I Discarded My Decade-Old Love for My Remaining Life

My husband, Tristram Dickerson, earns fifty thousand a month and hands over every cent of it, yet we still can't make ends meet.

His mother needs twenty thousand a month for her heart medication, and his father needs fifteen thousand a month for his leg rehab.

Then our daughter was diagnosed with leukemia and admitted to the hospital, and I couldn't even scrape together the hundred thousand for the surgery.

Everyone thought I was a spendthrift, and they all took Tristram's side.

After that, he lost his mind.

In three years, he went from a salesman to a president worth billions.

He stopped giving me a single cent.

Even on the day I was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

He looked at me coldly, his tone like he was handing out charity to a beggar.

"Paulette, if you've got the nerve, then die."

"Has anyone ever told you how sickening you look, faking an illness to scam money?"

I saw the million-dollar bracelet on the wrist of his secretary, Gladys Fox.

He said it was a reward for her work on a project.

In his mind, I was the one who killed our daughter.

So be it.

I would do exactly as he wished and vanish from his world.

...

"Stomach cancer. Late stage."

"The surgery will cost three hundred thousand."

The doctor pushed his glasses up and slid the diagnosis across to me.

I said thank you and turned to leave.

The moment I stepped out of the office, I saw Tristram at the far end of the corridor, supporting Gladys.

Gladys's foot was still wrapped in gauze.

I pretended not to see and turned to slip out through the side door.

Tristram came storming after me.

He grabbed my arm and planted himself in front of me.

"Paulette, you really are something."

"You actually followed me just to get my attention."

Followed him!

He thought I was following him.

I gave a bitter smile and couldn't help clenching the diagnosis in my hand.

It was still raining outside, and I was holding my mud-splattered delivery uniform.

If he'd stopped to think for even a second, he wouldn't have said something so stupid.

I opened my mouth to explain, even to show him the diagnosis.

Just then, Gladys hobbled over on her crutch.

She glanced at me and started explaining.

"Paulie, please don't get the wrong idea."

"I was bringing some documents to Mr. Dickerson when I slipped and fell and twisted my ankle."

She paused, then choked up.

"I know I shouldn't have let you misunderstand."

"But you should trust Mr. Dickerson too. He's your boss, after all, and he has his pride. How could you follow him around?"

Gladys was Tristram's junior from school.

She'd only been at the company five months and had already climbed to the secretary's post, so she clearly had some skill.

I looked up and watched Gladys standing up for Tristram.

And suddenly I laughed out loud.

I said nothing and turned to leave the emergency wing.

But Tristram was furious and came chasing after me.

"Gladys is talking to you, and this is how you treat her?"

"Don't you know she's injured? A bad mood will slow the healing of her wound."

"Come on, go apologize to Gladys."

He seized my hand and dragged me back in front of her.

"Apologize!"

I looked at Gladys, and the tears came dripping down her face.

I really couldn't stand to watch anymore and turned to go.

"I told you to apologize. Did you not hear me?"

Crack!

A sharp slap landed across my face.

My right cheek swelled up fast.

My body shuddered, my hand went slack, and a sheet of paper drifted lightly down in front of Tristram.

The paper lay on the ground, soaking up the rain.

The word "stomach" was half smeared away, but the three words "late-stage cancer" still stung the eyes.

One glance and Tristram's face went white.

He stared at the spot where the water had blurred the ink, fury surging up in him.

Seeing that something was off, Gladys quickly snatched the paper up.

"Where did you get this?"

The words had barely left her mouth.

Tristram grabbed the diagnosis out of her hand.

Seeing his expression turn ugly, Gladys said hurriedly,

"Paulie, this diagnosis is fake. How could you lie to Tristram like this?"

On the strength of one piece of paper, Gladys had pinned a crime on me.

And Tristram, without bothering to verify anything, believed her.

He raised his hand and slapped me, glaring at me hard.

"Paulette!"

"You'd better give me a reasonable explanation, or we're getting a divorce!"

Divorce!

In the past.

Those were the two words I dreaded hearing most.

Every time we argued, he'd hang the word "divorce" over my head.

And every time it ended with me caving and trying to please him.

Now, hearing the word again, I felt nothing at all.

"Fine, let's divorce!"

It came out before I could stop it.

Behind me, Tristram let out a furious roar.

Back home.

I set the divorce papers I'd prepared in the entryway, along with the key.

Back in the bedroom, I was packing when I heard a key turning in the lock at the entryway.

Tristram pushed the door open, his gaze pausing on my face for a moment.

I thought he was going to ask about the diagnosis, but he just looked away and stepped aside to let Gladys come in first.

"Tristram, if I stay here to recover, won't your wife be upset?"

"Maybe I should just stay at a hotel for a few days instead."

"No need!"

Tristram sounded completely sure of himself.

"With me here, you can stay and not worry about a thing."

Only then did he notice the luggage in my hand. He frowned and kicked at it.

"Are you never going to stop?!"

"Still sulking."

Sulking!

He thought I was sulking at him.

In the past, whenever he misunderstood me, I would explain.

But now.

Looking at his accusing face, I suddenly felt so tired.

Facing him.

I didn't want to say one more unnecessary word.

I took a breath and pulled up my suitcase to leave again.

This time, Tristram didn't stop me.

But Gladys blocked the doorway.

"Paulie, don't be angry just yet."

"My lease was up, and Tristram thought I had nowhere to go, so he said I could stay a couple of days until my injury heals, then I'll leave."

"If it bothers you."

She looked at me, and her voice suddenly dropped a lot.

"I'll leave right now, then. I just hope you won't stay mad at Tristram!"

With that, she turned to go.

As she passed by me, her body suddenly lurched to the side, and she crashed to the floor.

"Ah! Paulie, why did you shove me?"

I watched her slumped on the ground, offering no explanation, and instead pointed at the wall lamp.

"I shoved you?"

"Gladys, how about we check the security footage?"

The words had barely left my mouth when Tristram rushed out of the room. He shoved me aside and scooped Gladys up.

His face was twisted, his eyes full of disgust.

"Enough!"

"If you want to leave, call Mom and Dad and tell them it's your own choice to go."

"Don't go dragging my name through the mud in front of them later."

When he reached the entryway, he suddenly stopped.

"Paulette, you'd better think this through."

"If you walk out that door today, it'll be hard to ever get back in."

Right after that, the door slammed shut.

I watched him go and let out a breath.

Even now, he still thought I was throwing a fit.

He didn't know.

After our daughter's accident, Mrs. Acevedo reminded me more than once to have Tristram look at the bills.

It was me who felt that if he saw them, it would make me look petty.

Now I'd figured it out. This wasn't something I should have to bear alone.

I set the ledger on the coffee table.

The page it lay open to was exactly the record from the month our daughter was hospitalized.

By the time I came out of the complex, it was already dark.

I stood at the curb, dragging my suitcase, about to book a ride, when I noticed my phone had lit up with a low-battery red warning.

The complex where Tristram and I lived was out in the suburbs, and taxis rarely came this way.

I glanced toward the gate, thinking I might ask the security guard for help.

But after hesitating a long while, I decided it was such a small thing there was no point bothering anyone.

It was only two streets from here to the busy part of town.

Twenty minutes on foot, at most.

But I overestimated myself, and halfway there, the rain started up again.

It came down in sheets, streaming over my face.

Even my stomach began to cramp, wave after wave.

I walked, stopped, walked again, gasping for breath, and then all at once my legs gave out and everything went black.

What happened after that, I don't know.

When I came to again, there was the sharp smell of disinfectant.

"You're awake?"

A familiar face appeared in front of me.

"Mom!"

I was stunned, then asked.

"What are you doing here?"

Mrs. Acevedo handed me a glass of water, then let out a sigh.

"It's pouring outside, you didn't even take an umbrella, and you're dragging a suitcasewhere were you going?"

I took a sip of water, lowered my head, and said nothing.

She didn't press me. She only patted my arm gently.

"The Mid-Autumn Festival is almost here. I wanted Tristram to bring you out to the old house for a meal."

Mid-Autumn. I froze for a moment.

I'd forgotten there was even such a holiday.

"But I couldn't reach either one of you."

"I happened to have nothing going on, and I couldn't stop worrying, so I thought I'd come check on youand then I found you collapsed on the road."

As she spoke, her face turned serious.

"You're sicksomething this seriousand you didn't tell me?"

"Does Tristram know?"

I shook my head and said nothing more.

It was as if she saw straight through me, her voice going low.

"Before your parents passed, they placed you in my hands themselves and asked me to take good care of you."

"And now this rotten kid dares to mistreat youI will not let him off!"

Before she'd even finished, Mrs. Acevedo picked up her phone and said:

"Second floor, internal medicine. Get over here now."

"If you don't come, then from now on you don't have a mother."

I knew she was on the phone with Tristram.

Less than ten minutes after she hung up.

The door of the room banged open.

Tristram charged straight in.

The moment he saw me, he didn't offer a single word of concernhe just started laying into me.

"You were the one who insisted on leaving back then."

"And nice workno sooner are you out the door than you call her up to smear me, faking an illness, and now you've even taken it all the way to a hospital."

"Paulette, we've been together for years, and I never once realized how vicious you are!"

The words were barely out of his mouth.

Then came a slap, the crisp crack of it echoing through the whole room.

"Get down on your knees!"

It was Mrs. Acevedo.

Tristram, cradling half his face, finally got a look at who had hit him.

"Mom!"

"You hit me?"

He pointed at everything around him, as if it had all just dawned on him.

"It's you!"

"You had my mom put on an act with you, just to get me to come see you, didn't you!"

"Enough!"

Mrs. Acevedo's voice rang out again.

"If I still meant anything to you as your mother, you'd have seen me the moment you walked through that door."

"Not now."

Hearing that, Tristram's eyes wavered, and he stammered for a long while.

"It's not like thatlet me explain."

As he spoke, he fixed his eyes on me.

"Paulette, don't think that just because you're like this, I'm going to stay and take care of you."

"Let me tell you, if you hadn't run into Gladys, her wound wouldn't have flared up and gotten infected."

"If you don't apologize to her this time, I'll never forgive you, not if it kills me!"

"Then go ahead and die!"

Mrs. Acevedo's voice was firm.

Tristram clenched his fists and raised his hand to strike methen saw his mother's face gone dark.

"I was the one who said that just now. Don't you go after Paulie."

"In my heart, I have only one daughter-in-law, and that's Paulie."

Tristram was trembling with rage, but he wouldn't let it go, and right there in front of everyone he asked her:

"Mom, say it yourselfis Paulette your own flesh and blood or not!"

The air in the ward froze in an instant.

I looked at Mrs. Acevedo's shocked face.

Honestly, it wasn't just hereven I was shocked.

I didn't understand why Tristram would say such a thing.

The tense standoff dragged on for a long time.

Only then did Mrs. Acevedo speak, slowly.

"Tristram, do you know what you're saying?"

Tristram sneered and sat halfway up in the bed.

"Mom, stop pretending."

"If she weren't your own daughter, why would you shield her at every turn?"

Shield me?

I was baffled.

Just as I was about to speak, Tristram went on.

"You know perfectly well that I've always thought of her as a little sister."

"And you?"

"The moment she graduated, you pushed me to marry her."

I was completely stunned!

Back then he swore up and down that he loved me.

He said my parents had entrusted me to their family, that from then on their family would be my greatest support.

Now, out of his mouth, it had turned into coercion.

In the past, I would have made a scene, demanded to know why he married me if he didn't love me.

But now, I'd already decided to leave.

Even if I knew these things, they would only add to my troubles.

Whether he said them or not no longer mattered to me.

Mrs. Acevedo seemed to sense the change in me.

She didn't fly into a rage. Instead, she grew unusually calm.

"Tristram!"

"I'll say it once more: do you even know what you're saying?"

"If you're not thinking straight, I can treat what you just said as nonsense."

"I'm warning you to think it over carefully."

"Some words, once spoken, leave no way back!"

Hearing this, Tristram couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"What do I have to be afraid of?"

"Back in elementary school, when I had leukemia and needed a bone-marrow transplant, you and Dad worried yourselves sick over me. I remember."

"Afterward, I asked you more than once who donated the bone marrow, and the two of you flat-out refused to tell me."

"Well, today, I found her!"

"You found her?"

Mrs. Acevedo looked startled. "Where is she?"

Tristram smiled.

"For that I actually have to thank Paulette. If she hadn't run into Gladys, I never would have known."

"When I saw Gladys changing into her hospital gown, I happened to notice a crescent-shaped birthmark on her neck."

"You never told me who the donor was back then."

"All these years, I never gave up looking. The nurse said she couldn't reveal the other person's identity, so she just gave me a distinguishing mark."

"I just asked Gladys, and she admitted it was true."

I watched Tristram find his lifesaver, wearing the look of a man ready to devote his whole life to her in return.

Suddenly I wanted to laugh.

My parents and Tristram's father were good friends.

My parents died in a car accident, and before they passed, they entrusted me to the Dickerson family's care.

I was only seven that year.

When I first came to the Dickersons, Tristram wanted nothing to do with me.

But when he was ten, he suddenly fell gravely ill and was diagnosed with leukemia, urgently needing a bone-marrow transplant.

His father wasn't a match, and his mother was anemic and in poor health, unable to donate.

I watched the two of them go gray-haired overnight.

So, to repay their kindness, I volunteered to be tested for a match.

As luck would have it, my bone marrow was compatible.

I knew Tristram was a competitive person, so I asked his parents to keep it secret.

In all the years since, they never breathed a word of it.

I never imagined Gladys would find a way to slip through the cracks.

Seeing that Mrs. Acevedo and I stayed silent for so long, he assumed we had caved.

"Today, it just so happens you're both here."

"Paulette, let's get a divorce. I want to formally marry Gladys!"

"Fine!"

The word shot out of me.

Tristram was taken aback, as if he hadn't expected me to be so quick about it.

I hesitated for a moment, but in the end I couldn't help asking.

"Tristram, are you sure the person who donated the bone marrow was Gladys?"