The day my son was discharged from the hospital.
As soon as we walked through the door, Daniel Carter announced that, for our sake, he was going to quit his ten-year smoking habit.
Looking at the pile of empty cigarette packs stacked high in the trash can, I felt no joy—only a cold determination.
Instead, I stared at him with a stern face and told him I wanted a divorce.
He was speechless, then furious, accusing me of making trouble out of nothing:
“Emily Parker, are you out of your mind? Haven’t you been nagging me for years to quit smoking? And now you’re throwing a fit because I finally did?”
“Have you ever once thought about our son?” I sneered.
“Or have you already forgotten why he ended up in the hospital in the first place?”
His only response was slamming the door on his way out.
In my arms, my son Ethan stirred awake from his nap, his voice thick with congestion:
“Mom, didn’t Dad say he’d come pick me up when I left the hospital? Why didn’t I see him when we got home?”
A bitter ache welled up inside me.
From the moment Ethan was admitted, Daniel had been perpetually “too busy”—always away on business trips or rushing to catch flights.
I called him countless times, but he never once picked up.
The only time he ever called me, it was to ask about the company. He tossed in a half-hearted, “I’ll come pick Ethan up when he’s discharged,” and hung up.
Ethan had clung to those words as if they were gospel. If not for that expectation, he wouldn’t have been too excited to sleep last night, and he wouldn’t be struggling to keep his little eyes open now.
But Daniel hadn’t spared his son even a glance before storming out.
“Mom, where’s Dad?” Ethan pressed again.
I had no answer for him. Children remembered every promise, while adults discarded theirs as soon as they became inconvenient.
Daniel was sick of me now. Long gone was the man who once knelt outside my parents’ home for three days and nights, begging me to marry him.
“Emily, if you’ll agree to be my wife, I’ll treat you like gold. You’ve got allergies—I’ll quit smoking, I swear I won’t let you suffer a single sneeze. You’re the Parker family’s princess, and even in the Carter family, you’ll never lift a finger to do rough work.”
Back then, in New York City, the Carters were far beneath the Parkers in status. My family had already arranged a proper match for me.
But I was foolish, swept away by Daniel’s sweet words. I made the reckless mistake of getting pregnant before marriage.
The Parker Family cast me aside, and I married Daniel as I wished—only for him to show his true colors.
During my pregnancy, he smoked incessantly, without restraint. Our son was born with asthma.
This last hospitalization was again triggered by Daniel’s smoking.
He finally agreed to quit—but I knew it wasn’t for me or Ethan. It was for someone else.
…
It didn’t take long for me to meet the young woman he was doting on in his office.
One evening, after putting Ethan to sleep, I walked into the bedroom only to find the two of them collapsed on my bed.
She was a college senior, about to graduate. Her name was Sophia Miller.
Even though I hadn’t set foot in the company for years, I knew her name well.
Like me, she had allergies and couldn’t tolerate smoke.
For her, Daniel never smoked in the office. He even banned smoking company-wide, despite knowing some of the major shareholders were smokers.
I remembered the times I’d nearly suffocated after walking in on shareholders smoking, only for Daniel to scold me for “causing trouble at the office.”
But now? All his rare indulgence was reserved for Sophia.
And that delicate, contrived voice of hers—I knew it all too well.
