Rather Be the Sea's Moon Than Mountain's Returning Cloud

My husband's precious first love got into an argument with me while she was pregnant, and out of nowhere she lost the baby.

Marcus Sherwood screamed for my life in return.

My mother threw herself in front of me.

If a life has to pay for this, then take mine.

Not long after, she swallowed a bottle of pills and died in the bathroom.

I was destroyed with grief.

And from that day on, Marcus settled down too, never once mentioning his first love again.

But things between my husband and me didn't get better because of it.

If anything, we were falling apart, headed straight for divorce.

A year later, sunk in severe depression, I went abroad without telling him, just to clear my head.

And there, by accident, I ran into my mother, the one who was supposed to be dead, holding a baby, out for a stroll with his first love.

Standing in front of her was Marcus, the man who'd told me he was away on business.

"You've had a hard year. Divorce Bella Gilbert soon, and go live a happy life with Yasmine Aldridge."

Marcus was quiet. "But Mom, isn't this too unfair to Bella?"

My mother sighed. "One hand or the other, they're both my own flesh. What can I do, when Yasmine is the illegitimate daughter I left out in the world."

"Bella's already gotten more than enough. Since Yasmine loves you and is carrying your child"

"she's the one who should step aside a little."

Only then did I understand. A year ago the miscarriage was fake. She'd slipped off abroad and delivered the baby without a hitch.

And my mother trading her life for a life.

That was nothing more than a lie the three of them had cooked up together to break me.

Hearing this, Yasmine nestled against my mother, deeply moved.

"Mom, I know you love me most."

"All I said was that I wanted to be with Marcus forever, and you came up with a scheme this perfect. That idiot Bella actually believed it!"

In the corner they couldn't see.

I stood pressed against the wall, shaking all over, unable to stop.

In this whole life, the one person I'd never doubted was my mother.

And she was the one who'd woven the biggest lie of all around me.

Right now she was stroking Yasmine, her whole face soft with love.

"Silly girl, Mom wronged you before, made you live all these years as an illegitimate child."

"Of course I have to make it up to you now, whatever it takes."

"If you hadn't lost the baby last year while pretending to fight with Bella, then used the chance to go abroad and give birth, how would Bella ever have let you go?"

Back when I first found out this precious first love existed.

I really did fight her to the death.

More than once I put her in the hospital.

I threw a check in her face and forced her to leave Marcus.

I tried the gentle way and the hard way.

But she clung on like something I couldn't peel off, planted right between Marcus and me.

"Bella, Marcus just loves my face. I'm not leaving. What are you going to do about it?"

She was baiting me on purpose, and I couldn't stand it, so I slapped her.

Yasmine went down to the floor, and suddenly she was bleeding.

Marcus got there in time and rushed her to the hospital. When they told me she'd miscarried, I was standing there in a daze.

"Miscarried? I only slapped her once. How could she miscarry?"

But Marcus was in a rage.

"Bella, that was a human life!"

He made a scene, insisting on calling the police to have me arrested.

"I told you, I'm not the one who made her lose that baby."

I dug my heels in, refusing to back down.

"If you've got the nerve, let them take me away. A life for a life."

In the end Marcus really did call the police, and they hauled me into the station.

Three days later, they let me out.

And I came home to my mother's suicide note.

"If a life truly has to repay this, then let it be mine."

"Marcus, let my daughter go, and build a good life with Bella."

I clutched that note and cried until I couldn't breathe, asking Marcus where my mother was.

"She's already been cremated."

He held me in silence. "This ends here."

After that storm, we had a brief stretch of peace.

Yasmine, they said, had gone abroad heartbroken after the miscarriage.

Marcus cut off contact with her too.

But a life stood between us now.

However deep our love had once been, we could never go back.

I couldn't even accept my mother's death, and little by little I sank into severe depression.

But never in my life did I imagine this.

My mother, who'd faked her own death, had gone abroad to care for Yasmine's baby, this illegitimate daughter's child, cooking for her, tending to her every need.

Right now my mother's hand rested on the back of that newborn, patting, again and again.

Just the way she used to soothe me to sleep when I was small.

"There, sweet baby, you like it when Grandma holds you, don't you?"

I bit down hard on my wrist, not daring to make a sound, until the skin broke and bled.

I got depression over people like this.

Countless nights lying awake, countless times tearing myself apart.

For what?

The three of them were still laughing and chatting together.

And I couldn't watch anymore. I turned and fled without thinking.

Clearing my head no longer mattered. I bought a ticket and hurried straight back home.

Standing on a street back home, I still felt dazed.

As if it had all just been a dream.

My phone buzzed. A text from Marcus Sherwood.

"Bella, remember to take your medicine on time."

"Don't do anything reckless with your life and make me worry."

I looked down at my watch. Eight in the evening, exactly.

He was like a set alarm. Every night at eight, right on schedule, he reminded me to take my pills.

Because only if I took them on time could my mind and my moods stay stable.

"Be good. I'll be back from my trip tomorrow, and once I'm home I'll go with you to your treatment."

If I hadn't seen with my own eyes how he'd been abroad, keeping his first love company, I might really have believed his lies.

After I got back, I didn't make a scene.

I didn't even confront anyone.

I just went through the same life as before, step by step, like a walking corpse.

Marcus noticed nothing off, and kept going away on business every few days.

Every time he came back he carried the smell of perfume.

He explained it as company obligations, entertaining clients.

Next week he had another three-day trip.

I nodded and said fine.

At dinner he glanced at me. "Bella, how have you gotten so quiet lately?"

"What is it, no more scenes like before."

The routine we used to act out in this house every single day

was me weeping in front of my mother's memorial photo, a huge fight, and then forcing Marcus to kneel and apologize.

Blaming him. If not for the affairs he carried on outside,

my mother would never have swallowed those pills.

And in the end it always turned into a farce where neither of us would give in.

I shook my head with a bitter smile. "There's no point anymore."

"If I made you kneel and apologize every day, would it bring my mother back?"

Something like relief showed in Marcus's eyes, and he came and sat down beside me.

"Bella, I'm glad you can let it go."

"Forget the past. Let's just wipe the slate clean."

He tried to get close, even suggested we sleep in the same room tonight.

But I drove him off with one cold line. "I don't like having anyone next to me."

So he took his pillow and went to the study.

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

My mother's memorial photo was still set out in the living room.

In it she smiled so kindly. Truly ironic.

The first thing I did after getting up the next morning

was pull out from under the bed that box I'd treasured, ready to throw it away.

The box held all of my mother's belongings.

After she swallowed the pills in the bathroom and killed herself, I'd sunk into enormous guilt and self-blame.

When the depression was at its worst, only looking at those things could make me feel a little better.

After my mother died, Marcus was also full of guilt, falling into silence now and then.

But more than that, he simply vanished.

Going off alone to drink.

Or leaving on long trips, gone for ten days, half a month at a stretch.

Back then the reason he gave me was:

"Bella, I can't bear to look at your face. If I do I'll think of your mother, and of the child of Yasmine Aldridge's that you drove to its death."

So we'd start fighting again, freezing each other out, our relationship getting worse and worse.

But it never once occurred to me that those days he disappeared weren't because of any cold war with me.

He'd gone abroad to reunite with his first love and her child.

Because Yasmine Aldridge had just given birth and needed him most.

Yet lately, Marcus's monthly trips had dropped off quite a bit from before.

Probably because my mother, over there, was taking such good care of Yasmine Aldridge.

I came home from the hospital.

When I pushed the door open, Marcus was sitting on the living room sofa.

"You're back?"

He stood up and pointed at the gift box on the coffee table.

"Brought it back from abroad this trip. For you."

I said nothing, changed into my slippers, and set my medical record book down on the entryway cabinet without a thought.

"You went for a checkup?"

He came over and picked up the report to read it. "What did the doctor say? Any better?"

I said nothing. He read it for a long time.

Long enough that I came back out in my house clothes.

He was still standing in the entryway, his brow drawn tight.

"Severe depression, eating disorder, insomnia"

He read it aloud, his voice strained.

"Bella, weren't you taking your medicine on time? How did it get worse again?"

I walked into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water.

"I'm fine."

He caught my wrist. "You've lost this much weight, and you call that fine?"

I gently pulled free without answering.

He followed me into the kitchen, stood behind me, silent for a long time.

"I won't travel for work anymore. I'll stay home with you this whole time."

"Bella, your health is so bad right now."

And then, softening, he suddenly pulled me against him.

Breathing in that familiar scent, I felt like crying, but I held it back.

So what if he was tender now?

Their betrayal of me was real.

Nothing could ever erase it.

I gently pushed him away. "I need to go take my medicine."

While I was taking my medicine, Marcus slipped out onto the balcony to take a call.

"Can't you give it a little more time?"

"Bella's in a really bad way right now. If I bring up divorce, I'm afraid she won't be able to hold on..."

I couldn't hear what the other side said.

Marcus's voice turned into a sigh.

"Fine. I'll tell her as soon as I can."

I didn't need to guess. On the other end of that line were my mother and Yasmine, pushing him to divorce me fast.

What Marcus didn't know:

Today, besides going to the hospital, I'd also met my best friend at a caf.

My wealthy best friend Stella Farley had hired a private detective to follow them overseas.

She'd sent me a video.

In it, my mother was praying to the saints.

"I'm not being heartless as a mother, wanting to wreck Bella's marriage.

"It's just that, compared to Bella, Yasmine needs Marcus so much more, and she's already given birth to his child. They're the ones who should be a family.

"Making Bella let go is really the best choice.

"And with my death standing between them, Bella and Marcus were already at the point of divorce anyway. I only helped things along, to set them free. The saints will forgive me, won't they?"

Watching all this, I said nothing.

So it turned out she did know she was doing wrong.

She just believed the saints would forgive her.

Stella was hopping mad.

"I honestly can't believe it. This is supposed to be your own mother? How is there a mother in this world who's this cruel to her own daughter?

"Even playing favorites has a limit. She wouldn't ruin her own daughter's life like this just for an illegitimate one.

"I'm starting to think you two have some blood feud. You must be some kid she picked up off the street!"

I thought back to how, ever since Yasmine lost the baby and went abroad,

Marcus had been trying to force me into a divorce.

"Instead of torturing each other like this, better to end it cleanly and part on good terms."

But I refused, no matter what.

"This marriage cost my mother her life. What right do you have to force me out?"

My eyes went red. I hated Marcus down to the core.

"If you hadn't gone chasing Yasmine, if it weren't for the mess you made out there,

"none of this would ever have come to this."

So I would drag it out with him. Even if it dragged me to death, I would take him down with me.

That was why I'd thrown out the threat: "If you want a divorce, then we go down together."

I could understand why he'd hesitated so long.

No matter how urgently they pushed him from overseas, he never once said the word divorce.

He was afraid he'd truly corner me, and there'd be another death on his hands.

But lately, the calls from overseas came more and more often.

At first he'd still hide out on the balcony to take them.

Later he stopped bothering, and just took them in the living room.

"Mom, I know, but she can't sleep at night, she can't even walk straight anymore.

"I can't just, not right now..."

"Yasmine's side... tell her to wait a little longer.

"What do you mean I can't bear to? I'm a person. I have a conscience.

"Mom, you used to love Bella so much. How can you now..."

He stopped short and slammed a fist into the wall.

After he hung up, Marcus sat on the couch, weighed down with thoughts, not moving.

In my pajamas, I watched him through the gap in the bedroom door.

He was smoking.

But he'd quit three years ago.

When he saw me, he stubbed the cigarette out fast, panic flooding his eyes.

"Bella, when did you get back?

"Or did you... not go out at all today?"

Marcus had thought I wasn't home. That was why he'd taken the call in the living room so freely.

"Marcus, let's get a divorce."

This time I'd made up my mind.

If not a single person in this world loved me, then all the more reason to love myself.

Dragging it out like this was no way to live.

So let me be the one to say it.

The timing was just right.