Patsy froze for a moment but didn’t turn around. Her voice was hoarse when she replied.
“I’m taking Grandma back to our hometown.”
Cornell’s heart, which had been tightly wound, loosened slightly. His face returned to its usual expressionless calm.
“When are you leaving? Send me your return flight details that day. I’ll pick you up.”
Patsy’s lips curved faintly, that same detached smile never wavering.
“No need. I’m not—”
Before she could finish, a sharp and confident voice rang out from the hallway.
“Hon! Come look at my new nail tips! Aren’t they gorgeous?”
It was Stevvi.
Cornell turned on his heel without hesitation, leaving Patsy’s unfinished words—I’m not coming back—lodged in her throat.
She hadn’t planned to make any dramatic declarations. Her only fear was that Cornell hadn’t punished her enough yet and would never let her leave.
After a moment of thought, she decided not to say it.
Slowly, she walked forward and closed the guest room door, shutting out the so-called “husband and wife” outside.
Patsy remembered the first time she heard Stevvi call Cornell honey. Patsy had cried and confronted Cornell about it, only to be met with his indifferent response.
“So what? What do you want from me? Should I beat her for you? Kick her out? Or are you hoping for a threesome?”
“Patsy,” he had said coldly, “the moment you abandoned me, you should’ve known that one day I’d make you pay back double. Don’t forget—this is what you deserve.”
From then on, she understood—this was his revenge.
The three of them… It was not quite a marriage and not quite an affair.
She had heard that word, honey, for two years now, yet she had never once spoken it aloud. Cornell never allowed her to.
Funny thing was, before the wedding, he used to coax her endlessly just to get her to call him that.
He loved that endearment to death, forcing her to say it almost every time before he would give her what she wanted.
But after they got married, he never let her say it again. Maybe the very thought of it disgusted him.
After all, he never saw her as a wife. He could even toss her into another man’s bed like a disposable object.
When she finished packing, Patsy stood up, her knees throbbing with a dull ache.
She glanced out the window. Sure enough, it had started to rain.
Her leg had been injured once, nearly torn apart by a wolf in an underground fighting pit.
Back then, someone had given her an ultimatum: survive ten minutes with the beast, and Cornell would eat and sleep well in prison. Fail, and he’d “receive special treatment.”
She nearly lost her life that day. It wasn’t until a friend sent word that he was safe that she could finally breathe again.
Now, whenever the weather turned bad, her knee burned with a sharp, bone-deep pain.
She stood still for a while before pulling open the bedside drawer in search of painkillers.
Before she could find them, the door burst open.
“Patsy, get out of here.”
She didn’t move. She had no desire to be part of whatever twisted game they were playing.
In the past, she had gone along with him—out of love and out of guilt for failing to save his mother.
But now, her love had worn down to dust. There was nothing left in her heart for her to expect.
That was why when Cornell grabbed her wrist, she snapped, thrashing wildly in his grip.
But every time she broke free, he caught her again—until he dragged her into the living room.
“Stevvi wants to eat hand-peeled walnuts,” he said coolly. “Her nails make it hard to crack them. You do it.”
Patsy stared at the table piled high with walnuts. Her chest tightened as memories flashed across her mind—Cornell scaling a wild mountain just to pick walnuts for her.
It was the day before the SAT. Teachers had told everyone to relax.
But he had skipped class and dragged her into the mountains, climbing trees like a fool and knocking down a rain of walnuts for her.
Fresh walnuts were nearly impossible to crack, but he peeled them open one by one, handing each to her.
“Walnuts are good for the brain,” he’d said with a grin. “Hope you ace the exam tomorrow.”
That was the first time she realized even under a walnut tree, love could blossom.
They had promised—after the exams, they would be together.
She remembered how his hands bled from cracking so many shells. When they returned to class, gathering scattered walnuts, he had said, “Whatever you crave in the future, just tell me. I’ll get it for you. I’d never let my girl hurt herself.”
But now… he had shoved a table full of walnuts at her, asking her to peel them for his mistress.
Patsy’s throat tightened. She blinked hard, forcing her voice steady.
“I don’t want to.”
Cornell, who had just sat down, froze for a moment, then sneered. “You sure about that?”
Her knee ached so badly she could barely stand, but she ignored him and turned away.
That’s when he pulled something from his pocket and tossed it onto the table.
“You can refuse if you want,” he said, voice sharp as a blade. “But don’t expect to see your grandma’s bracelet again.”
At the word bracelet, Patsy stopped dead and turned around.
Lying on the table was a delicate string of seashells—the keepsake her grandparents had exchanged as a token of love.
It had vanished years ago, tucked away by her grandmother and forgotten after dementia stole her memories.
Connee had searched everywhere for it, but it never turned up—until now, in Cornell’s hand.
Patsy’s eyes burned red in that instant. Without a word, she dropped to her knees in front of the coffee table.
“I’ll do it.”
Connee hadn’t seen the bracelet before she passed. If Patsy could bring it to her… maybe she’d be happy, wherever she was.
As she cracked the walnuts, her gaze never left the bracelet. She knew it was the one—she had seen it when she was a child.
But the shells were hard, and after a few attempts, blood welled from her fingertips. She resorted to using her teeth.
Just as she brought the walnut to her mouth, a sharp pain exploded across her face.
