Henceforth the Mountains and Rivers Ask Not of Old Friends

The night our daughter was diagnosed with a fatal genetic illness, Sean Gilbert cheated with his adopted sister Lydia Pruitt at a spa resort.

A fatal genetic disease. Treatment cost: ten million

Mom and Dad drove through the night to reach me, and died on the way in a car crash.

All they left me was a last message that never got sent.

"Don't be afraid, sweetheart. Even if we have to sell everything we own, your dad and mom will scrape the money together. Don't go without."

On the seventh night after their deaths, standing in front of my parents' memorial altar, I signed the divorce papers and walked away with nothing.

Over five years, I sold the old family house.

I slept four hours a night and worked five jobs.

I wrung myself dry, every last cent going to my daughter's medical bills.

The final order that completed the treatment fund was a client who wanted nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine roses delivered to a spa resort.

A place I'd known five years ago, full of people I no longer knew.

I watched with my own eyes as my cremated father set up an anniversary celebration, doing all the work himself.

I watched my mother, who used to hold only me and call me sweetheart, tenderly take Lydia by the hand.

"Sweetheart, this hotel is where you and Sean first fell in love. It's perfect for this anniversary."

The daughter who was supposed to be lying in the ICU.

She had her arms around Lydia's waist, cooing at her.

"Mommy, Daddy already worked it out with the doctor. Once the last payment for my treatment comes through today, I get to fake my death on the operating table, just like Grandpa and Grandma."

Sean gently stroked Lydia's heavily swollen belly.

"From now on, all six of us will be together as one family, forever."

I leaned against the wall and gave a soft laugh.

So in this whole grand production.

I was the only one. The villainess standing in the way of their happy family reunion.

If that was how it was, then it was time for me to exit too.

Over those five years.

I prayed countless times that my daughter Katie Abbott would beat the illness and make a full recovery.

I longed countless times to see my dead parents once more in a dream, so they could finish the words they'd never gotten to say.

I never once imagined.

That my dearest wish would come true in a way this cruel.

The grand hall was alive with laughter and chatter.

But I felt like I was standing inside a silent film.

I couldn't hear a single sound of the celebration.

I only saw the smiles overflowing on every face, and they stung until my eyes went red.

Katie saw me come in with an armful of roses and ran over to me, excited.

"Daddy, the flowers you ordered are here. I'll take them for you."

But the moment she saw my face clearly, she gasped, clapped a hand over her mouth, and stumbled back a step before collapsing to the floor.

Mom noticed something was wrong and rushed over, pulling Katie up, asking anxiously, "Katie, what happened? Did you hurt yourself?"

Katie pointed at me, timid. "Mom's here."

When Mom's eyes met mine, she gasped too, both hands pressing to her chest.

"Mer Meryl Donaldson, why are you here? What are you doing dressed like that?"

Mom, with her thing about cleanliness, looked at my filthy work uniform, and her face twisted into a knot.

Heat rose behind my eyes, and my nose stung until it ached.

"Shouldn't that be my question to you?"

I used to believe my parents' sudden accident was because of me.

If I hadn't lost control and called them in tears.

They wouldn't have come racing over in the middle of the night to comfort me, only to end up dead in a wreck.

Every night I dreamed, and it was always the horror of the crash.

Every time I woke sobbing from the nightmare.

I blamed myself. I grieved. I regretted.

I wanted nothing more than to go with them.

But then I would think of my daughter in her hospital bed, and I would grit my teeth and hold on.

Now I was looking at my mother standing right in front of me, perfectly fine.

A numb, suffocating feeling swept through my whole body.

So the ones who had betrayed me back then. It hadn't been just Sean.

The others heard the commotion and gathered around.

The faces that had been so cheerful all clouded over the instant they saw me.

The festive mood was like someone had hit pause.

Sean cleared his throat softly and was the first to break the dead silence.

"Meryl, why don't you head home first? I'll explain everything to you later."

"Mom and Dad have bad hearts, and Katie's still little. Don't go scaring them."

As he spoke, Sean pulled Lydia behind him.

Even Mom and Dad moved to stand on either side of Lydia, ready to shield her at a moment's notice.

Lydia wore an exquisite couture gown, a diamond necklace lending her a graceful, regal air.

She lifted her chin and looked down at me, haughty, unable to hide the smugness in her eyes.

But the next second, she softened her expression and lowered her gaze.

She braced a hand at her waist and slowly began to bend her knees, making a show of about to kneel before me.

"Meryl, I'm so sor"

Sean caught her quickly before she could. "Lydia, don't kneel. You owe her nothing."

My temples throbbed, and the words came out before I could stop them.

"So what, I owe her?"

Sean's face was cold, and the words came out with a chill that pressed in on me.

"That's right. You owe Lydia."

"You owe her ten whole years. If you hadn't clung on the way you did, I'd have married her long ago."

Something tore open in my chest.

Pain flooded through every limb.

He'd once said I was his salvation. Now it was clinging.

So all my devotion, my patience, my throwing myself into everything for him.

In the space of a breath, in his eyes, it had all become shameless pestering.

Years ago, Lydia really had been dating Sean.

But she scorned poverty and loved money, and before she even finished college she ran off with some rich man.

Sean took it hard, and broke down more than once.

It was me who held out a true heart and warmed his frozen world back to life, bit by bit.

The day he proposed.

He'd choked up and said to me, "Meryl, you pulled me out of the abyss. I'll be good to you for the rest of my life."

But by now, I'd long since become the burden he wanted to shake off.

All at once.

The humiliation of betrayal, five years of bitterness, the fury of being deceived, all churned together.

My fingertips wouldn't stop trembling.

"So you got everyone together and put on this whole show for me?"

I clenched my fingers so hard my nails dug into my palms, and I didn't feel it.

Something uneasy flickered in Sean's eyes.

But he recovered fast, and said it like he was in the right, "That's right."

"We planned all of it in advance."

"Letting you catch me cheating, bribing the hospital and the funeral home to stage it, that was all my idea."

"You drove Lydia away for ten years. Do you have any idea how much she suffered? Making you put up with a little grievance is nothing."

A little grievance?

Every time I closed my eyes.

The image rose up of Mom and Dad being pushed into the cremation furnace.

I took sleeping pills to force myself to sleep.

At first half a tablet, then two, then four.

By now it took six before I could sink into that muddy sleep.

Katie's condition rose and fell.

I worked myself to the bone for money.

No matter how filthy or exhausting the job, as long as it paid, I didn't so much as flinch.

I didn't dare rest, didn't dare get sick, didn't dare let up for even a moment.

Terrified Katie wouldn't last until I had the money to save her.

The long overdraft ate away at my body without a sound, and it had been running on empty for a long time.

All I could do was grit my teeth and hold on.

But only now did I see that all of it was a script written for me ahead of time.

They'd simply let me struggle alone in the mud.

Watched me get gnawed away by suffering, cold-eyed, unmoved.

And then, one light little sentence.

Wiped out all five years of pain I'd endured.

How was I supposed to bear that?

I stared at Sean and asked, unwilling to let it go, "If you don't love me anymore, we could just divorce. What's the point of grinding me down like this?"

Mom saw my eyes redden and couldn't help but step up and take my hand.

"Sweetie, don't blame Sean."

"You've always been proud and stubborn. If Sean had asked you for a divorce himself, knowing your temper, you'd probably have done something terrible to Lydia."

Dad chimed in.

"That's right. Lydia's suffered enough already. She can't be hurt anymore."

"For those ten years she watched you and Sean wrapped up in each other. You can't imagine how much that hurt her."

"This was supposed to be her life. You just stole it from her."

"What we did is a big lesson for a small wrong, making up for your mistake."

And suddenly I understood.

Why the "will" Dad left behind had ordered me to walk out with nothing.

Only that way could every path behind me be cut off, leaving me no room to worry about anything else.

No room to even think that the people closest to me would be laying a trap.

I'd treated that fake will as my one pillar, saved it on my phone and cherished it for five whole years.

When I couldn't hold on, I'd take it out and chew on it again and again.

And it turned out to be their punishment, meant to make me atone to Lydia.

The blade Sean drove into me had already cut me to the bone.

I never imagined my own parents and my daughter, the people closest to me, would twist another one into the wound.

I wrenched my hand out of Mom's grip.

"Is this what Lydia said? That I stole her life?"

Tears rolled down Lydia's face in great drops, her voice shaking out of tune.

"Meryl didn't steal my life. I chose to leave on my own."

"Don't blame Meryl. She just loved Sean too much."

"She did nothing wrong. The one who was wrong has always been me."

The moment she started crying, the tension on every face was plain to see.

Katie swung her little fist at me, furious.

"Bad Mommy. It's your fault Auntie Lydia's crying."

"We were such a happy family, and you made everyone unhappy. I never want you to be my mommy again."

The child I'd once raised cupped in my own hands, swinging her fist at me.

In that moment, everything I'd given, everything I'd sacrificed, became a joke.

Katie was only five when she was "diagnosed" with a terminal illness.

She'd shed the frail, scrawny look now, grown into a slip of a girl just starting to bloom.

But that vivid, healthy child was a fiction I'd wrung out of five years of blood and tears.

For five years, all I got was half an hour a day beside her in the ICU.

That short half hour was the only light in my gray days.

And it was the cruelest torture too.

I even knelt outside those heavy doors, pressing my forehead to the floor, praying.

Take every hardship in the world and give it to me, I begged, just let Katie get well.

But now, at the moment we were finally back together,

what met me wasn't a warm embrace. It was a fist thrown without a second thought.

The dull ache in my chest cut deeper than anything my skin could feel.

Only now did I understand what the nurses' pitying looks had really meant.

That was the sorrow of the helpless, watching one woman get fooled completely.

I wanted to laugh.

But somewhere in the laughing,

the tears came down and I couldn't stop them.

Seeing me cry, Sean's brow knotted.

He looked me over with disgust. "Is it that serious? How hard can a kid's hand even hit?"

"She barely touched you, and you put on a show like this. For whose benefit?"

My mother's face went cold too, her voice impatient. "You see Lydia cry, so you cry."

"Can you stop measuring yourself against her? Lydia lost her parents and got taken in by our family. She's had it hard enough as it is."

"You're the one who cost Lydia ten years with Sean. Fine, you don't know how to step aside, but then you go and act like you're the one who's been so terribly wronged."

My father pursed his lips, every word heavy with reproach.

"You really have let us down."

"Thank goodness Lydia's big enough not to hold it against you. If she had your temper, would you even be standing here in front of us right now?"

Seeing everyone rush to defend her, Lydia grew smugger by the second.

She made a show of wiping away a few tears.

"Don't be so hard on Merry, everyone. Honestly, Merry's not that bad."

"The things I like, she likes too. It just means we have the same taste."

"It's only that sometimes she gets a little possessive."

"Really, I don't mind. If she wants something, I let her have it. It's not the first time anyway. A little grievance like that, I can take it."

Watching Lydia put on her act, my stomach turned over on itself.

She always did it exactly like this, leaving everyone convinced that I was the one always snatching her things, the one who couldn't stand her.

Sean gathered her against him, his face soft with relief.

"Lydia, what am I supposed to say about you? You're just too kind."

"Just like your birth parents. Kind, selfless people, all of you. If it hadn't been for them back then, my mother and I would've been gone long ago."

Inside, I laughed coldly.

Lydia's parents had saved their lives, yes, and been trapped in the flames themselves, never making it out.

But I knew that fire was no accident.

Lydia's father had seen Sean's father come home carrying a bag stuffed full of the day's payment, and greed took him.

They plotted at home to set the Gilbert house on fire and steal the money, and Lydia overheard the whole thing.

One time, drunk, she poured all of it out to me.

If Sean ever learned his father had died in that fire, and that the mountain of debt his family had drowned in was all the Pruitts' doing,

would he still cradle Lydia in the palm of his hand?

Just then Roland Lambert, who'd been hauling the roses with me, came looking for me.

"Meryl, where are we actually unloading these roses? You've been in here a while. Why didn't you say anything?"

That snapped me back.

I hadn't come here to tangle with them. I'd come to work.

If it weren't for scraping together that last bit of Katie's treatment money, I never would have come here.

Never would have stumbled onto the trap they'd built for me so carefully five years ago.

Maybe even heaven couldn't bear to watch me keep being fooled, and laid the truth bare in front of me.

I peeled off my gloves and said to Roland, calm, "I'm not unloading the roses. Call the boss and tell him to find someone else."

Roland's eyes went wide with alarm. "Meryl, you're giving up your pay? What about your daughter?"

"I don't want it. Not now, not ever again. I don't have a daughter anymore."

Under Roland's stunned stare, I strode out of the hotel.

Mom hurried after me. "Merry, wait."

She planted herself in front of me so I couldn't move.

"We never meant to keep it from you forever. Lydia's due any day now. Once she has the baby, we'll bring you home."

The anger I'd been holding down shot straight to the top of my head.

It burned until I could barely think.

"Bring me home for what?"

"To tell me how you all lied to me for years?"

"Or to tell me none of you actually died, so I can weep for joy?"

There wasn't a trace of guilt on her face. If anything, she looked perfectly at ease.

"We're still family, after all. Family shouldn't fuss over things like this."

"You could show Lydia a little understanding too. You had ten happy years with Sean. That's more than enough."

"Since you know everything now, move back home tomorrow."

"You and Sean can't be husband and wife anymore, but you can be brother and sister. He's already decided to leave most of his assets to you, and we'll make it up to you properly from now on."

Mom had barely finished speaking.

My phone lit up with my medical report.

Malignant stomach tumor, metastasis present, essentially no chance of curative surgery

That glaring line of diagnosis worked at my heart like a dull blade, cutting it away over and over.

I gripped the phone, and a bleak, sorrowful laugh escaped me.

Five years ago, in this same hotel, a medical report had popped up on my phone. My daughter's.

Now fate seemed to be playing a joke on me.

Another medical report on my phone.

Except my daughter's report had been fake, and mine was real.

I said weakly, "There won't be a from now on. I've been diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer."

At those words, Mom's face went white as paper.

"Merry, don't scare your mother. You've always been so healthy."

However healthy I'd been, it couldn't hold up against years of running myself into the ground.

To save money, I ate one meal a day.

When work came in, I'd go from dawn to midnight, and when there was no time to eat, I'd choke down a couple of plain bread rolls.

After a while, my stomach started burning and cramping in waves.

I thought it was an ordinary stomach problem and got by on a few painkillers.

I never imagined I'd wear myself down until the oil was gone and the lamp went dark.

Dad came up, saw how bad Mom looked, and asked, "What is it? You've gone so pale."

Mom was babbling. "What do we do? Merry, late-stage stomach cancer."

Dad stared at me in disbelief. "Is what your mother said true?"

At some point Lydia had come to stand behind them, her whole face full of doubt.

"Meryl, don't joke about your own life."

"Mom and Dad love you so much. They can't take a shock like this."

Then she stole a careful glance at my parents. "Could they have gotten it wrong? Or maybe it's a misdiagnosis?"

"You've never had a single hard day in your life. Isn't this too convenient? We've only just been reunited, and suddenly you've got such a serious illness."

My parents, who a moment ago had been frantic, changed their expressions in an instant.

Dad's face went livid. He pointed at me. "You're going to be the death of me. How can you throw around something like this?"

"Isn't this you deliberately deceiving people? Your mother's heart is weak. You nearly frightened her to death just now."

Dad's face was full of disappointment in me.

Accusing me of using a serious illness as a tool to deceive my own family.

But he'd forgotten. Five years ago, that was exactly how they'd deceived me.

The draft cutting through the hotel entrance hit me, cold.

I pulled my clothes tight, ignored them, and walked out with long strides.

Behind me, Lydia took Mom's arm and soothed her with such care.

"Mom, don't be angry with Meryl."

"That's just how she is. The second something doesn't go her way, she lies. And once she's caught out, she runs off feeling guilty."

"She knows you care about her, so she made up an excuse like that to scare you on purpose."

Mom sighed. "In the end, it's our fault for spoiling her."

Sean came up too, watching my retreating back as he spoke slowly.

"Mom, don't worry. Meryl treats you and Katie like her whole life. Seeing you all alive and well, she couldn't be happier."

"She's probably just throwing a little tantrum. Give it a few days and she'll be fine."

Mom nodded.

"True. There's no grudge between parents and children that lasts overnight."

"Emmet, let's go get her ourselves in a few days. She's our own child, after all. A little coaxing and she'll come around."

Ten days later, my parents followed my address there.

The two of them got out of the car, made their way through the filthy, run-down stairwell, and walked with trepidation.

Mom's face was grim as she spoke. "How could Meryl be living in a place like this?"

Dad didn't understand either. "Exactly. Why not stay in the old house? Even if the old house brought back too many painful memories, the money we left her was plenty to live in a nice neighborhood."

At last they reached my rental unit.

They knocked for a long time. No one answered.

An old woman leaned out from next door and asked, "Who are you looking for?"

Mom answered quickly. "Meryl Donaldson. She lives here."

The old woman's face filled with pity. "Oh, Meryl. You've come too late."

"That poor girl. Her daughter was gone, and she had late-stage stomach cancer herself. Last night she couldn't bear it anymore, and she drowned herself in the sea."