together, made the cover of a finance magazine together.

And I was just an ordinary bank employee.

When they pulled all-nighters revising a project, I was the one delivering food.

When they stood on stage giving interviews, I sat in the audience, holding their phones and their coats.

I used to think that as long as Thomas came home holding my hand in the end,

whether or not I stood beside him didn't matter.

It was only in this moment that I saw it.

Marriage had given me the title of wife, but it had never let me truly step into his world.

When Marina got to the funding plan, I couldn't help but say,

"The policy in this industry seems to be shifting. The banks have been tightening approvals lately."

Thomas didn't even lift his head.

"You've been out of work two months. Your information's long out of date."

"Marina and I will handle this. You don't need to worry about it."

But Marina looked over at me and smiled.

"It's already impressive that Carrie thought of that."

"At least it shows she pays attention to what we do."

Only then did Thomas raise his head.

"She's always like this. Afraid she can't keep up with us, so she forces herself to listen to everything."

"There's really no need."

He ladled a bowl of soup for me and set it in front of me.

"Everyone's good at different things."

"You just take good care of the baby. That's the biggest help you can give me."

I looked at the soup in the bowl, scattered all over with the cilantro I never eat, and my stomach started to turn again.

I didn't say anything else, only lowered my head to confirm Wednesday morning's prenatal checkup.

Last time, Thomas had suddenly needed to drive Marina to the airport, and promised he'd come with me for sure next time.

But I didn't ask him again whether he still remembered.

3: 3

That Wednesday, Thomas left before dawn.

Marina's project had landed a new round of funding, and there was a celebration party that night.

Before he went, he warmed a glass of milk for me and reminded me,

"Don't forget your prenatal vitamins."

"Once you've done the checkup today, send me the results."

"Marina just got back. She'll probably drink too much tonight, so I need to look after her."

I watched his back as he reached the door, and answered softly.

"Okay."

At the hospital, halfway through the scan, the doctor suddenly stopped.

"The fetus's brain tissue hasn't developed properly."

"There's no treatment for this. The baby wouldn't survive after birth."

I stared blankly at the shape on the screen, the outline already there.

It was as though everything around me had gone silent.

Ten minutes earlier, I'd still been guessing whether it was a boy or a girl.

Ten minutes later, the doctor was telling me this child would never have a chance to enter the world.

And right then, a sharp pain tore through my lower belly.

Blood soaked through the hem of my dress in moments.

The doctor's face changed. She had a nurse wheel over a chair at once.

"You're already bleeding. We can't wait any longer."

"We have to terminate the pregnancy as soon as possible, or your life could be in danger too."

It all happened too fast.

Before I could even truly accept that this baby couldn't be saved, the consent form for terminating the pregnancy was already in front of me.

Before I signed, I made only one request.

"Can I call the baby's father first?"

The phone rang a long time before it connected.

The other end was full of the noise of a celebration party being set up.

Thomas asked impatiently, "Checkup done?"

I gripped the phone hard.

"Thomas, something's wrong with the checkup."

"The doctor says the baby has no skull. He has to be terminated right away"

"Carrie, I don't have time for your dramatics right now."

He cut me off.

"Marina's launch is about to start. Everyone's waiting on me."

"It's not about the numbers. The baby, he can't"

Before I could finish, the line went dead.

The nurse looked at me with pity.

"Family can't make it here?"

I stared at the darkened screen, and after a long while, I shook my head.

Something went wrong during the surgery.

I lay on the operating table and heard the doctor urgently telling the nurse to prepare a transfusion.

When I opened my eyes again, I was already in the recovery room.

The nurse saw me wake and let out a breath.

"You hemorrhaged during the operation. Thank goodness we caught it in time."

"You can't leave on your own now. Someone from your family has to come."

She held the phone out to me.

I stared at Thomas's number for a long time, then dialed it anyway.

The phone rang for over ten seconds before it connected.

Thomas's voice was even more impatient than before.

"Now what?"

I looked at the blood bag by the bed, still not empty, my voice so weak it was almost inaudible.

"The surgery's over."

"I hemorrhaged, and the baby's gone. Can you please come?"

The other end went quiet for a moment.

Then came his cold laugh.

"Carrie, an hour ago you only said something was wrong with the checkup."

"Now it's a miscarriage and a hemorrhage?"

"You'd make up a lie like that just to drag me away from Marina's party?"

I forced out an explanation.

"I'm not lying to you. The doctor can"

The nurse couldn't stand to listen anymore and took the phone.

"Sir, Ms. Pruitt just had surgery to terminate her pregnancy. She hemorrhaged during the operation. She needs someone with her."

But Thomas said coldly,

"I don't know who you are."

"This is between me and my wife. Please don't help her put on an act."

Marina's voice came through from the other end.

"Thomas, come cut the cake. Everyone's waiting for you."

Thomas's tone softened at once.

"Coming."

Before he hung up, all he left me with was this:

"Carrie, using a baby to fight for attention is vicious. Using a baby's life to lie is even worse."

"When did you turn into this?"

Only the busy signal was left in the receiver.

The nurse was pale with anger.

"That's the baby's father?"

I watched the sky darken bit by bit outside the window, and shook my head gently.

"Not for much longer."

At midnight, I was still on the IV.

A three-way video call suddenly popped up on my phone.

I thought Thomas had finally remembered to ask whether the surgery was real.

But when it connected, the face in the frame was Marina's.

She must have had too much to drink and hit the group call by accident.

The phone had been set down on the liquor cabinet, the lens pointed right at the couch not far off.

Marina looked up at Thomas and suddenly smiled.

"Thomas, I regret it."

"All these years, I've been so many places."

"Snowy mountains, deserts, Antarctica. I thought that was the life I wanted."

"But today, seeing the things you bought for the baby, I suddenly wanted a home too."

"I don't want to keep drifting alone."

Thomas looked at her, and a kind of pain I'd never seen before came over his face.

It was a long time before he asked hoarsely,

"Why are you only saying this now?"

Marina's eyes reddened.

"What if I hadn't left the year I graduated college?"

"If I'd told you back then that I was willing to stay, would you have married me?"

Thomas didn't answer right away.

But his silence had already told me the answer.

Marina asked again,

"Would you?"

"Yes."

One word, and it tore the seven years between him and me to shreds.

I gasped in great painful breaths, barely able to breathe.

When the nurse came to change my dressing, she knocked the phone down by accident.

The video call cut off.

I didn't call back.

I just lay quietly in the hospital bed, watching the fluid from the blood bag flow into my body drop by drop.

The child he'd wanted to be like Marina was gone now.

And I would finally be free of ever tangling my life with theirs again.

4: 4

After I checked out of the hospital and got home, Thomas still hadn't come back.

I packed my own things into a suitcase and left the signed divorce papers on the dining table.

Then I bought a plane ticket to Norway to see the northern lights.

It was a wish I'd had since I was twenty.

In seven years, Thomas and I had booked tickets three times.

The first time, Marina hurt herself skiing, and he rushed off through the night to take care of her.

The second time, Marina's project made the shortlist for an international award, and he canceled the tickets to go abroad with her for the ceremony.

The third time, right before we were set to leave, Marina got drunk over a breakup, and he stayed by her side the whole night.

Every time, Thomas said he'd make it up to me later.

But I waited seven years, and that so-called later never came.

When I reached the airport, there was still an hour before boarding.

I had just finished checking my luggage when I saw Thomas and Marina.

Marina was wearing a white down jacket, and Thomas was bent over, fixing her scarf.

Marina held up two tickets, her eyes curving with a smile.

Back in college we said we'd go to Iceland together to see the aurora. I never thought it'd take this many years.

Thomas ruffled her hair.

This time I won't break the promise.

My phone rang at exactly that moment.

A message from Thomas:

The company set up a last-minute business trip. I'll be gone a few days.

Stay home and think things over. We'll talk when I get back.

I looked at him across the crowd and gave a small, bitter laugh.

The airport announcement began calling for boarding.

I put my phone away and wheeled my suitcase toward my gate.

From today on, they could go see their aurora.

And I would go live a life without them in it.

Just as I was about to step into the boarding tunnel, a hurried shout came from behind me.

Carrie!