Grandma had promised to clear my name at the right moment. What they thought of me no longer mattered.
I stared at him, my face blank, then exhaled slowly and rolled over, burrowing into the covers.
"Do whatever you want."
He'd expected me to lash out at Rose like I used to—physically. He was so tense he'd planted himself in front of her like a human shield.
But when I simply turned my back and lay down, every trace of his alarm evaporated.
After a long pause, his voice came out thick with disbelief.
"You're... not angry?"
My tone stayed flat. "Isn't this what you've always wanted? Me getting along with her?"
Relief flooded his face, and he actually laughed. "Finally, you're learning. I knew you weren't really that heartless. I'll make it up to you—I promise."
I didn't respond. Not a word, not a glance, until they were both gone.
For a long time afterward, I pressed my palm to my chest.
So this was what letting go felt like.
Over the next few days, guilt seemed to drive him back to my room again and again. I gave him nothing—cold shoulders, closed doors—but he never lost patience. He just kept painting pictures of the beautiful life we'd have together.
Until he brought up the one-month celebration for the baby. Then his confidence faltered.
"Rose will never be able to publicly acknowledge her own child. So I thought... while the baby's still too young to understand... I'd let her attend the celebration openly. As the mother."
He hesitated. "It would give her some closure. Don't you think?"
My knitting needles never paused. I didn't even look up.
"I told you—do what you want. It's not my child. None of this has anything to do with me."
His jaw tightened. A flush crept up his neck, and something dark flickered in his eyes. He snatched the memorial offerings I'd prepared for Mingchu out of my hands.
"Why have you been like this lately? Do you even understand what it means for her to attend? It's as good as announcing she's the lady of the Stephens household. You never would have allowed that before."
I paused, finally sparing him a bored glance.
"And that's a bad thing? Two months ago, when you two were in bed together, didn't you say it was a shame you could never give her a proper title?"
He went white. Marble-still. A statue drained of blood.
I plucked the items from his frozen hands, my composure unruffled, as if nothing had happened.
He hovered at my ear after that, stumbling through excuses—he didn't love her, he'd been drugged, he only slept with her because he felt responsible—until my silence finally crushed his pathetic explanations into dust.
After that day, he stopped visiting.
But Rose's social media told me everything I needed to know. Post after post: the three of them at photo studios, posing as a picture-perfect family in every style imaginable.
The day I finished my postpartum confinement was the day the Stephens family threw a grand celebration for that illegitimate child.
Grandma messaged me: The divorce papers will be ready tomorrow.
I went back to the house to collect my things.
The home that had once been ours—warm, familiar—had been gutted and rebuilt in Rose's taste. Every corner, every detail, remade for her.
Even the portrait that used to sit by the living room TV—him cradling my pregnant belly, both of us smiling—had been replaced. Now it was a family photo: Percival, Rose, and the baby.
In the picture, Percival was beaming.
Happier than he'd looked the day I said yes to him.
I went to the bedroom to pack the clothes I'd brought into the marriage.
But no matter how many times I searched the closet, I couldn't find it—the qipao my mother had sewn for me by hand before she passed, every stitch an heirloom of embroidered silk.
I was about to call and ask when I saw it.
Rose's latest post. Her at the celebration. Wearing my mother's qipao.
Rage erupted—white-hot, volcanic.
I grabbed a taxi and stormed into the banquet hall.
There she was, arm linked through Percival's, accepting congratulations with a gracious smile, basking in the admiration of the crowd.
The moment he saw me, guilt flickered across Percival's face—but underneath it, a smug satisfaction, like he'd been expecting this all along.
He released Rose and walked toward me.
