The Wind Blows North, What's Spilled Can't Return

The night before my boyfriend and I flew home, he ran the Rosamund Swanson's Wheel game with the college girls one last time.

Rosamund, same as the last ninety-eight times. Find your angle and shoot.

Once we sell the compilation upstream, we go home and buy a place.

I nodded, numb.

The music started. Raymond Sanchez stood in the center.

Six college girls bent at the waist, formed a ring around him, and began to turn.

In the middle of all that springtime skin, his phone suddenly lit up.

His childhood sweetheart, Charlotte Dickerson, had sent a voice message:

"Raymond, when are you planning to come clean with her?"

"I'm already three months along. I'm still waiting to get home and hold our wedding."

"My belly gets any bigger and I won't fit into the dress!"

It was like falling into ice water. I kept scrolling up.

Only then did I find that this wasn't the first time Charlotte had asked him.

But his answer was always the same:

"Just wait a little longer. She has no one, nothing. What would she do without me?"

"That one night we tangled up and made a mistake, but she and I have leaned on each other for four years. It's hard for me too."

Every time the three of us went out, they'd flank me, one on each side, barely saying a word.

I loved Raymond, so I was willing to put up with his game work.

But I couldn't accept that he'd lied to me.

When the game ended, Raymond wrapped his arms around me from behind, gentle.

"It's all over. The three of us fly home tomorrow."

I took a deep breath and wrenched myself free.

"You don't have to feel torn. Let's break up."

Without him, I knew exactly what I'd do.

...

"Rosamund, what did you say?!"

Raymond's hand still hung in the air.

The six girls sensed something was wrong and looked at us, uneasy.

I said coldly, "The ninety-ninth shoot is canceled."

I pulled up the contract. "Today's base pay stands. The compensation for calling it off early is doubled."

"What we've already shot won't go to any third party. I'm deleting the footage right now."

I settled the balance on the spot and posted the payment screenshot to the work group chat.

Raymond got dressed, glanced at his phone, and understood in an instant.

"Rosamund, I'll explain later. This is the last episode, and it's worth the most."

"If we stop shooting now, there's a penalty to pay."

I took out my phone and messaged the business side right away.

"Take the penalty out of my personal cut."

"The first ninety-eight episodes get delivered per the original contract. No one else at the studio gets dragged in."

Raymond's brow tightened, and it finally hit him that I was truly angry.

I ignored him and quickly canceled my flight, too.

Then I opened a chat window sealed away for four years and messaged an old colleague.

"Natalie, is there a rebooked route to anywhere else tomorrow?"

Raymond couldn't take it. He snatched the phone out of my hand.

"Rosamund, you'd really throw away four years over one mistake?"

I looked at him, and it struck me as almost funny. "One mistake?"

I opened Charlotte's voice message and played it out loud.

Three months ago, she'd already been asking him when he was going to come clean with me.

The color drained from Raymond's face, bit by bit.

"I admit it, I lost control after drinking. But the baby's been tested, and it really is mine."

"And there was no feeling in that night. I'd just had too much."

His eyes went red, and he moved to hold me.

"Rosamund, the one I want to buy a house with, build a life with, marry, has always been you."

"Once we're home I'll give her a sum of money, and I'll take legal responsibility for the child, but we..."

I cut him off, cold. "Then why does she think the two of you are getting married?"

Raymond fell silent. I kept going. "You must have given her expectations she never should have had."

A few seconds later, he forced the words out. "She was unstable when she first found out she was pregnant. I promised her we'd talk about registering the marriage once we got home."

"But don't worry, I'll handle this, I swear. You're the only one I love."

A chill ran through me. I turned away to pack up the lens.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking, and all at once the cracked lens hood sliced my palm open.

Blood welled up instantly.

Raymond's face changed. Almost on instinct, he dropped to his knees in front of me and pressed his mouth to the wound.

"Don't move."

Then he rushed for the first aid kit and dug out, exactly, the antiseptic I wasn't allergic to.

But his hands shook worse than mine. He couldn't even tear the packaging open.

"Does it hurt?"

"Rosamund, say something. Does it hurt?"

I looked at all that heartache and panic in his eyes, the love in them almost spilling over.

And that was the moment the apartment door swung open.

Charlotte had arrived.

But when she saw Raymond on his knees in front of me, tending a small cut, the smile on her face froze at once.

She came over meekly, one hand braced against her slightly rounded belly.

"Just... just now you two were talking at the door. I heard all of it..."

"Raymond, if you love her this much, then what are the baby and I?"

Raymond's face went awkward. His voice came out hoarse. "Charlotte, I'll take responsibility for the child."

Charlotte pressed on. "And me?"

He couldn't say what she was, not for the longest time.

I yanked my bandaged hand back.

"Raymond, you split a single answer into two, and you still dare say you know what love is?"

"Your hypocritical lies just make me feel even sicker."

The words had barely left her mouth when Charlotte held out a slip of paper to me.

It was a deposit receipt from a five-star hotel back home, for a wedding banquet.

She spoke softly. Rosamund, I know I wronged you, but there's something you probably still don't know.

After we landed, we were supposed to go try on the wedding dress first.

I never wanted things to turn out like this, but the baby's innocent.

I didn't bother with either of them. I turned and went back into the room to pack my equipment.

Raymond stayed outside the door. He wouldn't come in, and he wouldn't leave.

After a while, he dug an old work badge out of the equipment case and slid it through the gap in the door.

Rosamund, take a look at this.

It was my overseas assignment badge from four years ago.

The me in the photo was younger, and there was still light in my eyes.

Four years ago, I was the youngest field producer at the documentary center.

A set of key footage shot overseas had a corrupted timecode from an equipment failure, and the investors accused me of faking reshoots.

Everyone on the project urged me to give it up, to take the fall for a "management error" and protect my standing in the industry.

Only Raymond, who handled the cameras and the data back then, believed I was innocent.

He stayed with me in that unfamiliar city, and we went everywhere we could think of.

Hotels, transit stations, the local cloud storage companies.

In the end, he found an automatic cloud backup on the server of a company that was about to go under.

That backup was what proved the timecode error came from an equipment failure and had nothing to do with me.

To testify for me, he made enemies of his old company and the investors, lost his contract renewal, and watched his career hit rock bottom.

The documentary center offered to bring me on staff and keep me, but on the condition that I return home at once and stop involving myself in Raymond's affairs.

I refused without hesitation, because I had fallen in love with him.

I stayed overseas with him, and we went from making documentaries no one watched to shooting eye-catching commercial short videos.

Through the door, Raymond's voice dropped low. Back then everyone gave up on me. Everyone but you.

So I won't let you go. I'll marry you, and I'll spend the rest of my life loving you.

I pulled the door open and looked at him quietly. I stayed back then because I wanted to.

Not because I was the Rosamund you keep describing, the one who couldn't survive without you.

He flushed and took half a step back, and started explaining the banquet deposit.

The deposit was just to keep her calm. She's pregnant, her emotions are all over the place.

Once we're home and everything's settled, of course I'll cancel it.

I let out a scornful little laugh. If I hadn't heard that voice message, when exactly were you planning to tell me?

He hesitated a moment. After the house was bought... or once you'd calmed down a bit.

Or maybeafter the baby was born.

Every single "wait" was like a dull blade, cutting my heart apart piece by piece.

From the far end of the hallway came a sudden, violent retching.

Charlotte was braced against the wall, her face ghost-white, like morning sickness.

Raymond's face filled with panic, as if he'd forgotten the conversation we'd been having a second ago.

Charlotte's got morning sickness. Hurry and help me find the folic acid.

I looked at him with red eyes and didn't say a word.

He finally caught on and went to search himself, and soon found it in a hidden compartment in the nightstand.

Bitterness surged up in me all at once.

So in some unseen corner of this home, there were secrets I'd known nothing about.

A few minutes later, he lifted the weak Charlotte into his arms to take her downstairs.

Before he left, he still turned back to look at me, his eyes full of pleading.

Rosamund, when I'm back from the hospital, I'll explain everything to you properly.

I love you.

Watching that devoted look on his face, my stomach turned.

A man I'd loved for four years, holding another woman in his arms, and still telling you he loves you?

Before, I waited because I wanted to.

Not because I couldn't leave. And now I don't want to wait anymore!

The door slammed shut behind him.

I sat back down at the desk and logged into the documentary work email I hadn't touched in four years.

In the inbox, Natalie James's tenth invitation letter, sent three days ago, was still waiting.

It was the small hours of the morning when Raymond finally came back, Charlotte trailing behind him.

His eyes wouldn't meet mine. "The baby's stable for now, but the doctor says she needs to avoid any emotional stress. She needs more company."

"So... so I brought her back here."

The moment she stepped inside, Charlotte looked at me all timid, as if we'd never met before.

"Rosamund, can we talk?"

I stayed on the couch, not in the mood to deal with either of them.

She came straight to the point. "I want to have the baby, and I want Raymond to take legal responsibility as the father."

"You can go on being the one he loves most."

Raymond's face changed. He cut her off at once.

"Charlotte, I won't have you humiliating Rosamund like this. Apologize to her, now."

The words were barely out before Charlotte burst into tears. "I'm the one who's pregnant. I'm the one who got hidden away. What did I say that's wrong?"

Raymond shoved her suitcase off to the side. "I'll handle the child. You have no right to humiliate her."

Then he turned back to me and laid out another plan.

Once we were back in the country, he'd get Charlotte settled with a place to live and arrangements for the birth, and after that he'd take me to look at apartments.

From the inner lining of the suitcase, he pulled out a floor-plan booklet.

Every page was crammed with his notes.

The kitchen counter, lowered five centimeters to match my height.

The editing room facing north, so sunlight wouldn't wash out the screen.

No heavy curtains in the bedroom, because I liked waking to the light.

A whole wall left clear in the entryway for my equipment.

Raymond turned the pages for me one by one, his eyes red.

"Rosamund, every city we passed through, I looked up what the housing cost there."

"I never once forgot I was supposed to give you a home."

His shaking voice landed somewhere deep in my chest.

But right then Charlotte produced her wedding banquet contract and her prenatal checkup booklet.

"The baby needs to be registered at birth. It needs a father out in the open."

"I'm not going to accept living in some other apartment, waiting for you to drop by now and then."

Whatever softness had been left in me went cold for good.

So this was it. Charlotte got the child and the title.

And I got an apartment fitted perfectly to the way I lived.

Both were his love. Both were his selfishness.

He wanted to slot the two of us into the life he'd already mapped out.

Seeing how cold my face had gone, Raymond fell into a full panic.

He offered me the entire cut of the first ninety-eight videos, and all the savings he'd set aside to buy the apartment on top of that.

"Rosamund, as long as we don't break up, all the money can be yours."

I answered flatly. "What I need isn't a bigger share of the money."

"What I needed was for you to admit, before the betrayal ever happened, that I had a right to know and a right to choose."

At that exact moment, Natalie called. I put her on speaker.

"The resident director slot on The River Running North just opened up. Do you still want in?"

"You've been overseas these past few years, but you've kept doing remote work for the team the whole time, footage verification, foreign-language interviews, rough cuts."

"Everyone on the team knows your skills never lapsed for a second."

"Report in the day after tomorrow, afternoon. Closed shoot, four months."

"If you're in, I'll email you the destination in a bit."

Raymond heard the words "director position" and assumed the project was here in the country.

His whole face lit up. He said quickly, "Rosamund, say yes, please. Once we're back I can go on set with you."

I gave my answer into the phone, clearly.

"The slot's mine. I don't need until the day after tomorrow. I can be there tomorrow."

The words had barely left her mouth when a new e-ticket confirmation dropped into my inbox.

Raymond leaned over eagerly, but the moment he saw the destination, his face changed.

"The high-altitude wetlands? What about your flight home?!"

I said coldly, "Canceled."

The next day, before check-in at the airport, Raymond handed me a new boarding pass.

Seat 14A. He'd put himself in 14B.

Charlotte he'd arranged for the back, several rows away.

"Rosamund, this is the best I can do right now."

"Trust me, I can sort it all out. Let's go together."

I took the boarding pass, and in my head I laughed to myself.

The two flights took off only forty minutes apart.

Just like every trip in the past four years, he checked my equipment cases for me and bought me a hot drink with no sugar.

He'd even thought ahead and gotten a blanket ready.

Charlotte trailed behind us the whole way and couldn't help asking Raymond, "Raymond, after we're back home, are we still going to try on wedding dresses?"

Raymond refused flatly. "The wedding's on hold."

He gripped my hand and pleaded.

"Rosamund, I'll take care of everything. I'll treat you right."

I didn't answer, because I had no interest in a pointless argument.

In the waiting area, I calmly finished handing over every access right to the studio.

The boarding announcement for the flight home came over the speakers.

Just as Raymond took my hand to get up, Charlotte, in the back row, let out a sudden cry of pain.

She was clutching her stomach, her face twisted, and under the pale hem of her dress a faint smear of blood had appeared.

After a quick look, the airport doctor advised going to a hospital for a check right away.

Raymond went white.

With one arm holding up the swaying Charlotte, he clutched my boarding pass for the flight home in a death grip.

He looked at me, and the fear in his eyes was real, and so was how much he didn't want to let me go.

But what he said was, "Rosamund, wait for me one last time. Just once."

His body had already moved, on its own, to shield Charlotte.

I nodded. "Go. This time you don't have to come back looking for me."

His eyes went frantic, and he shook his head desperately. "Rosamund Swanson, don't go to the high country. Let's go home and have the wedding!"

He reached out to stop me, but Charlotte's pained moan called him back again.

I just watched him rush off with Charlotte toward the airport's emergency corridor.

He took a few steps and looked back at me once.

A few more steps, and he looked back again.

Every time he turned, it was full of reluctance and struggle.

But inside me, nothing stirred.

Then I walked straight toward the gate in the opposite direction.

Before the cabin door closed, his calls came in one after another.

I declined them, then switched to airplane mode.

Then I pulled the blanket over myself and said softly, to myself.

"Raymond, this is goodbye for good."