Deep Among the Flowers, I Wandered In by Mistake

For three years of marriage to Giles Delgado, we lived in a basement that leaked.

He worked five jobs a day, said he was saving up to give me a home.

So when the doctor told me my condition had gotten worse, my first reaction was to apologize.

Am I going to be a burden on the family now?

I came home clutching the diagnosis, and the moment Giles saw the medical file in my hand, his face darkened.

"The hospital again?"

"Sally Henson, hospitals are a scam. Don't put that kind of load on this family."

I looked down at the diagnosis and, out of nowhere, laughed.

"And if I really were sick, if I were dying?"

Giles frowned.

"Don't say things like that. I'm still saving up to give you a real wedding."

"If you're really sick, I'll sell a kidney to treat you."

That night I couldn't sleep at all. I didn't want to be anyone's burden anymore.

I swallowed every painkiller I had.

When I opened my eyes again, I watched Giles walk out of the bedroom.

It turned out the other side of that basement was a private estate.

In the lavish living room, Lillian Fox stood laughing with a glass of red wine.

"Mr. Delgado, it really can't be easy, living in that awful place every day, playing poor for her."

Giles pulled off the twenty-dollar digital watch and tossed it carelessly into the trash.

"What can I do."

"If you don't test someone, how do you know who's sincere."

In that moment, I finally understood.

All those years of hardship were a sincerity test he had staged.

Only I had actually died inside that test.

......

"Is she really sick?"

Lillian set down her glass. There was no fear in her voice, only probing.

Giles tugged his collar open, baring the watch on his wrist, worth half a million.

"Probably not."

"She's seemed pretty lively lately, hasn't missed a shift. Yesterday she even gave me three hundred dollars."

"Today's whole act is most likely her trying to make me feel sorry for her."

I drifted under the crystal chandelier, watching him change out of that jacket washed pale from wear.

A servant bent to take it and stuffed it straight into the laundry hamper.

That jacket. I had mended it three times.

When the cuff tore, I sat up sewing it until the small hours.

Giles had held me then and said,

"Sally, once I have money, I promise I'll give you a good life."

It turned out he only wanted to see how much I'd suffer for him.

Giles handed Lillian a box of supplements, the price tag reading five thousand dollars.

That was a year's rent on the basement. It was also the treatment cost I'd agonized over and never dared to pay.

Lillian leaned in toward him, smiling.

"Five thousand dollars. Thank you, Mr. Delgado. If she saw this, she wouldn't start crying again, would she?"

Giles picked up his water glass, his tone flat.

"Let her cry."

"If she can't even accept that your health isn't good, then she's too small-minded."

"Not just anyone gets through the Delgado family's door."

Something smug flickered in Lillian's eyes.

"But she is your legally married wife."

Giles let out a laugh.

"Legally, yes."

"The Delgados haven't acknowledged her."

Behind him, Teresa Delgado came down the stairs.

She had a cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders, and she cast a glance toward the basement.

"Today is the last day of the third year."

"If she hadn't pulled this stunt, she could have signed the formal induction agreement tomorrow."

"She picks this exact moment to fake an illness. A poor girl really has no class."

I stood frozen.

The last day of the third year? What agreement?

Giles said nothing.

Teresa went on.

"Lillian is far more sensible than she is. I told you long ago to choose Lillian, and you wouldn't listen."

"Three years. If you wanted to see whether she was sincere, you've seen enough."

"If you really mean to marry her openly, make her sign the property waiver agreement first."

Lillian offered a soft word.

"Ma'am, don't say that."

"Sally's had it pretty hard too."

Teresa gave a cold laugh.

"Hard? Three years in a basement makes her pitiful?"

"When the Delgados were building this from nothing, we lived that way too. If she wants all this, she has to eat a little bitterness."

"Mom, that's enough."

Teresa looked at him.

"Feeling sorry for her? Then go check on her."

Giles was quiet for a few seconds, then picked up his phone.

On the screen was a call from the landlord.

"What now?"

The landlord's voice was shaking.

"Mr. Delgado, something's happened to your wife, I think."

"I knocked and no one answered, and I heard a pill bottle drop to the floor inside."

Giles's face went cold.

"She's faking. Ignore her."

"No need to call the police."

"Tell her when she's done with the act, she can open the door herself."

I looked down and saw that broken basement light still flickering.

Beside the bed, my body had already gone cold.

My hand was still clenched tight around that diagnosis.

On it were the words: malignant tumor, terminal stage, immediate hospitalization advised.

And my husband was in a private estate a few hundred feet away, waiting for me to bow my head and admit I was wrong.

The next morning, the landlord pried open the basement door.

Mildew and the smell of medicine spilled out together.

The woman next door took one look and clapped a hand over her mouth, backing away.

"Call the police! Someone call the police!"

I lay beside the bed.

My face was ashen, my lips cracked and dry.

On the nightstand sat a half-full glass of water, and next to it a bottle of painkillers, mostly empty.

The landlord saw the diagnosis paper still in my hand, and his legs gave out. He sat down hard on the floor.

"What a waste of a life..."

"I should have called the police yesterday."

When the sirens cut through the mouth of the alley, Giles was eating breakfast in the estate's dining room.

Lillian handed him a cup of coffee.

"Looks like a patrol car just pulled up near the basement."

Giles glanced up.

"So she actually called the police?"

A servant rushed in.

"Sir, the officers say there's been a death at the basement."

The knife and fork stopped in Giles's hands.

Lillian went pale.

"A death?"

Giles shot to his feet.

"Sally, you'd better not push this too far."

By the time he reached the basement, the police tape was already up.

The landlord saw him and pointed, shouting,

"That's him! He's the dead woman's husband!"

Giles's steps froze.

"Dead woman?"

Then he laughed.

"Is this what she told you all to say?"

"Sally, come out. You win. I'm back."

No one answered.

An officer stopped him.

"Sir, please stay calm."

Giles shoved him aside.

"I'm her husband."

"You think I don't know what she's like? She just wants to force me to give in."

Then the white sheet was lifted.

He saw my face.

In that second it was as if a hand had closed around his throat, and every sound in him cut off.

They handed him the diagnosis paper.

"The deceased had a malignant tumor, already late-stage."

"From the condition of her body, she'd been malnourished for a long time. The pain would have gone on for a good while."

Giles stared at the words on the page, his fingers slowly going white.

"That's not possible..."

"She only asked me yesterday whether she was going to die soon."

"How could she really be dead?"

The landlord was shaking with rage.

"She started coughing up blood last month. I told her to go to the hospital. She said there was no money at home."

"She said you worked five jobs a day, and she couldn't be a burden to you."

The neighbor woman's eyes reddened too.

"Every night she came home holding onto the wall to stay up."

"I cooked her a bowl of noodles, and she still tried to send me five dollars for it."

"A grown man, and you let your wife get this sick. Are you blind?"

Giles's lips moved.

"I didn't know..."

The landlord sneered.

"You didn't know?"

"I called you yesterday, and you said she was faking."

"I said I'd call the police, and you said no."

"Now she's dead. Who are you telling you didn't know?"

When Lillian hurried over, she was still in her heels.

She stopped in the doorway and covered her nose first.

"Giles, the smell in here is awful..."

Giles slowly turned his head.

Lillian's eyes reddened at once.

"I'm not being cruel, I'm just scared."

She turned to the officer, her voice going soft.

"Was Sally always a little emotionally unstable?"

"I really never thought she'd do something this extreme."

Giles's grip crushed the diagnosis paper.

I drifted behind him.

And finally saw him start to shake.

Maybe he had finally understood that I was really dead.

My body was taken to the medical examiner's office.

Giles stayed behind in the basement, tearing through everything like a man gone mad.

Under the bed, the drawers, the instant-noodle box, the old wardrobe.

He dumped it all onto the floor.

"Where are the medical records?"

"Where are her old test results?"

The officer cut in.

"The deceased's phone is being held for now. It'll be returned through the proper channels later."

Giles looked up.

"I want to see her phone."

"I'm her husband."

The officer's voice was cold.

"Right now you're also one of the people under investigation."

Giles went rigid.

The landlord fished a plastic bag out from behind the cabinet and tossed it at his feet.

"Stop digging. Her records are all in here."

Giles crouched down and picked them up one sheet at a time.

Three months ago. Suspected malignancy.

The doctor had advised an immediate follow-up and treatment.

Two months ago. The readings had worsened.

One month ago. Clear signs of spread in multiple areas. Hospitalization advised.

The most recent one. Late stage.

Every sheet had a failed-payment note in the bottom right corner.

Giles's throat worked.

"Why didn't she tell me?"

The landlord let out a bitter laugh.

"Didn't tell you?"

"That day she collapsed from the pain in the stairwell. The doctor called her family."

"The one who answered was a woman."

Lillian was standing in the doorway. Her face changed in an instant.

Giles turned to look.

"Who?"

The landlord stared straight at Lillian.

"Her. She even said she was Mr. Delgado's fiance and told the doctors to stop calling."

Lillian's tears spilled over at once.

"I didn't."

"I thought it was just ordinary anemia at the time."

"The doctor made it sound so serious. I didn't want you to worry, so I didn't tell you."

Giles closed in on her step by step.

"You took the doctor's call?"

Lillian backed away.

"I forgot"

The officer flipped open his notebook.

"The hospital has already provided the call records. We'll be looking into it."

Lillian bit her lip and said nothing more.

Just then Giles's phone rang.

It was Teresa. Her voice was heavy.

"She's dead now. Kill the news first."

"We can't let anyone outside find out she died of illness in a basement."

"Tell people she had long-term depression and was emotionally unstable."

The basement went frighteningly quiet.

The officer raised his head.

Giles gripped the phone, his knuckles white.

"Mom, you knew she was sick?"

Teresa paused for a second.

"I knew a little. Lillian mentioned it to me."

"I even had someone ask the doctor. The treatment wouldn't have been cheap."

Giles's voice went hoarse.

"So all of you knew."

Teresa's voice turned cold. "Giles, don't be a fool."

"She was an orphan. Treating her would have been a bottomless pit."

"You haven't even officially taken over the Delgado Group. You can't shoulder that kind of burden for her."

"Besides, if she really loved you, she wouldn't have dragged you down."

I drifted off to the side, and all at once I remembered that day.

I'd been clutching my records, crouched in the hospital corridor, calling Giles.

When the call connected, it was Lillian's voice.

"Sally, Giles is busy."

"Stop holding him hostage over every little ache and pain."

"He's tired enough as it is."

After that, I never dared to call again.

Back then, every path I had to save myself, they had sealed off.

On the third day, the officer returned my phone to Giles.

One corner of the screen was cracked.

That was from the night the pain left me too weak to stand, when I fell down the basement steps.

Giles typed in my birthday. It didn't open.

He typed in his own birthday. That didn't work either.

In the end, he typed in the date we got legally married.

The screen lit up, and he sat frozen for a long time.

He was pinned to the top of my messages.

The last one had been sent the night I died.

Giles, the pain is really bad. Can you come home soon?

No reply.

He scrolled up.

The landlord asked about rent today. I covered it for now.

The soles of your shoes were coming apart, so I bought you a new pair. They weren't expensive.

My test results weren't great. There's something I want to tell you.

Never mind. You're too tired today.

His fingers were shaking.

He opened the notes app.

Line after line, crammed together, was my ledger.

Rent, eighteen hundred.

Utilities, three hundred twenty.

Giles's birthday cake, eighty-eight.

Giles's stomach medicine, twenty-nine.

Follow-up exam fee, unpaid.

Hospital stay, undetermined.

The last line read:

Treatment costs too much. Don't do it.

Don't be a burden to him.

That was me, writing to myself.

Giles clapped both hands over his face.

Sally, why won't you curse at me?

Curse at me...

Another email popped up on the phone.

There were many recipients.

The Delgado Group board, social welfare agencies, and a few media outlets.

The subject line read:

Please see the truth about how Sally Henson died.

His fingertip stopped.

Once he saw what was inside, his pupils shrank all at once, and even his breathing stopped.

That was the email I sent to the orphanage director before I swallowed the pills.

I only meant to give Martha, who raised me, a proper goodbye.

I never thought that after I died, she would be the one to speak for me.

The email held scanned copies of my medical records.

Photos of the basement.

Rent transfer records.

And a recording.

In the recording was Teresa's voice.

Sally, the Delgados don't keep sickly people around.

If you really care about Giles, then learn your place.

My own voice was very faint.

But the doctor said if we act now, there's still a chance.

Teresa laughed.

A chance? You, an orphan girl, what are you going to pay for treatment with?

Don't think that a marriage certificate means you get to spend the Delgados' money.

The recording ended there.

Giles went rigid in the chair.

The next second, another document jumped onto the screen.

It was an agreement waiving all rights to property.

On the signature line were the two words, Sally Henson.

Beside it was pressed a red fingerprint.

The date was the night I died, ten forty-seven p.m.

By then, the pain was so bad I couldn't even hold a cup of water steady.

Giles shot to his feet.

Impossible.

There's no way she'd sign this.

Lillian's message came through right then.

Giles, the agreement's been taken care of.

Sally won't get in the way of you inheriting the Delgado name anymore.

Don't blame me. I did all of this for you.

Giles stared at that line, the red creeping into his eyes.

His hands wouldn't stop shaking, and only now did he understand.

Everything he had thought was a test of feelings had been a death they'd calculated down to the last detail.