No Matter How Hard the Wind Blows, the Past Won't Return

I'm a blogger who talks relationship gossip under a pen name, and I connected on a live call with a young woman in the same city.

She said her boyfriend was a married man, and she hadn't known.

I spoke to her as gently as I could, urging her to get away from the danger.

But she loved him so much it had wrecked her, and she wanted to beg for the relationship, to plead for that other woman to step aside.

My phone suddenly rang. It was my husband calling.

I picked up right away and explained the situation to him.

"You're a psychologist, you're more qualified than I am. Talk to her, quick."

But the moment my husband spoke, she went over the edge.

I didn't even know who the girl was, and yet Arthur Sanchez said her name out loud.

So it turned out I was the other woman she'd been talking about.

I wrote my name in the consent box on the transfer form.

Across rivers and seas, I would give them their true love.

I shut off the livestream.

Arthur had already hung up, and he said work was busy today, that he'd be back very late.

Not long after, I got a ticket for running a red light.

I screenshotted it and sent it over.

Arthur replied fast.

"A patient's trying to kill herself. A life matters more."

I've always supported his work, and I wanted to do my part for people on the edge too.

That's why I chose to be an anonymous gossip blogger, giving people a place to vent what hurt inside, without ever naming names.

The regulars in the comments would jump in to reassure whoever it was, to talk them back from the edge.

Once everyone found out my husband was a psychologist, they all said we were a match, an angel couple doing good in the world.

Regina Pruitt was pulled back in time. She lay in the hospital three days, then showed up at my door with a thank-you banner.

"Hey, thank you so much for having Dr. Sanchez save me."

She held up her phone, wanting to tell the followers online she was okay.

She wanted a photo with me too.

But I'd never revealed my address. How could she know where I lived?

I asked, and she froze for a second.

"Dr. Sanchez told me. He knew I was struggling, and he was afraid I'd try again."

I stood there big with child, my skin gone slack, and she was young and pretty, all bright energy.

Arthur, who always put his patients first, was home within ten minutes.

"Dr. Sanchez."

She walked to him without a second thought, hooked her arm through his, and even wiped away the sweat from his run over.

To make his commute easier, we'd bought a place nearby.

Twenty minutes on foot.

He'd run home.

A month ago, when my stomach hurt and I thought I was miscarrying, I called him.

All he'd said was that he was about to see a patient and couldn't let them down.

But when Regina showed up, it took him ten minutes. Half the time.

When I got up, I knocked the mic over by accident. Arthur quickly pushed past her and came toward me.

He bent to pick it up for me. "You're this far along. Don't be doing things like this yourself."

Then, seeing I was about to go live, he added, "Everyone's worried about Regina too. Why not have her on the stream with you?"

I couldn't help myself. "Sweetie, aren't you going to go find your boyfriend?"

Arthur stepped in front of her at once. "She just had her heart broken. Don't bring that up."

I gave a bitter smile. So it was me not stepping aside, setting her off.

Arthur caught what I was thinking and said, helpless, "Pregnancy hormones are spiking, and you're clearly overthinking, getting paranoid. I'm not doing this with you."

When I said nothing, Arthur took my silence for a no and simply led Regina into the study.

He never shared his own account with anyone, but for Regina he made an exception.

A little while later he came out and took my livestream mic.

Within five minutes he'd carried off three or four more things I needed to film and go live.

I always started on time. That night, for the first time, I was late.

The comments were asking how Regina was doing.

"Your husband knew her name right away. She must be one of his patients. So dedicated."

People who were usually sharp, who could dig the truth out of the smallest detail, were all playing dumb.

Everyone knew I was seven months pregnant. They didn't want to upset me.

Without the beauty filters and the lighting, they could see I looked run-down, and told me to go rest.

I was about to speak when Regina's voice cut in.

"See, I told you posting on your account wouldn't help. Everyone here really cares about me."

She stepped into frame without asking me.

I followed her line back and saw the study door standing open for the first time.

That desk I was never allowed to tidy, the one that held his patient files, the one I couldn't so much as touch.

Yet her makeup sat on it, easy as anything.

Arthur had even carried a chair in for her.

The more she talked, the more I got pushed out of the shot.

Arthur brought me a cup of warm water. "Have a little. With her here to keep things going, you can take a rest."

"So you want her to replace me?"

He knew exactly how much of myself I'd poured into that account.

I don't push products. I don't wear branded clothes on camera.

But the comments were already steering it, asking for the link to Regina's top.

I ended the stream then and there.

Regina looked straight at Arthur. "Did I do something wrong?"

Arthur stroked her head to soothe her, then turned to my assistant.

"Shelby, from now on let Regina be the assistant. You can just help out on the side, bring the tea."

I refused outright. Shelby had been with me half a year. She'd helped this account grow up alongside me.

I wasn't going to let anyone take her place.

Shelby glared at Arthur, standing up for me.

"Dr. Sanchez, you've already brought your mistress right into the house, and now you want to get rid of me too."

"Don't put it so ugly. She's only easing your workload, and she isn't a mistress, she's my patient."

He looked Shelby up and down.

"My wife's rubbed off on you. Now you're seeing ghosts everywhere too. Maybe I really should let you go."

Arthur used my need to rest through the pregnancy as the reason, and handed the account over to Regina entirely.

Then he paid Shelby triple wages to make her resign.

I lay in bed listening to Regina out in the living room, using my account, slowly starting to sell products.

Arthur wouldn't let me touch my phone. He treasured me and the baby, he said, and wanted me to focus on the child and my health and not overthink things.

He used to be so busy. Now he came every day to cook for me.

Regina would stay and eat too.

I watched the table fill with more and more of the dishes Regina liked.

She looked more and more like the woman of this house, while I turned into the outsider.

That day, I used feeling unwell as an excuse, and while Arthur was at work, I made Regina take me to the hospital.

She went to pay, and I borrowed a stranger's phone and found the internet buried under people cursing me.

They said I'd teamed up with Regina to put on an act and rake in money like mad.

I fainted at the hospital. When I came to again, Arthur was sitting by the bed.

"You're eight months along. Can't you give me a little peace of mind? Regina only came to help you."

He turned everything upside down.

Arthur stayed with me at the hospital for three days, taking care of every little thing.

"You're oversensitive and suspicious with the pregnancy. I only chatted with her a bit, to take the edge off. She can't take your place."

Arthur smiled and tucked the blanket around me.

"She's emotionally unstable. If she loses control and it comes out, I might end up in prison. Veronica, you wouldn't have the heart for that."

"I want a divorce." I couldn't live under the same roof as him anymore.

He stroked my face, gentle as ever.

"There you go, talking nonsense again. You don't have a job, I'm the one supporting you, and there's the baby. How would you get by?"

He knew my parents raised hogs out in the country. He hadn't even let them come to the wedding, said it was too far to travel.

He'd promised he'd take me back home and do it all over again.

But three years of marriage, and he always brushed it off, always too busy.

It wasn't that he cared about sparing my parents the trip, and it wasn't that he was really busy. He just looked down on them for raising hogs out in the sticks.

I should have seen it long ago.

Instead I stayed with him for three years.

Back home, Arthur didn't stop me from picking up my phone. Regina went to him and helped him off with his coat, not sparing me a single glance.

She'd dropped the act completely, like she was just waiting for my baby to be born so she could sweep me out the door.

Then she'd be the rightful Mrs. Sanchez.

The two of them cooed over each other in the kitchen. I went back to the bedroom and messaged Shelby from my phone.

"Got it. They met online. Regina posted a suicide note over her ex-boyfriend, and that's when the scumbag Sanchez reached out to her."

So it turned out Regina had always been this hopeless.

Arthur had her wrapped around his finger.

As my belly grew and the due date closed in, Arthur took leave from the clinic and kept up his devoted-husband image.

He even said his old assistant had quit, so he'd brought Regina on to help.

I had Shelby keep digging, and we learned Regina had been deceived by her ex-boyfriend and could no longer have children.

Arthur wasn't deeply in love with me. He only wanted to borrow my body to give him his child.

I went to Arthur myself and asked what he wanted to name the baby.

Behind his back, I had Shelby look into our assets. I was planning the divorce.

And Regina, seeing how much Arthur seemed to care about me, threw a fit until he agreed to take her out shopping.

Arthur had no choice but to take her. He'd already reinforced the doors and windows and changed the locks.

Only he and Regina had keys.

I'd become a machine they kept penned up to have a baby.

Half an hour later, I called him. Arthur picked up fast.

I said my stomach hurt. Arthur glanced at his phone and told me I was perfectly healthy, body and mind.

"I put a monitoring band on you. Don't try any tricks now. What if you teach the baby bad habits?"

Another half hour passed, and Arthur answered my call again.

"I still don't feel right. Maybe it's coming. Come home."

"The band is a new product the clinic released. It's been through countless trials. Stop playing games. I bought the wontons you like."

Regina was next to him, clamoring to see a movie, and Arthur agreed.

A movie would take at least an hour.

I didn't do what Arthur told me and lie down in the room. I opened the study and sat inside.

At the counseling clinic, Arthur had signed a ten-year contract, the highest tier of treatment they offered.

The day before Regina showed up, he'd brought home a transfer form that needed my signature in the family-consent box.

With me so close to giving birth, of course I hadn't wanted him posted far from me, so I'd never signed it.

Arthur probably didn't know the form was still valid.

I signed it, then called Shelby over.

My belly was heavy, but I forced myself up and fed the transfer papers to her one page at a time through the gap in the door, telling her to take them to the clinic.

"Ma'am, you should have done this a long time ago."

Shelby wasn't someone I'd screened online and interviewed.

My father had sent her over, because he saw how much I liked doing this kind of blogging.

On top of the salary I paid her, she drew another from my father's side.

My father did raise hogs, that much was true, but he supplied the whole country. He'd caught the wave of the times and built it into a corporation long ago.

Even the clinic Arthur worked at had been arranged by my father.

Half an hour later, the person calling Arthur was no longer me but Mr. Osborne from the clinic.

Arthur came rushing back in a panic, and Regina was nowhere behind him.

"If you don't want to see her, you could have just told me. Why sign the consent form?"

He'd be going over there for five years. No communications. No way to reach anyone.

"Arthur, love can't have sand mixed into it."

I was letting them be together. Regina would never have to jump into the sea again.

The day I gave birth, Arthur was already on a plane, flying overseas.

Regina insisted on going with him.

He still refused to sign the divorce papers, so on paper I was still Mrs. Sanchez.

There was no way to reach him by phone out there, so he wrote letters by hand.

Regina's fierce love, he didn't turn away.

My quiet, steady presence, he didn't care about.

Every letter he sent, I threw straight in the trash.

After the baby was born, Arthur wrote ten letters and came up with twenty names, never quite satisfied with any of them.

He wrote: "No rush on registering the birth. Let me think of something better."

But I'd already registered our son long before that, under my own surname. Vincent James.

I printed out the photos on purpose and mailed them to Arthur.

For three months straight, his entire paycheck went into my account.

He said he was working hard, saving up his vacation days, so he could come back and talk things through with me.

Regina, on the other hand, was working three jobs over there.

Arthur gave all his money to me, so without a job she had no way to live.

Even throwing herself into the sea wouldn't help.

People out there liked their thrills. Jumping into the sea was routine.

Even if she went, she'd have to wait in line.

I brought my son back to my parents' home, and just like that a year went by. He could recognize faces now.

Then word came from overseas. Regina was pregnant.

She'd borrowed money and had a procedure done abroad, and she'd successfully conceived Arthur's child.

Arthur knew my family had money, so he wanted me, as the mother, to chip in a little more. It wasn't as if I'd shortchange the child anyway.

Regina didn't have to work anymore. She lived in Arthur's little apartment.

To make sure I saw how happy she was, she rode a bus for over ten hours and sent me a photo of Arthur gently stroking her belly.

I smiled and replied: "I'm Mrs. Sanchez."

"The person Arthur loves most is me." She was hunched over, dry-heaving, her eyes fixed on her phone.

"We're not divorced." I still hadn't divorced Arthur, which meant she would always be the one people cursed.

I had my account back now.

I told one of my own stories, and I refunded every product Regina had listed for sale.

Only then did my followers realize they'd been deceived by a scumbag and a cheap little woman.

They felt so sorry for me that they wanted to buy my family's products.

I told everyone to buy only what they actually needed, not to spend out of guilt.

I wanted the people who'd been deceived to keep their nerve to flip the whole thing over.

That only made my followers rally harder, and even buying just what they needed, our sales climbed a good deal.

It was Arthur's side that blew up instead.

Regina's pregnancy was fake.

To be precise, I'd had the doctor over there drop a few hints, and Regina actually thought she'd conceived.

Afraid I'd take Arthur from her, she'd paid a fortune to have me killed.

Too bad the man conned her out of the money and vanished.

And all that money had come from Arthur.

Regina had also talked Arthur into getting a vasectomy, and to soothe her he actually went and did it.

But her fake pregnancy came out anyway.

Arthur beat Regina, a neighbor caught it, and someone quickly called the police.

When people learned the two weren't married and were living together, they were disgusted.

Arthur's reputation was finished for good.

The clinic sued him for three million, on the grounds that what he'd done had damaged the clinic's name.

But Arthur couldn't come up with it at all.

And no one dared let him counsel them, afraid of being manipulated, afraid of being abused.

He could only do odd tasks, frozen out by his coworkers, and still had to take care of Regina.

No time left to write me letters.

Before I knew it, it was time for my son to start preschool. I no longer had to circle around him all day, so I took over the family business.

But he'd only been in preschool half a month when someone snatched him away.

The one who took him was Arthur.

When we met again, he was unshaven, worn ragged, and my son was sobbing in his arms.

He'd snuck back into the country a month ago and had been secretly following me the whole time.

He'd waited for his chance and grabbed my son. The preschool wanted to call the police, but afraid something would happen to the child, they contacted me first.

I asked him what he wanted.

"Veronica, I've been gone all these years and suffered so much. Doesn't it hurt you at all?"

He wanted thirty percent of my family's shares, and he wanted to take my son.

"Being the James family's son-in-law really isn't easy." He bared the scars on his arm. The refined, gentle man from before was gone.