“If you're sick, go to a hospital. Don't come here making trouble!”
The answer I'd expected. I nodded.
“So you won't say it? Fine. I'm calling the police right now, and I'll have them treat it as poisoning.”
“Let's see whether your little lover can really stay out of it once the cops show up.”
The moment he heard Charlotte might be dragged in, Abraham panicked.
He cleared everyone out of the room and let out a sigh.
“It wasn't anything serious.”
“It was just… just some chili extract.”
“May saw a prank video and got curious, so I used her to test it out.”
Test it out.
So casual, so light.
The daughter I'd nearly died bringing into the world, the daughter I cradled in my hands.
And in Abraham's mind she was nothing but a toy to test poison on, for a laugh?
The rage I'd been holding down broke loose.
My palm cracked across Abraham's face.
His head snapped to the side.
He clearly hadn't expected me to hit him; his expression shifted from shock to fury.
“Cindy, are you done yet?”
“It's not like anything happened to May. Do you have to blow it up into some federal case?”
“I already apologized. What more do you want!”
Even now, he didn't think he'd done anything wrong.
Even now, he hadn't asked a single time whether May was all right.
My daughter, like my words.
In Abraham's heart, both were just that meaningless.
My eyes burned before I could stop them.
“May is your daughter too. Your blood runs in her veins!”
“You watched her suffer, watched her in pain, watched her sick in a hospital bed, and you don't feel even a shred of guilt?”
“What kind of poison did that bitch pour into your ear, to make you turn on your own daughter like this!”
Abraham's temper flared too.
He shot it right back at me, without mercy.
“What are you screaming about? I'm not the one who told you to have the kid.”
“Back then you were the one who threw yourself at me and crawled into my bed. Then you had the gall to come waddling in pregnant, insisting on marrying me.”
“A shameless mother like you, what kind of decent daughter could she possibly raise?”
“May's so sickly, maybe it's because you were sleeping around years ago and caught some dirty disease!”
In an instant, all the blood in me ran backward.
I felt like I'd been struck by lightning.
I stood frozen in place, unable to make a sound.
Ten years of marriage, and I'd thought the worst of it was that Abraham simply didn't love me enough.
It had never once crossed my mind that this was how he truly saw me.
No wonder he never took a word I said to heart.
No wonder he never cared when my mood changed.
So all along, in his eyes, I was nothing but a shameless burden who cost him money.
Back then I'd married him without asking for a single betrothal gift.
I'd sold the house in my hometown just to back his start-up.
And none of it, in his eyes, was love.
It was throwing myself at him.
It was shameless groveling.
Ten years.
For a man like this, I'd buried the best ten years of my life.
The tears fell, one after another.
Every feeling I had tangled into a knot lodged in my throat.
Sickening, and impossible to swallow down.
After words like these, there was nothing left to salvage.
I shook my head, trembling, and spoke slowly.
“Let's divorce, Abraham. We're getting divorced.”
