01
The weather turned brutally hot overnight, and I mentioned getting my parents a new AC unit, the kind that heats and cools.
My husband didn't even look up. "It's not that hot. And we're saving up to buy a house, remember?"
My mom rubbed her hands together, embarrassed. "Austin's right. Summers here only average around sixty degrees. No sense wasting the money."
But the next day, an AC order popped up in his shopping feed.
So he'd said no to my face and placed the order behind my back.
I was still eaten up with guilt over how I'd misjudged him, thinking about how to be a little kinder to him—
A few days later, his childhood sweetheart posted on social media: her parents' place had a new AC installed.
Same style, same model. Identical to the one in his order.
I snuck a look at his phone. The recipient's name, plain as day, was hers.
And the payment account was the little fund we'd been saving to buy a house.
The summer heat had blown past a hundred, and the AC in our home couldn't push out a breath of cold air. But my heart had turned cold enough.
……
I tossed and turned all night.
The same question kept circling in my head: when exactly had Austin Swanson and Linda Donaldson gotten so close?
In their chat logs, Austin had written:
"Linda, as close as we are, why stand on ceremony with me?"
"I make thirty grand a month. Forget an AC unit, I could buy a house without breaking a sweat."
I stared at the words on the screen. I knew every single one of them, and strung together they felt like a hand closing around my throat.
Thirty grand a month.
For three years he'd told me his salary was eight thousand, that he put three thousand into the fund every month, swearing up and down that we'd buy a house once we'd saved enough.
For that, I didn't even dare get pregnant. I was afraid a baby would eat into our savings, afraid the pressure would be too much for him.
I couldn't bring myself to buy a set of pajamas over two hundred dollars, just so I could set aside another three hundred a month.
The phone slipped through my fingers and landed square on his face.
Austin jerked half upright. "What are you doing?"
I drew a long breath, my nails digging into my palm. "Austin, why wouldn't you let me get my parents a new AC?"
"I told you, the temperature's going to drop in a few days."
"Then how come your precious Linda's parents got a brand-new AC installed?"
He rubbed at his sleepy eyes, and the moment he saw the phone lit up in my hand, it hit him.
He snatched it and shot up off the bed. "You went through my phone? Isabella Harding, I told you before we got married my work involves confidential material, that my phone can't be poked through by other people. Are you trying to get me fired?"
A chill crawled up my back.
My hand tightened on the corner of the blanket, loosened, tightened again.
When we'd first started dating, he'd told me he had no secrets except his phone, and to make it easy for me to keep tabs on him, he'd gone and gotten a new number just so I could look through it whenever I wanted.
I never once checked. I never even put a passcode on my own phone.
I thought that was called trust.
Turns out it was called stupid.
Maybe it was the look on my face. Austin took a deep breath and started to explain.
"Bella, don't read too much into it. Linda asked me to buy it for her, she said she didn't know how to order it herself—"
"The best dual-function AC on the market. Eight thousand six hundred dollars. Paid for out of our fund. Austin, were you helping out, or did you buy it yourself?"
He was silent for three seconds.
"Linda said her parents aren't in good health, that the heat could give them heatstroke, so I just—"
I cut him off. "But you told my parents to run a fan. You're not worried about them getting heatstroke?"
"How is that the same? Linda's parents grew up with air conditioning their whole lives. They've never had it rough."
Something clogged in my throat like a wad of cotton.
"So because my parents can handle hardship, they deserve more of it?"
That stopped him cold.
He sighed and ducked into the kitchen.
"I'm going to make breakfast. Linda's family had their water cut off yesterday, I'm putting something together for them."
I sat on the bed and listened to the frying and steaming and clattering coming from the kitchen.
He spent two hours cooking breakfast for Linda's family.
In the three years we'd lived in this home, I could count on one hand the number of times he'd made me a bowl of noodles.
"I'm off to work. Breakfast's on the table, don't go hungry."
On the table sat a dainty little bowl, holding a serving of plain cold rice porridge.
My nose stung. I turned and saw Linda had posted again: 【A beautiful day starts with the eight lavish breakfast dishes a certain someone brought over.】
That time my mom was sick and in the hospital, he hadn't so much as made a phone call.
And my parents still made excuses for him.
So it turned out it wasn't that he couldn't spare the time.
It was just that his time was something he wouldn't share with my parents.
I picked up that bowl of porridge and threw the whole thing, bowl and all, into the trash.
The porcelain shattered at the bottom of the can, like something inside me breaking too.
Then I turned around and bought my parents a dual-function AC, and pulled out every last dollar left in the fund.
If we were splitting up, then I had to guard my own purse.
